Chapter Text
“It’s not like I can’t get myself off.”
“Of course you can’t - you said yourself, the waxen spectres that tug you away from rest render the path to relaxation fraught with obstacles.”
“I have trouble sleeping.”
“And getting yourself off.”
“Ok, yeah, and getting myself off.”
“Please, Will. Have a seat.” He gestures to the chaise longue as if it were any other chair and not the scene of an ethical breach. Will feels himself flushing.
“I just mean that,” he swallows, paces, “I didn’t come here to-” Hannibal closes the gap between them in a long-legged stride. Will thinks he’s going to kiss him and his heart rate skyrockets. But he does not. He simply brushes the hair off his forehead and presses his palm to his brow. Taking his temperature.
“The visions, are they still-”
“Nightmarish?” Will eyeballs him. He’s come undone in his hands and between his lips, but he hasn’t kissed him. His lips part.
“On the chaise, please,” Hannibal murmurs into his mouth.
The silk is already laid out, luminous as a summer sky. Will goes to it, and Hannibal straddles his belted hips.
“Tell me, Will, in your solitary moments, is your arousal inextricable from your nightmares? Do you long for a space apart from the ghosts?”
Featherlight caresses tickle Will’s ears, throat, chest, even as Hannibal grinds infuriating pressure into Will’s groin.
“Or do you fear that such a separation might catalyse the dissolution of your very self?”
“I don’t fear separation,” Will gasps, “so much as fragmentation.” His voice lowers to a whisper so quiet he’s unsure he’s spoken aloud. “I’m afraid that I might not be able to piece myself back together again.”
“I’ll piece you back together again.” Hannibal’s eyes burn honey-amber. “With gold.”
He captures him in a kiss.
Will is briefly lost inside the searing heat of Hannibal’s insistent mouth. Hands undo his belt and fly and he helps them tug the seat of his trousers down. Breaking from the kiss, Hannibal travels down his body to nose his crotch, breathing there, open-mouthed, for a mortifying minute, before taking the soft fabric of Will’s boxers between his teeth.
“I would prefer to not need mending.” Will shudders as pointed canines glint near his half-hard cock. His mind races fast yet feels ten steps behind. He pushes back into the silk, hoping to ground himself in a neutral sensation. It only brings scalding memories flooding back of firm hands pressing pleasure out of his organs.
Those hands now busy themselves with unfastening buttons, Hannibal briefly rising to shed and neatly fold his trousers, then his underwear, a shimmering plume of satin cream whisked off and settled on the doctor’s chair atop the rest of the three-piece suit. His shirt stays on.
“Self-reliance has been an essential tool for you, but it’s a double-edged sword.”
He resumes his position astride Will, who gasps as Hannibal’s cunt comes to rest, hot and shockingly wet, directly against his thickening erection. Only Will’s ass and upper thighs are bare to the room. It feels indecent, being almost fully clothed yet so exposed. Hannibal pulses his hips, dragging soft slickness up and down Will’s shaft, glancing down to see their dicks line up, tips touching, making them both shiver with the connection.
“You protect yourself, and alienate those around you.”
Hannibal’s voice remains commanding, but betrays his breathlessness.
“The spectres are gathering, Will. You throw them scraps of yourself, but this sates them only temporarily. They claw at your peace. You cannot allow them to dismember you.”
Hannibal takes Will’s cock in hand, rubs the head against his entrance until they’re both whimpering for more, then guides it inside him with a sigh.
“Fuck.” Will is subsumed into the other man’s body - the thought feels surreal and so does the sensation. He thinks about being kept safe inside somebody else, somebody able to keep themselves together. Hannibal starts to move in slow, sure undulations, and Will wishes he could disappear further into him with each swell. He settles for meeting the motion of each ebb and flow. He claws at the bottom of Hannibal’s shirt, pushing it higher, and tries to keep his eyes open to watch ripples break across the downy stomach with each thrust. Kneads that plush belly; pictures himself caught within it.
His hands are captured and pinned either side of his head. Quick, almost frighteningly so. The doctor’s grip is strong, and Will’s only urge is to let himself be immobilised, held fast in sure hands.
“Fuck, yes.”
The act of restraining Will has forced Hannibal to lean over him, almost mouth to mouth, trapping the heat of their bodies between them. Hannibal licks and bites into his neck, and single-handedly undoes Will’s shirt buttons to suck ravenous kisses down his throat and chest.
The lapping and the teeth against Will’s skin, his cock sliding wetly in and out, Hannibal’s scorching sex abutting his smooth belly, all infuriate him into biting and tearing at the front of Hannibal’s shirt. His second assault targets the buttons directly, and sends them popping free. He expects a rebuke, but looks up to see delight dancing in the doctor’s blown-black eyes. He presses them together, sternum to pelvis, and Will’s eyes close into the pleasure of skin on soft, furred skin. Hannibal holding him down like a straitjacket, wringing him out like a wet towel.
Will’s breaths begins to thin and rasp, turning whining as he shakes into Hannibal’s body and, baring his teeth, releases deep inside him. No white noise this time, no glowing visions. Will’s mind simply closes to everything that isn’t Hannibal - fire doors disconnected, slammed shut by the wind. Hannibal holds his wrists in his fingers, his torso with his torso, hips between thighs, cock within cunt. Thoughts within walls of bliss that bar entrance to all but the feeling of being so lovingly, unrelentingly devoured.
Hannibal’s next outbreath is harshly expelled, his orgasm expressed in the tensing of every muscle, the tightening of his full-body grip on Will. Neither can help moaning and shutting their eyes as wetness floods Will’s balls and drizzles down his crack, soaking into the waiting silk.
His hands released, Will grabs the doctor by the back of the neck and plunges his tongue into his gasping mouth. He doesn’t think about the action. He is simply taken by the sudden urgent need to possess Hannibal’s insides in every possible way, to dissolve in the safety of that hungry place. His fingers wrest the remnants of the shirt from Hannibal’s shoulders before sliding down his waist and hips to grasp his ass and push into his hole. Hannibal sucks his tongue and he feels teeth, both warning and encouragement. Will huffs a laugh into his neck. A final gentle bite, and he pulls them both loose-limbed down into the chaise’s cushiony embrace. Arms warm, crotches damp, heartbeats jumpily slowing, they fall asleep cheek to cheek.
When Will wakes, he notices immediately that he is dry and comfortable. So the doctor must have cleaned him off and buttoned him back up. He also notes that he is alone. By the quiet and the dark at the windows, it is late, likely gone midnight.
Joints creaking and crackling, Will shucks the blanket - soft, cashmere probably - and lifts himself off the couch, that accomplice to such crimes of passion as cannot be clearly appraised from this close range. What is clear, though, is that Will has never in his memory felt so profoundly satisfied. He tries not to assess what this might mean for his relationship to the doctor, his relationship to his own self even.
As if on cue, the door behind Hannibal’s desk opens and the man himself steps through. Bearing tea.
“You’re awake,” he breathes, conspiratorially.
Will smiles in spite of himself. “I’m awake.”
“You may stay as long as you like.” He sets the silver tray down on a side table, pulls up one of the leather armchairs, compelling Will to sit himself back on the couch. “Lapsang souchong - the champagne of tea. It is my long-held opinion that its smoky aroma lends itself beautifully to late-night drinking.”
Why does Will feel such a tug towards this man and his oddities.
Tea is poured and china placed into his cupped hands. The steam is, he must admit, reviving. Bonfire and bacon.
“Tell me, Will, how are you feeling?”
Will sips. Absorbs the healing heat of the liquid.
“I feel… strangely settled.” He quirks a smile. “For a man whose psychiatrist just rode him into oblivion.”
“Will… I am not your psychiatrist.” Hannibal stops the teacup on its way to his lips. “And we agreed to this course of therapy.” Demurely, he sips.
“You’re not my psychiatrist, yet you do seek to treat me, therapeutically.” Something is rising in him, bilious. Petty, but that the stakes feel too high for pettiness.
“I would not classify you as resistant to my efforts.” Hannibal’s tone is calm, but Will senses a warning, a gate closing, drawbridge about to be pulled up. He does not want to be left in the cold.
“Hannibal, I…”
“Shall we change tack again, Will? Would that please you better?”
“I’m not…”
He catches those tea-dark eyes, more amber now than the wide, deep black of earlier. Hannibal could shut him out in a moment, he knows. Could he let him in?
“That was not just therapy,” Will says softly.
He fancies he sees every muscle in Hannibal’s face soften. He knows he sees Hannibal’s pupils dilate, the gate reopening. Something unnameable settles itself into Will’s abdomen like a weighted blanket, reassuringly oppressive.
“I hope it was therapeutic. And if it was more than merely therapeutic, I hope that excess is welcome.”
Their gazes are threaded. Too many moves and they’ll tangle.
“What is it you want from me?” Will whispers.
“As much as you wish to give,” comes the reply.
And more, Will’s mind fills in. There are no bounds to your desires. You would swallow me whole.
He cannot find it within himself to resist.