#post fall

He doesn’t get to just sit there frozen in post nut clarity wondering what his life is anymore. He needs to listen to her and fucking focus on what’s coming next.

Hang tough. Home stretch Willy boy.

‘You reached your limit quite a while ago, mylimasis.’ The words bounce through the bathroom softly, almost wry in their observation. Will shudders where he is bent over his naked body: muscles cold, yet skin hot where he’d been beaten, blood on his knees, blood on the tile below.

‘Please.’

A shadow. Hannibal is now knelt beside him—fingers beneath his chin tilts his head up. ‘What is it?’

Will swallows. His eyes won’t focus, gaze landing on the other’s shoulder. The world is spinning, and he lifts a shaking hand to hold onto Hannibal’s arm as if to steady himself. ‘No more.’

There is a moment in which nothing is said. The air is cold, the ceramic beneath him leeching away his heat. His own stuttering breath is thrown back at him by the walls. ‘We have pushed the bounds of pleasure far enough,’ Hannibal murmurs. Will can feel those maroon eyes searching his face. ‘To push any further would be to risk you grievous harm. It is clear you can endure no more: do you truly believe that I would take such enjoyment in tormenting you further than you can bear?’

The words are tight. Will lifts his eyes then, meeting the blond’s steady gaze. Hannibal’s ire is a sinkhole—one is often unaware they had earned his wrath until the ground was giving way beneath them, with no manner in which to escape it. Feeling the floor tilt, he goes to wrench himself away, but the hand moves; tightening around the back of his neck, holding him in place, holding him down, and Will drops his own, too weak to push back.

He will not beg. If that’s what Hannibal wants, Will will deny him. He will fight, no matter how bruised, how broken.

‘The session is over,’ Hannibal continues slowly, carefully, the words almost tripping over themselves at the sudden shift in tone, voice melting into something softer. His thumb caresses the skin of Will’s neck in slow, tender strokes where moments ago they had been wrapped around his throat. ‘Now, I must look after you.’

Look after…

Will blinks at him. The older’s face is a visage of blurry concern. To look after him... it was not Will to whom Hannibal’s anger had been directed. I must look after you: the words are spoken with the sanctity of a vow.

The hand disappears and Will drops his head, too weak to hold it, and then something is being wrapped over his shoulders, cocooning him; soft, warm. Reassurance.

He grips onto the towel as Hannibal’s form disappears again, before reappearing once more. The gravity of his presence draws the brunet, both knelt on the same bloody tile, leaning into the other. ‘I regret that you feel you cannot trust others with your wellbeing,’ the blond breathes. Fingers under the chin again—a warm cloth is pressed to younger’s lip, gently swiping away the blood, the touch adoring. So adoring.

The blur deepens as Will’s eyes burn. And stripped of his sight, the world narrows into nothing, save for the points of heat where Hannibal is handling him like something sacred.

‘I regret that you feel you have to lick your wounds in secret, that you have come to expect pain, and I…’ the words slow, heavy, soaked in the sentiment, dropped much the same as the cloth. ‘I regret I had a role to play in that too. I wish to rectify it.’

And then a hand reaches up, carding through Will’s hair as tender lips are pressed to his temple. ‘You are deserving of care, mylimasis,’ Hannibal murmurs into the skin, as if he could brand the words there. ‘Allow me to take care of you.’