Shooting from the hip 乁.ര⁠ ⁠ʖ̯⁠ ⁠ര).ㄏ

卵の殻を破らねば、雛鳥は生まれずに死んでいく。

He wandered forward, almost looking apologetical with the impossible softness of his steps as the last couple of other students rushed past and home. It was late - probably how Professor Graham prefered. It was what he himself prefered anyway. Natural light made a man look so clean and good and professional. It was the smallest hint of exhaustion creeping up on that man's eyelids before it ever reached his caffeinated mind though that Hannibal liked. The smoother motion of lethargic limbs, the open kind of gentleness in tired eyes, the way his skin looked ever so slightly more reachable when they were alone and the way his voice rumbled for only him to hear then.

When only a handful of moments remained for the door to close with an intimate finality, Graham finally looked up to see his most stubbornly above it all student waiting to receive his attention. By now, he knew his name and the one fellow professor that cared to hear his troubles did as well for how often he half-heartedly complained about this student's determination to challenge him about everything and anything.

This time, it was about the prevalence of genetics in discussions about character. Nature versus nurture and all. Though like the dutiful man of his profession that he was, Graham merely dared to hint at what would be his own, biased opinion. Facts and statistics and theories would twist into the net he spun for his classes and concluions, he seemed to trust, would be the fish he reaped from their mouths instead of his own.

Now, like many evenings before, Hannibal came to provide a theory of his own. Like many evenings before, it would be an attempt to pry into his mind and paw at the hidden truth of his opinion. Facts and statistics and theories gave a measured balance to nature and nurture but maybe there was a more prevalent weight on one of them for this professor. Maybe he had a mysteriously firm respect for his own genetics in the question why he was who he was. Maybe it wasn't respect. Maybe it was fear.

Professor Graham, to the best of his limited abilities, attempted to reshape this curiosity back to Hannibal and craft it into something that didn't feel like a knife trailing his skin. Agitation rose in his chest slowly but surely.

Even when Graham started to hear himself getting defensive, Hannibal didn't stop. He was like a bloodhound and wouldn't let go of the glimpse of something private and decidedly none of his business. He would probe and lay out his evidence of something behind the veil that wrapped itself in shame behind that professional exterior. He seemed to close in and feel all over that veil until the shape of that shame was clear. Violating, yet from outside, it must have looked like the most cordial thing. Only the eyes betrayed him then - only the eyes that reflected a distant predator.

Graham, in this feeling of both entrapment and violation, started to pack up his things as a desperate signal that he did not have time for this. Flight was better than fight where his job was concerned.

Then, when the urgency of that student's fantasies would be disregarded before he had a chance to taste victory over his teacher on his tongue, he doubled down. Hannibal went on, clawing into him, asking if, maybe, this was why he neither married, nor had children by now. Fear of his genetics when he dared to preach nurture as an equal - but it wasn't any sickness was it? It was something beyond a physical weakness. It was something deeper. Something shameful?

The professor's body grew hot and seemed almost to suffocate him in his need to stop whatever it was that the other thought he was doing. With all the conviction left in him and his last nerve white knuckling a calmer exterior, he gave a warning. Some harsh reminder that this was crossing a boundary he wasn't going to leave unenforced.

Because enough was not enough, that was when Hannibal stepped around the desk and into his space, looking ever so unwavering into his eye and continuing like he couldn't even hear it anymore. His voice was so clear as he started to paint a picture of his undesirable tendencies around perhaps alcohol or gambling or fleeting, perhaps less than ethical love or maybe, just maybe it was violence. If it wasn't that, it could, of course, just be that he was gay. A gay man too ashamed of himself to allow himself to be loved.

It was the sound of a last nerve ripped apart that sent Graham's hand to grapple at his student's belt buckle. A gasp later, it was open and dangling weakly at his hips.

He wouldn't remember what he practically bit into the silence that followed to make Hannibal shut up. A command or warning or threat, probably. It didn't matter. What he was trying to prove was proven perfectly when his hand slid further into his student's pants to find him half hard at the prospect of being the target of his punishment.

He did remember asking - less than politely - if this was what he really wanted. He also remembered the speed at which that boy said yes like he had been starving to be touched for all his life.

It didn't take long before those pants fell away and Hannibal felt his back hitting the desk, being held down onto the wood below him. His legs driven apart around the other, he was not smug for the first time ever in this lecture hall.

Hannibal held onto the desk's rim for dear life as one of his legs was lifted over his professor's shoulder and the punishment began - unprepared and rough and wrathful.