Chapter Text
Frederick Chilton’s body showed up four days after he went missing. Post-mortem examination of bruises and other wounds showed he’d been alive for three of those days.
He showed up on Jack’s doorstep. Jack woke up to the neighbors screaming.
It was only a body by the loosest definition of the word. Whatever semblance of life Chilton had recovered with skin grafts and therapy was gone. He was even more unrecognizable than he had become, sliced into pieces and left in a bloodless pile. There were bites taken out of him, places where someone had literally sunk their teeth into him and swallowed the pieces that pulled away.
They pulled Will Graham’s dental records, but the comparisons were unnecessary. Fredrick was also missing a kidney.
In the lab, Jack tried to figure out what he was looking at. Here an arm, there a leg. Organs rearranged and haphazardly shoved back into the abdominal cavity. For a fisherman, Will was not very patient. Perhaps he was growing desperate without Hannibal there to guide his enthusiasm. Good. Desperate people made mistakes.
“Burn victims often report severe nerve damage. Chilton himself mentioned his sense of touch was incredibly dulled,” Price explained.
“He got on everybody else’s nerves,” Zeller muttered, “Will needed all three days to find some he could still press.”
He sounded like Will when he said it. Will’s bitter and too-accurate observations of killers, of ripping people open to get a good sound out of them. Jack made a mental note to force some vacation time on the both of them, when this was finally over.
Lounds was waiting when he stepped outside, red knee-high boots and a little black dress. She looked perfectly put together, unless you looked close enough to see her hands were trembling where they gripped the recorder.
“Too close to home?” Jack asked her. She glared at him, pushing the recorder closer to his face.
“I’m just here for a statement, Jack. It was Graham, wasn’t it?” There was lipstick on her teeth. In all the years he’d known her, with the exception of the time he’d caught her after a shower, Jack had never seen her with a hair out of place. Besides the ones she left all over crime scenes.
“No comment,” Jack told her, turning towards his car.
Lounds trailed him across the parking lot, a lost, angry little duckling. “I warned you all,” She said, “For years, I told you Graham was dangerous.”
“You also lied about how dangerous he was, under oath.”
“You can’t prove that.”
They were both defensive. It was automatic at this point, more instinct than any real faith. Lounds knew what he thought of her, and Jack knew what had become of Will Graham. Yet here they were, same old song and dance.
“A statement, Jack. Just a sentence. A tiny sound bite for my readers.”
“A sound bite to help you sleep at night,” Jack scoffed, fumbling with his keys.
“When Graham chased Lecter across the Atlantic, I told you. The Murder Husbands, on their Italian honeymoon. You didn’t listen, and now you’ve ripped Lecter right out of the arms of his vicious little bride. ‘Hell hath no fury,’ Jack. Give me a statement.”
Jack slammed his door shut. “You don’t want a statement,” He growled, “You want to know if you’re next.”
Lounds blinked up at him. She was a tiny thing, despite the heels. Jack could have crushed her. This new, violent Will would devour her whole. Jack felt a sudden stab of pity.
“You didn’t do much to ingratiate yourself to Will while he was still the man I trusted,” Jack said, soft and gentle as he could manage for Freddie Lounds, “And now you want to know what sort of man he’s become, if you should expect him to come calling. I can’t tell you about the body, Lounds, you know that. I can’t tell you anything more than you learned from standing at the police line: Frederick Chilton, on my doorstep. What I can tell you, and what I hope you’ll listen to, is this: Let it die, Freddie.”
She gaped at him. Her little gloved hand was still shaking. She was a grown woman, laugh lines creeping in around the edges, but looking at her now, Jack felt strangely paternal.
“Let it die,” He said again, “Don’t write about the Murder Husbands. Don’t write about Will Graham. Go underground.”
“I have a duty to my readers,” She said. She sounded unsure.
“You have a duty to yourself, first and foremost. Don’t antagonize him, Freddie. Let it die.”
He left her standing there, looking lost in the parking lot. She looked thoughtful. Concerned.
It didn’t do her any good. Lounds ran the article anyway, a half-hearted attempt at reframing Jack’s warning into an ‘interview.’ It was the last article she ever ran.
They found her body a week later, hands smashed until the bones were nothing more than shards. They never found her tongue.
_____
“You couldn’t get me to set foot in that institution if you paid me,” Alana told Jack when he called, “And I’m afraid my idea of a fair wage is a bit higher than it used to be.”
“The inmates have gone wild without you or Chilton to watch out for them,” Jack tried, “They have a new guy, they’ve already chewed him up and spit him back out. Lecter made him cry. You were always good with him.”
“I gave him what he wanted, and in return, he was kind enough to keep his nails filed while he dug around inside my head. Nobody is good with Hannibal, Jack.”
“I can’t do this without you, Alana.”
“You’re not talking about running the hospital anymore.” Alana’s voice was razor-sharp, filled with a bitterness she’d cultivated over the years. Sometimes she sounded far more Verger than Bloom. “You don’t want me to keep Hannibal in. You’re hoping I can keep Will Graham out.”
“You always excelled at analysis.”
Alana chuckled. There was little humor in it. “There is no love lost between me and Will, Jack. Whatever fondness he felt for me was destroyed years ago.”
“He was fond of you the last time you spoke.”
“The last time I spoke to Will ,he was manipulating you and I so he could get Hannibal out of prison. Maybe he hadn’t yet decided what he was going to do with him when he succeeded, maybe he still thought he was going to kill him, but regardless, Hannibal’s escape was no surprise to Will.”
Jack was silent. It was a truth that had lingered in the back of his mind for years. A truth he had preferred to leave buried.
“Jack,” Alana said. Her voice held the same softness Jack had used on Freddie Lounds. He bristled to have it used against him. “Don’t get involved. Don’t become a part of this. There’s no justice to be found here. There are no walls that will hold Hannibal Lecter, not with friends on the outside. And there are always friends on the outside.”
“Will is leaving a trail of bodies that point straight towards Hannibal Lecter,” Jack argued, “I became a part of this the second I set him into Lecter’s path.”
“Will will destroy anything in his path,” Alana hissed, “He will burn the world down to get to Hannibal, because it excites him. Because it will please Hannibal.”
“Will was never a people pleaser.”
“And yet he was never happier than when he had Hannibal’s full and complete attention. He’s an excellent fisherman, Jack, but now he’s learned to hunt, from a man who can walk through walls and into your head. Don’t be the prey Will stalks.”
“I’m not going to walk away from this! Hannibal Lecter will walk free over my dead body!”
Alana laughed, sharp and bitter. “He’ll be glad to hear that, Jack. Don’t forget the salt.”
“Alana…”
“We’re moving again. Changing our names and numbers, getting as far out of Will and Hannibal’s radar as we can. You would be wise to do the same. Don’t try to find us again.” The click was abrupt, nearly mid-word. Jack stared at his phone.
Fine. He’d do it alone.
_____
The hospital was under new management. Perpetually. Jack didn’t qualify for psychiatric positions, but he had enough paid vacation saved up to park himself in the director’s office for a good long while. It was the perfect seat to watch the ever-rotating sea of employees. People had a habit of quitting, when they were assigned to Lecter. Or dying off. In the first week Jack was there, he witnessed two walk-outs, a no-call no-show that turned out to be a suicide, and a fatal assault by the inmate in the cell next to Lecter’s.
They moved Lecter to an empty ward and stationed two guards so no one was ever alone with him. “We should have done it from the beginning,” The director, a man by the name of ‘Hoss,’ explained, “But we thought he would see it as a privilege.”
Doctor Hoss was a spineless little man, all the worst parts of Frederick Chilton without any of the immodest confidence, but he was correct. Lecter flourished in isolation, as if he’d been given all the trappings he enjoyed under Alana’s care, rather than a cot and a toilet in an empty box. He smiled more, was pleasant to the guards who rotated shifts regularly. He asked after Jack, who did not visit. For an entire week, he was kind and courteous. Jack began to worry that he would run out of PTO before Will made his move.
Then one of Lecter’s guards was found strung up in an abandoned warehouse, holding his heart in his hands. He was missing his liver and his keycards. Doctor Hoss began to panic.
_____
“What do you mean, you’re moving Lecter?” Jack liked to think he’d settled a bit, in his late-middle-age. .He felt as though Bella’s passing had mellowed him, as if everything was a bit more muted without her, even rage. The light had gone from Jack’s world, but so had shadow and ire.
Now, though, he was definitely ‘bellowing.’ Doctor Hoss sat at his desk and ‘worked,’ which appeared to consist largely of sharpening pencils in as much time as humanly possible. He would not look Jack in the eye. Spineless little-
“He’s a threat to the entire staff,” Doctor Hoss said stubbornly, “We cannot afford to keep hiring. We hardly have any applicants as-is.”
“This is just what Will wants. You send Lecter out there, and he’ll pounce.”
“It’s already arranged. We’ll be doing it in secret. No fuss, no fanfare. We’ll be slipping out at night. The guards assigned believe themselves to be guarding an entirely different prisoner, so they won’t be able to brag. There will be nothing to draw attention to the transport, no flashing signs like last time.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means we won’t be advertising Lecter’s presence with a police escort,” Doctor Hoss muttered. “The Tooth Fairy or the Dragon or whatever you called him, he caught your scent from miles away because you made a huge production of it. If Lecter is heavily sedated, we won’t need the escort.”
Jack gaped at the man. “You may as well leave him out on the street with a suitcase and a plane ticket,” He finally said. “You’re leading Will Graham right to him.”
“Nobody outside of this room knows that Lecter is moving,” Doctor Hoss insisted, “He’ll be long gone before Will Graham ever suspects a thing.”
“You’re an idiot,” Jack hissed, “And you’re going to get all of your employees killed.”
“On the contrary,” Doctor Hoss said with a smile, “I’m the only person smart enough to put as much distance between themselves and Hannibal Lecter as possible.”
Doctor Hoss tried to keep things as private as possible, but Jack knew the full details of the transport well before it happened. And if he knew, Will certainly did.
_____
The night Lecter was moved, Jack lurked outside the hospital in a rented car. He trailed the van from a distance, keeping the tail lights in his vision. He didn’t know what Will’s plan would be, but he had a firearm tucked into his belt and plenty of caffeine.
In a patch of woods in Virginia, /the transport van’s driver-side window burst into a haze of shattered glass. Gunfire. The van swerved into a ditch. Jack scrambled to get in a call for back up, pulling off the road into the dark cover of a thatch of bushes. He loaded the gun. He waited.
____
Will had waited. Too long, too much. His heart was racing as he unlatched the back door of the van.
“Don’t move!”
There were two guards in the backseat with Hannibal. One had fallen and smacked his head against the bench seat when the van swerved; he was unconscious already, with a trickle of blood dribbling down the side of his face. The other had his gun trained on Will. His hand shook.
“Stay back,” The man said again, but Will only had eyes for the man behind him.
They had not bothered with a cage this time. A straitjacket and irons were enough, when they’d drugged him to the gills. Hannibal looked barely conscious. As Will watched, his glassy eyes locked onto Will, and then dilated out of focus once more.
Will felt another burst of fury. Hannibal was the most brilliant man he’d ever met. To see him like this, dazed and unaware, was wrong in a way Will couldn’t even begin to describe.
But then… Will tilted his head, calculated. Watched the steady rise and fall of Hannibal’s shoulders. The tremble of the guard’s finger on the trigger. Not like the guard Will had killed, no, not at all. A last resort. Hired from a dwindling pool of volunteers. Underpaid and overworked, completely unaware that it was Hannibal Lecter he’d be transporting, and very displeased about it. Virginal, when it came to death. Meant to keep the inmates from getting out of line and throwing their food out the bars. Not made to face down the reaper himself.
Will took a step closer. The man whimpered. Did a calculation of his own. Will showed no sign of self-preservation, but everybody knew his weak spot. The guard turned his gun on Hannibal.
“Don’t take another step.” This time, the guard said it with confidence. Safety assured. Will would not jeopardize his freedom to come for Hannibal, only to let a stranger shoot him. Will watched him. Tilted his head.
Hannibal wobbled slightly. His chains were restrictive, but not immobilizing. He drooped in them now, unable to keep his head up. The guard smirked and reached for his walkie.
Hannibal was not immune to sedatives, but he was experienced. He lunged as far forward as his restraints, both chemical and physical, would allow. It was less an actual motion, and more allowing himself to fall, letting the weight of his body do what his muscles would not. It was just enough to knock the guard’s arm aside, throw of his aim.
Of all the people Will had torn through to get to Hannibal, this man caught his rage the most. The final barricade between himself and Hannibal, too dumb to step aside and let Will leave with what he’d come for. Will wrapped himself around the man’s back, wrenching his arm back until he screamed and dropped his weapon. Over the guard’s shoulder, he met Hannibal’s hazy gaze. Jealousy and fierce pride beneath a thick layer of fog. Aware enough to offer praise with his eyes, even as they narrowed when Will set his lips to the man’s throat.
“You’d be dead anyway,” Will assured the man, “No one who’s touched me since we left has lived to brag about it. Really, you’re lucky it’s me instead of him. Should have called in sick.” With every word, Will’s lips brushed a hummingbird thrum of a heartbeat. Will tilted his head, as if to suck a lover’s bruise, just under the jaw where his pulse was the strongest. Will tore that part out with his teeth, sharp and quick. The man would suffer, but not unduly so. Will had not been lying; Hannibal would have done it slower. Smaller bites. Will never took the time to savor a meal, too excited for the next course.
The next course was Hannibal, leaning forward in his seat, wavering as he tried to watch Will. He was barely awake, but too stubborn to sleep. Hannibal had developed a fondness for Will covered in blood. No doubt he was only disappointed he hadn’t put it there himself. Will couldn’t help a smile.
“Later,” He promised, fishing keys from the nearest pocket. “Later, I’ll show you the scars Freddie Lounds left me, so you can rip them back open. She fought with her teeth. You would have been proud of her. Probably would’ve cooked her better, too, I think I seared the meat too long.”
Hannibal hummed in sleepy acknowledgement. Will went for the mask, first. He’d waited too long.
The kiss was more blood than passion, Will’s victim slick between their mouths, Hannibal’s slack and tasting thickly of sleep and copper. Will could feel him struggling to respond, to taste.
It was not that he’d never felt he had power over Hannibal. On the contrary, whatever their dynamic, Will knew that he commanded Hannibal with every angle of his body, every quirk of his lips, every cut of his knife into a victim. Hannibal orbited him like Will was the sun itself, and in return, Will offered him a gift.
Now, though, the power was entirely in Will’s hand. Power over life and death, escape and incarceration, freedom and suffering. He hated it. He would gladly have put his life right back into Hannibal’s hands.
As it turned out, someone else was grasping at the threads that dangled from the tapestry of fate. The thunk of a boot on the bumper, expected. Welcome. Will had been waiting for this reunion for far too long. He grinned, and let his hands fall away from the chains that held Hannibal in place. “Hello, Jack.”
A beat of silence. Jack’s voice, gruff and familiar. “Step away from him, Will.”
Will set the keys down on the bench beside Hannibal and turned, straightening up.
Will had caught glimpses of Jack in the past few weeks, in passing, in his peripheral. Setting up Chilton’s body on the doorstep, he’d watched Jack’s outline wake for a 2AM bathroom run. It had not prepared him for seeing Jack, face to face.
He’d grown old before his time, face creased with the lines of age, of laughter. Worry. His hair was pure white, now, and he looked… tired.
Will knew what he looked like, in contrast. He was aging gracefully into his mid-forties. Until he’d been forced to return to the states, he’d been well tanned, leanly muscled. The only real ‘blemish’ were the scars which covered every clothed inch of him, some decorative and some situational. Will did not regard them as a ‘blemish’ He felt beautiful, powerful in a way he’d never felt before.
He’d ended up a lot better than Jack had. For a moment, a thick knot of guilt tied itself in Will’s chest. Not regret, no, he could never regret Hannibal or what had brought them to this point. But he could feel a pang of sorrow for what it had done to Jack.
For what else he was about to do to Jack.
“It doesn’t have to be like this, Jack.” Will raised his hands, cautious and slow.
“Maybe it didn’t, before,” Jack said, “When we were friends.”
“I still considered you a friend,” Will admitted, “You’d have been welcomed at the table, right up until you took him from me.”
“’At’ or ‘on?’” Jack growled.
“At, Jack, of course.”
“I know what was served at that table, Will. What you’ve been feasting on since you came back.”
Will grinned. He was sure he looked quite a sight, blood drying on his face, teeth stained red. Smiling like a goddamn horror movie villain.
“Hannibal once gave Alana a choice. I’ll give you the same one, Jack, with the same consequences. Be blind. Don’t be brave.”
“I’ve got you empty handed,” Jack said, “Empty handed, at gunpoint, in the back of a prison transport van.”
“You’re missing something, Jack. You work for the FBI. Surely, you should be more observant.”
“And what,” Jack spat, “Am I missing?”
Will dropped his hands, and any pretense of fear. “I didn’t shoot the driver.”
The bullet hit Jack in the shoulder. There was a poetic justice about that. His arm jerked, then gave out with the rest of his body. The gun hit the ground, skidding along the floor. Will kicked it under the bench seat, stepping forward to tower over where Jack knelt.
“You should have been blind,” He said. “Or better yet, you should have listened to me years ago.”
Jack blinked up at him, hazy with pain. It was not a deadly wound, but Jack’s fate was already stitched into place, and he clearly knew it. “I never should have introduced you to Lecter,” He said.
“On the contrary,” Will told him, “That’s the only thing saving you from him.”
Will cupped Jack’s face, looked him in the eyes. He allowed himself a moment, just one, to mourn. Then he shifted his grip and twisted.
Jack’s neck snapped easily. He was dead before he hit the ground. Will straightened up, dusting his hands off. “But not from me,” He told the corpse. He had promised a reckoning, sworn to eat the heart of anyone who stood between them. But now, with Jack before him and Hannibal behind… Will was tired. He just wanted to go home. He turned his back on an old friend and stepped forward to help Hannibal.
Hannibal had tried and failed to release himself, sluggish from the drugs and thoroughly restrained by the straitjacket. Will admired his tenacity, if not his stubbornness. He freed him easily, helping him into a standing position. Hannibal leaned on him, as heavy as he’d been when Will dragged him from the ocean years ago.
“Thank you,” Will called.
“My debt to you is more than repaid,” Chiyoh told him, lingering outside the van. She glared at the bodies. “I will help you to the boat, and then we will go our separate ways. You will not call on me again.” She hesitated, her sharp eyes landing on Hannibal’s concerned features. “Either of you.”
Hannibal mumbled something that Will assumed was positive, though he could not be certain. “Of course,” Will translated anyway, “We’re grateful for your help. The money I promised you is already in your account.”
Chiyoh frowned and turned to stalk back towards their car. She did not offer to help guide Hannibal through the trees, and Will did not dare ask her.
_____
The bed was large, oversized for such a small boat. It dominated much of the cabin, what parts weren’t devoted to dining and plumbing. Will tucked Hannibal into it with a fond smile and a kiss to his forehead. No doubt he’d be thrilled by the extravagance, even if the kitchen area left much to be desired.
Hannibal slept well into the next morning, until they’d slipped out of American territory and into international waters. Despite her words, Will knew Chiyoh lingered. She would not feel secure until Hannibal was safe in their new home. Hannibal had been practically begging to return to Europe, and while Chiyoh and Will had chosen the house specifically for its isolation, the beauty of the woods could not be understated. Hannibal would be happy there, at least for a little while.
And they could be as loud as they wanted. Will looked forward to that.
The sun was well up by the time Will finally let himself give in. They were far enough out that he could let himself rest, at least for a little bit. Hannibal would no doubt wake him when he finally shook off the sedatives, and Will needed a nap. He crawled into bed, tucking himself up around Hannibal, clutching him close to his chest. Hannibal smelled wrong, cheap hospital soap and bland food. Will wanted to wash his hair under the shower spray, to cook for him and get it wrong and watch Hannibal eat it anyway. He’d missed him. More than it seemed possible to miss anyone. Will ached for Hannibal.
Will fell asleep with his arm slung around Hannibal’s waist. He woke face down in the pillows, with a hand in his hair and teeth against his throat. He hissed out his pleasure, rolling his hips down against the bed. He was hard already, just from the weight of Hannibal bearing him down into the mattress.
“I’ve missed you,” Hannibal breathed against his pulse, “My beautiful, clever boy. I pined for you, alone in my cell, and you let someone else touch you.”
There was a true, honest jealousy to Hannibal’s tone, but a playfulness in the hand that yanked Will’s head back. Will grinned around gritted teeth, more feral lust than anything else.
“Only to get to you,” He promised, “A path to your freedom.”
“You didn’t kill the club owner for me, you killed him to prove a point to Jack.”
“And to make you jealous,” Will said, gleeful from the way Hannibal nipped a warning against his jaw. “Would you like to know how I did it? How I lured him into the shadows? Where I let him touch me?”
The hand in Will’s hair tightened. Hannibal shoved his head forward with a growl. It might have hurt, had the surface below Will not been down pillows.
“Dreadful thing,” Hannibal hissed, shoving Will’s pants and underwear down around his knees, “Tell me.”
Will arched his back, pleading with his body. He grabbed for the hand in his hair, dragging it to the front of his throat. “Here,” He said, “He bought me a drink. Rested his thumb against the beat of my heart and told me what a pretty little slut I was.”
Hannibal’s hand tightened, just enough to make Will’s breath catch. Not constricting, not yet, but warning. Will knew the word was enough to kill the man all over again, that he had looked at what was Hannibal’s and demeaned it so. Will pressed forward into the bed, into Hannibal’s hand.
“Here, too,” He whispered, guiding Hannibal’s hand to the curve of his hip, a slow caress over his ass. “To guide me to his playroom. Pity, he didn’t get to have any fun.”
“Pity,” Hannibal echoed, in a hoarse, raw voice. He lifted up off of Will’s back to deliver a sharp blow to the spot, and then another. Will rolled his hips and cried out his pleasure as Hannibal turned him an uneven shade of red, a bruise over where he’d been touched.
“He kissed, me, too.” Will finally said, and that turned out to be far too much for Hannibal.
Hannibal flipped him onto his back with a sound that might have been a growl, pure rage and possessiveness. He kissed Will with teeth, tugging at his bottom lip hard enough to make Will taste copper. He grabbed Will’s hands, pinning them above his head. This bedframe was not made with their needs in mind, flat and unyielding, no bars or decorative curves, or places where Will had carved and welded himself. It didn’t matter, Will was too relieved to struggle. He let Hannibal pin him down with one heavy hand and cup his jaw with the other. “You let him,” Hannibal hissed, and there was some playfulness to it, but also a genuine ire that Will was ecstatic to have provoked. “You let him put himself all over you. Tell me, Will, would you have let him fuck you, if that was what it took to get his guard down?”
“No,” Will said, with immediate disgust, “But I wonder what you would have done if I had.”
Hannibal smacked him across the face for that one. They did not do playful little swats. Will’s head snapped to the side, already red across the cheekbone. Hannibal backhanded him in the other direction, and Will moaned.
“You are insatiable,” Hannibal muttered, hoisting one of Will’s legs up around his hips. He shoved two fingers into Will’s mouth, tapping impatiently at Will’s tongue.
There was lube in the bedside table, but Hannibal didn’t know that. And Will wasn’t going to tell him. He was getting exactly what he wanted.
“He told me exactly what he wanted to do to me,” Will said, hissing when Hannibal shoved two barely-damp fingers inside him, stretching him out in ways he’d gone without for weeks. “And I thought about what you’d do if you’d been there to hear him.”
A third finger, dry. Everything had hurt, the blows to Will’s face, his ass, the unyielding pressure of Hannibal’s fingers inside him, but only now did Will feel the first stirrings of discomfort. He reveled in it.
“He would have died slowly,” Hannibal promised, pulling his fingers away to spit in his hand. It was disgustingly base for someone usually so put together. Will loved watching Hannibal lose his composure. He loved more when Hannibal crudely slicked his cock and started to press against Will, barely-stretched, unprepared. “I’d have fucked you over top of him, did everything he promised you, while you were tugging at his organs.”
“Yesss…” Will hissed. Hannibal forced his way into him in tiny, agonizing thrusts. Agonizing, both from the pain and from Will’s desire for more. Will took deep breaths, forcing himself to relax. Open up for Hannibal like he had a thousand times before.
It would hurt. It already hurt. Will wanted it to. He arched his back, welcoming Hannibal into himself.
Hannibal tucked his face into Will’s neck, grazing his teeth over the flutter of his pulse. Will tilted his head to bare his throat.
When they fucked, usually, Will fought back. He made Hannibal earn him, made him hold him down, chain him to the bed, force good behavior with every sharp thrust of his hips.
Today, Will welcomed him, gave himself over to Hannibal with the line of his throat and the rough whimpers that dragged themselves from his lips. He begged, wordless, with eyes and mouth, kissing at Hannibal’s arm, braced over his head to pin his wrists. He wanted. He ached.
The motion of their bodies was a burn and a balm, punishment and reward. Will shivered and moaned when Hannibal was gentle, cried out when he was rough. He was huge, imposing, overtaking Will with every motion, and when he came, he sank his teeth into the skin of Will’s throat.
Every other mark had been easy to hide, hidden by clothes, by suits and long sleeves. This was ownership, a declaration, a promise. They would not be separated again. Hannibal’s teeth parted Will’s flesh, a trickle of blood seeping over his lips to stain the bed. Will screamed and sobbed and came, shaking.
It hurt more when it was over, when the high of pleasure could no longer mask the pain. Will’s voice broke when Hannibal pulled out, a harsh groan. There was blood on the sheets, not much, but enough to set a frown to Hannibal’s lips. He ran a soft fingertip over where Will was swollen and sore, tutting his disapproval. “Look what you do to me,” He said, as Will squirmed with the discomfort.
Will grinned up at him, showed all his sharp teeth. “Would you like me to do it again?”