𝔄𝔩𝔢𝔞 𝔦𝔞𝔠𝔱𝔞 𝔢𝔰𝔱

i sharply exhaled through my nose

     [ When Hannibal is having his fun. ]

     {Will: -offended noises-}

     {Who is he, Emeril?? BAM add a little salt to this bitch.}

     It’s a stomach churning revelation to stare into the abyss of dark maroons and know that the man who had singularly ruined his life and built a new one revolving around him was the man whose touch he craved senselessly. He’d been broken, abused, taken advantage of, used. All by the same man who he welcomed, arched for, felt fondling away beneath a sweater bought by the devil himself.

     Dressed like a doll so he could undress it. God why was the prospect intoxicating? Taken care of, cared for, pampered and doted on. And in the quiet of the shadows, in the secrets of their truly intimate nights, a bliss greater than any sex he’s had before. Will likely have to come.

     Despite Hannibal’s careful attentions its easy to slip back into their third or fourth favorite game. Denial. What the good doctor wants more than anything, Will is enthralled at his staunch refusal. A game of tug of war and the sound of his voice is the prize. Hannibal hasn’t won (fairly) yet and Will intends to keep his streak going for years to come.

     I’ll show you who you really are. No one likes a mirror pointed at them.

     Gasping as he shifted, allowed the attention of his captor to wander while he caught his breath, his hands find the soft roots in graying hair. A piece of his heart beat for a moment. God…he is Hannibal’s mirror. This is narcissism at it’s peak. There was no ‘beyond this’. This was Narcissus and the pond and both of them were drowning because he was. Will shuddered hard once and he could (almost rightfully) blame that on the teeth grazing against his shirt and the hard nipple beneath.

     No. He wasn’t just some poor victim to be coddled when it was all over. He smelled the smoke. He saw the fire. And knowingly he’d taken a step into that hungry fire and felt it lick his skin and make him feel alive. More alive than he had ever hoped to be, fixing boat motors. He wanted to laugh at the idea of that stupidly beautiful, peaceful life he thought he could have had. No one, nothing like him deserved happiness. Not with the seeds they sew in their footsteps.

     That loving caress of a hand in Hannibal’s hair turns sour and those perfectly trimmed tresses become his weapon. Yielding the bastard’s cut-able throat and the small flecks of hairs under his chin determined to grow back out by morning. His teeth sank down but it was his lips that found the adam’s apple leaping up and down like some perverse cheerleader spurring on the imminent desire to bite down and hard. It’d be so easy. Hannibal would let him. To die the same way the Dragon did. Imagine the sick satisfaction flickering across that face as he collapses watching his greatest creation destroy him. Become More Than.

     Moaning, Will jerks hard on those short hairs and he knees the cannibal in his gut, shoving him just as hard with his other hand until there’s room enough for him to leap to his feet and hook his ankle around the bastard’s. Watch him stumble to catch himself, twisting just enough that slamming his body into Hannibal’s lands them both in the crevice of the couch cushions his lover captor had vacated minutes before. This is their second favorite game. The one where they fight for who gets control in that moment. Will usually wins. Persistence pays off.

     It certainly does when he grinds the palm of his hand down against the heaving chest, feels the warmth and the beating of a heart. He follows it up, up, into cold dead eyes he doesn’t want to admit aren’t cold and dead at all. They’re the most alive eyes he’s ever seen. Open. Honest. Beautiful. He hates the god damn bastard.

     His hand wraps around Hannibal’s throat and he stifles a sound of bliss to feel the windpipe inches beneath his palm. Knowing he could crush it before there’s even a flicker of a reaction.

     Ragged breaths precede unforseen turn of events a rapid fire chain reaction, train barreling down broken tracks and- He’s lost control again. In all these long and despairingly lonely years no being has wrenched his grip from the wheel more times than he could count and in as many, driven him to heightened ecstasy unfathomable in daily life. Modern thinking with all it’s quirks and candor and acceptance of the strange and erotically charged manifestations of damnable desires could not begin to comprehend the dance performed between them now. One misstep and it all turns to dust.

     Glee and surprise are in no short supply here, the wild war drums beating their battle cry in the ivory cage which held them felt as likely to burst through their bastille as his quarry seemed adamant to dig in. Self preservation should take precedence yet no deathly hand raises to stave off imminent death, glittering pools of frigid waters fill him with delight and in their depths he drowns willingly for Will Graham has given him The Thing Which He Craves And The Thing Which He Is Always Denied if in such short supply as to fall extinct thereafter.

     It is enough for him and he feasts on it heartily, filling his belly and his lungs and the tips of his fingers as they dig into taut thighs quivering their distress over his prone form lost in the subjugation. They can not be whole and they can not be half and what wickedness there remains breathes a poison in his lungs which gives life as it takes. Unerringly he is frozen in a moment of constant decay and regeneration at an exceedingly perfect pace as to match. Deliriously maddening and terribly frustrating it serves no purpose other than to give discontent.

     Writhing beneath the palm of that hand a voice bellows its presence in the quiet dim beating of their hearts and startles him in its gutteral rasp.

     “Will.” Delightful hell that this is, it brings to bear the ache inside of him yearning for something more, something not yet willingly given. Now is not the time for following one’s deepest darkest desires into the rabbit hole. It is already far too long past time for medication, even the smallest indulgence is a greater inconvenience than he should have allowed.

     Desperation reeks and he can smell it on himself as if he’s bathed in it, throat dry and tongue parched it doesn’t take more than a gentle tug to urge the man in closer and his breath quavers against Hannibal’s lips. The smell of wine wafts back between them and he’s thankful they’ve had a few drinks already. It would be easier to reason this away.

     “If I said I’d rather be alone, you’d leave?” All he has left is this bastard of a man who at every turn available ruined his life and stole any chance of happiness ever afforded to him. The last thing he wanted was to be alone with his thoughts in haunted halls echoing back the sentiments of the dead. Their unforgiving milky eyes casting ridicule.

     He doesn’t have the strength to speak his shame, lucid blues drifting between the sharply contrasted maroons gazing back at him and the lips he desperately wanted a second taste of. God willing he’d come to his senses and find a way to end their suffering. God willing, justice would find them and they would pay for their shared crimes.

     “I don’t want to talk, I don’t want to think, I don’t want to be alone.”

     Wicked delight takes the breath from struggling lungs and left gasping for air he seeks the shelter in the hollow of a thrumming neck where pulse beats vividly beneath sun kissed skin. Against the curve of tongue it leaps, a gazelle in the maw of an unrelenting beast but here where skin remains unbroken the prey is safe.

     How beautiful the plight of his quarry and the response elicited in him. A tuneless dance swaying power this way and that. In this moment he seemed the benefactor keeping death at bay, knowing well how quickly the farce could end. A snare around his neck, a bullet to the gut. Trembling lips travel north in search of the curve of jaw lifting at his ministrations, palm pressing against the violence in his veins.

     “You don’t have to talk Will, but I hope you will listen. To the tune you play, the reality of the result and all its consequences.” Awareness itself could be a potent thing to either delight or trick the senses and he had never fallen prey to deception. Ah, an amendment as he claimed the bitter resentment from waiting lips and supped on it as nectar. One man had learned the game and turned the tables with impeccable grace to fool even the devil. Long ago he would have proceeded with greater caution but it had long since been thrown to the wind. No longer could he pretend to be indifferent nor could he claim to be separate.

     The loss of self was invigorating and terrifying and he could neither welcome nor enhance its power fast enough. A sense of dreamlike haze in the caress of tongue, a brush of fingertips along warm skin, the small puffs of breath stolen between them. He felt as python and prey to be so engulfed and to engulf, ravenous and patient to devour the martyr.

     It’s nearly the exact opposite for Will. The world becomes a dizzying merry-go-round of shapes and colors, there’s music in his head but its cacophonous and grating. He’s all teeth and fury beneath the touch but he doesn’t back away. He can’t. There’s no where to go but into the arms of the man he hates more than anything. Loves more than anything.

          I could have loved you. Under different circumstances, I could have.

     But Hannibal Lecter has soiled everything he’s ever touched and Will is no exception. They’re dangerous together and self destructive apart and all Will wants to do is-

     He doesn’t despite the ache in his chest but he is the first to open up. The first to part his lips and welcome his (ex)psychiatrist past the boundaries he’s kept up for so long. They’ve been used and abused by people he trusted, people he didn’t even know half as well as he should have. Alana’s rejection, Margot’s clever ruse. Will had wanted it then sure. It was nothing like the acid that boiled in his veins now. Making his skin crawl, eating him alive with the whispers of the dead. Abigail forgive him.

     The first brush of their tongues startles him into momentary quiet for all intents and purposes a deer in the headlights. Just once, one tiny little peek, he opens his eyes to the euphoria across Dr. Lecter’s face and its his undoing. He wants it. More than anything in the world at that precise moment he wants to watch that careful facade melt away under his touch. It draws his hand from the arm rest, sliding along the back of the beast’s neck, and with a handful of perfectly coiffed hair he pulls the man away from him. Forces those eyes to open and focus on him.

     “Would you be happy if I never kissed you again? Would you still want me?” Will’s breathing is ragged and he tries to wrangle it under his control again, nostrils flaring as he shudders. He runs his free hand along the pristine collar down to the multicolored tie and he tightens it. Considerably so.

     Head cants to the whim of his master, delight in the wickedness of his touch carving lines in the clay of his expression. Masochism at its finest, the parting of lips and the quickening of breath, it draws attentions to cold sapphires forged in the fiery depths and he, with all of his knowledge, reaches for the quivering thighs. Up beyond the fold of pockets and into the slip of shirt exposing pale flesh to chilled air.

     “Yes.” He hisses between barbed lips and the flick of a forked tongue wets them.

     “Love has little to do with sex, Will. Even if we never touched I would desire you. As the artist looks upon his masterpiece and feels a sense of fulfillment.” He has been denied before, rightfully so, and he has left matters alone when asked. Nothing could compare to the warmth of Will against him, the scent of his neck bared beneath waiting fangs, the ghost of his breath as he sighs in anticipation.

     [ This is all I’m ever going to hear about for the rest of the year. ]

     “Hell has leashed itself to me. I never asked for this.” But the sight of the cannibal knelt before him in supplication does wonders for his ego. His breath skitters and his hand rises, traces the curve of Hannibal’s jaw, a thumb grazes his lips and he can’t stop staring. Fuck.

     Will leans back, slow and purposeful, hands returning to their positions on the arm rests of his chair and the muscle in his jaw twitches violently. It’s as good an invitation as Hannibal is going to get. Finally Will lifts his gaze to lock them with the murderer’s.

     But I’m asking you to kiss me.

     Music to soothe a rabid Beast whose Beauty strummed the lullaby. Skeletal digits slide wanton along silken slacks, cradle thigh and knee alike to bring their lips closer. Closer. Never close enough. Will’s breath upon his tongue tastes of champagne and fervor and ceremoniously he claims the mouth which offends him. Day in, day out. Tormenting, lamenting, buried in brutish bullheadedness. A trait it seems he learned so well.