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Will tied his dark blue tie and squinted at his hair. He reminded himself, again, that Hannibal had agreed to this, however unlikely that now seemed.
He glanced down as Winston leaned against his thigh. "Tell me I'm being stupid, Winston."
Winston barked obligingly, and Will scratched him behind the ears one last time before he grabbed the car keys. The dogs had enough food and water to last them until tomorrow. Will had lube and condoms because if he weren't, almost unwillingly, an optimist at heart, he probably would have killed himself by now.
He locked the front door behind him and got in the car.
*
Hannibal's suit was nearly the same blue as Will's, his tie an intricate tangle of dark blue and forest green. It could've looked like they'd dressed to match, but Will suspected it just made him look like a cheap knockoff.
"I didn't get you flowers," Will said, but he did hold the car door for him.
Hannibal looked amused. “A deviation from the script."
"I'm not too sure how the script goes between guys. I might need some coaching if we get beyond the basics."
"Are you referring to dating etiquette or sex?"
Will went around to the driver's side. “Etiquette tends to be my weak point. You might’ve noticed.”
“I might have. What led you to believe I was attracted to men?"
"Never thought about it. Just thought you might be attracted to me."
“Are you ever wrong?”
“Hardly ever, now. Pretty often when I was younger.”
“And why was that?”
“Hope. Easy to convince yourself of almost anything if you want it bad enough.”
“And are you now without hope or merely without desire?”
“I’ve been without both for a while.”
“Has that changed recently?”
Will shrugged one shoulder and smiled a little, eyes on the building traffic flow around them. “What about you?”
“I am lacking in neither hope nor desire.” He paused. “But I must admit, your invitation surprised me.”
“Bet that doesn’t happen often.”
“No. It does not.”
Will glanced over at him, just for a moment. He was his usual stone-faced self, but the air around him seemed to waver in a dangerous way that Will had come associate with the wavering of his own mind. There was a damp patch of darker cloth on his knee. Will swallowed.
"My script might be out of date, but I think we're supposed to be making small talk about the weather and the restaurant and…dogs and stuff," he managed.
He snuck another glance, this time upward. An uneven stain marred the ceiling upholstery. Glimmering water dripped from it, lit from within as if filled to brimming with bioluminescent life. It fell down onto Hannibal's leg and then to the floor. Will wondered if he should pull over. They were in the middle of six lanes of traffic. It would probably be more dangerous to try than to keep going, hallucinations or no. At least it wasn’t Hobbs. He jerked his eyes back to the road.
"You despise small talk," Hannibal said. "In part because it's a skill you have never mastered, but also because you do not see the value in it."
"There is no value in it."
"On the contrary. You can learn a great deal about someone through his treatment of mundane subjects, sometimes more than in therapy. Few people are on their guard when speaking of the weather. Or their dogs."
"I was," Will said. Therapists had asked about his dogs before, and he'd always done his best to make sure they regretted the question.
"In this, as in most things, you are a limiting case, but you still revealed more than you might have planned. In between discussions of heart worm and the unfortunate consequences of Gretel’s wheat sensitivity."
"Your fault for asking. What did I give away?" Drip, drip, drip. He could hear it now. The glow had started to fill up the car.
"The depth of your affection for them. To rescue strays is one thing. The continued commitment to their care and training is another. It speaks well of your constancy and devotion."
Will thought hard about Gretel’s intestinal issues for a few seconds, but he could feel his face heating anyway. He looked over at the leak. It had increased in volume and started to pool around Hannibal's feet. That was more than enough to distract him.
"What is it you see, Will? You look over here, but you're not looking at me."
"Water," Will admitted. "I know it's not real."
"Where do you see it?"
"Dripping onto your knee. Down your shin. There's a puddle on the floor." Will swallowed. "It's rising."
Hannibal reached over slowly and grasped Will's wrist. He pulled it over and placed it on his leg. "Do you feel it?" he asked.
Will almost closed his eyes. Hannibal's thigh just above the knee was warm and solid, undoubtedly dry. He shook his head. "I only feel you," he said.
His hand stayed there until he had to turn off for their exit. Hannibal kept his own hand layered over Will's.
*
They parked near the restaurant and walked in silence. Will felt both cold and hot, fingertips chilled to the bone, heat welling up from a seemingly endless spring inside him. Some days he felt like he was being burned alive from the inside out.
His entire sense of self was quaking like some unknown fault line had shifted, and he was on a date, his first in three years.
"Do you ever think life is just fucking strange?"
"Often," Hannibal said.
The Blue Duck Tavern was earth-toned and minimally decorated. It had a lot of semi-reflective surfaces, in which Will caught distorted glimpses of himself as they were shown to their table.
"What in particular is fucking strange tonight?" Hannibal asked, when they'd sat down.
Something in Will's stomach twisted pleasantly at the sound of the word fucking in Hannibal's mouth. He liked the slight emphasis Hannibal put on it, as if he wanted to be sure Will had heard him say it.
"Everything? Yeah, everything sums it up." The noise level in the restaurant was rising like a tide. "I just don't get how this is possible."
"This?"
"Us, here. You talking me through hallucinations before dinner like that's normal. It's not even normal for you. Your patients aren't this level of crazy."
"What level do you think that is?"
Will looked down at the plate in front of him. He didn't remember ordering food. He didn't even remember looking at a menu. "What is this?" he asked.
"Bone marrow. I ordered the entrees as well. You seemed preoccupied and complained you had left your glasses at home."
"Were they on my face at the time?"
"They were. Is the time loss becoming more frequent?”
“Up till right now, I would’ve said no.”
“The stress of your work may carry over into other areas of your life. And of course the current situation presents stresses of its own.”
“I don’t feel stressed.” He scooped out bone marrow with a small knife and spread it on toast. It tasted like butter on steroids.
“What do you feel?”
“Good. Calm.” He looked down at his plate. “It’s good being here with you. I— Thank you. For coming.”
“Thank you for the invitation. I’m enjoying myself as well.”
“Are you?”
“Do you believe I would lie to you?”
“Yes,” Will said instantly, and then passed a hand over his eyes. “Sorry. But everyone lies.”
“Including you?”
“Sometimes. I don’t think I’ve lied to you.”
“And I don’t believe I’ve lied to you.”
The appetizers were removed, and the main course set in their place. Will got Muscovy duck with cherry compote. He wondered exactly how much of the evening he’d lost, how much he might have lost alone in his house without realizing.
Hannibal glanced at him. “Eat, Will. Your duck is feeling neglected."
"Don't anthropomorphize my food."
*
The music started like ripples across water. It was nice, but Will wasn't much of a classical music person. Not much of a music person at all, really. It wasn't long before he was plucking at a loose thread on the edge of his velvet seat. There was a forensics report he was waiting for, retesting blood for an old case, and he wondered if it were done yet. Beverly would've sent him an email.
The moment his hand moved towards his pocket, Hannibal caught his wrist in a hard grip. "This is lovely. Please don't spoil it," Hannibal murmured.
Will left his wrist in Hannibal's possession. Somewhere around the time he started to actually listen to the violin soar above the rest of the orchestra, Hannibal's thumb started rubbing small circles into his wrist bone.
The touch held Will's full attention as the music had not. It was a small point of contact, not even as large as the pad of Hannibal's thumb. He wasn't pressing down, rather almost hovering above Will's skin. The music shifted from something low that picked its way through individual notes and instruments across the orchestra to something swelling: grand and tidal and complex.
Hannibal's grip on him shifted as well. He fitted his fingers into the hollow of Will's wrist, the soft cradle between small bones, and pressed there. His grip acted as an anchor on Will's mind. The air grew heavier in his lungs, and the music compressed the space around him like sinking a mile under the ocean. He felt as if he were suspended in a bubble of sound and touch.
Gradually, he became aware of changes: light, movement, cessation of music, the uninterpretable babble of a hundred overlapping voices.
"Are you all right?" Hannibal asked.
"Yeah. I'm great, actually. It's not over, is it?"
Hannibal looked pleased. "Only intermission. Shall we get something to drink?"
Hannibal was a member of some program that would let them into the lounge (called Golden Circles, which Will thought sounded like a cattle ranch or a chain of convenience stores), but even as he made the offer it was clear there was a 'but' attached to it.
"What's the problem?" Will said.
"No problem. It's likely I'll know some of the people there. I only wondered how you wished to be introduced."
"Don't care," Will said automatically, and then reminded himself that he probably should. "Sorry. Are these people your friends?"
Hannibal's face went utterly blank. It was like a split second of catatonia, and it was one of the weirdest things Will had ever seen a human face do, in life or death.
"No," Hannibal said, and smiled faintly. "Acquaintances."
He led Will toward the lounge and didn't ask again about introductions. In the next few minutes, Will shook more hands than he'd shaken in the past year. Hannibal seemed to know everyone in the room, and they were all delighted to see him. Will smiled on cue and let Hannibal do the heavy conversational lifting. He didn't even try to remember names; he knew he didn't have a chance.
"And this is my dear friend, Will Graham," Hannibal was saying, and the woman on the other side of the introduction turned to him with raised eyebrows.
Will watched her draw the correct conclusion, which couldn't have been difficult. The possession in Hannibal's body language was somewhere between touching and ludicrous.
"This is the one who was meant to be at your dinner party?" she asked. "Now I'm doubly sorry you couldn't make it."
"I had to work," Will said.
"And what work calls you out into a filthy night like that?"
"Crime scene. I work for the FBI."
"My goodness," she said, with a glance at Hannibal. "How on Earth did you meet?"
"They wanted someone to tell them I was mentally stable enough for field work," Will said.
"A patient, Hannibal?" she said, clearly delighted at the possibility of scandal.
"For the space of an hour, yes. It was mainly pro forma."
"Did I just get you in trouble?" Will asked, when she'd gone off to greet a man with an enormous mustache.
"Not at all. I find your predilection for tactical honesty rather charming."
"I wasn't actually trying to get rid of her."
“But I am just as glad you did.”
Will sipped champagne and watched the whorls and eddies of the crowd, a current of color and mingled voices that flowed endlessly in and out of the room.
When they returned to their seats, Hannibal took Will's wrist again as they sat down. "It seemed to ground you before."
"Yeah." Will swallowed. "Tighter than that."
Hannibal's grip tightened until Will could feel the blood under his skin. When the lights went down, he took it at first as a darkening of his own vision, as if Hannibal's hand were wrapped around his throat instead. He found the thought a peaceful one. It would be easier to have someone else in control of his breathing, of his blood, and there was no one better qualified.
The music started, and he slid under the surface, all the way to the bottom.
*
The outside air hit them, crisp and sharp. The further they moved from the crowd, the easier it became to breathe, to think, and to see.
"You enjoyed it more than you thought you would," Hannibal said, as they pulled out of the parking garage.
"I enjoyed it more than you thought I would."
"Had enough of talking about yourself tonight?"
"You're more interesting."
"Ah, I knew it would happen eventually." Hannibal smiled at him, warm and lingering, until Will had to force his attention back to the road.
"I don't know that much about you."
"I'm hardly secretive."
"No. That would imply you're trying. You keep to yourself. It started when you were young, and now it's a habit. You don't even think about it anymore."
"Is this psychoanalysis or profiling?"
“I’m not a therapist. You said you were an orphan."
"I grew up with my uncle."
"Not always. Where were you before that?"
"You tell me."
"Orphanage," Will said. "Not one of the nice ones. No singing nuns or murals of rainbows and flowers for you." Headlights streamed toward him, and he fought not to close his eyes. There was a room. It was gray, concrete, blankets on the floor. Cold sunlight from high windows. Frost on the inside of the walls, winter finding a way in.
"Will," Hannibal said sharply.
"Boundaries. I know. Sorry." Will let out a shuddering breath. "It's hard to shut off."
They drove in silence for a mile or more until the last echoes of the conversation faded from Will's mind. He almost wondered if it had happened at all.
Hannibal shifted in the dark beside him. "Tell me what you saw."
Will told him about the room.
More silence. There was such a weighted, waiting quality to it that Will started to wonder if he might be dreaming.
"Tell me about the blankets," Hannibal said.
"Wool. Itchy. You thought they were ugly. Two piles. There was someone with you."
"What makes you say that?"
"Because you haven't always been alone."
The silence after that lasted all the way to Hannibal's house. Will was caught between guilt and the shadows of Hannibal's childhood. There was too much he couldn't see. He needed more information. It was none of his business. Hannibal had every right to shut him out.
Parked in Hannibal's driveway, winter crept in around them. The moon hung over the house, dim in a flat, black sky. The only noises were their breathing and the contraction of cooling metal.
"Sorry I messed this up," Will said.
"I'm not angry, Will. I'm thinking."
"Doesn't usually take you this long."
Will just caught Hannibal's breath of laughter, and it gave him the courage to look over at him. He didn't look angry, only far away.
"Would you like to come in?" Hannibal asked.
"Do you want me to?"
Hannibal turned toward him. "Would it surprise you to learn that I very much want to have sex with you tonight?"
"Honestly? A little bit, yeah."
"Nevertheless, it is the truth."
Hannibal took Will's wrist again. He brought it close to his face and paused. One hand cradled Will's, and the other wrapped loosely around his forearm. Will could both hear and feel him inhale deeply before he pressed his lips against Will's pulse.
"No aftershave with a ship on the bottle," Will said, voice and knees both suddenly shaky.
"Much better without," Hannibal murmured into his skin. "Shall we go inside?"
Will just nodded. It seemed a very long time before Hannibal released him and opened the car door.
Hannibal's driveway was a frozen river. Each footprint in the frost was a star reflected in black ice. Will shook his head hard and plunged into the light and warmth of Hannibal's home. The wall he'd chosen to press himself against felt insufficiently solid.
Hannibal hung up both their coats. "Come into the kitchen," he said. "I'll make coffee."
The espresso machine hissed and puffed steam. Hannibal filled two small cups and placed two brown sugar cubes on each saucer.
“You don’t take sugar in your coffee,” Will said.
Hannibal set his cup down and adjusted the angle of the handle. "It lends itself to the created image."
Will dumped both sugar cubes into his cup to watch Hannibal's politely disguised wince. The entire house was Hannibal's created image. Will didn't analyze interior design, but if he were going to start, he would start here.
He leaned over the counter. Unlike the polished stone and wood at the Blue Duck Tavern, the stainless steel offered a more or less true reflection. "Is this on purpose?" he asked.
"Hm?" Hannibal looked at him over the rim of his cup.
"Your kitchen is an operating theater. Emphasis on theater. Did you do that on purpose?"
Hannibal blinked slowly at him. "The work surfaces serve similar functions in both places, certainly. Stainless steel is easy to clean and difficult to damage."
"It's not just that." Will pulled himself up to sit on the counter, next to the range. "The whole room revolves around the operating table." He knocked on the surface next to him. "Even the lighting."
"And look where you're sitting." Hannibal set his cup down and moved closer. He put his hands on Will's knees and pushed them apart until he could stand between them. "Do you want me to open you up?"
"Yes," Will said, dizzy with all the ways in which he meant it.
Hannibal dragged the side of his face against Will's and inhaled deeply, nosing at Will's neck. Will pulled at his tie, fingers scrabbling on the silk.
"I want you naked," he said, and threw the tie onto the range. The tip dangled over the center burner, and Will found himself caught by it, blue and green against black iron.
"What color does silk burn?" he asked. Of course it would burn like any other cloth, but he could see colors behind his eyes, Hannibal’s entire form ablaze with cool and rising flames.
"It depends on the color of the silk,” Hannibal said.
Will wrenched his eyes back to Hannibal. "Making fun of me. Not nice."
"But I have your attention again, and you're no longer thinking of setting my wardrobe alight."
Hannibal straightened and let his suit jacket fall to the floor. He unbuttoned his shirt and toed off his shoes. Socks, undershirt. His belt hit the kitchen floor with a clink.
Tailored suits could hide a lot, and in Hannibal's case they hid muscle. His skin stretched over it like a skim of frost on black ice. Will hesitated to touch in case his fingers burned right through the surface.
Hannibal gripped him instead, pulled him to the edge of the counter so Will's cock pressed flush against Hannibal's thigh. He shifted and rocked, helpless to stop himself.
"Now you," Hannibal said. Will started fumbling with his own tie, but Hannibal caught his hands and then went down on one knee to remove Will's shoes. "This was your request, wasn't it? To be opened up. Revealed. Seen."
Hannibal worked in silence, deft as if he stripped people naked as often as he had once opened up bodies, repaired arteries, prised foreign objects from soft tissue.
At the end of it, their clothing lay together in a mixed pile on the floor. Hannibal leaned into his space, hands flat on the counter, bracketing Will's thighs.
"Have you ever fucked someone on your operating table?" Will asked.
"Never," Hannibal said. "This one or any other." He had retrieved Will's optimistic lube and condoms from his jacket pocket, and they sat next to his right hand.
"Do you want to?"
"More than you know."
Will pulled his feet up onto the counter and leaned back. His knees splayed outward. He gripped the black grate over the range with one hand and the edge of the counter with the other. His cock lay across his stomach, hard and flushed dark, wet at the tip. He had never felt more exposed in his life.
Hannibal loomed over him. Light flowed over the higher planes of his face and cast the recessions of his eyes and the corners of his mouth into darkness. He slid one hand up Will's chest to his throat. Will's breath caught hard, and his cock jerked. The grip was barely there, but it was enough to hold him steady as Hannibal worked two slick fingers inside him.
Will forgot about his exposure and momentarily about the fact that he was lying on a stainless steel countertop. He snapped his head back, and it hit metal with a dull thud.
"Careful now," Hannibal murmured. He slid his thumb down the center of Will's throat.
Will got one elbow under him and levered himself halfway to sitting. He grabbed a handful of Hannibal's hair and dragged him down until he could feel Hannibal's breath across his lips. "I don't want to be careful. I don't want you to be careful."
Hannibal held up one of the two flat condom packets between thumb and forefinger. "How not careful do you want me to be?" he asked.
Will snatched it from him and chucked it hard at the opposite wall. Less than aerodynamic, it fluttered down atop file of their clothes. Will half-expected him to go after it. He was a doctor, after all. He didn't.
Will's heart beat fit to break his ribcage. It burned as Hannibal started to press inside him. It felt impossible, the perfect metaphor for his life: one more thing he couldn't possibly take and yet desperately wanted.
They grew more tangled: Will's hand on Hannibal's forearm, his leg supported in the crook of Hannibal's elbow, Hannibal's cock slowly opening him up.
"More," he said, on a breathless exhale.
Hannibal gave him what he asked for. He drove in, not roughly, but with no respite. Will arched his back against steel that had warmed to his body, slid in his own sweat, and Hannibal's thumb pressed into the hollow of his throat to pin him down.
Hannibal sank all the way in at last, withdrew, and started to fuck him. It was slow, controlled, and horribly reminiscent of their therapy sessions: Will throwing everything he had at Hannibal, getting back measured, absolute responses.
"Please," he said. It came out sounding like a sob.
"What do you need, Will?"
He need Hannibal to need him. He needed a loss of that perfect control. He needed things that weren't going to happen. He shook his head and turned away, cheek pressed to the countertop.
Hannibal made a low noise and slid his hand up Will's neck. Two fingers dug in behind his ear, and Hannibal's thumb pressed into his mouth, ran along the sharp edge of his teeth. He forced Will's head back to center. Their eyes met, and everything Will wanted was there: darkness and desperation and need. It was like looking in a mirror.
They both groaned, and Hannibal slammed into him, harder now and faster. Each thrust slid Will backward, and each time Hannibal's grip pulled him close again. Every stroke drove the head of Hannibal's cock across his prostate, and sticky strands of pre-come stretched between his belly and his cock. He closed his teeth around Hannibal's thumb and sucked hard as he started to stroke himself.
Hannibal thrust in almost brutally hard, and Will felt it as a compaction of his spine and a bright, hot spike of pleasure. Hannibal stared down at him as he came, eyes wide open and frighteningly dark.
His lips moved silently around the shape of Will's name, and Will came as well, in violent shudders, streaks of white up his chest and over Hannibal's arm.
The air was close and hot, as if they were in a much smaller space than the cavernous kitchen. Will was still panting, and Hannibal's skin gleamed with sweat. Hannibal pulled out and bent over Will, letting his leg fall limply against the cabinets. He pulled his thumb from Will's mouth and ran it in a slippery path over his lower lip and across his jaw. He stroked along Will's cheekbone, pressed lightly into the hollow under his eye.
There was something there, Will thought. Something he was missing, right there, in Hannibal's hands and eyes and wet, open mouth an inch from Will's. He couldn't place it, and then he'd missed his chance.
Hannibal's usual veneer of implacable calm returned slowly. He straightened and brought Will up with him. Neither of them spoke, even now, though Hannibal looked like he wanted to.
Will slid down from the counter. It pressed him up against Hannibal's body, and Hannibal didn't step back, even when Will put a hand on his chest and pushed. It wasn't a very sincere push. Hannibal had a really nice chest.
He had to clear his throat before he got his voice to work. His throat felt raw, and he wondered what he'd sounded like, during. "I'm going to drip on your floor," he said.
That seemed to bring Hannibal back from wherever he'd gone. "It's seen worse," he said, but stepped aside anyway.
Will cleaned himself up in the bathroom down the hall. Hannibal's guest towels were monogrammed. Will didn't touch them. When he got back, Hannibal had his pants back on and his shirt, still unbuttoned.
"I'll go," Will said.
"You don't need to."
"You'd rather I did. It's okay."
Hannibal looked hard at him for a few seconds and then nodded. Will gathered up his clothes and started to dress.
Hannibal trailed him to the door. There was an awkward moment that would've been filled most easily by a kiss, but they hadn't done that yet. It felt like the wrong time now.
"We have an appointment tomorrow," Hannibal said.
"Twenty four hour cancellation policy, I know. I'll be there."
Hannibal caught Will's hand in both of his, dropped it a second later like it'd burned him, and shut the door in Will's face.
Will turned on the radio as he started the drive home, inexplicably cheerful. The night had been worth it, even if tomorrow's appointment turned into we'd-better-keep-this-professional.
It had been worth it for Hannibal's company, for the music, definitely for the sex. For the way Hannibal could make him feel almost normal. And, more than that, for the brief glimpse of the man behind Hannibal's polished facade. He needed to see more of that. He would see more of it. He’d find a way.