Archive of Our Own ^beta

It takes fifty-seven minutes to drive from his little farm house in the heavily forested part of Wolf Trap to Hannibal’s house in Baltimore. Will knows this because it feels like he’s counting every second and every minute of the drive through thick, blanketing snow. He doesn’t bother with the radio the whole drive there because the snow around him creates enough static as it is; if he has to hear the buzzing from the radio between channels too, he thinks he might crash his car into a thick copse of trees just to stop it all.

He watches the road, slick and white and empty from the snowfall that pushes across the line of snowstorm. He watches the clock on the dashboard, checking every few minutes to make sure it’s still somewhere around six in the evening. In dreams, he knows, the clock never stays the same time if you look at it twice. The steady progression of time is soothing to his fraying edges, but Will still can’t make himself unclench cold fingers from his steering wheel.

Even as he pulls up the drive of Hannibal’s house - if it can even be graciously called anything but a fucking mansion, honestly - he watches his fingers turn as white as the snow outside from how hard he grips the wheel.

He sits in the driveway, in the snow, for a long moment and lets the snow dampen the world around him. It had dampened the sound outside when it first started hours ago, and when he’d been searching through the field outside his house for pawprints of anything other than his dogs.

(He hadn’t found any. That, more than anything, even the horrible failure of a kiss with Alana, sits and sinks in his chest like pure lead. He’d gone so far as to crawl onto the roof and all it got him was soaking wet pants and a chill still living in his bones.)

Will forces himself out of the car and up to the porch, scrambling for a key on the same ring he keeps his car and house keys on. Technically, Hannibal had said it was for emergencies, but if he’s honest with himself, he feels like an emergency right about now. Maybe he should have driven himself to a hospital instead, like the one twenty minutes from his house, but the idea of it had sickened him more.

Somehow, Hannibal has become synonymous with safe. He’s not entirely sure how, because Hannibal is pretentious and uncomfortably hard to read anything from and often looks at Will like he’s waiting for something. But, for whatever reason, the animal part of his brain has decided that Hannibal is safe, can save him from this. Ridiculous. And yet, here he is.

He pushes the door open, shedding his damp, snow-sprinkled jacket as soon as he enters the warmth of the foyer. He probably could have, should have, changed entirely when he swapped for dry pants before immediately driving over. Will knows there’s still dust from plaster and brick and mortar covering his shirt and vest, after all. He just hadn’t been able to make himself do it. The hazy realization that he was absolutely fucked had felt like too much for him to manage it.

And then, for some fucking reason, when Hannibal walks in with a face already asking him why he didn’t call first, Will doesn’t say well, you see, I’m being forced to confront the fact that I’m hallucinating and now I’m having a breakdown about that. No, because Will is an idiot, instead he just blurts out, “Well, I kissed Alana Bloom.”

Good god. He should have just crashed his car into a tree, what the fuck.

Hannibal stands there for a moment, seeming more surprised at the opening than Will actually being in his house. He gestures an arm towards the dining room, simply replying with, “Well, come in.”

Will walks ahead of him into the dining room, because now that he’s out of the car, it feels like if he stands still for even a moment then he’ll implode and paint the pristine wallpaper of Hannibal’s home with his guts and gore. He stares at the table, half-eaten food and half-drunk wine set up. Whoever was here is gone, clearly out the glass side door that wasn’t closed properly and into the snow, but something sour fills his mouth.

(What if it was Alana, a traitorous, cruel part of his mind whispers. What if Alana was the one sitting across from Hannibal and telling him about Will’s massive fuck up. What if it was someone else Hannibal had invited to dinner? Who? that same whisper asks, tasting of something he doesn’t want to call jealousy because it begs too many questions. It still asks, why wasn’t it Will sitting across from him?)

“You have a guest?” Will says, manages to make it sound flat and like a question and not like any of the raging emotions battling it out in his head right now. God, he feels sick with it all and he’s not even entirely sure why.

“A colleague. You just missed him. Didn't finish his dinner, an urgent call of some sort,” Hannibal explains as he follows Will in and starts clearing the table. When he glances up at Will, there is no pity there, just concern. It soothes an ache in him to know Hannibal cares. “He had to leave suddenly. This benefits you, because I have dessert for two. Tell me, what was Alana's reaction?”

Of course, whatever balm Hannibal’s feelings towards him were, the question ruins entirely. Still, he follows Hannibal to the kitchen as he leaves there with the plates.

Will’s jaw works as he watches his maybe-friend move around with ease he’s never felt himself. His skin is too tight, bones too large for the body he inhabits. He struggles to find the words, testing answers in the privacy of his mind before throwing them all out. What fights out of his throat is, “She said she wouldn't be good for me, and I wouldn't be good for her.”

He knows it’s true, knew it even before he leaned down and kissed her with plaster dust still coating the inside of his mouth from heaving, panting breaths. But there had been a moment, when Alana’s hand had curled over his neck and soft fingers grabbed for purchase in his hair that he thought it might be okay anyways. Because she was kissing him back, breathing the same air as him even as she said they weren’t compatible.

Because she hadn’t pulled away from him more than a breath’s distance, not even once, and that had felt an awful lot like yes. Right up until he was standing in his ruined living room, confused, and it just felt like devastation instead.

“I don't disagree,” the older man replies, pulling out what looks to be bread pudding from the oven. “She would feel an obligation to her field of study to observe you, and you would resent her for it.” Hannibal plates the desserts with fruits and whipped cream and some other syrup. When he’s done, he looks at Will as if searching or waiting for something again.

“I know,” he says, and it feels insufficient. Hannibal is watching him and silently commanding him to speak, and it feels like he should be able to offer more than that. But the thing is that Will knows he’d resent Alana for it, he knows that she couldn’t help it. He didn’t need Alana to tell him that and he doesn’t need Hannibal to either. Because there’s a part of him that already resents her for it, and for kissing him back and breathing his air and letting him lean into her and-

He thinks it would have been kinder if Alana just ripped his heart straight out of his chest and thrown it into his dirty and now completely unusable fireplace.

“Wondering then why you kissed her, and felt compelled to drive an hour in the snow to tell me about it.” The older man offers him dessert, with a spoon and everything, and seems to linger in the shared space there though if he does it’s not long. He sounds… not angry, but irritated, like he thinks Will might give him the wrong answer.

Is there a wrong answer?

“Well, I wanted to kiss her since I met her. She's very kissable,” Will says, meeting his eyes, but it sounds weak even to his own ears. He takes the dessert and stares at it for a long moment before he sets it down on the counter carefully. It feels like all his defenses are collapsing and he wants to sag against a wall and turn into dust.

It’s not a lie, or really even wrong. It’s just that when he first met her, at a conference for profilers, he had thought she was beautiful, her lips were perfectly shaped, and she wore red lipstick like it was made for her specifically. But the observation had been completely sexless, void of attraction beyond the musing that Alana Bloom was a very beautiful woman. The kind of woman all men look at and want to kiss; she had certainly caught the attention of several other profilers as she stood there in a beautiful blue dress and talked to Will of all people.

Will plucks a thin slice of kiwi from the plate and shoves it into his mouth, giving himself more time to look up at Hannibal and see if he’s made the wrong answer. He doesn’t know. So he licks his lips and forces himself to admit, “I came here because… you’re safer. Safer than, um, being home right now, I guess.”

“You waited a long time, which suggests you were kissing her for a reason, in addition to wanting to.” If Will didn’t know any better, he would say there’s perhaps a touch of envy, or even jealousy in his voice. And then it melts away into concern again as Hannibal asks, “Are you alright, Will?”

Will has to look away. He can’t make himself look at the open worry there; it feels like a knife to his lungs. Instead, he picks up his spoon and finally takes a bite of the dessert. It’s bread pudding, good bread pudding, and it makes him think of what few, faded memories he has of his mother. It makes him think of Christmas morning and a pan of bread pudding and the kind of sweetness life lost not too long after.

“I…” I don’t know, he tries to say, but his voice breaks and he gives up like the coward he knows he is, “I heard an animal trapped in my chimney today. Um… Broke through the wall to get it out. Didn't find anything inside. Alana showed up, she looked at me…”

(His memory has always been impeccable and he hates that her face materializes with ease when he closes his eyes. He sees her tiny frown as her lips form the words might’ve been? and the way they twist when she’d said, at least it got out. She hadn’t sounded convinced and Will hadn’t been either. But the memory still sits on his tongue and tastes like acid.)

“I… maybe her face changed. I don't know. But, um, she knew,” he makes himself finish. She knew and so did he. He just wasn’t ready to admit it to himself yet. God, he’s such a coward, isn’t he?

“Oh?” Hannibal steps closer and even as he keeps his voice even, there’s a trace of something too close to care there. “What did she know, Will?”

“There was no animal in the chimney,” he whispers into the space between them. It feels both wrong to admit it, and like a colossal weight has been pulled off of his shoulders. “It was only in my head. I- I sleepwalk. I’ve been getting these horrible headaches. I’m hearing things now. And I… I feel unstable, Hannibal. It felt like if I didn’t leave my house then I was just going to climb back up onto the roof, and you were safer than staying there like that.”

“That's why you kissed her. A clutch for balance,” Hannibal deduces, though he stares at Will for longer than he has before, and not with the same curiosity he always does. He stares at Will like he knows something even the younger man doesn’t. “You said yourself what you do is not good for you.”

“I kissed her because she was so close to me and that’s what you’re supposed to do. And she-”

Will cuts himself off, dropping the spoon. There’s a headache building behind his eyes and he wishes that Hannibal had a chair in his kitchen. He wants to collapse into something and tug on his hair until the pressure in his head dissipates. Until the confusion of the day turns into smoke.

Looking up at Hannibal, he realizes the man is closer than he’d thought. On instinct, he reaches out to grip his forearm like it will stop the tide of warring emotion rising through him.

He licks his lips and forces himself to admit, “I’m so confused, Hannibal. She- she didn’t say no. She said it was a bad idea but she didn’t say- she kissed me back. More than once. And then she left and I spent hours looking for an injured raccoon that didn’t fucking exist and I- I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

Hannibal’s eyes soften, only because they are on Will, but from the way the man’s shoulders tighten and straighten one thing is clear; his friend is mad. “Whatever is wrong, Will, I can help,” he assures, reaching his free hand up to gently press and feel at the younger man’s face. It’s a caress, really, and Hannibal for once isn’t hiding anything when he does it. “Will, how long have you had a fever for?”

“I have a fever?” he frowns. He doesn’t feel like he has a fever. Sure, his head hurts like a bitch and he’s kind of sweaty, but that’s just his normal. Has been for a while now. And Christ, Hannibal’s hands are so cold against his face, it’s hard not to lean into his steady hold.

Hannibal sighs and rubs his thumb under Will’s eye, like he’s trying to make a very important decision. For a moment, there’s only silence and Hannibal’s repetitive motion as the older man thinks. And then in an affectionate, gentle voice, he asks, “Will you come to the hospital if I take you?”

“What?” A good part of his attention is taken up by the soothing slide of his thumb and the fact that Will has never heard this voice from the other man, but there’s still enough room to be confused. “Why? I’m fine.”

(Technically, that’s a fucking lie and he knows it. He just admitted to feeling unstable and an hours-long hallucination that made him destroy part of his own living room. Hell, he’s still covered in the evidence of it. But involuntary hospitalization has always been something he was terrified of since he was sixteen and first threatened with it. He wasn’t crazy. He isn’t.)

“I won’t force you or coerce you, Will. I would never. But you came to me because it would be safer, because you knew I would take care of you,” Hannibal points out, lifting the arm Will is still clinging onto so he can hold back onto him as well. He gently pushes hair out of the way before sliding knuckles across the younger’s cheek. “Do you trust me, Will?”

He doesn’t think he should. There’s something about Hannibal that feels dangerous, something he still can’t pinpoint but noticed the day they first met. And yet.

“Yes,” he says, and he finds he means it with complete surety. He trusts Hannibal, for better or for worse. Will closes his eyes and makes himself say, because he’s admitting so much tonight, “I’m… scared. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I was so sure it was there and I don’t understand- I don’t know why Alana didn’t just tell me it wasn’t. I don’t know why she kissed me back instead. I don’t understand anything anymore, Hannibal.”

“Alana Bloom is something I will resolve later,” Hannibal assures, slipping his hand over to the back of Will’s neck and gently rubbing the tenseness away. “Let me take care of you, Will. I’ll drive, of course.”

He wants to ask what that means, to resolve Alana. But he’s tired and his head hurts more and more, building into a truly nightmarish migraine. Will has always been fiercely independent, but he thinks that, for once, he wants to let someone else take care of him. And Hannibal, with his cold hands - broad, steady hands and all the strength belied in them by the mild manners he presents to the world - is a better choice than any.

“Okay,” he says, swallowing around the tightness suddenly in his throat, “My head hurts.”

Hannibal keeps his hand on Will’s neck as he moves them along. “We’d best make haste, then, dear. Would you like your coat?”

Will blinks. Right, he’d taken off his coat when he stepped inside, though it’s so warm it doesn’t feel like it. His hands are still cold, he notices as he picks it up from a chair and slides the coat on. He can’t have been at Hannibal’s long then, but it feels like it’s been forever and he compulsively checks his watch. It’s barely after seven; not more than three hours ago, easily less, he was climbing out the window onto his roof to check for pawprints that had never been there.

He stares at his hands as the rest of Hannibal’s words register. Dear, he’d said so easily. If he didn’t feel like smashing his head against the wall to make it stop pounding, he’d have more to say about being soothed like a dog. But oddly, it’s nice. Even if he’s not a deer or a dog or anything like that at all. Maybe he’s the stag that’s been haunting him. Not yet, but maybe he’s becoming it.

God, where’d he put his aspirin? He searches through his coat pockets and feels victorious when he pulls the small, almost empty bottle from one of them.

Hannibal, however, swipes it before Will can even open it and then gently settles him into the passenger seat of his Bentley. “You’ve been taking too many of these, darling. They could be making your symptoms worse,” he says when he gets back into the car and settles in for a short drive. “I promise we’ll find an answer, Will.”

“Yeah, well. My head fucking hurts,” Will grumbles, massaging his temples and barely remembering to buckle his seatbelt until prompted. “Maybe I’m just finally going crazy.”

(He’d been eight, the first time someone told him that. He thinks making it to thirty-seven has to be a pretty good run. If he tried to count the pulse of the throbbing in his head, he thinks it would match up to thirty-seven. Over and over and over again.)

“You are not crazy, Will,” Hannibal snaps lightly, reaching out to hold and comfortingly squeeze the back of Will’s neck like it’s the most natural thing to do. Maybe it is, because it helps. “These are not mental illness symptoms, dear. We’ll find a solution.”

Hannibal’s hands are so fucking cold and Will kind-of-really wants to sink into his skin, even when the sudden chill against his neck makes him shiver. He tilts his head back and tells the car ceiling, “I feel crazy. Did I ever tell you that I woke up on my roof? A few weeks ago. That doesn’t feel like something a sane person does.”

“Sleepwalking does not make you crazy, Will,” Hannibal assures, squeezing a bit more, like maybe if he presses enough, they might blend together where their skins touch. “Will, be a dear and match my breathing, won’t you?”

“I’m breathing just fine,” he snaps. At least, he thinks he is. He’s definitely breathing, anyway. Still, he finds it far too easy to listen to Hannibal and sync up the timing of their breaths. When did Hannibal get so much sway over him? It should bother him, just like every other liberty he finds the older man taking, but he can’t bring himself to dislike it.

He’s in a forest and he thinks if he heard Hannibal calling his name from the woods, he’d be the fool who walks into the treeline. He closes his eyes and watches the antlers sprout from the other’s head, pierce through the roof of his fancy ass car, and he is not afraid.

That, too, feels insane.

It doesn’t take much longer before they reach the hospital, Hannibal steadily keeping him silent company and rubbing his fingers into Will’s neck like it’s the most natural thing in the world to him. Maybe Hannibal knows him better than Will knows himself.

“Do you want me to stay afterwards? I don’t blame you if you would rather be alone,” Hannibal asks him softly, shifting to rub his thumb under Will’s ear in a slow pattern. It’s almost like the psychiatrist thinks they have all the time in the world. Or maybe he really is just trying to soothe him, to be like a second skin. It shouldn’t be that comforting an idea.

Will thinks if Hannibal leaves him in the emergency room alone, one of two things is going to happen: either Will is going to somehow get home in the middle of a snowstorm, or he’s going to manage to get himself locked up in the psych ward for a minimum of three to five business days while people he’s never met before debate if he’s insane or not. He really, really hates psychiatrists.

He stares at the entrance to the emergency room and all the people beyond the sliding glass doors. When he opens his mouth to say I’ll be fine, what really comes out is, “Please don’t go.”

“I’ll stay,” Hannibal whispers back, letting go of Will’s neck to exit the car. Before Will can think to follow him, however, the older man has already hurried around to the other side to open the door for him. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen Hannibal act so kindly, so chivalrous, before. He blocks the snow from hitting, offering an arm for him to hold onto, and he’s still looking at him worriedly, like he’s afraid Will just might run off from him this time.

Pettily, Will thinks, I hope whoever he was eating dinner with would hate this.

He lets himself hold onto Hannibal’s arm as he climbs out of the car, in no small part because his feet suddenly feel a lot less stable than they had before they left Hannibal’s house. Will hates being weak, hates feeling like a newborn deer on skinny limbs, but the tether that his maybe friend, maybe psychiatrist provides feels heaven sent right now.

Hannibal wraps his free hand around Will’s waist to keep him steady when he steps out, holds him as close as Will allows before slowly dropping his arm and walking them in. “Don’t worry, dear, this is almost over.”

Has Hannibal always been so doting when it comes to him? He’s not sure how he feels about suddenly realizing that Hannibal’s spare key and little smiles may have been more private than initially thought.

There is something very wrong with this picture, Will thinks a little deliriously, but he finds he likes it more than he thinks he’s supposed to. He doesn’t know much about art, but he imagines them in swirls of art nouveau. Like that one painting of two swans. He looks up into the snow as Hannibal guides them under the awning and thinks about swans and winter.

As they step through sliding glass doors, the whir and hum of the lights and the doors themselves sounding more like cymbals next to his head, Will says, “Did you know that a man was drowned by a swan once?”

Hannibal looks at him, not out of surprise, but genuine interest. There’s that small, genuine smile on his lips he keeps from everyone but Will. “When was this?” He asks, instead of saying something like you’re not making sense anymore, as if his maybe friend, maybe psychiatrist, actually cares about what he thinks and not why or how he thinks of them. “Swans are quite mean beasts. It’s not surprising.”

“Last year, in Illinois.” Will remembers reading an article about it, and then seven more articles about swans and their brooding behavior. “He got too close to the nest and swans are protective. You’ve got a swan painting in your house. I don’t actually know anything about art.”

His head feels like a swan picked a fight with his skull. He read somewhere that swans can’t actually break any bones with their wings, but have a bite force of almost 1600 newtons. Not enough to break his skull open, but enough that Will feels like his brain has been tossed in a rock tumbler.

He checks his watch; it’s 7:36 in the evening, in a hospital ER in Baltimore. Hannibal is right beside him, and he’s pretty sure he’s not dreaming.

“I’ll tell you everything you want to know about my paintings, dear,” Hannibal promises, walking them right up to the counter. “Please just tell me how many aspirin you’ve been taking in a day.”

Ah, there it starts again, Hannibal’s prying questions. Even if this is a completely understandable one, it doesn’t mean that the older man has him practically trapped between the counter and himself. As if Will would run off anywhere now. Hannibal’s right to hold him there, and it still might not stop him from turning around and going right back to the man’s Bentley.

Will squints at Hannibal and the very attentive ER nurse who’s glasses look just a bit too big for his young face, and sighs. “I don’t know, 5 to 8?” he hazards a guess, pinching the bridge of his nose and hoping it will help settle the pounding even a little bit. Considering there’s a child screaming about something somewhere else in the waiting room, he doesn’t think it will. “It’s not like I’m counting, I just take it when my head hurts. Which is usually.”

Hannibal rests his cold hand on the back of his neck again, changing between squeezing and rubbing his fingers there as he talks to the nurse with nothing but a polite smile on his face. At least there’s that, some proof that Hannibal sees Will as different, special. Maybe the dinner was just that, a dinner. It doesn’t ease the annoyance in his stomach.

When he finally tunes back into what Hannibal is saying, it seems he’s already gone ahead and chose for him somewhat. “... A CT scan would be better to confirm in the morning, when he can make the choice himself. Otherwise, the symptoms I told you concern me, I am afraid he may harm himself.”

Will opens his mouth to say that he can talk for himself, handle himself, but… He thinks of the hole in his wall and the feeling of stone dust sticking in his hair and waking up standing on his roof, in the middle of a road barefoot and miles away from his house. He can’t refute it, because that would be a lie.

He’s not well, he realizes. Or, no, he already knew that. But something about standing in a way too bright waiting room, with Hannibal half holding him up and in place, and a wide eyed nurse staring at him makes it easier to admit to himself. He doesn’t know how to convey this revelation, couldn’t even if he wanted to - and he definitely doesn’t want to - so he doesn’t bother.

“I’m not going to hurt myself, Hannibal,” he says, sounding more tired than he means to, “Can I at least sit down? I can’t feel my fucking feet.”

Hannibal snorts, like Will’s annoyance is endearing and not something to focus on. “Here, Will,” he says, leading him to a seat before covering him in his overly expensive overcoat. The older man checks his fever again, gently brushing his hands over the empath’s cheeks and forehead and Will wants them to stay there forever, cold and gentle.

“I’ll be right back, dear,” he promises, but he stares down at Will with his hands on his cheeks for a moment longer.

“We can get your husband into a room and have some blood tests ordered as soon as a bed opens up,” the nurse reassures Hannibal.

Will is pretty sure one of them should correct the kid because they’re definitely not husbands unless they managed to get married in the last half an hour without him noticing, but he’s a little distracted at the moment. Hannibal’s hands are a cool balm on his face and his coat smells like whiskey and the cologne he always wears. He didn’t even know he’d noticed and remembered the smell of the psychiatrist’s cologne.

“Wait,” he says, words finally clicking in his aching head, “What the fuck do you mean? Where are you going? You said you were going to stay.”

“I am staying,” Hannibal replies quickly, looking down at Will with a worried type of amusement. “You need water, Will, I’m only getting us something to drink. Could he have something for the pain in the meantime?” he asks, turning to the nurse who only shakes his head with an apologetic smile.

Hannibal, as odd as he is, doesn’t take his hands away. Almost like he worries it might set Will off if he were to pull back now, so he rubs under Will’s eyes like a caring lover might, like the younger could ask anything of him and get it for no price at all. He kind of likes it, because Will Graham is nothing if not an absolute mess of a person.

It strikes him that less than twelve hours ago he was kissing Alana Bloom in his destroyed living room while she looked at him like he was crazy and didn’t even have the decency to not kiss him back while doing it. A sudden wave of bitterness, like cheap grape cough syrup, crawls up his throat and down his back and Will is really fucking glad he drove through a snow storm to Hannibal’s house rather than staying alone in his.

“Alright, let’s get you back into a room and we can start running those vitals and getting you something for the pain,” the nurse says, startling Will. Despite the unbearable clatter of people all around him, he’d somehow managed to almost forget that it wasn’t just him and Hannibal alone in the world. “If you’ll just follow me.”

Will lets Hannibal help him up from the chair and down the hallway into the little room the nurse leads them to. He settles, albeit reluctantly, onto the side of the bed as the nurse hooks him up to the heart monitor, sticks an IV catheter in the back of his hand, and draws blood from his opposite arm. With an apologetic smile, the nurse hands Hannibal the paper thin gown, like Will isn’t right fucking there.

“You’ll want to help him into that and then we’ll get him hooked up to an IV with an opioid painkiller for his head,” the nurse says. What the fuck, Will is still right there. He’s definitely offended, but he also thinks he should be a bit more outraged than he is about being ignored like a child. Or, he thinks hysterically, like someone’s sick lover.

Hannibal doesn’t even correct him, just nods like he’s accepted his role without a second thought. The nurse leaves, and Hannibal closes the door before turning to Will.

“Will-”

“Give it here,” Will demands, reaching for the blue gown and failing fantastically when the IV tugs and he hisses a swear in pain. Stubbornly, he reaches out his free arm and insists, “I can do it myself.”

Hannibal expertly swats his hand away, gently, which is even more infuriating when he grabs the one with the IV. “Will, please,” he sighs, sitting down in the nearby chair. “Let me at least disconnect you so you don’t rip it out, please.”

Sometimes Will wishes Hannibal would just snap and start swearing - at him or anyone in the world, or even just at the weather - because he’s never met anyone so infuriatingly, disturbingly polite. He knows he’s an asshole, but the older man has a way of really making him feel like one without even saying anything to condemn him. Sourfaced, he slowly offers Hannibal his arm to detach the tubing of his IV.

Hannibal hands over the gown once he’s done and gives Will space, turning to face the door but not leaving. “Let me know if you need assistance, Will.”

He shakes the gown out and manages to get as far as shucking off his boots, jeans, and shirt before he runs into what he would call a big fucking problem. The problem is that, as easily as he was able to slip the gown over his arms, his hands refuse to work right and he can’t get his fingers to move how they’re supposed to. He can’t tie the stupid ties.

Standing in the room in his boxers and the gown slung over him like a backwards bathrobe as his entire body seems to betray him, Will debates how humiliating it would be if he breaks down right then and there.

He stares at his hands - when had they started shaking so badly? - for a long moment before finally, softly calling out, “Hannibal.”

Hannibal turns around and moves to Will in a few quick steps, grabbing his hands and helping him sit on the bed again. “Would you like to hold onto me, Will?” he asks softly, loosening his hold on Will’s hands slowly.

“I can’t- I can’t tie it,” he says, hoping desperately that Hannibal doesn’t catch the break in his voice and knowing despite it that he definitely does. “I don’t know- Can you just… tie it for me?”

Hannibal sets Will’s hands down before sitting in the chair next to him to do just that. “Breathe, Will,” he says softly, fingers brushing his back a few times as he ties the first two laces of the gown. “Your hand please, dear?”

He opens his mouth to say, I’m breathing, but all that comes out is a heaving sigh. Okay, maybe he hadn’t been breathing. Will places his hand in Hannibal’s, swinging his legs up and settling back into the bed properly. He stares at his feet and the thick woolen socks he didn’t even think to take off - mismatched, because Buster ate the other blue one last winter like the menace he fools people into thinking he isn’t - because it’s easier than meeting Hannibal’s eyes right now.

Hannibal, however, doesn’t reconnect the IV right away. No, instead he massages Will’s hand with a focused glare. After a moment he sighs and seems to give up, reconnecting the tube. The older man leans back into his seat and looks at Will with worry again. “Will, when you mentioned kissing Alana…”

Will winces, barely managing not to groan out loud. Is there a reason for reminding him of how much of a fuck up he’s been today? “Yeah? What about that disaster?”

“You mentioned that you only kissed her because that’s what you’re supposed to do, could you- could you elaborate?” Hannibal looks almost pained, but not for the reasons Will would have thought. The man looks pissed under that polite mask, ready to go on a rampage, and Will knows Hannibal is dangerous, this is more than enough proof. But he still feels safe.

Like a guard dog on a leash, some part of him whispers, Will is the one thing safe from his path of anger. Strangely, the thought soothes him.

“Alana is… beautiful,” Will starts slowly, still confused on what exactly Hannibal is asking him to elaborate on, “and smart. And- you know that reading people is my ‘thing’, Hannibal. I knew that she was attracted to me since we first met, and I guess I was… attracted to her, too. When she was at my house this morning, and even though she knew, she didn’t… stop me. Because she wanted me to kiss her, so I did.”

He huffs in exasperation, shaking his head, “That’s just what you do when two people are attracted to each other, when someone wants to kiss you. You kiss them. I don’t see what’s confusing about that.”

“Will,” Hannibal says softly, setting a hand on his arm. “For someone so good at reading others, you do not understand yourself, do you? Did you want to kiss Alana, Will? Or did you simply do it because she practically roped you into it?”

“What? Roped me into it?” Will says incredulously, leaning back slightly to stare at the older man properly, “Don’t say it like that! That makes it sound like she- what, coerced me? That’s ridicu- that’s- it wasn’t like that. I kissed her.”

Hannibal stares at him for a long moment, frowning slightly. He looks at his hands, linking them together with a sigh. “Didn’t she?” he asks softly, quietly, almost like he didn’t want Will to hear.

“What, I don’t-? How could she even have done that, Hannibal? You’ve lost me.”

Will’s had to get used to being confused and lost more than he’d prefer, recently, but this? He has no idea what’s running through his friend’s head right now. Not that he ever does, but certainly not right now. It wasn’t like there was any big conspiracy here.

He’d just looked at Alana, in a room alone with him for the first time since they’d met, and standing so close. He’d looked at her, met her eyes, and known that she wanted to kiss him. So in that room, just the two of them… He likes Alana. She’s smart and can be waspishly funny and she was pretty enough to look like she belonged in the old black and white French films the library down the road from his middle school played on the weekends.

So it wasn’t like it was a hardship to kiss her.

“But did you want to, Will? Can you truly tell me you wanted to kiss her?”

Will frowns; he really doesn’t understand why Hannibal is asking so much, pressing the issue so much. The want to kiss anyone hasn’t been much of a factor in his life, if he’s being honest. There’d been a girl he dated for two years while on the force in New Orleans and there’d been enjoyment in kissing her in the mornings or at night. Sometimes, he’d look at her and think, I should go kiss her right now. But things had ended, messily, long before he ever left for Virginia.

He was used to secondary want, secondary lust. It wasn’t hard to do, or even uncomfortable. He’d always had a lower libido. That’s just the way it was; intimacy was one of those things you share with someone you care about. He thinks of Alana, with kissable lips in varying shades of red lipstick and sweet smiles, and long dark hair like an actress and he feels…

Not nothing. He feels warmth and fondness and the same bitterness that had flooded forward when he thought of her kissing him back and then turning him down like she was doing them both a favor. There’s a certain amount of apathy, an acknowledgement that he doesn’t actually know all that much about her and she doesn’t know much about him either. But there’s no hunger there- no hunger to know her or understand her, and no hunger to have her. No skin hunger.

(Her hands, when they had been sliding up his neck and into his hair, had been warm and soft. Not quite delicate, but almost. He’s not sure why, but the memory of them disappoints him now. They had lacked the comfort that Hannibal’s hands provide him now, cold and steady and always teeming with restrained strength.)

“I don’t know, okay?” Will finally says, staring at where his and Hannibal’s hands are tangled. He doesn’t like the thought that he only kissed her because he’d looked at her and felt her desire to be kissed reflected back onto him like a cheap mirror. It makes him feel vaguely nauseous to think about, that he can get so caught up in someone else’s wants that he loses sight of his own- of himself. But he also can’t deny it, not fully. “I just… I don’t know if I wanted to kiss her. I know she wanted me to, so I- that’s all I know, Hannibal.”

Hannibal softens, one hand smoothing over his forearm to massage over tense muscles like tending to Will is second nature. He doesn’t stop holding his hand through it, thumb running up and down slowly. “Do you want to kiss women at all, Will?”

Will stares at him blankly, tired and in pain and so beyond done with this conversation, before he opens his mouth and finds himself saying, “Well, it’s not like I think about kissing anyone else either. It’s not really something I think about at all.”

“Neither do I, that doesn’t mean you have to kiss every woman that wants you to kiss them,” Hannibal points out. “It simply means you can reject anyone as you please.”

Will wonders if Hannibal thinks he’s stupid, then decides he’s really tired of just wondering things. “I’m not stupid, Hannibal, I know that,” he bites out acerbically, “With Alana, it’s just… I don’t know.”

He shakes his head. It’s a small lie, but a lie nonetheless. If Alana was looking at him like that just because she wanted him to kiss her, then that’s all she wanted from him. If she kisses him back, then it’s just that: a kiss. He doesn’t have to think about the fact that she knew, from the moment she stepped into his house to find him covered in stone dust with a hammer in hand, that there was something wrong with his head and she said nothing about it.

Thinking about it now makes him kind of want to confess it to Hannibal, crack open his head and spill the tangled mess of his thoughts into his lap.

“Will,” Hannibal whispers, leaning in closer and staring him down. His voice is gentle and easy, so soothing against his fried nerves. “What is it, Will? Tell me.”

He pulls one of his hands away from Hannibal, dragging it down his face. Where’s that nurse with an interruption?

“It doesn’t matter if I wanted to kiss her,” Will says, and he was never Catholic but he can’t help wondering if this is what confession feels like, “because if she wanted me to kiss her, then it was just kissing her. Because if it’s not just a kiss, then it means that she knew there was never anything in my chimney, that it was always in my head, and she didn’t say anything. It means that she knew, she kissed me back, and then she decided it was a bad idea after and left. And I don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to think about that.”

The nurse comes back in before Hannibal’s shocked rage wears off, he sits there, staring like a loyal, aggressive guard dog awaiting his orders. Like Will might approve whatever solution he deems harsh enough and have Hannibal exact it obediently and perfectly, like he does everything else. “So sorry for the wait, we had a slight hiccup.”

The nurse prepares a bag of drugs and connects it to Will’s IV as Hannibal remains silent, stewing in his rage and schemes. His eyes slowly drift away from the younger man, as if to glare a hole through the wall.

Will can’t help being amused by it, just a little bit. The amusement is quickly washed away though, because he can feel the second the morphine hits his system. Partially because the relief is near instantaneous and partially because it’s freezing.

It hits him like a truck, and he feels like his spine could turn to jello and he might not even notice. Honestly, it might have already. He wouldn’t know the difference. He hadn’t realized how much pain had just been a constant, burning buzz in the background until he couldn’t really feel it anymore. The wave of exhaustion that follows is less pleasant, but Will can’t be bothered to pay attention to the nurse talking at him anymore.

Much more pressing are Hannibal’s hands holding his. Large hands, strong hands, an artist’s hands. Hands that could hold him up, hold him in place, hold him together, with ease.

What had the nurse called him earlier, his husband? Yes, Will thinks, if he had a husband, he’d want one with hands like Hannibal’s. These are husband hands, he thinks nonsensically as he holds them back tighter. Or maybe he says it out loud. He’s tired and clearly the morphine is doing its job because he hasn’t felt this light in… ever probably.

Hannibal shifts, calm and sweet and so loving, such a good husband. “I’m right here, dear,” he assures, putting Will’s hand to his cheek. “Your hands are quite lovely as well.”

“Come here,” Will demands, tugging on his hands. He wants to crawl into Hannibal’s chest, or maybe his mouth. He wants to dig around until it stops feeling like he’s peering at the man through a mesh screen door. He wants to know Hannibal- Hannibal, who is so poised and polite it feels unreal, feels odd when Will can’t help feeling everything and looking like it. Hannibal, who is dangerous when he’s mad and he’s the maddest Will has ever seen him before, but he doesn’t feel all that dangerous. Hannibal, who is leaning in closer but not enough.

“No, closer,” he says, frustrated. Will lets go of his hands to reach for his face and drag it close enough their noses almost touch. He stares into brown eyes, warm like honey and almost red under the lights of the hospital room, like dried blood. Like cracked lips and bruised knuckles. Will wants to know him, understand every piece of him. Wants to crawl inside his head and make his bed there.

Hannibal is open to him this once, a hand on the bed over Will’s shoulder, arm resting against him slightly like the older man isn’t quite sure what to do. “Yes?” He whispers, his rage slowly fizzling away and being replaced with warmth and an unyielding want to care and protect him. It’s almost like Hannibal is at his most honest.

“Whoever had dinner with you,” Will says, latching onto the feeling that had hit him when he walked into Hannibal’s dining room to find a half finished dinner, “I hate them.”

Hannibal shivers a little and laughs in disbelief. He looks amused and fond and altogether endeared with Will when he asks, “What? Will, why would you?”

“Because they were there and I was on a roof looking for a raccoon.” It makes less sense saying it outloud than it had in his head, but Will doesn’t care. “It should have been me. I didn’t even get to finish your pretentious bread pudding.”

Hannibal shifts away from Will a little to sit on the bed before letting him pull his face close again. “I’ll make us dinner when you can leave,” he promises, moving a hand to the younger man’s cheek to rub under his eye. “And I can always make more for you, Will. I’d make just about anything for you.”

“Good,” Will says, and he’s not sure if he remembers to let go of Hannibal’s face first, but he’s reasonably sure he closes his eyes to blink and promptly passes out.

---

Will has been asleep for hours now and Hannibal knows what he has to do. It’s early enough in the morning that it’s still dark outside, but he hasn’t allowed himself to sleep so far. The room is dark and quiet, save for the beeping monitors, and he wonders if he should have kept at least one light on for when his dear Will wakes up. He holds one of the professor’s hands in his lap, from his seat on the side of the bed since the younger man had refused to let him go in his drugged and sleeping states.

He sighs, knowing what must be done and yet mourning his extraction from the empath. After all, he’d ruined his plan to save Will from further pain only because the younger man had asked, and had finally turned to, Hannibal for help, willing to give up on Jack Crawford and Alana Bloom for once.

He lifts Will’s hand and kisses it sweetly before standing quietly. “Sleep well, dear,” he whispers, brushing a few curls away before stepping away. He’d already told Jack Crawford to put his need for an investigator somewhere the sun doesn’t shine, but he knows there’s much more to be done due to this. Resigning may have to wait until he returns home with a proper resignation letter. Maybe he could just kill Crawford.

He glances back towards Will and smiles fondly, deciding against it for now. After all, it’d be all the better if Will killed the man himself. He exits the room but stays posted at the door, looking at his watch. She should be any moment now.

Alana Bloom, however, was going to be a problem. It’d been the fact that she left Will alone, after calling him unstable of all things. And the fact he knew she was coming here and would try to have Will take back his statement. Unfortunately for her, Hannibal was not about to leave his precious husband alone.

When the nurses started referring to them as such, it had been difficult not to pull out a ring and slip it onto Will’s finger, only because he didn’t have one on hand. And Will’s hands on his face, his breath on his lips, it has all been almost too much. He’d stopped himself from kissing the empath only because what difference would there be then between what Alana did and what he would have done.

He’d let Will set the pace this time around, let him catch up. After all, in this little room, in this hospital, Hannibal could control who was allowed in, a task that he would take great delight in exacting perfectly. If he could cut off that pesky attachment to Alana Bloom and Jack Crawford quickly and efficiently, then he would.

He only looks up when he hears the tell tale sound of her heels clicking on the linoleum floor. He hates her. He hates how she hurt Will. He knows better than to kill her, though. No, beautiful and scholarly Alana Bloom will fall to the pits before he kills her.

“Alana, I’m afraid you can’t see him. He’s asleep.”

“I don’t mind waiting for him to wake up,” she says with a thin, red lipped smile. Is it the same lipstick she wore when she kissed Will as he hallucinated? She’s wan, her face vaguely guilty like she’s trying to repress it. Good, she should feel guilty. “I just want to see him, Hannibal, I won’t wake him. He’s my friend, too.”

“After the stunt you pulled, Alana?” Hannibal scoffs, feeling his hackles raise and by gods, she’s lucky Will doesn’t entirely hate her. “I won’t let you see him.”

“Stunt? What are you talking about?” Alana frowns at him and it’s a wonder she doesn’t know. Hannibal would think that, as a fellow psychiatrist, she would be more aware of the repercussions of knowingly taking advantage of a vulnerable state. After all, she was the one to call Will too unstable for a relationship, wasn’t she?

“Don’t pretend with me, Alana,” he snaps, voice icy cold like frigid water and he hopes it gives her the chill of fear she should have felt the moment she stepped into this hospital. “It was foolish of you to come here, Alana. I had such high hopes for you, yet you seem to forget critical rules regarding psychiatry.”

The genuine confusion Alana aims at him might be worse than willful ignorance. She shakes her head, “Will isn’t my patient, he’s my friend. I have no idea what you’re talking about, Hannibal. Can’t you at least explain that before doubting my professionalism?”

“A friend, yes,” Hannibal steps up to her, knows he towers over her and cares very little about it. “Who was hallucinating, fearing he was losing his mind, and you knew, didn’t you? That alone with him like that, you could get what you want. And then you simply left him there. If that doesn’t put your professionalism into question, when you have admitted yourself to have a professional curiosity about Will, then I’m not sure what does.”

He thinks he might burn with it, with his anger and his hunger, this the thirst to harm her for hurting his Will. He wants her to know she should be afraid of what he could do, what he might do. At least she hasn’t raised her voice yet, but Hannibal wouldn’t be above escorting her out himself.

“I missed some things, I can acknowledge that,” Alana says slowly, like she’s trying to calm him. But he is not one of her young clients and he will not stand to be treated like one. Certainly not by someone he himself mentored. “But it’s Will, Hannibal. You and I both know he gets… a little too deep. He’s always off center on a case. And it’s not like it’s the first time I’ve helped him look for some kind of trapped or injured animal he heard out there. I imagine there’s a lot, considering he lives practically in a forest.”

It takes all of his self-control not to dig the words out of her throat to tear them apart at the roots, so he crowds her instead, forcing her a step away from the door.

“Do not try to use the tricks I remember full well teaching you, Miss Bloom. You will find having your license revoked is the least I can do to you,” he warns, because he intends to follow through on it. “Would you like to know what Will said about kissing you?”

He leans in close to whisper, “That he was supposed to, because you wanted that of him. Did not have an ounce of self-respect to push him away?”

“Hannibal, he kissed me! And I told him it was-”

“We both know Will has a tendency to get… too deep in other people’s heads, Alana.”

The other psychiatrist stares at him, the shock and bafflement playing across her face oddly satisfying to watch. “Are you really going to- to chide me for missing signs of some kind of delusional episode and then take Will’s word over mine?”

“Yes, Alana, you knew, called him unstable and then left him alone, for hours. He drove through a storm to find me,” he finds himself honestly rebutting her, wanting her to feel as small as Will felt. “Did you or did you not kiss him back Alana? Knowing he was, at the least, hallucinating.”

“I never called him unstable,” Alana dodges his question. “I only said that he would be bad for me, and I for him.”

“Do not lie to me,” Hannibal says steely smooth before shaking his head in disgust. “Go home, Alana,” he dismisses her, turning to return to Will’s room.

If she is too blind to see the problem, it matters very little. He has Will to take care of once the man wakes up, and a letter to send a bit later as well. He has very little desire to continue his interaction with Miss Bloom.

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Hannibal! Mutual attraction was being expressed and we kissed, yes. And I don’t understand why you presume to stick yourself into that, when it’s none of your business,” Alana says sharply, followed by the quickly disappearing sound of her tapping heels.

Hannibal fumes outside Will’s door long after her footsteps have left and he’s certain Will must have woken up for at least the tail end of that. He’ll make him breakfast as an apology, Will loves food after all.

He opens the door once he feels more settled, and makes his way to the empath’s bedside. He’ll have to hunt soon to get rid of this rapidly building anger.

Will is half propped up against a pillow, clearly not bothering to sit up fully or aware that the bed raises, but Hannibal isn’t surprised. His eyes are still glassy, pupils still dilated. It isn’t surprising; he doubts Will has ever been on narcotic painkillers before, or perhaps only briefly after the injury that made him quit the police force in Louisiana.

“Was that Alana?” the younger man asks, painfully hoarse. Although one of the nurses had set up a saline drip with an antipyretic and he’s nowhere near as sweaty, he must certainly be thirsty.

Hannibal hums softly in response. “I turned her away,” he assures, setting his hand next to Will’s so he can brush his pinkie against the younger’s. He’s a greedy, hungry thing when it comes to his darling Will, but being here, like this, helps ease the burn coursing through him. “Would you have preferred I didn’t?”

“No,” Will says after a moment, sluggishly tilting his head towards Hannibal. The way he looks at him, wide eyed, for guidance or maybe even just to watch is beautiful. He hopes he can see it more. “She sounded… upset at you.”

“Did I not also sound upset at her?” Hannibal evades teasingly, which is easier with Will like this, obviously. “You don’t need to worry about her.”

“Well, I already knew you were pissed off,” the empath snorts, ever perceptive and somehow even more blunt. “You weren’t hiding that very well. Pretty sure you’ve been mad, since I told you we kissed. Getting her license revoked might be an overreaction, though.”

Will is lucky he’s so easy to care for, so interesting and marvelous, because Hannibal is not in the mood to argue. He’s certain he could cut Will to the quick for choosing her side again, could hurt him into compliance, but he enjoys Will’s snark on most days.

“I feel it might be an underreaction,” he mutters back, linking their pinkies together stubbornly. “I could have her banned from practicing altogether, I suppose.”

“I don’t… get why it’s such a big deal,” Will sighs. He looks down at their hands, not quite interlocked, with something that could be awe. It’s a sweet sight.

“She took advantage of you, Will,” Hannibal says softly, and he wishes the empath were sound of mind now so that they could talk about something else. Instead, he stays silent and waits.

The look that earns him is hopelessly baffled and disbelieving. “It’s not like I was drunk or something. I was just… hallucinating a raccoon in my walls. That doesn’t sound great, I’ll admit, but was it really taking advantage?”

“Yes. You weren’t able to make a clear choice, you were going through an episode, Will.” It hurts, a little bit, that Will doesn’t see it, doesn’t see himself. Hannibal aims to change that soon.

Will groans, lifting the hand not entangled with his to rub his face. “I hate the idea of not being in control of myself,” he confesses, a dirty secret between just the two of them, “But I think I have to admit I haven’t been for a while now. Maybe if it was just hearing things, but I see things. I sleep walk, sometimes for miles. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m… not sure if I want to know, honestly.”

“Would a brain scan help ease your worries, Will?” Hannibal asks without hesitation, because Will trusts him and feels safe around him. Even when angry, surprisingly. He almost thought Will would shy away from him, seeing all of that.

“Maybe,” Will relents, face set as he considers but it’s oddly… cute, the look of concentration with hazy, dilated eyes. “I think they found something in my blood. Someone came by to schedule a spinal tap while you were talking to Alana.”

Hannibal looks down at their hands and defly slips Will’s into his. He hasn’t had a chance to actually relax and enjoy having Will here with everything else he has to endure just to keep him here. So, he decides to show his hand a little, because Will has the right to know. “I told Jack that you weren’t fit for field duty anymore, earlier last night after you fell asleep. You should be focusing on recovery.”

Will makes a face at him and slumps further into his pillows, but, curiously enough, doesn’t bother to argue the point. “Sometimes, I really don’t understand you,” he says, instead, “I don’t like that. I want to. You hate them, don’t you? Jack and Alana?”

Hannibal looks into Will’s wide pupils and doesn’t mind letting him see most of himself, but he doubts the empath is ready for everything that makes up Hannibal Lecter.

“As much as you hate the person I dined with last night, I’m sure,” Hannibal quips back, though he finds no heat behind his words. “Starting when I send my resignation letter, I won’t be your psychiatrist anymore, Will.”

“I thought we were just having conversations,” his friend says, and where he would expect amusement or snark, he’s startled to hear only thinly veiled panic. “What do you mean?”

“No, Will,” Hannibal chuckles softly, squeezing his friend’s hand comfortingly. It wouldn’t do for Will to panic right now, and especially not when it comes from a misunderstanding so easily clarified. “We are just having conversations. I’m letting you know that I won’t work alongside Jack anymore.”

“Oh.” Will looks awed briefly before a pleased expression unfolds across his face. If Hannibal were to be entirely honest, he would call it smug. “Good. What’s next? I get a scan and hope it’s a tumor and not just in my head?”

“Are you that pleased to have me for yourself?” Hannibal teases, pressing his thumb into Will’s palm gently. It’s definitely not a tumor. He should know, he can smell the fever coming off of Will even now and worries what the issue might be. “There are worse things than tumors, Will.”

He watches the empath yawn and melt into the hospital bed with the steady pressure to his hand. “I want to understand everything about you, Hannibal,” he repeats, as if that’s not the sweetest thing he could say, knowing what he knows about Will and how his mind works. “I’m being selfish and keeping you so I can figure you out.”

“Hm, I quite enjoy when you decide to be selfish, then,” Hannibal replies softly, gently rubbing the pressure into Will’s hand. He could eat him, bite into the man’s flesh and keep a piece for himself, tucked away near and dear to his heart. He also knows he cannot kill Will. Harm and maim him without hesitation, but killing him would be crossing a line.

Hannibal prides himself on control, and he’ll make sure to keep himself in check, if only for his dear Will’s own good. As bothersome as such a task should be, he finds it comes easy; he’s not certain if that means his darling would have a chance to kill him or eat him if he hesitates just once but a part of him wants to find out, wants to know how dangerous Will can get.

“I’m sure you’ll come to know me as well as you know yourself,” or as well as I know you one day, he thinks idly.

“I know I will,” Will says with shocking confidence, an intensity in his eyes that belies his slow crawl towards clarity and sobriety. “I'm not letting you go until I know everything about you. Not just what you want people to know about you, the stuff you don’t, too. How your house is a stage. How your office is, too, because it’s less about comfort and more of an altar to your work, isn’t it?”

Hannibal’s hold on Will’s hand loosens a little bit as he smiles. His dear Will is smart, so it’s not surprising that he’s picked up on these aspects of the psychiatrist’s life. “Do you care for interior design that much, Will?” he teases, knowing it’s an entirely different type of interior design the empath is dissecting.

“You can tell a lot about someone by how they live, the entire field of anthropology is based on it. I know so much about you, Hannibal. You’re stronger than you look, strong enough to lift someone. You wear so many layers, you’re so picky about touch, but you let me get away with it,” he muses, looking down at their hands. Much slower and less coordinated than if he were sober, Will flips his hand in Hannibal’s grip. He slides their palms together before slipping further to clasp against the thin skin of his wrist.

Hannibal doesn’t flinch, he’s grown from that, but his hand does twitch at the touch before easing into the hold. It’s an odd feeling, Will’s warm hands on his skin, nearly seering him. Odd, but not wholly unwelcome. He looks up at Will, searches his face for any sign of danger and finds… nothing. Nothing more than an intensity that he’s fairly certain is helped by the morphine, no matter how much it seems to be wearing off.

There’s a hunger there, too, but Hannibal can’t define whether it’s obsession or a compulsion.

“I didn’t know you enjoyed watching me so much.”

Will scoffs and he’s gifted the half smile, half grimace Hannibal knows comes from his genuine amusement. Blue eyes, brighter than they’ve ever been before, bore into his and say, “Don’t you? Everything about you is a performance- you like that I know that.”

Hands shoot out to grab him by the jaw, Will heaving himself up with the effort of pulling their faces right up to each other. He says, lowly, “Just like I know you hate the cold. You try to hide it, and you do so well, but I can tell. It reminds you of something, something bad. I don’t know what yet, but I’ll find out. I’m going to know every single thing about you.”

His heart thuds heavy in his chest and ears, thumping away with Will’s words and those warm hands on his face. He does hate the cold. He hates snow and the ache that comes with it, with the promise of a white nightmare. He’s been meticulous about hiding it. Too many frozen nights and terrors in the shadows, Hannibal is not one for treating his own mind lightly. He hasn’t been afraid of the cold in years, so how did Will figure him out?

His heart beats harder and faster, his lungs straining with the effort not to breathe harder than his controlled breathing. He wants to bite one of Will’s hands, lash out in some way that makes him feel in control again. He doesn’t. He can’t because Will’s eyes hold no malice, no anger, just that hunger that Hannibal reciprocates and it is intoxicating. There are so many things he wants to do to Will, to himself, to both of them. He wants them to be so intricately woven together that they cannot survive separation. He needs Will to need him back just as intensely as he does. He wants to kiss Will until they don’t know where one starts and the other ends.

Instead, just as lowly, he finds himself asking, “And would you keep me, after finding out everything about me?”

“I haven’t decided yet.” Will keeps staring him down, looking over his face and how close they are, as if he has not just speared and flayed Hannibal open upon his words. And then, incredibly, beautifully, “Yes, I think I will.”

Hannibal closes his eyes with a soft sigh, lets himself relax into Will’s hands like the younger man clearly wants him to. He feels vulnerable, pried open a bit, but in the best of ways, like whatever secrets Will may find in him will be safe with him. It’s a comforting thought.

Will opens his mouth, something speculative crossing his face, but a sharp knock on the door interrupts him. A different nurse than the night before sticks her head in and smiles, “We’re ready for Mr. Graham’s spinal tap, so unfortunately you’ll need to clear the room, Mr. Lecter.”

Hannibal sits up and offers Will a small smile. “Be mindful with the nurses, Will,” he says before pulling away and standing to turn to the nurses. “I should be back in time for his CT scan, please let Dr. Sutcliffe know not to move him without me present.”

He has many things to do before coming back to Will; better they be done as soon as possible so he misses the least. The killer, Tobias, remains a faint loose end; he reminds himself to tie it off before coming back, as well.

“Come back soon,” Will asks- no, demands of him.

And oh, who is Hannibal to deny him that? He simply can’t.

---

There is a dull throb slowly starting to build back up in his head as Will watches Hannibal leave. He’s still floating pleasantly on the vestiges of the morphine they gave him. He’s grateful, though, that they don’t push another dose down the line in his hand. His dreams had been odd and surreal, which was normal, but hadn’t been horrifying, which wasn’t.

The nurse from the night before, who’s shiny name tag reads Austin, pulls the side rails of his bed off and sets them down. “Your husband will be right with you, Mr. Graham,” he assures him and Will feels embarrassment flush through him at the reminder of the assumption made that neither he or Hannibal rebuffed.

Even now, he finds the idea… not entirely repellent. He still doesn’t correct the nurses.

The spinal tap is deeply unpleasant, even after the local anesthetic they give him. He closes his eyes and breathes through the sharp pain and discomfort of a needle lodged between his vertebrae, and a part of him wishes that Hannibal was still sitting there next to him.

“It’s mostly a formality,” the doctor tells him when it’s done and they’ve rolled him back onto his back. His head is throbbing again, but Will doesn’t ask for more morphine. He doesn’t want it; as nice as the pain relief had been, it was also absolutely mortifying to know he’d grabbed Hannibal by the face to stare at him, more than once. “We saw some antibodies in your blood work that indicate a possible brain infection, so we’ll use the cerebrospinal fluid tap to figure out what the infection is and how to treat it, and a CT scan to see what part of your brain is most affected and if there’s any long term damage.”

“I don’t want the CT until Hannibal is back,” Will says before he can think it through. Not that he’s doing much thinking beyond the pounding in his temples.

“Of course, Mr. Graham.”

(Isn’t it kind of fucked? From the day they met, there’s been tension between them. A maybe-friendship that’s been simmering between genuine connection and the potential for something much more, much crueler. Yet all it takes for his fucked up brain to latch onto the man in a way he knows is unhealthy but is helpless to stop is morphine, a conversation about attraction and sexuality in regards to his empathy, and a whispered confession that Hannibal intrigues Will. What does that say about him?)

When they leave, Austin the nurse kindly turns off the lights at his request. He lays there for what feels like hours in the dark, eyes closed and so hot that the thin sheet spread over his body feels like it’s going to suffocate him. The fever is probably back, then. He can feel his heartbeat in his temples, the back of his head, where his jaw attaches to his skull.

He just breathes, and hurts, and waits for Hannibal to return.

(Like a dog at the door, eagerly awaiting its owner to return home.)

There’s a hushed conversation outside the door before it opens slowly and quietly. Hannibal steps in silently and closes the door, if he knows Will is watching him, he doesn’t acknowledge him as he starts setting a bag down and shucking his coat off.

“Hannibal,” Will greets, wincing at the sound of his own voice, low and hoarse. Christ, he sounds like shit. He feels like it, too. He can’t remember the last time he was idle for so long and despite the pounding migraine - possible brain infection, Dr. Sutcliffe had said - he’s almost tempted to get up just for something to do.

Hannibal looks at him as he sets his coat on the back of a chair and takes his scarf off. He smiles, looks and sounds calmer, when he greets back, “Will. I brought dinner.”

“You look calmer,” he says. Will eyes his hands, still gloved, and has to shove down the compulsion to take them in hand (mouth) and peel the gloves away with his own fingers (teeth). He swallows despite the drag on his dry throat, and asks, “What did you bring?”

“Loaded mashed potatoes,” Hannibal replies, completely bypassing the comment with feigned ignorance of it altogether. “Simple and delicious.” His friend doesn’t remove his gloves before grabbing the bag and walking over with the same prowess as a snow leopard, which is a funny thought when the man hates the cold so much.

“I didn’t know you were capable of making food that was simple.” It’s a lie, because Will remembers the first meal Hannibal ever fed him- egg and sausage scramble in plastic travel containers.

He knows so much about Hannibal, just like he’d said when he was still doped up. But it strikes him then and there that Hannibal knows so much about him, too. It makes sense, and reasonably, he should know plenty about Will, considering their unofficial conversations that have been going on for months now. It’s just that Will has been cursed to always understand other people, to know what’s going on in their heads, but rarely has he ever been as understood in return.

(He thinks of lighthouses, beacons in the night that weather the buffeting waves and shine a light on the path ahead but remain lonely. Isolated, empty, the source and home of too many horror stories and ghosts and never enough warmth. He thinks there must be one growing in his chest, cracking him open and using splintered ribs to build itself up. There is a light that is always on, even when he wishes it wasn’t.)

(He wonders if that makes Hannibal the keeper, the only one patching cracks and keeping him from burning out, burning down. The thought is uncomfortable, and yet not unwelcome. If anything, it begs for attention; there is a part of him that wants to open the door and lock it behind Hannibal, and that is what he finds terrifying.)

“And I wasn’t aware you were touch starved until a few hours ago. It appears we’re even,” Hannibal quips back he sets the bag on the chair he’d been occupying. “Are you alright, Will?”

Briefly, Will imagines launching himself from his stupid hospital bed and throttling Hannibal. He’s not stupid enough to deny being touch starved, because he’s well aware of the role touch plays in emotional needs and well being. He did study psychology, after all, even if generally isolating yourself from other people tends not to fulfill those needs. Still, he’s not a fan of having it pointed out, and certainly not by Hannibal of all people.

“The spinal tap was the most painful thing I’ve ever done,” he says instead of something ridiculous and childish, “and I’ve been stabbed through the shoulder blade.”

Hannibal sighs with a look that tells Will he knows exactly just how childish he wanted to be. Instead of riling him up further, he gives the younger man a pointed look as he pulls out their lunch. “Yes, well, denying morphine when in pain does not usually help, does it, Will?”

Fuck you, Will thinks viciously, and judging from the other man’s smug face, he knows it. He makes a face back and mutters, “I’m sure you’re already aware I don’t like not being in control of myself. A lack of inhibitions due to morphine is kind of antithetical to that.”

Hannibal hums thoughtfully and sets up the bed table to him. “Do you need assistance sitting up?” his friend asks honestly once he’s done, always so mindful with him, so full of care, it’s a bit infuriating.

It manages to both rub him the wrong way and soothe him at the same time. He shakes his head, glad he’d figured out the button to lift the back half upright. “I’m fine,” Will brushes him off. “It’s not like there’s anything strenuous about just laying here.”

He might be a little bitter about it. He should be finishing the case or cleaning up his house or-

Shit. Slightly panicked, he turns to Hannibal, “My dogs-”

“Already handled,” Hannibal assures gently, finally sitting down. The sight of dog fur on Hannibal’s perfectly fitted suit isn’t surprising, necessarily but- “They’ll be staying with me during your stay here. Far easier than driving almost five hours a day.”

If anyone were to ask him - and not that they will, because thankfully mindreading isn’t an actual thing - Will is having a very normal reaction to the warm bowl of food he’s been handed and the collection of dog fur on a subtle tartan pattern. It’s a blatant fucking lie, but he’s gotten pretty good at lying to himself. To know that someone knows him so well that his dogs are taken care of before he can even remember…

(Will thinks he’s become the wine dark sea, hungry and greedy and tearing into the bluff. He wants to pull Hannibal in, drown him and tether him among the seafloor and keep him away from the light of day and envious hands of others. He wants to devour him, leave nothing behind.)

(Is it possible to be both the ocean tearing at the shore and the lonely lighthouse barely holding ground? It feels like he is.)

He’s staring, he thinks, but all he can utter is, “Oh.”

Hannibal lifts a bundle of utensils out of the bag and offers it to Will, hands still gloved and hidden away under real leather. He’s not sure the older man can even tell he’s trying to put a wall between them just by doing that much. He doesn’t seem to, because he looks as relaxed as he had last night, smiling so lightly it might as well be nothing. But Will can tell, he can tell some part of Hannibal must have been shaken from just his fingers on his wrist.

“Winston was the easiest to get in the car, of course,” his friend says idly, waving the utensils absent-mindedly.

“You’re still wearing your gloves,” Will points out, not sure if he’s saying it just to say it or if it’s a question. If he’s watching the smooth shine of leather, well. He can just blame it on his currently up in the air brain disease.

Without much thought, he reaches his hand out to grab the utensils- and promptly drops them back into Hannibal’s lap to grab his hand instead. Will digs his thumb into his palm, considering. The leather is soft and warm, well worn but clearly taken care of. Genuine leather, too. He bets the older man uses saddle soap and oils them regularly. Loved, not in the way you wear something so often and for so long that the creases are permanent and holes worn in, but in the way that place something behind a glass case, maintain it perfectly so it never withers away.

He wonders if they’re a gift, who Hannibal thinks of when he sees them. Wonders how old they are. And, because the sudden movement has made his head throb nauseatingly in time to his heart, he wonders if Hannibal’s pulse would match his. Will can’t help but slide his hand down, just as he’d done while doped up, to tuck his fingers under fine sleeves to find the pulse there.

Except, this time, he doesn’t have the excuse of morphine blazing through his system.

Hannibal hadn’t gone stiff, exactly, but there is definitely a tenseness to him. Eyes resolutely on their hands, no one would be able to tell that the older man’s heart was practically fluttering like a panicked bird under his skin.

“I’m surprised you forgot,” Will muses, gaze flickering between his hold on the man’s wrist and his face. “You take care of them, I’d think you wouldn’t want to ruin them.”

The thought strikes him, sudden as lightning but lingering far longer: would Hannibal let him take the gloves off of him?

Hannibal glances up at Will for a moment long enough that there’s a clear flash of uncertainty and something he can’t put his finger on before his friend simply sighs. His heart really does betray all the hard work he puts in to show no emotion. “I do care for them,” he answers. “This pair was from Bedelia, a friend.”

He can blame it on the exhaustion or the pain or the horrible little hospital room, but if Will is honest, he knows the wave of not quite anger and not quite jealousy that surges through him isn’t very new.

“This pair?” he says, and pleads the roil of emotion in his stomach isn’t audible in his voice. He stares at the brown leather and something with talons and antlers crawls out of his mouth to say, “Do you have a red pair? It would… suit you.”

Hannibal’s heart stutters under his fingers before evening out to that same quick pace as before. He takes a moment to stare Will down, as hidden as he’s ever been since they started to get closer. Like he’s trying to decide what the better answer would be, or why Will is even asking. It’s nice to put him on the defensive every now and then.

“I don’t, yet,” the older man finally relents, voice low and thoughtful.

For a moment, Will can’t help wondering what his pulse would feel like against his tongue, taste like. Looking up to meet Hannibal’s eyes, he undoes the clasp and pulls it off carefully. The moment is charged and Will isn’t entirely sure why, but he has to physically swallow down the idea of pressing his lips against Hannibal’s wrist.

Hannibal, whose breathing had just started becoming apparent, who was staring at Will, not their hands. There has to be a moment in time where everyone must lose control of themselves, because for just a fraction of a moment, Will is sure he must pick up on something like lust-

Until someone knocks on the door and Hannibal gently pulls away, only to stand like he means to leave. “I’ll go see who it is, you should eat, Will.”

Will does not get to eat his baked potato. Which is a fucking tragedy, because it smells great and he’s actually really hungry. Instead, he gets disconnected from his IV stand, port taped securely to his arm, and wheeled down a hallway. The CT scan is uncomfortable in an entirely different way than the spinal tap was. With the tap, it had been painful. And though the clunking of the magnet in the scanner certainly doesn’t help with his pounding head, the discomfort is different.

He’s never thought of himself as someone claustrophobic, but laying in an empty room with only metallic clanging for company, he can’t help but feel a little bit like he’s stuck in a giant metal casket. Even the knowledge that Hannibal and Dr. Sutcliffe are on the other side of a large one-way mirror doesn’t soothe the unease.

Neither does Dr. Sutcliffe’s face, horrified and yet awed, when it’s over. Will fixes his attention on Hannibal instead, because seriously? He’s not a mouse in a lab to be studied, and he’d rather not be treated like one because his brain is apparently on fire.

Hannibal looks better than when he’d refused to look at Will the whole walk here, even managing to look at him and grimace a bit. “Advanced encephalitis,” he says, like it’s self-explanatory. “Anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, to be precise. It’s an autoimmune condition, your immune system is attacking the NMDA receptors in your brain.”

“Am I supposed to know what that means?” Will asks, wrinkling his nose. He studied psychology, not neuroscience. At the very least, it earns him a fond if exasperated smile from the psychiatrist.

“They’re primary conductors in synapse plasticity and function. All of your symptoms - the hallucinations, sleepwalking, headaches - are because of your encephalitis. It’s entirely possible you’ve been experiencing seizures without noticing as well, as they are a common symptom,” Hannibal explains, not letting him get a word in edgewise as he reassures, “It’s very treatable, most patients respond very well to treatment. Though treatment and recovery may take several months and there is a small chance of relapse in the future, you will be just fine.”

It’s a relief. Will feels his shoulders sag with it, with the knowledge he’s not just going crazy or possibly dying. But… months of treatment and recovery? He doubts he can help Jack on cases anymore and if he’s not consulting, then what? Does he just go back to teaching? Will he even be able to?

The insurmountable dread that had been fading rises back up sharply. He doesn’t even know if his health insurance through the FBI Academy will cover this.

Fuck.

“Will,” Hannibal says sternly enough to pull him back, but warm enough to be soothing, reassuring. In a more passionate yet quiet tone, he simply says, “Let me.”

“What?” Will stares openly, letting Hannibal’s gaze bore into his. A pleased, biting warmth burrows into his chest and makes a home there.

(He is the wine dark sea reaching greedily for the cliff edge where Hannibal stands. He is the lighthouse upon rocky shore with doors closed shut to keep the wind out and Hannibal in. He aches with it. He… wants.)

“Let me take care of paying for the treatment,” Hannibal elaborates, setting a hand on Will’s shoulder and squeezing as the other one grabs his hand. Dr. Sutcliffe excuses himself quickly, and his friend, now without gloves, holds his hand and rubs his thumb over his knuckles like Will is something precious to be kept safe.

A bit like those gloves.

“I…” Will thinks if Hannibal were to ask just about anything of him right now, he would be helpless to say anything but yes. He swallows and drowns in those eyes, rich brown but almost red under the fluorescents of the hospital. The color reminds him of old blood and red velvet cake and it should unsettle him. But all he can think is that it fits Hannibal so well.

(He thinks of Hannibal’s hands, strong and steady and so sure. He thinks of them, wrapped in well loved leather gloves. He imagines them in a red pair, curled around his steering wheel. He imagines those perfect hands in perfectly fitted red leather gloves, wrapped tight around his throat. His stomach drops out to the floor and leaves only an oddly pleasant swooping sensation in its place.)

“Okay,” Will says, and wishes the hand on his shoulder was on his face instead. He has the overwhelming urge to press his lips against Hannibal’s palm or wrist to see what happens.

And maybe because they already know each other well enough, or maybe as some kind of reward, Hannibal does just that and gently- as if worshiping him -sets that hand on his cheek, rubbing his thumb under Will’s eye like it’s the easiest thing in the world. “You can stay with me while you recover,” he assures, voice low and sweet and real. “I would like it if you did.”

This feels dangerous. Not the kind of dangerous he can solve with a gun or his badge. No, this feels dangerous like he’s standing on the edge of a precipice and doesn’t know what lies in the dark below. But Hannibal… he trusts him.

Will turns his face into Hannibal’s hand, letting his lips brush his wrist, and breathes, “Okay.”

Hannibal’s breath hitches this time, but he does nothing to pull away, just rubs his thumb under Will’s eye gently again, like he’s something precious to be cared for indefinitely. Hannibal is a man unlike anyone he’s ever met; polite to a fault with cutting words at times, who enjoys his air of mystery and pageantry.

And yet, he’s always so willing to be there for Will, like the lighthouse at the edge of the shore, welcoming him home.

For a moment, the world freezes. The world clicks together like tumblers falling into place, and Will sees everything:

Months ago now, at the beginning of it all, during the early stages of the Minnesota Shrike case, Hannibal had brought him breakfast. It had been delicious, but the breakfast wasn’t what stood out in the memory. No, what stood out was how the man had made him laugh, loud and open and only a little bitterly. And then he had said something that wasn’t a lie then, but certainly was now- I don’t find you that interesting, he had said.

Hannibal had looked at him and promised, you will. And he does.

Will remembers the older man asking him to come to a dinner party, just something small. A celebration. And he’d turned him down, repeatedly. He’d brought a bottle of wine to his house and even when he’d asked him to stay, Will had said no. He’d gone home to pour over photos of the Chesapeake Ripper’s crime scenes, all while wishing he’d said yes.

He thinks of the time spent in Hannibal’s office, all the conversations they had. Of consolations and considerations and the sweltering relief of not being treated like he was unstable.

It hasn’t even been 48 hours since he kissed Alana Bloom in his living room and was left trying to piece together why he felt so sick about it. How the first thing he’d done had been to flee to Hannibal’s home, to which he has a key that Hannibal gave to him. He thinks of the conversation they had a couple hours ago.

It all clicks into place for him in the march of three realizations, one stumbling right after the other: Hannibal is the closest friend he’s had since possibly ever; he doesn’t think he actually likes Alana all that much; and Will has never felt about anyone the way Hannibal makes him feel.

He’s pretty sure he’s falling in love with Hannibal Lecter- and has been for months now.

So Will lets Hannibal take him back to his hospital room and help him back into the bed as nurses wheel in carts covered in wires and equipment. Treatment for his condition starts now, Dr. Sutcliffe explains. The first week will be lengthy and uncomfortable and he’ll be trapped in this small, dull room. But soon enough, he’ll be released to go home with a long list of medications to take, regular check ins and appointments that are far too close together for his comfort, and a tentative prognosis to begin any physical therapy, if needed, in less than six months.

He won’t be going back home, to his little house with the oceans of grass surrounding him in every direction, though. He, and assumedly his dogs, will be staying with Hannibal. Who already brought his dogs to his fancy house in the middle of upper class Baltimore because he knew Will would worry about them. He doesn’t know how he missed it; he sees so much - more than he wants to, all the time - and yet this has caught him entirely off guard.

The first plasma treatment starts and it’s not painful, but it is deeply uncomfortable and makes him freezing cold. He wonders if he reached for Hannibal’s hand, if he’d let him. If he’d stay. It’s a novel feeling, to not want to be alone in a room, but Hannibal is good at tearing new and bordering on uncomfortable feelings from him.

He’s so tired, but he doesn't want to close his eyes and miss the chance to stare at his friend a little more. Because, he realizes abruptly, that’s exactly what he’s doing: staring at Hannibal.

Hannibal is staring right back with what must be the fondest smile he’s ever seen, all amused and concerned in one small line. “Why are you staring, Will?” He asks, but if he’s trying to be harsh it fails miserably.

Before Will can answer, however, Hannibal goes still and a little angry. And then the door to his room opens, silent as ever as more light from the hallway creeps in.

The man that steps in is tall and dark skinned, his hair neatly shorn close to his head, and with the kind of tightly wound prim and properness that Hannibal wears. But his eyes are what startle Will, flat and cold and empty. Not obfuscating, not holding back thought and emotion in tightly held self control- no, this man’s eyes remind him of a shark’s. Black and unfeeling, staring through him as if he’s either a threat to be taken out or a next meal.

But while Hannibal clearly recognizes the man, Will has no idea who he is. Rather, he doesn’t know this man’s name or profession or even how he got in here, got his eyes set on them. There’s a connection building in the back of his head, though, and one he’s almost certain to be true.

“I just killed two men,” the man who made a cello out of a trombonist says. His voice is smooth and deep, rich. It would be pleasant if Will wasn’t cold, vaguely nauseous, and the next words from weren’t, “I thought we saw eye to eye, Dr. Lecter. But you took Franklyn from me, and now I’m going to kill him.”

Will’s head spins, thoughts racing through his still faintly feverish mind. There’s the implication there that Hannibal has killed someone, but he can’t afford to focus on that. Not when, apparently, there’s a killer who wants him dead. The past 36 hours have been hellish, in a word, and aren’t looking up yet either.

He just can’t get a break, can he?

Hannibal stands so quickly, he sends the chair flying into the man’s legs, throwing him off balance. It’s not a surprise that Hannibal is strong; what is surprising is the ease and speed at which he grapples the killer as far away from the bed as possible.

He’s not supposed to touch his IV or the transfer machine they hooked him up to, but Will knows the treatment has finished since the machine isn’t whirring anymore. It’s probably not a great idea, he acknowledges as he unhooks the cannula in his arm like he’d watched Hannibal do earlier.

His head hurts like a bitch, but he’s used to working through it. So Will makes himself slam a hand to the button to alert the nurses station and heaves himself off the bed. Hannibal’s back is to him, but the killer has an actual wire garrote, like a shitty movie assassin. So Will makes the perfectly sound, reasonable decision to pick up an empty vase from one of the side tables and chucks it at the killer’s head.

Hannibal doesn’t turn to look, much more preoccupied with grabbing the man’s shirt by the collar and yanking his face onto his knee once. Twice. Almost a third before the intruder claws at Hannibal’s arms.

They tumble against the walls, vying for control; like two bucks fiercely ramming and whipping at each other to win, no matter the cost, no matter how tangled. And they will surely get tangled if Hannibal can’t get that wire out of the bastard’s hand.

There’s a feeling, an urge, rising up in his chest that while not foreign, is one he usually shoved down and strangles out of obligation. Sometimes, he fails at it, though.

(Hannibal once asked him what he considered Garret Jacob Hobbs, if not his victim. And Will had told him, in entire sincerity, that he didn’t consider him anything but dead. For all that Hobbs has haunted and tormented him since the day he shot him down, he had quietly known that he was always going to kill the Minnesota Shrike.)

(The same feeling rises in him now.)

Will has no weapon in this room, not his gun or even a conveniently heavy or sharp-corned book. But he does have knowledge, the vast experience that comes with his job. Too preoccupied with their scrap, neither of the men fighting in front of him pay him any mind at all. So he watches.

When they’re close enough, Will finds no hardship in reaching out to grab the killer by his shoulder and ear, and slam his head into the solid bathroom door frame.

Barely taking a second to breathe, Hannibal unwinds his arm from the garotte and pulls it out of the man’s grip. He grabs their assailant, stuned as he is, and sends him flying against the sharp sink in the bathroom, head first.

There’s a sharp snapping crunch before he slumps lifelessly on the ground. Hannibal is heaving, standing with this murderous look in his eye that refuses to leave, even as he stares down at the now-corpse. His arm is injured, bleeding through his suit, but the older man doesn’t seem to notice.

“Well,” Will says wearily into the sudden silence, “that wasn’t… what I meant to do, but I’m not that, uh, disappointed. Are we supposed to call the cops or hospital security first? Or Jack? Since he, uh, definitely killed that trombonist.”

Hannibal turns at the sound of his voice and whatever urge to kill that had been there simply vanishes. “Jack would be best,” he admits as the nurses finally come in. What awful timing, screams the older man’s minute shift in expression. It’s wonderful to know him so well.

“Right.” Will stares at Hannibal a little more, a temptation climbing up his throat only for a nurse to cut off her overly polite Mr. Graham please do not take out your IV- with an ear piercing screaming. Ah, so now she’s seen the body.

With a heavy sigh, he waves questions away and grabs Hannibal by his uninjured arm to drag him back over to the bed. He pulls him down to sit on the edge next to him and grabs his phone to send a text to Jack. He doesn’t have the energy for the mess of a phone call it would be right now.

“You should get that looked at,” Will tells Hannibal, gesturing at his arm, as a wave of exhaustion hits him like a car barreling into a frozen deer in the road.

Hannibal expertly handles the nurses, disheveled and battered as he is, before letting any of them near his injuries. And when asked to take his shirt off, his friend only slightly hesitates before doing so. “I’m certain my suit jacket took the brunt of the damage, Will.”

“So?” There’s a warm gnawing in the pit of his stomach, a nauseous hunger he doesn’t know what to do with. The sensation is completely novel, but surprisingly pleasant. He thinks he wants to eat Hannibal, thinks he would have already if they were alone. He shallows, ignoring his phone going off in favor of dropping it back onto a bedside table. “I don’t- if you’re hurt, you should get it looked at. You- I’m sorry.”

“They’re tending to me, dear,” Hannibal soothes warmly, almost too sweetly. And the older man has no right looking that good and well-toned even if Will already knew he would be under all those layers. It’s completely unfair. Not that Will cares what he looks like, but it’s unfair to him. “What could you possibly be apologizing for?”

“That you’re hurt?” It doesn’t feel like the right answer, but he’s not sure what the right answer is. He’d admit to being a little distracted by the warm honey way Hannibal is looking at him, talking to him. He wants to live inside his chest; the feeling comes so suddenly and without warning that Will is surprised he doesn’t move. It feels like he should be bowled over by the intensity.

“Oh, Will,” Hannibal says softly as the commotion of security and other personnel start streaming in to secure the scene. “You did nothing wrong. How could you have caused this?”

The man’s free hand comes up to brush curls away from Will’s eyes like it’s the most natural thing in the world and- what if it was? What if it could be? Is he allowed to be so selfish that he gets to choose where this goes from here? -then settles on the back of his neck, warm against the coolness of his skin this time.

Oh, Will thinks, followed by, ah, fuck it.

“I’m going to kiss you now,” he tells Hannibal, regardless of the nurses still in there and the security staff coming through the door. He gives the older man a second to move away or reject it, anything at all really. And then he’s reaching out to grab his face and presses their lips together.

Hannibal kisses him back. And then keeps kissing him back, doesn’t once try to pull away as he keeps his hand on the back of Will’s neck, squeezing just enough that the pressure is perfect. He might just explode from it all, from the overwhelming sense of everything about him.

It feels good, he realizes dizzyingly. Not that it’s much of a surprise, really, but it’s easy to let himself fall into it. Easier than it had been kissing Alana, a quiet pool of black tar dread opening in his chest even as she kissed him back. Kissing Hannibal isn’t like that at all. It’s as easy as breathing, sweet as spun sugar, and Will only pulls back when he needs to breathe.

He immediately draws his face back and ducks his head; he doesn’t go far, just buries his face into the older man’s shoulder and breathes. Tries to process the last thirty minutes that feel a little like a fever dream. He hopes it’s not another elaborate and devastatingly realistic dream, that might actually kill him.

God, he hopes not. He wants to kiss Hannibal again. And again, until Hannibal doesn’t let him anymore. He may have been the one to kiss him, but Will can’t help but feel bowled over by the strength of his own emotions right now.

“Will,” Hannibal whispers, warm and loving and sticky sweet. It’s not a demand or a request, he simply says it like he needs to make sure he still knows how. He sounds almost dizzy, even, as he does it again. “Will.”

He feels dizzy, listening to Hannibal say his name like that. So sweet and tender. So caring.

“Hannibal,” he echoes back, surprised to find when he pulls his head back that they’re alone again, even the corpse taken away. When did that happen? He ignores it, focusing on the man in front of him. Will cradles his jaw and kisses him again, shorter but no less intense.

(Everything feels intense right now. Will wasn’t aware he could feel so intensely about someone, despite how intensely he feels everything. The heat in his gut churns and oh, he wants.)

“They’ll be back to make us move rooms,” Hannibal whispers, kissing Will again and following him when he goes to pull back. “I cannot wait to take you home.”

“Christ,” Will swears, “you can’t just say that, Hannibal. I… can’t wait either.”

It’s definitely the wrong time to ask about his dogs, but he has to fight the urge down. Even if focusing on his dogs would be easier than the hunger gnawing at him. He kisses Hannibal one last time, reluctantly but firmly drawing away. He’d rather not but he’d also rather the nurses didn’t walk in on them making out.

There’d be time for that later. Because it only takes Will one look to know that Hannibal will let him kiss him again later, that they have all the time to figure this out. It’s surprising - and admittedly makes him feel stupidly young like a teenager with a first crush again - just how exciting the prospect is.

Well, one last kiss can’t hurt.