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Chapter 3

Summary:

“You’re beautiful,” Will told him. “You’re exactly as beautiful as the day I met you.”

Hannibal huffed a laugh, bracing his palms on Will’s chest, rocking his hips in a slow rhythm that threatened to kill Will. “I’m nearing fifty.”

“As beautiful as the day I met you,” Will insisted.

Notes:

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Chapter Text

It was exactly how Will remembered it. 

They didn’t even make it to the desk. They sprawled on the floor, raw and needy, grinding against each other, hands wrapped around each other’s cocks, biting and sucking and leaving bruises across each other. 

They ended up in a sweaty, sticky heap, Hannibal pinning Will bodily beneath him. 

Will felt like he was on fire. He’d already come, he was in his forties , and all he wanted was to drag Hannibal up to straddle his shoulders and lick at him until he was hard again. 

“What are we doing?” Hannibal asked him quietly. 

“We aren’t doing anything,” Will said. “Hannibal, when I leave here… this can’t happen again.”

And it didn’t.

Until the next week.

And the next.

And the next.

Until Will went to Hannibal’s house for dinner, fully intending to simply enjoy the food and company and good wine. And he did. They both did. The meal was exquisitely prepared, and the wine was rich and expensive, and the company… the company made Will feel young again. They laughed together, they reminisced. They thought back to those short - far too short - months together back in New Orleans and fell in love with each other all over again.

Will kept his ring in his pocket. 

He followed Hannibal upstairs.

He got him in bed and slid between his legs, taking Hannibal to the back of his throat with a deep and pleased hum. He could suck Hannibal off forever. Will lost his mind when he had his cock in his mouth. The taste, the girth, the sheer masculinity of the whole thing made him come undone at the seams. 

And Hannibal’s voice, how it broke on soft little moans, the endless mantra of his filthy words broken by a hitch in breathing or a shudder. Will slipped a hand between his own legs and rocked into it, groaning when Hannibal snared a hand in his hair and tugged.

“Will, your goddamn mouth , always that goddamn mouth…” Hannibal bared his teeth with a hiss and draped a leg over Will’s shoulders. “You know I never swear, I never fucking swear unless it’s with you.”

Total loss of control. Absolute release.

Sometimes it was like Will could forget. 

Like he could lose himself in the give of Hannibal’s body. 

In the noises he made. 

Will would tell himself he was coming to break things off, and find himself naked in Hannibal’s bed, Hannibal astride his thighs. 

“You’re beautiful,” Will told him. “You’re exactly as beautiful as the day I met you.”

Hannibal huffed a laugh, bracing his palms on Will’s chest, rocking his hips in a slow rhythm that threatened to kill Will. “I’m nearing fifty.”

“As beautiful as the day I met you,” Will insisted. 

Sometimes Will stayed for hours; they’d fuck, doze, fuck again. Just like before. Just like twenty-three years ago.

Then Molly was out of town for work, and Will practically moved in. They slept together and woke together. They drank good wine and smoked on the porch. Will didn’t put on more than his briefs around the house, since they didn’t leave it, and Hannibal would catch him by the waist as he passed him in the hallway.

“I’m going to fuck you in the study,” Hannibal promised him, a warm purr against Will’s ear as the other grinned. 

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes. Push you up against the library ladder, spread you wide, work you open with my tongue until you’re shaking.”

Will groaned, bringing a hand up to stroke Hannibal’s face. “That’s some promise.”

“You don’t trust me to deliver?”

Will shrugged, playing up indifference, laughing when Hannibal’s hands squeezed him tighter. “We’ve grown soft,” he said. “We used to leave the bedroom bruised and bitten.”

“Get your ass to my study, Will,” Hannibal told him, snapping the elastic on his briefs playfully. “And get these off when you’re there.”

Hannibal took him apart, just as promised. He licked at him until he was dripping, and when he finally slid his cock inside, Will was shaking. 

“I dreamed of this,” Hannibal said, rocking against Will, pinning him against the ladder. Will clung to the rungs, gasping. “I dreamed of your warmth, of your shape. 

Will’s hands tightened on the rungs of the ladder. “Don’t,” he warned. 

Hannibal’s lips met his shoulder, trailing over fading love bites. “I couldn’t help myself.”

“Hannibal…”

Hannibal twisted his hips and Will cried out, closing his eyes and clinging for dear life. 

“God, I missed you, Will.”

It became harder and harder to leave, after that, but Will always did. Somehow, he did. Somehow he got his clothes on and kissed Hannibal until the very last moment and left.

Back home to Molly, who greeted him with a smirk and a playful shove to his shoulder, teasing him about being tired, always so tired.

Too tired to play on the couch, too tired to fuck in bed.

Too tired because he'd given his all to a man who'd found him after all these years, a man who felt like destiny.

"Stay with me," Hannibal whispered, hand heavy and warm over Will's heart as he nuzzled Will's curls. "Just tonight. Til the morning, til the day properly starts."

Hannibal rarely sounded desperate, but he sounded it here. He sounded as helpless as Will felt and it broke him . He'd left Hannibal so as not to hurt him, all those years ago, and now he was reading him to pieces, night after night.

Will's breath hitched as he started to speak and Hannibal cling closer, burying his face against Will's neck.

"Please," he breathed. "Please stay with me, Will."

“I can’t,” Will whispered. His arms tightened around Hannibal. He held him close, as if to hold him together. As if he might hold himself together. “You know I can’t, Hannibal.”

“How is this any better for her?” Hannibal propped himself up on one elbow, trying to catch Will’s eye. Will had turned avoidance into an art form, but Hannibal knew all of his tricks. He cupped Will’s jaw in his hand, turning his face towards Hannibal’s own. “How is this any better for you ?”

Molly deserved a husband that loved her, that cherished her. Will could be that for her, if he tried. She adored him, but she did not look too far beyond the surface. 

Hannibal looked good deeply, saw too much. Will could not offer him safety or stability. He couldn’t taint someone else with the shadows that engulfed him. 

He took Hannibal’s hand in his own, kissed the knuckles, the wrist. 

“Will-“

“Don’t.” Will’s voice cracked and broke. “Don’t do this to me. Just- just be with me. Just for a little while.”

Hannibal looked at him, expression helpless, broken, and leaned in to kiss Will’s cheek, his sigh cooling the place his lips had warmed. “I’m going to take a shower.” He said instead.

The shower was still running when Will closed the door behind him.

He popped his collar, dug about in his pockets for his pack of cigarettes and lit up, waiting for the nicotine to hit his system before he stepped off the porch and moved off down the street.

It wasn’t quiet. Baltimore was never quiet, not even in the witching hour, and Will took solace in that. He couldn’t handle silence right then, couldn’t be alone with his thoughts. He had too many, and all of them were clambering about in the bone arena of his skull vying for dominance, aching to be heard.

All Will could hear was broken, broken, broken as his feet hit the sidewalk rhythmically and he made it down another block. He hailed a cab the next block over and mumbled his home address.

He’d never planned this to be his life. In fact, Will hadn’t had a plan for his life at all beyond the tender age of twenty-seven; he’d read about the twenty-seven club when he was younger and found the entire concept thrilling. Going out with a bang, with a mystery, when one was still so young, so passionate, so promising .

Instead, he’d been promoted to detective at twenty-seven, and met Molly when he turned thirty-five, and married her a year later when his position at the BAU had been turned into a consulting and teaching one from that of an active field agent.

Now he was forty-six and rubbing sleep from his eyes as a cab took him home to his wife from his lover’s house at 3AM.

C’est la fucking vie, he supposed.

Molly was asleep when he slipped into their room, his shoulders hunched up around his ears, a mangy pup come home with fleas. She murmured something when he climbed into bed; he hushed her with gentle fingertips against her face. 

She was a beautiful woman. Sweet and strong. He should have done right by her. Should never have married her, if he was going to stay hung up on a decades long mistake. 

He had meant to leave the past in the past. Leave darkness and shadows at work. Pop the pieces of his life into boxes, lock everything away. 

But then there had been Hannibal. 

Hannibal had dug claws under his skin and burrowed beneath. Hannibal filled Will’s every breath, every blink. 

“Molly.”

It broke from him at the breakfast table. Her name, nothing more, irrevocably shattering their quiet peace. 

Molly set her coffee mug down with a quiet sigh. She smiled at him, soft and sad. “It’s about Hannibal, isn’t it?”

Will blinked at her. “What?”

“Hannibal.” She reached for his hand, running her thumb over the knuckles. “It’s okay, Will. It’s alright. I wish… I wish you’d just told me, but we were always just slightly mismatched, weren’t we?”

Will didn’t know what to say. He felt sick. He hated that he had done this, him , that he had hurt Molly this way, that he had broken what they had started to build. In the decade they’d been together, they had made a life, they had made it work. They’d tried for kids, but it never took, they stuck to their work, adopted dogs, renovated the house as they paid it off.

It was easy. It was comfortable. But neither could say they were particularly happy .

They just… were.

Will freed his hand and brought the heels of both against his eyes, pressing there until he saw stars, until he could breathe again.

“I’m sorry.” he gasped.

“I know,” Molly didn’t sound angry. She didn’t even sound defeated. She just sounded sad. Will hated that. He hated himself for it. “I know, Will, I do. D’you know, I wanted to be so mad at both of you? I tried. I have so many reasons to be but… God, I haven’t seen you smile like he makes you smile since we first met. You don’t smile like that with me -”

“Molly -”

“And I don’t smile like that with you,” she finished, tilting her head to look at him when Will finally dropped his hands and looked up, sniffing. “Shit happens, Will, sometimes you just don’t work out.”

“I hurt you,” Will admitted gently, wanting to feel some anger, some pain, something from her that felt like retribution. He didn’t get it. She just shrugged.

“Yeah,” she said. “But hurting you back won’t make me feel better.”

He wished it would. He wished he could offer himself up and let her tear him to shreds, but it wasn’t her way. She’d always been too good for him. 

“You can have everything-“ he began. She snorted, rolling her eyes. 

“Don’t be so dramatic, Will. We’ll split it fairly.” She narrowed her eyes. “But I get the Chevy.”-

He laughed, helpless and blown away by this woman. “Of course.”


Will didn’t know how to tell Hannibal. He thought he should have a speech prepared. Flowers. An apology, maybe, for more than twenty years of silence. 

Instead of a speech, he showed up with shaking hands and a tan line where his wedding ring should have been. Instead of flowers, he handed Hannibal divorce papers, already signed. 

In answer, Hannibal gathered Will against him and held him close.

It took a couple weeks to sort everything out, and in the end Molly kept the house and the car, because it was more convenient for her, and she’d just started working on the downstairs bathroom before shit hit the fan. Will didn’t mind. He’d been mentally living with Hannibal for months at that point, and when the question came up it wasn’t even a question but a confirmation that Will was moving in.

The dogs… the dogs were another matter. For the time being they stayed with Molly, but she reminded him that he had “full visitation rights” for as long as it took him to get settled. The dogs were always more Will’s thing, in the end. She loved them dearly, but they were his pack; she found her pack among people.

For the first few days, all Will did was sleep. He woke to Hannibal sitting on the bed reading, or to him pressed close and still slumbering. He ate when Hannibal fed him, and showered, but he was exhausted . He felt like he’d shouldered off a great weight and the strain it had taken to carry it was catching up to him.

When he finally woke up and felt refreshed, he waited for Hannibal to get home and greeted him at the door with a kiss, chaste and warm.

“I owe you an explanation, huh,” he said, watching Hannibal take off his shoes and coat in the hall. “For the twenty three years of silence.”

Hannibal hesitated. 

He was not a hesitant man, but Will could see the signs of yearning in him. He knew them well, now. 

Then he straightened. He hung his coat. He greeted Will with a soft kiss to his lips. 

“You owe me nothing,” he murmured. “You’ve come back to me. Your debt has been repaid tenfold.”

Will blushed pink all the way to his ears. “But you want to know.”

“I want to know everything about you,” Hannibal said, guiding Will towards the kitchen. Nothing would ever make Hannibal delay dinner. “That doesn’t mean I’ll force it from you. “

“No force,” Will promised. He settled in at the island, perched on a stool, and sipped at the wine Hannibal poured him. “You remember how work used to get to me.”

“It still does,” Hannibal said with a frown. “Don’t think I hadn’t noticed.”

Will ducked his head, said nothing. Hannibal could always see him so clearly, could always read him as though Will were a poster on a wall, not even a book. He swallowed and continued.

“It started when I had to help at that scene, the murder. I could… see how it was done. I could put myself in the mind of the man responsible. I… empathized with him.” Will chewed his lip, listening to Hannibal continue to gather things to start their dinner. He just looked out into the middle distance a moment more before sighing.

“It scared me,” he admitted. “It scared me so much, I didn’t know what was going on. Found out later it’s an actual psychological disorder,” he laughed, shaking his head when Hannibal hummed agreement. “But I was scared that I would become like them. Like those killers. And I couldn’t drag you into that, not when you were saving lives and being so… so good. I couldn’t sully you with that.”

“You never would have,” Hannibal told him gently, moving to rest his weight on the island too, across from Will. “You are extraordinary, Will. Nothing you could do would ever have me think differently.”

“Clearly,” Will mumbled, wincing as he said it. He looked up at Hannibal again. “Sorry.”

Hannibal’s hand squeezed his. “I missed you,” he said. “For over twenty years, I missed you. And Will, I do not give a damn.”

Will choked on a laugh, shaking his head. “I-“

“No,” Hannibal said firmly. “I’m glad to know. I’m glad you told me. But I won’t hold those years against you and I won’t let you hold them against yourself. This is our time now, Will, together.”

“I don’t deserve you.”

Hannibal pulled Will’s hand to his mouth and let his lips brush gently across the knuckles. “On the contrary,” he said. “I’ve fought for years to earn you. And I intend to enjoy my prize.”

Notes:

Mizpah (n.)
Hebrew
The deep emotional bond between people, especially those separated by distance or death.

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