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Will has never really seen the point of heat suppressants. He knows intellectually there are people who hate going into heat, embarrassed of the days they turn needy and wanting. He can empathize with it the same way he can empathize with killers and criminals, and he’s glad heat suppressants exist for such people. No one should have to go through heat if they don’t want to.
He’s never seen the appeal, though. He likes the feeling of heat. Likes the way it turns his spine liquid, everything going molten and hot. Loves the way it heightens his senses, makes the sex so damn good. The inside of his mind is often so loud, and it’s nice to be able to turn it off, even for a little while.
Until.
He didn’t mean to kill anyone, is the thing. He really didn’t. He remembers seeing red. Red in front of his eyes, the taste and smell of it, cloying and thick. It was someone he’d picked up at a bar, with a nice smile and flashing teeth. He smelled good, earthy and homey. Will hadn’t meant—
He’d just meant to take him home, have a good time. Spend his heat mindlessly filled, bruised and begging. Shake the guy’s hand and send him out the door after—that was the plan. That was all.
And then Will wakes up covered in blood from head to toe. He’s still knotted, is the worst of it. Knotted to a corpse with viscera slicking itself over his bed and skin in a gleaming, slippery sheen. Everything looks black in the moonlight. He’s lying in a puddle of it. His room reeks of copper, and his dogs are skittering around the edges of the room, ears pressed flat against their heads and tails tucked between their legs, whimpering.
He tries to get up. Can’t, because he’s still stuck to— He shushes them, leans up on his elbows and quiets them as best he can, whispering soothing nothings and trying not to look down.
Don’t look down, don’t look—
His eyes were blue, Will notes with a hint of hysteria. Blue and unseeing, staring up at the ceiling. The sweet taste in his mouth is curdling. As his pheromones fade away, it resolves into the taste of raw meat. The taste of blood. He retches and tries not to be sick.
He spits, careful not to hit him. Scrubs his tongue with the cleanest corner of the bedsheet he can find and eases himself back down onto his back to wait it out. Will takes deep breaths through his mouth. In, out.
Don’t be sick, don’t be sick.
He doesn’t think he can deal with any more bodily fluids right now.
He has the brief, panicky worry that he might be stuck like this forever, that the cops will find him like this, come to take him away, wrinkle their noses and assume he’s some kind of pervert. His fear is unfounded; he knows that. He knows the biology of it—a knot is just blood and engorged tissue. If the heart’s not beating, if the majority of the body’s blood content is currently pooled on Will’s bed and floor, the knot will eventually subside. It probably won’t even take very long.
That he knows that doesn’t ease the panic. It does absolutely nothing to quell the visceral horror that comes from being impaled on a dead man’s cock and lying next to his rapidly cooling flesh. He takes deep breaths. In, out. Tries his hardest to drive off the panic attack he can feel simmering just at the edge of the horizon.
It can’t be more than a few minutes before the knot inside him deflates, but it feels like an eternity. Will doesn’t even wait until it goes all the way down, just waits until it’s small enough to not rip him open when he yanks himself free. He pulls himself off with a grunt and ignores the sharp jab of pain it sends ricocheting through his guts.
He buries the alpha in the backyard, next to Bandit and Rusty. His dogs nose around his heels, still whining. He shushes them, pushes them away from the body with a foot. He doesn’t pet them; he’s tired, and he doesn’t want to wash blood off their fur. He’s going to be up all night scrubbing blood from the floor as it is.
He thinks maybe he should say a few words, but what he should have done was not ripped this poor fucker’s tongue out through his throat, his insides from his belly. What he should probably do now is walk himself down to the nearest precinct and turn himself in. What he does instead is burn his mattress and bedding out on the lawn.
In the morning, he drives two states over to a seedy fertility clinic that lets him pay in cash. He’ll go to his own doctor but later—after the grass has grown over the shallow grave in his backyard. Will Graham gets on heat suppressants for the first time in his life. He doesn’t like the way they make him feel, muted and irritable, but it’s better than losing his mind and literally murdering someone. Someone else.
He waits for the cops to come, for blue and cherry lights and sirens outside his house, but they never arrive. No one comes. A week passes, then two. Then a month, and he realizes no one is going to.
* * *
Will immediately dislikes the psychiatrist Jack presents him with. He reeks, for one thing. All alpha pheromones and nothing to mask it for courtesy’s sake. It makes Will’s nostrils flare. He has less of a tolerance for alphas these days. What was once tantalizing is now just grating with the cocktail of suppressants in his system. Being in a room with Jack is bad enough—makes him nervous and twitchy—but an unmated alpha is infinitely worse.
Hannibal Lecter seems to know it. Seems to know exactly how uncomfortable he’s making Will as he gives him an easy, guileless smile. Will narrows his eyes. He hurries back to the lecture he has to give and ignores the flashes of red he sees at the edges of his vision.
He probably wouldn’t have liked the man anyway, secondary gender aside. He wouldn’t have liked anyone Jack brought to profile him, but Alana is at least soothing, with her dulcet voice and wonderfully bland beta scent.
He’s as rude as he knows how to be, which frankly isn’t hard. He’s probably driven the man off.
Good riddance.
* * *
Because if there’s a God he hates Will Graham, Will does not succeed in driving Doctor Lecter off. Instead of leaving Will alone like a sane person, he brings him breakfast on their first case together, which Will resents on several different levels. He resents that he’s in Minnesota instead of at home with his dogs. He resents that Hannibal is here and that there’s a case at all. He resents that this well-coiffed man is at his door wearing a perfectly pressed suit while Will is in his underwear and a shirt that reeks of night sweats and fear.
Plus it’s his time of the month. While the suppressants get the job done, they never quite get it done enough. Will always knows when he should be in heat because there’s an itchiness beneath his skin, a certain ravening wildness in his mind. He’s thought of asking for a higher dose of hormones, but what would he say? ‘Sorry, doc, this prescription doesn’t quite kill the bloodlust?’
All these things conspire to mean he is very, very bad mood when he finds Hannibal at his door, talking his way in and unpacking sausage and eggs that smell far too good for anything cooked up in a shitty motel kitchenette.
You’re the mongoose under the house.
* * *
Hannibal rubberstamps him pretty much immediately. He doesn’t have to come back. He is certifiably more or less sane-ish. He could tell himself that he only does it to get Jack off his back—to stop him breathing down Will’s neck—and it’s even true. But that’s not the reason he keeps his standing appointment with Doctor Lecter, every week like clockwork. The real reason is that he and Hannibal Lecter get on like a house on fire.
They discuss cases and philosophy, God and Garrett Jacob Hobbs. Their conversations meander in a way that feels comfortingly familiar, like a mimic of the inside of his mind. They don’t talk about sex or gender, and Will’s mistake is thinking that just because they don’t, it means that they won’t.
Hannibal brings it up the same way he brings anything up, with the kind of forthright curiosity and reciprocal openness that shouldn’t work but does. It shouldn’t work because Will can see exactly what he’s doing: building rapport, forging a connection. You can’t be dazzled by a magician when you’re an expert at sleight of hand. But it works because Will wants what Hannibal is offering. Because when he gets down to it, Will is glad he couldn’t drive this man away.
That doesn’t mean he’s glad for this particular conversation.
“How do you feel about your biology, Will?”
Will had finally stopped waiting for the question to come, the part where they talk about his supposed discomfort about being an omega. “I didn’t take you for a fan of Freud. ‘Latent male insecurity upon presenting hysterogenic characteristics,’ really? Isn’t that a bit passé?” He shrugs. Answers the question. “It’s fine. No complaints.”
Hannibal shifts in his chair. Uncrosses his legs and recrosses them in the opposite direction. Will has to fight down the instinctual compulsion to mimic him. He stays right where he is.
“And yet you’re on heat suppressants,” Hannibal says. “That suggests a discomfort with your biology, does it not?”
“Have you been scenting me, Doctor Lecter?”
Hannibal gives a smile that doesn’t have the good grace to look the slightest bit abashed. “It was in your file.”
Jack’s doing, then. Other people’s care is so often invasive, oozy and sticky.
“Heat is… distracting. You feel too much, you don’t feel enough. It’s simpler not to deal with it. Cleaner. Easier.” It’s not true, but it’s the closest he can come to truth without finding himself in a jail cell. It’s not hard to sell Hannibal what he wants to believe.
“You ought to embrace your nature. You might find that it brings you clarity, a greater sense of ease in your own skin.”
“I feel plenty easy in my own skin.”
Hannibal doesn’t point out the fact that it’s a bald-faced lie. He doesn’t need to. He simply arches an eyebrow at the way Will is squirming in his seat, body betraying him in its discomfort. He always feels itchy around Hannibal. Itchy under his skin in a way scratching won’t touch, so he doesn’t even try.
He meets Hannibal’s eyes in a challenge, forces himself to look. Some alphas don’t like it, but Hannibal doesn’t look put out. If anything, he looks pleased.
Will squeezes his thighs together and hopes Hannibal doesn’t notice. He might hear howling in the distance. Might hear something baying for blood.
* * *
“It’s perfectly natural. You shouldn’t fret about it so,” Hannibal says with such nonchalant ease that he might be talking about anything, anything at all except the way Will is currently soaking through his pants and Hannibal’s pristine chair in his immaculate office.
Will grits his teeth. The only reason he doesn’t get up immediately, the only reason he doesn’t walk out, is because he doesn’t want to embarrass himself further. “Hannibal, I just ruined your chair.”
Hannibal shrugs, but because it’s Hannibal, it’s more the suggestion of a shrug than the genuine article. “I can have it cleaned.”
Will narrows his eyes. It’s just a false heat. Just a sudden letdown of slick caused by hormonal fluctuation—annoying, embarrassing, but harmless. He hasn’t had a true heat in years. The suppressants he takes dutifully every morning see to that. If he were going into heat, he wouldn’t be dangerous—not yet—but he also wouldn’t be anywhere near Hannibal. Wouldn’t be anywhere near anyone at all.
But even so, it’s odd that Hannibal is so unaffected. Hannibal is an alpha. It’s strange that he’s not sniffing around Will, being driven to distraction by his rising hormones.
Hannibal seems to catch his thoughts in that eerily perceptive way of his. He smiles, and it’s a very good facsimile of a smile. One that crinkles the corners of his eyes without actually bringing a hint of warmth to them. He taps the side of his nose. “Hormone resistant. I have a very poor sense of smell.”
“Ah,” Will says.
That’s interesting and terribly useful. It shouldn’t mean anything to him—it doesn’t. Hannibal is never going to be his alpha, isn’t in the running for a whole host of reasons starting at he’s my therapist running through I’m not gay and ending up at I will literally kill anyone who tries to bond with me, and I don’t want to kill Hannibal. But it makes something in Will relax anyway, allows him to uncoil and bask in something that feels a lot like safety.
Hannibal does smile at that. A real smile, this time. Will tries not to think about the way he can tell the difference. Tries not to wonder why that should be so.
* * *
It’s two days later when Will realizes it isn’t a false heat at all. He’s been taking his suppressants religiously, but there’s a familiar cramping in his belly, a tenderness in his chest. His body sounds a warning. It’s there in the way he wants to eat nothing but red meat. In the way a walk with his dogs is enough to make him crawl under the covers and sleep until morning.
Even so, he doesn’t notice it, really notice it, until Alana says something.
He’s jolted awake by a gentle touch on his shoulder, woken from dreams tinted red where he runs and runs, fast and strong. He grabs her hand too hard before the shapes and smells around him resolve into something familiar—the lecture hall, empty now but still filled with the lingering scents of dozens of students. Alana with her comforting beta aura, wincing as Will grinds the bones of her wrist together.
“Ow! Jeez, Will.”
She jerks her arm away at the same moment Will drops it like he’s been burned. He runs a hand through his hair and tries not to make a face when it comes away damp with sweat.
“Sorry,” He says. “I’m sorry. You startled me.”
She rubs her wrist, and he feels so guilty.
“Are you feeling okay? You’ve been acting weird all day.” She peers at him, and for a second he thinks she might put her hand to his forehead to feel his temperature. Her concern is so honest. It just makes him feel worse.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” He smiles, wan. Pulls his glasses from his face to scrub at his eyes. “Sorry, I’ve been up late. Haven’t been able to sleep.” He nods at her wrist. “Sorry about your hand.”
“It’s fine,” Alana says. She looks at skeptical, but she lets it go.
He’s glad she does. She probably shouldn’t have. They chat about nothing, movies and TV until Will’s heart rate is back within the realm of normal. He excuses himself—to sleep, he says, and Alana looks relieved.
“Take care of yourself,” she says when he gathers his things to go.
“I will.” (He won’t.)
Will steals a pair of handcuffs from one of the classrooms, and then he gets in his car and drives himself home. He speeds the entire way, just daring a cop to pull him over. He wants meat and blood, and he wouldn’t mind hunting for either. He wants to pick someone up from a bar and ride them until he’s forgotten his own name. He doesn’t bother reprimanding himself for the thought—either thought. It won’t do any good either way. He can’t turn the thoughts off, but he can drive fast enough to get himself home before he actually hurts anyone.
Get home and then what?
He doesn’t think that far ahead. He can’t. He feels a laugh bubbling up from somewhere deep inside his chest.
It isn’t that Will is ignorant of his body or the things it does, because he isn’t. He knows what heat feels like; he used to have it marked on a calendar. It’s that he really hasn’t been sleeping, plagued by nightmares more often than he isn’t. It’s that he’s been running around being Jack’s bloodhound, filling his head with crime scenes to point the finger at killer after killer.
It’s that the goddamn suppressants were supposed to keep exactly this from happening, and Will chucks them into the garbage as soon as he gets home.
He fills up jugs of water and stands in front of his open pantry impatiently tapping his feet. There’s not much food in the house—that’s another thing that had fallen by the wayside as soon as he’d stated working for Jack. There’s a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter. Will takes both into the living room and piles them next to the water. He considers a butter knife but decides that giving himself a weapon is a bad idea. Fuck it, he’ll use his hands.
It’s not much, considering it’ll have to last the next three days. It’d be better if he could go to the store, grab a box of granola bars, beef jerky, anything. But he wants to bite, wants to fight and feel the crunch of bone beneath his hands, and he doesn’t trust himself around other people.
It’s been so long since Will’s gone into heat that he’d forgotten how good it feels.
In the end, he decides it’ll have to do. He takes off his clothes and throws them in pile in the corner. He’s already half hard, already starting to sweat. The dogs are gone, and there’s just one thing left to do. He picks up his phone, scrolls to number he wants in his contact list. His thumb hovers over the call button.
He could still change his mind. Do something else, drive until he hit— what, exactly? Where would he go?
He closes his eyes and hits the touchscreen. Hannibal picks up on the third ring.
“Hello?”
The familiar voice hits him like a punch to the gut. Come over, he wants to say. Come to my house. Hurry, come now.
“Hey,” Will says instead. His voice shakes, but maybe it’s all in his head. “Can you do me a favor?”
There’s noise in the background. The sound of Hannibal excusing himself, a door closing and then quiet. “If I’m able. What do you need, Will?”
He blows out a breath. “Can you just—can you come check on me in a few days?” He pulls the phone away from his face and checks the display. “On Monday, can you come to my house?”
Hannibal sounds sharper now. “Will, is something wrong?”
Yes. “No. I—Sorry, I’m in the middle of something. I have to go. Just— Monday, please. Come over then.”
He hangs up before he can beg for anything else like come over and fuck me blind. He turns the phone off and sets it on the table. He sits down next to the exposed pipe running lengthwise up the wall in his living room. He handcuffs one wrist to it and stares at the tiny silver key in his hand. This is going to be hell.
Last chance to back out.
But he won’t. He can’t. He takes a deep breath and throws the key far out of reach and gets ready to wait it out.
* * *
Within hours he’s shivering and shaking and furious with himself. He wants out. His wrist is rubbed red and raw because he keeps pulling at it, struggling against the cuffs as though he could make the metal give by sheer force of will. If he keeps it up much longer he’ll rip through the skin, and he knows that, but that doesn’t mean he can stop. This is hell, and he needs to get out.
It’s dark by the time he hears it, the footsteps outside. Will’s senses are more finely tuned at this time of month, more keen. He can hear the someone outside before they even make it to the top of the porch. Some mailman, probably. Some canvasser or Jehovah’s witness. He could yell for help. He could yell and scream, and someone would come to let him go, someone soft that he could break so easily.
Go away, he thinks. Go away, go away.
His nostrils flare has he catches the scent of an alpha—of Hannibal, standing outside his door. He bares his teeth without entirely meaning to.
“Will?” There’s a rap at the door, polite but insistent. “Will, are you in there?”
There’s a low snarling sound, and Will realizes it’s him. He is aching to be filled, and there’s an alpha right outside his door. It takes everything he has in him to force himself to say, “Go away.” To grit it through his teeth.
“Will?” Hannibal sounds concerned. “Will, I’m going to open the door.”
Will moans. Yes, he wants to hiss. Yes, yes, yes, come in. Come in and let me have you. Let me tear you apart.
“No!” he yells instead. “Hannibal, go the fuck away.”
There’s the unmistakable sound of a key entering a lock, the tumblers falling into place as the doorknob turns. He wants to laugh, but it comes out wrong, choked on a sob of relief when Hannibal doesn’t listen. Of course he doesn’t listen. Thank god gets tangled on oh no.
Hannibal lets himself in and closes the door behind him. He takes one look at Will—naked, cuffed to a pipe in the wall—and nods. He seems entirely unconcerned by the situation, for which Will is distantly grateful. Some very far off part of him thinks he’ll be embarrassed by this eventually. For now he’s practically salivating at the rush of pungent, heady alpha hormones in the air, and it’s all he can do not to beg.
Hannibal takes a look around, removes his jacket and hangs it on the back of a chair. “No dogs,” he says conversationally.
“Nngh. In the barn,” he manages to grit out. He didn’t want to scare them. Didn’t want to hurt them.
Will’s hands cramp with the effort of holding themselves shut. His brain clamors for sex and blood, preferably lots of both. He’s still in his right mind for now, but that’s changing fast. Faster, now that Hannibal is here.
“Hannibal you can’t be here. You need to leave right now.”
“I was worried,” Hannibal says softly. “You sounded distraught, and the message you left me was very concerning. I was worried you’d injure yourself.” There’s a pause as he breathes deeply in. His eyes grow dark and sharp in a way Will can see, even in the low light. It makes him drool. “I must confess, I didn’t expect this.” He hesitates. “May I stay?”
There’s a quiet earnestness in Hannibal’s voice that catches Will off guard, even though the haze settling in his brain. He would’ve said yes either way, even without that soft edge of care. Now that Hannibal is here, Will can’t bring himself to send him away. He feels like he might chew through his own arm first.
“Yes,” he exhales, and his whole body goes slack with the relief of it. Of giving in. Yes, his blood sings, approving. Yes, yes, yes. He nods at the chair against the wall. It’s close, but not so close that Will can get to it. Not even if he stretches and strains, and he will. “Sit there. Don’t move. Don’t get up, no matter what I tell you. Do you understand?” He meets Hannibal’s eyes though it burns, trying to impress upon him the gravity of the situation.
He doesn’t know if it works or not, but Hannibal nods once. “Yes. Of course, Will.”
Hannibal settles himself into the chair to wait. He’s watching Will, looking at him. There’s a puddle of slick beneath Will, wet and sticky, and he squirms and shifts with the need to be filled. He refuses to touch himself with Hannibal sitting right there. Refuses while he still can.
Hannibal looks fascinated.
“Why spend your heat alone like this? Why not call a service?”
Will shakes his head. “It’s not safe.”
“Surely you could find a reputable service. I understand their background checks are very thorough.”
Will pants with the effort of simply holding still. “You don’t understand. I’m not safe.”
He sees the information filter into Hannibal’s brain. How could he not, when the totality of his awareness is rapidly contracting to two points—the alpha in the room with him and his clawing need.
“Why don’t you touch yourself?” Hannibal asks. From anyone else it might be a sleazy attempt at dirty talk. From Hannibal, it’s a genuine question.
Will huffs a laugh. “Because I didn’t plan to masturbate in front of my therapist today.”
“Fascinating. I would think most omegas would be unable to resist the compulsion. Most omegas would not demand that I remain in this chair.”
“Most alphas wouldn’t be able to stay in the chair,” Will says. “Isn’t it difficult? You said you’re resistant to hormones, but surely you’re not immune.”
“You are testing my will power,” Hannibal allows easily. Maybe it doesn’t. “Your scent is painted all over the walls. It’s thick in the air, heavy and sweet. But I can refrain.” He cocks his head. “Can you?”
The answer is of course no. Will can, but not forever. Not indefinitely. His heat lasts three days, and this is just the beginning. By tomorrow he’ll be clawing at the walls trying to get free, desperate for anything to soothe the ache inside him. Desperate for Hannibal. The thought is enough to make his cock bob against his stomach, to force a thin whine from his throat. Oh, he wants.
“For a little while,” Will says.
“If it comforts you, you can rest assured that this was my breach of etiquette, not yours. You did ask me to leave. I broke into your house.”
Etiquette. As if that’s the biggest concern here. He snorts. “How kind of you to reassure me, Doctor Lecter.”
He’s being sarcastic, but there’s no bite to it. Hannibal’s words are comforting. Despite everything, he’s being reassured by an alpha while in heat, and his hand starts inching toward his crotch of its own volition. He sighs as it makes contact, the press of his own fingers over his cock doing a little to relieve the blinding press of need beginning to consume him.
He pumps himself once, twice. It feels good, but it’s not what he wants. What he needs is to be so stuffed with cock that he doesn’t know which way is up. What he settles for is trailing his hand down past his balls, lower, lower, to his hole that’s loose and empty and starting to dribble slick.
He rubs himself gently at first, then harder, and gasps at the blessed relief of it. He needs to tilt himself back, to lean against the wall for better access. The movement exposes him to the room, to Hannibal, who shifts forward in his seat, rapt. His lips are slightly parted, and Will can hear the sound of his quick breaths in the quiet room. It lights something dark and primal in him.
He wants to say Hannibal’s name so he shoves three fingers into himself, rough and hard, to shut himself up. He and Hannibal groan at the same time, and he’s viscerally gratified to see Hannibal’s cock tenting his pants obscenely. He fucks himself on his fingers, opening himself up too fast, before his body can acclimate to the stretch. He’s wet and leaking, and it’s not enough. Not nearly enough.
“Hannibal,” he moans.
He sees the indecision on Hannibal’s face, and he wants to wipe it away. He wants. His fingers aren’t enough, and he can see the line of Hannibal’s cock. Wants to taste it, be stretched and spitted on it. He’ll beg if he has to. He doesn’t mind begging.
“Hannibal, please. Please come fuck me. I want you. I need you.” He’ll beg sweet as pie, sweet as anything. He just wants. Needs. He’s right there.
The sound of Hannibal swallowing is very nearly audible over the squelching of Will’s fingers in his ass.
“No,” Hannibal says.
Will is so far gone that it takes a minute or two for the words to sink into his brain, for meaning to connect with sound. When it does, he snarls.
“What do you mean no?” His voice is low, dangerous. He’s fixated on the flicker of Hannibal’s pulse in his neck, how easily he could puncture it.
“I mean no. I made you a promise, and I expect you wouldn’t thank me when this is over, if I broke it.”
Will’s eyes narrow. “You’re not concerned about ethics. Abigail killed Nick Boyle, and you helped her hide the body. This is something else. Something different.” It comes together slowly in his lust-addled mind, but it does come together. “You want to watch me squirm.” He cocks his head. “Do you want to watch my suffer?”
“If my motives are not entirely altruistic, you should know that I do want what’s best for you, Will.”
Hannibal’s voice is deeper, low and sonorous, and hearing his name in that tone sends an involuntary shiver down Will’s spine. It soothes him a little. Just enough that he can keep the vicious bite from his words when he tries again. “I won’t be mad if you just come here,” Will says, and he sounds entirely credible to his own ears. “I’ll be good. I’ll be so good, please. Let me have you. Let me just—” he twists his fingers inside himself and his voice breaks off on a small gasp.
“No,” Hannibal repeats, gentler this time. “But I’ll help you.”
Will means to laugh, but it comes out a sob. “How can you possibly help me when you won’t touch me?”
Hannibal gets to his feet. Will’s breath catches in his throat, some combination of yes and no choking him, but Hannibal stops just outside his grasp. Not that Will could reach for him if he tried—the thought of being empty right now is too much to bear. Hannibal crouches down so he’s eye level with Will, and Will moans at the scent of him, spicy and sharp. It’s dizzying, soothing him and stoking his desire all at once.
“I’m going to talk you through it,” Hannibal says. “Is that something you want?”
Will nods, not trusting himself to speak.
“Good,” Hannibal murmurs. “Add another finger for me.”
Hannibal sounds like he always does. Like this could be just another therapy session, but for his flushed cheeks and too-bright eyes. They’re keen as they watch Will whimper and do as he’s told, slotting his pinkie finger in beside the others and sighing at the relief it brings.
Hannibal watches silently for several long minutes before he speaks again. “I wish you had another hand free. It would certainly make things easier. Why did you handcuff yourself, Will? What happens if I take the handcuffs off?”
Will keens and shakes his head violently. No. Nonononono. But Hannibal doesn’t push.
“Can you slip your thumb in for me? Can you reach?”
Will moans. His vision goes red at the thought of freedom. Sweet blood and the chance to rend and tear. He’s still shaking his head when he pulls his thumb into his palm. His face contorts as he meets resistance, his hole slick but still tight. Too tight for this.
“I can’t,” Will gasps. “I can’t, it’s too big.” He’s still thrashing from side to side, still denying it. Still no when he feels a touch on his wrist. It feels like electrocution, sudden and sharp. He sucks in a breath.
The breath gets lodged in his throat, choked and panicked when he feels Hannibal push. He’ll hurt him; he’ll kill him. There’s pressure and a searing stretch, and then he moans around the feeling of fullness, of his own fist crammed into his body.
Nobody moves.
And then Hannibal runs a gentle hand over the side of his cheek. He pushes the hair out of Will’s overheated face, smiling, and it sets off every emotion in Will at once, a klaxon jarring through him. Bright and dark and bad and good blending into a strange amalgam.
“There,” Hannibal says. “You can’t hurt me like this.”
Simple touch feels so good. Will relaxes into it.
Then he bites Hannibal, hard enough to hit bone and then harder still, clamping his teeth down around the hand in his jaws. Blood floods his mouth, salty-sweet and hot, and Will sighs.
Hannibal doesn’t jerk his hand back. Doesn’t strike Will or fight. Doesn’t do anything except hold perfectly still. “You’re hurting me,” he says. Calm, interested.
Some far-off distant part of Will registers this and understands he should let go. He doesn’t, though. Doesn’t want to. Can’t. Won’t. He gnaws at the flesh between his teeth, trying to work the meat from the bone. He’d hold it to his mouth, the better to suckle at it, if he had his hands free to do so. But he doesn’t. One is chafing in the cuffs he’d nicked from the BAU, dripping blood down his arm, and the other is buried deep in his own ass. He whimpers around Hannibal’s hand.
And then Hannibal does the last thing Will could have ever expected. He scoots forward and pulls Will into his chest, cradling the back of his head with the hand Will isn’t currently savaging. It’s an awkward gesture—it can’t be anything but. It’s also the most soothing fucking thing that’s ever happened to Will in his life.
“Shh,” Hannibal shushes him. “Poor darling. You’re going out of your skin, aren’t you? I’ve got you. It’s all right now.” He holds him, whispering calming nothings. Will butts his head into Hannibal’s chest, content to be held.
“You know, if you give me my hand back, I could help you better.”
Will growls and starts to pull away from Hannibal’s embrace, and Hannibal doesn’t bother to hide his wince when it tears at his skin. Will is not in a state to be reasoned with. He rocks himself onto his own hand, taking short, sharp breaths through his nose. He’s close, so close, and that was before Hannibal’s blood coating his mouth, before the scent of Hannibal’s pain. It isn’t long before he’s coming, mouth falling open on a cry.
Hannibal takes the opportunity to jerk his hand back and move out of reach. Will’s only protest is a soft sound of dismay. His wrist and shoulder are stiff and screaming from the way they’re contorted, and he huffs out a labored breath as he eases his hand out of his hole. He’s sore now, sore all over, but his orgasm’s cleared some of the fog from his head.
Hannibal is holding his hand up and examining it, turning it this way and that as if it’s a curiosity. It’s still bleeding freely, dripping patterns on Will’s dusty floor, and Will feels guilt. Shame. Although not enough of either to keep him from licking his lips to catch the blood smeared there. Not enough to keep him from dragging his fingers along his face to catch the bits he can’t reach with his tongue. He shoves them in his mouth to suck off the animal taste of slick and blood.
Hannibal is looking at him as though he’s a marvel, and it’s a look Will instantly mistrusts. He’s vividly aware that he’s handcuffed to the wall, unable to even stand up. He’s suddenly unsure if he should be worried for Hannibal’s safety or his own. He shakes the thought free and write it off. Paranoia. Some lurking savagery born of the miasma of pheromones in the air.
“Your hand,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
“You did warn me,” Hannibal says. “I didn’t listen.” He doesn’t sound sorry at all. “If I get close to you, will you do it again?”
Will swallows. He wants to lie. I won’t. I’m fine. Get close to me. Let me do it again.
He doesn’t lie. “Probably,” he says.
Hannibal nods. He studies Will’s eyes, and whatever he sees brings a slow, warm smile across his face. “What are we going to do with you?”
What, indeed?
Will can feel the itchiness beneath his skin, the pressure rising. The violent, clawing ache to be filled. To fill himself with life and blood, meat and seed. He closes his eyes shut tight and breathes through his mouth. He gets ready to ride out the storm.