Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“There was a report of a disturbance in the residence,” Will intones, and at least he’s not swaying anymore. Hannibal has yet to comment on what he’s wearing because in all truth, he has few words that can describe what Will is wearing.

Shorts. He supposes he can call them shorts - they are, to a degree, short-like, if ridiculously high. The rest is a semblance of a police uniform, and Hannibal is almost certain it is painted onto Will, and not actual fabric. He leans with his hip against the door, a pair of cuffs hanging from one belt loop and his boots undone, and he’s grinning.

“I wouldn’t argue with me, sir,” Will continues, tone level but higher than his usual voice, and he’s almost vibrating with whatever he’d taken at that party that he had insisted on going to. “To get in I had to break the door down with my keys. Politely and respectfully. I have little patience for denial.”

Will snorts but manages to hold his composure from collapsing into giggling entirely. In truth, he looks almost endearingly innocent, like a child who had found an old Halloween costume in the attic that he had worn once and grown out of.

Hannibal makes only a sound, a low note of warning as Will tips towards him, thumbs shoved into his back pockets and threatening to push what slender fabric clings to his hips even lower. “It isn’t breaking in if you have keys,” Hannibal informs him.

“That’s enough out of you,” Will declares, and Hannibal curves a brow higher. Dark eyes narrow just a twitch above his glasses, seated in a large armchair in the living room. Despite himself, Hannibal yields a smile to his officer, arresting in a different way than Will intends, and lets slip closed the book resting against his knee.

“There’s been no disturbance,” Hannibal purrs. “The one who causes them has been away. The evening has been blissfully quiet, in truth.”

“Then he has left you to take the fall.” Will brings a hand up and wags his finger as a teacher would to a misbehaving child. How he manages not to trip on his laces is a mystery, but Will comes closer and sets a knee against the soft cushion of the chair and hums. “You are under arrest, and I do not take kindly to being bribed. You should accept your fate, sir.”

He is entirely warm and pliant against Hannibal, still swaying gently from inebriation and whatever powder or pills are in him. Will smiles, delighted, and it is almost as if the game falls away for a moment.

But only a moment. As soon as Hannibal reaches up for him, Will snares a wrist and flicks the cold steel of a cuff against it, locking quick and fast as he shakes his head.

“It will only get worse for you,” he muses, biting his lip.

Hannibal’s eyes widen, a rare and genuine moment of surprise made possible only by the boy’s speed. He presses his tongue between his lips and paces a breath. Tilting his head to the side, almost reptilian, he searches between Will’s eyes, black with swollen pupils from whatever he’s taken.

Cocaine, Hannibal wagers, from the acrid molecules of scent he catches on Will’s breath. It doesn’t alone explain the boy’s speed, but his own skill has become muscle memory now. He is quick.

Agile.

Dangerous.

He is rubbing his knee between Hannibal’s legs.

The older man squirms, regarding the cuff around his wrist, dangling. “We decide our fate,” Hannibal supposes, “in the choices we make.” His shoulders curl tighter, free hand placed innocently against the arm of the chair, and although he presses back against the boy’s leg, his tone doesn’t waver. “What are the charges?”

“Arguing with a police officer,” Will lists, still rocking up against Hannibal as he holds the other - still empty - cuff between his fingers. “Resisting lawful arrest. Being a smartass,” Will grins, tilting his head as though daring Hannibal to argue the matter. He doesn’t, so Will continues. “Looking so fucking hot in your glasses.”

The slap comes, predictable and harsh, and Will takes it with a laugh, turning his head and catching Hannibal’s wrist, using Hannibal’s own strength and direction of motion to press his hand down next to his other to cuff it as well.

“Striking an officer of the law,” Will adds, giggling, as he shakes his head and holds Hannibal’s bound hands down, wrist pressing down the metal connecting the cuffs as his other hand works his belt open. “Entirely uncalled for. I’ll have to take you in, now. When my backup gets here. If it gets here. Do you know how atrocious the response time is on this island?” Will raises his eyebrows and with a grin leans in to peck Hannibal gently on the lips.

The belt is looped over the connecting chain and through itself and Will stands, a quick motion to get him behind the chair Hannibal sits on, pulling the man’s arms up over the high back. The angle is enough to make a struggle awkward, for long enough that Will manages to tie the belt tight to the decorative strap of leather that hugs the chair like its own belt. The man so restrained, he returns to stand in front of Hannibal again, shaking his head in put-on displeasure.

Hannibal’s jaw clenches, just a flicker of movement before his expression smooths and his muscles tighten. He pulls subtly, experimentally, to gauge the sturdiness of his bonds, and settles again with an eerie calm, arms back over the chair and glasses slipping down his nose. Will reaches a finger as if to slide them higher, and Hannibal snaps at him, before another soft smile coils his lips.

“Is a backup joining you?” Hannibal asks, optimistically. “Someone, perhaps, who has not addled themselves with so much powder that they can hardly stand.”

“I got you, didn’t I? The murderous Doctor Lecter -”

“I allowed you,” Hannibal corrects him, and Will snorts, laughing.

“Lying to an arresting officer,” he sighs, head lolling to the side as he twists back and forth. Hips swaying, Will sets his fingers against the brassy buttons of his shirt, catching each as he spans his hands down to the front of his shorts.

“Miserable boy -”

“Officer Graham,” Will purrs, grinning, before he shakes his head and clucks his tongue.

Hannibal sighs, eyes closing, his patience strained as his shoulders as he tries to grasp for where Will has hooked the belt to the chair. “Release me, and I will carry you to bed, and exhaust you in it.”

“And we are back to bribery,” Will sighs, eyes narrowed in his pleasure as he moves to straddle Hannibal again. “I wish to exhaust myself right here.”

“Surely that’s unlawful,” Hannibal murmurs, opening his eyes to look at the boy sitting so prettily on him. “Taking advantage of your position of power.”

“It really, truly is,” Will agrees, licking his lips as he sits back on Hannibal’s knees and starts to work open the buttons of his uniform from the bottom up, a careful twist of the button through its hole, eyes always on Hannibal, who watches Will just as surely, just as closely. “And I really do not care.”

A grin, childish and pleased, and Hannibal’s own lips quirk just a little when he tries to fight a smile of his own. Will leans in to kiss him again, lips soft as he finally pushes Hannibal’s glasses up his nose with his fingertips and leans back to admire the view.

“I am going to ride you so fucking hard,” he breathes, smile widening when Hannibal’s reflexive need to strike the boy for his foul mouth is stopped by the cool cuffs and heavy belt.

“Every one,” Hannibal warns him. “I will remember.”

“I hope so.”

There is a sinuous wave of muscle as Will exposes his stomach, sun-brown and taut, forever smooth but for the thin trail of hair that leads into the tight little shorts rubbing red against his thighs. His lip pushes pink where his teeth set against it, hair curled with sweat, wild from dancing, and just as much Dionysian madness in his eyes. He ruts against the inside of his pants, and Hannibal imagines that if Will manages himself to hardness - which, of course, he will - the shorts might tear at the seams.

“Wicked Doctor Lecter,” sighs Will, and Hannibal lifts his eyes again. He watches rueful as Will lets his head loll back, his Adam’s apple rising and falling with each word, bared so close and still out of reach. “I, Officer Will Graham, find you guilty -”

“Are you judge and jury now?”

The slap startles Hannibal to silence, an echoing of skin against skin as his lips part, glasses skewed. Each beat of his heart, echoing in the heat of his cheek where Will struck him, darkens his eyes, the roiling of storm clouds overcoming the sun.

“I find you guilty of murder,” Will whispers. His shirt slips open and he pushes a bare hand across his chest, over pebbled nipples, pinching to pull a moan from himself.

“Is that all?” Hannibal asks, dire, pulling hard enough to snap the leather against the chair, but there is no more give than that.

Will smiles at the struggle, does little more than stretch his arms up over his head with a groan. “Far from all,” he murmurs, stretching to the side, now, to the other.

“Eliciting a minor,” he lists, slipping his shirt from his shoulders and letting it fall to the floor. “Lying to a minor.” Will rolls his hips forward, shifting carefully against Hannibal’s thighs as his fingers rest against Hannibal’s chest to start on his buttons as well. “Consuming a minor,” Will giggles, gently slapping Hannibal again, enough to startle, not to hurt.

“Doctor Lecter, you have been busy,” Will purrs against him. “You have been awful. Perhaps I should deal with you before backup arrives. They are not as intimately involved in the case as I am, they would be biased in their leniency.”

Hannibal groans, more felt than heard, quaking deep from his belly when Will’s fingernails scratch down his chest. “Entrapment,” he insists, amusement narrowing his gaze. Will only giggles in response, and yanks at Hannibal’s trousers. “I was lured, by boys with ill-intentions. Helpless to their charms, I succumbed. You cannot blame me for that.”

Will shoves a hand to Hannibal’s chest to hold him to the chair when he tries to lean forward. “I will mete out a punishment befitting the crime,” Will tells him, broad teeth flashing white when he grins.

“You would deny me my life?”

“No,” Will murmurs, skimming his hand higher to hold Hannibal’s throat beneath slender fingers. He drapes a kiss over his cheek, careful to avoid the snarling teeth so close to tender skin. “Not your life.”

“My freedom, then,” Hannibal asks. He jerks against the restraints, and the steel against his wrists makes him marvel at the fact that for his tawdry uniform, Will has found a pair of real handcuffs. “You would take that from me?”

“I would… borrow it,” Will laughs, low and warm and eyes hooded as he watches Hannibal’s expression, his hands working the man’s pants open to stroke him without warning or preamble. Will’s laugh grows delighted, finding the man already semi-hard. “I would keep you captive to me.”

“And this would not be biased treatment?” Hannibal asks him, teeth gritted and lip snarled back until Will catches his chin between his fingers and kisses him deep, holding Hannibal’s jaw open so he can’t bite down cruelly against his tongue.

“A personal vendetta,” Will murmurs, stroking Hannibal harder, sitting up a little to work his own shorts open, moaning, pleased at just touching himself for Hannibal, when the man can do nothing at all to him in return.

“You look fucking gorgeous like that you know?” Will licks his lips, smiling. “Tethered.”

Hannibal doesn’t count aloud - they both know well enough that he’ll suffer for this, spilling blood and tears across the floor. He stops straining, allowing his arms laxity. Will’s cock pops free of his uniform, held between tight fingers that squeeze beneath the head and push a bead of glassy fluid from the tip. Biting his lip, Will watches as it swells and slips down, catching the droplet on his thumb.

“This is an abuse of power,” Hannibal murmurs. “By an officer too intoxicated to be in his right mind and realize the harm he is bringing on himself.”

His lips part when Will smears his thumb across them, pushing them out of shape and leaving a sheen of precum across them. He gasps when Hannibal’s tongue slicks his fingertip, and quickly withdraws his hand to watch in awe as Hannibal allows this depravity continuance.

But Hannibal’s curiosity is piqued, sated for now by licking his bottom lip into his mouth to suck the taste of Will from it. He hums when he releases it, flushed dark, and allows whimsy to surpass displeasure. “And how may I earn my freedom, then, Officer Graham?”

“Be good,” Will sighs, shifting back to kick his boots to the floor, to slip free of those ridiculous shorts. “Sit still.” Naked, Will returns to Hannibal’s lap, draws a hand through his hair to snare it and tug his head back with a sharp yank. “If you want something, beg.”

Will ducks his head to bite sharp against Hannibal’s neck, sucking a deep bruise there that he knows will be echoed again and again over his own skin, with lips and fists and belts. He knows and he makes it deeper, tongues against it before moving to make a mirroring mark on the other side, hands down to stroke Hannibal as he twists in the cuffs more, cursing Will’s ability to knot leather to hold him so helpless.

Will is trembling already, still high and drunk and pleased to be here, in Hannibal’s lap, so close to him. It has been a long time since he has been allowed this, the first time since he has been allowed this without a dead body leaking filth behind them.

“You should have come to the party with me,” Will whispers, biting against Hannibal’s earlobe and tugging it down. “So many pretty things there, Hannibal, throwing themselves begging and needy at you.”

“Would you not have caught me in the act, then?” Hannibal asks him. Will just laughs.

“Perhaps a different punishment, then. But I would still have had you.”

Teeth against Hannibal’s collarbone draw a hiss, body bucking upward. Will rides the movement, languid, lovely. “You are inescapable,” Hannibal sighs, and that is the truth of it.

He has him.

He will always have him.

“And so you will avenge them upon me,” Hannibal says. Little fingers press into the blossoming bruises livid on his neck, and the older man allows a grin. “All the pretty young things that have offered themselves into my bed and onto my table. Vigilante justice, worthy of Fritz Lang -”

His words are snared silent when Will crams the crescent of his hand, between thumb and forefinger, just beneath Hannibal’s Adam’s apple. Enough to threaten his breath, but not halt it. Enough to quiet his words into no more than a rasping laugh, as Will grabs Hannibal’s cock with the other.

“I will have my way,” Will sighs, pleased, “and my justice.”

“For them?” Hannibal whispers.

“For me,” Will replies, coy, letting Hannibal have enough air to tell him, to whisper those words before he cuts off his air entirely, pressing to his throat, not to his arteries, wanting him conscious as long as possible for this.

”Selfish boy.”

Will continues to stroke, slow languid pulls up to the head and twisting just beneath, watching Hannibal’s cheeks darken, his eyes brighten and widen. He holds him long enough to genuinely hurt before letting Hannibal breathe, just enough to fill his lungs, just enough to feel his entire body arch before folding his fingers over the man’s mouth, just beneath his nose, leaning in to kiss the back of his hand.

“You do get off on this, you masochist, look at you,” Will whispers, letting Hannibal breathe again. “Leaking against me, fucking hungry for it.”

Hannibal’s breath rasps against Will’s hand, loosened just enough to allow in a trickle of air, no more than that, and poised to cinch the flow again. He focuses, to keep his heart rate at resting, to use no more air than strictly necessary, even as his vision darkens in the corners when Will steals his breath again. The release, an elevator-plummet rush, is just as sweet as the suppression, and Hannibal can do little more than moan when his life is released from grasping little fingers - little more than rock up against the miscreant spread bare and erect before him.

“My body,” Hannibal pants, throat clicking when he tries to steady it again, eyes hooded and heavy, “is only what you make of it. You do this to me,” he whispers. “All of you.”

“You cannot so easily displace your own blame,” Will chastens him, squeezing harder around his cock until Hannibal makes a sound. His eyes close and his throat works, lips just parted enough to show gritted teeth as he catches his breath, dangerous and displeased. Will knows the energy that coils through the man now, the desire and anger and need to free himself and assert his power once more.

Will kisses him instead, lingering when Hannibal’s lips part against his own. He allows him to take this even as there is another tug against the heavy leather of the belt, the decorative leather of the chair. It will hold. Both will hold. Until Will sees fit to undo them.

He sits up and kneels closer to Hannibal, head ducked and eyes hooded. Watching him, he continues to stroke before teasing the head of Hannibal’s cock between his ass cheeks, just behind his balls, biting his own lip at how good it feels to have him there.

“Tell me what you see,” Will whispers, “if I am to blame for what you are.”

Hannibal thrusts up against his boy, seeking the warm inner heat of his body, with little mind for preparation - from the scent of him, he knows Will has already been had tonight. Will shifts easily away, as if turning at the call of his voice, and does not allow Hannibal entrance.

A snarl curls his words. “I see a beautiful and wretched creature,” Hannibal says. “Entirely aware of his own loveliness and heartless enough to use it against men at every turn. I see a predator, who takes his prey in languid time, toying with them before changing their lives unalterably. You have ended mine as it was,” Hannibal accuses him, not without a hint of fondness. “You have enthralled me to you. And all others pale by compare.”

With a moan, sighed, Will slips the head of Hannibal’s cock against his crevice again, rubbing slick against his hot opening, and yet with a firm hand disallows entry. Instead, he presses his other hand against Hannibal’s chin, avoiding teeth that he knows - in anger and desire both - would sink into his skin and tear marks in it. A brow lifts in expectation, and with a ruddy flush of humiliation, Hannibal works a mouthful of spit and pools it glistening in Will’s hand.

Will grins, draws a thumb over Hannibal’s chin to gently clean him up before bringing his hand back and stroking over Hannibal’s cock again, slippery and hot. He doesn’t stretch himself, he doesn’t need to, and when he sinks down it is with a sigh and a bitten lip, before sweet, soft noises of need pull from him.

Will is flushed, horny, entirely demanding in his fucking today. He bides his time taking Hannibal to the very base, shifting around in his lap to feel him there, tensing his muscles to watch Hannibal’s throat work, his eyes hood and stay partially open. It feels good, it feels so entirely good. And for a second Will wishes Hannibal had his hands free to hold him and touch him and move him as he wishes.

Just for a second.

Then he moves himself.

Hannibal ducks his head, tongue wetting dry lips as his breath cuts short across them. He works upward, thighs rigid as he rocks into Will’s heat above him, raising as Will lowers, to bury himself deep enough that his groin’s curled, coarse hair rubs against silken, youthful skin. A little hand presses to Hannibal’s chest, palm tickling a dark nipple, and with the other, Will keeps himself open, fingertips touching Hannibal’s stiff shaft as he enters him, again and again.

Arms bent back, he strains, as much to grasp the boy and pull him close as to throttle him, as much to stroke him as to spread him painfully wide. He wants to consume, rather than be consumed - to take and claim and instead finds himself held in bondage to this boy, this insufferable boy, curls draped across his rosy cheeks and lips parted on a decadent whimper as he fucks himself on Hannibal’s cock.

“Will you not let me kiss you?” Hannibal asks, voice pulled tight from the pressure around his cock when Will squeezes, warm walls collapsing hot around him. “Let me lick the drugs from your throat and fill your mouth with my tongue,” he insists.

“Is that what you told the other boys, too?” Will asks, amused, coy, turning his hips one way and the other in a languid shift until Hannibal yanks at his restraints again and Will laughs. “You want to fill me more? Look at you already, sweating and straining for me because I’m riding your cock. Greedy, demanding, dirty old man you are.”

Will licks a strike up Hannibal’s cheek but does not yet kiss him, not again. Instead, he speeds up, arching and twisting and bending, one hand up in his own hair as his eyes close and his lip presses pale between white teeth and the flush spreads like wine over his nose and down his cheeks. He whimpers and sighs, shivers and coils, and then finds the right position, where Hannibal thrusts against his prostate over and over, and damn near howls his pleasure.

The sound morphs into another laugh and Will ducks his head, leaning in to finally kiss Hannibal, feed him his little sounds here as Will’s hands seek down behind the chair to gently encircle Hannibal’s wrists.

Hannibal does not bite him. He considers it, certainly, how easily his teeth would part that meat like ripe fruit, the gout of blood that would pour down his throat like wine. But then what pretty sounds he would miss, the aching high whimpers as their tongues instead stroke softly together, entwined in an embrace beyond the cages of their teeth. Were he to bite, Will would surely do the same, and both would bleed into the other until it dripped down their chins and spattered their stomachs like scarlet semen.

He chases Will’s lips with kisses as the boy moves away, little things, almost sweet, wanting - indeed - nothing more than to fill his Will in every way imaginable, in body and mind and in heart.

Will releases his voice to the sky with a long, wavering moan, and sets his hands back against Hannibal’s knees. Cock bobbing up against his belly, he works himself angled against Hannibal’s length, riding him faster, harder, deeper, enough for it to hurt, for him to feel the stretch that will draw a hiss from him for days. Perched between his teeth, swollen lip and words, throat jerking as he holds them back.

“Look at you,” Hannibal breathes in challenge, even as - true to Will’s words - sweat beads across his brow. “Insatiable boy, is there nothing that pleases you? I have tried to fill you, mouth and ass alike, your stomach with food and my own release, again and again and you are but a gaping hole,” he whispers. “There is no satisfying you, wretched child. You exist to torment me with demands that can never be sated. Has it always been so? Touching yourself late at night in youth again and again for a release that never proved enough. Terrible boy. You should be punished until penance sates you in place of sex.”

“Yes.” The word is hissed, the sibilant dragged out until Will’s lungs are empty and he gasps to fill them again, eyes opening to look at Hannibal. Tethered and angry and beautiful before him, close, too, with how Will rides him, how he presents and plays and shows him. How he uses Hannibal entirely for himself. It is rare Will gets to. It is rare he is allowed or is quick enough to take it.

Will slows his pace, enough to draw himself whining to pleasure, hot between them, up against his own stomach, smeared over Hannibal’s as Will leans in to kiss him, open-mouthed and hungry, a giving and a taking both.

“You are enough for me,” Will assures him, and despite their games, the coyness and whimsy, the words are earnest, entirely, truthfully meant. “I just cannot get enough of you, and so I am insatiable.”

Another kiss, a chaste and gentle thing, and Will tenses his muscles as he pulls off of Hannibal, as he sinks back down, working to bring him to orgasm as well, despite the selfishness of before. Will adores him. He watches Hannibal allow his body to enjoy the build up, to arch and bend and need Will as he always does, as he always will. The boy rides out the slick heat with a grin, bobbing up and down on exhausted legs until Hannibal is spent, until they are both sweaty and sore and tired.

Hannibal allows himself to pant, breathless from all that Will is and all that Will gives him, again and again. He yields that much to the boy who has claimed it - earned it from him, tonight and every other night since he took him from a desolate street corner in Baltimore. Hot semen drips sticky from inside Will, down to pool in the hair between Hannibal’s legs, sticking to the chair beneath him. Will’s own release clings to his belly, to dry tacky and stiff between them both.

Hannibal hums as Will leans into him, rutting warm and exhausted, rubbing his hairless chest against Hannibal’s own, sweat sticking to his chest hair and curling it dense. Tilting his head, he allows the boy to nuzzle his throat, touching kisses to the marks he sucked, with little sounds of bliss. Hannibal tugs against the bindings as though this time they might give, and allow him to sink his fingers into Will’s wild curls. To snare and pull them straight and drag the boy across the house to be similarly bound and used until tears wet his cheeks.

“Have I paid my debt to society?” Hannibal asks softly. “I have taken you from the hunting grounds where you shed blood with delight and mercilessness. You have taken me, entirely, and ensured that no other might hope to please me so wholly.”

Will smiles, eyes narrowing in the pleasure of it, the genuine delight, and leans in to kiss Hannibal again, just once.

“I will let you off with a warning,” Will whispers, nuzzling their noses together before he pulls back and with a groan, pushes himself to stand. He stretches, up onto his toes, hands up above his head and fingers splayed to the ceiling. Then he folds back into himself, compact and strong and beautiful, and with a smile, turns to gather his things from the floor. Hannibal watches, eyes following every bend and shift of the boy, muscles working beneath smooth skin, and frowns when the boy shows no indication of untying him.

“Will.”

“Hmm?” He looks sleepy, hair a mess and eyes drooping already in his post-coital haze. Will stifles a yawn against his wrist and draws a hand through his hair. Hannibal says nothing else, just tugs his restraints again and Will blinks, as though he just remembered they were there. He walks closer, leans to whisper in Hannibal’s ear.

“I don’t have the key.”

There is a flicker of something animal in Hannibal’s eyes. A panic, perhaps, a fear intrinsic to all men - even he - at being trapped, without release. His gaze sharpens and softens in turn, and he forces a smile that does not touch his eyes.

“Must I beg?” Hannibal offers, and Will’s brows lift.

“You can if you like.”

“And will you release me when I have?”

“Unless you know the words to create a key,” Will muses, “then no.”

Hannibal’s throat clicks, his tongue presses his lips apart. “Why do you not have the key, Will?”

It takes a moment of thought, through the fuzziness of sex and drugs, for Will to remember. He laughs and shakes his head, like a stubborn pony, eyes bright beneath his hair. “Because I stole the handcuffs.”

“You stole them.”

“From another officer of the law,” Will purrs, drawing the words long and delicious over his tongue, sweet as honey. Cloying. Hannibal snarls.

“Do you think, dreadful boy, that I cannot slip these bindings? Do you think that if these cuffs are not removed when I do, I will stop myself from strangling you with them? Enough. I have played your game,” he spits, shaking his skewed glasses free from his nose. They fall to his lap, resting against his heaving stomach. “Enough.”

Will makes a noise, like a child displeased and about to stamp his foot, and drops his head back to take a deep breath. His clothes are pressed to his belly, bunched up and to be thrown away, and he almost sways where he stands.

“I don’t have the key,” he repeats, looking at Hannibal again, sidelong, before he drops his head forward and rubs a hand against his face. “I don’t have one, I’m not lying to you. I will pick the lock and let you go and you can unleash all holy hell on me.” The tone is almost bored, now, and it would be funny if Hannibal weren’t tied to his own damn chair in handcuffs Will had stolen from an actual officer. “But I’m too tired now, you’ll have to wait.”

“Wait?”

“Wait.” Will raises his brows, shrugging. “I can’t see straight right now, I can’t see anything but double right now actually, that shit was strong, whatever it was.” He rubs beneath his nose and sniffs before looking longingly towards the stairs and the bedroom up them.

“Will -”

“I’ll be back,” he sighs, trudging off towards the kitchen. He disposes of the costume in the bin, drinks from the tap until he is sated and returns with a paperclip between his teeth, working it undone.

“Don’t fucking blame me if this takes a long time, I warned you my mind’s not here.”

“Language,” Hannibal warns, and the only thing he hears from behind his chair is a snort. His hands are numb already. Left overnight, they would swell until the cuffs could only be cut off with great difficulty and risk of harm. Hannibal envisions nerve damage, from his shoulders to his fingers. He envisions how even deadened, he would bring his hands to fists and make the boy pay for it.

He envisions how Will would laugh and weep his apology, and with swollen lips made bloody, kiss his repentance to Hannibal’s skin.

Will doesn’t pay mind to the warning, especially not now, half-asleep and with the room swimming around him. He’s nearly asleep by the time the clip finds its home, and the first cuff clatters undone. Hannibal joins him in cursing, then, as he draws his tingling arm back and flexes his hand, lip curling at the pain of blood moving freely inside it.

“Foolish boy,” he murmurs. It is enough to express his concern, that Will would fill his nose with substances and let others have their way with him. Enough to express his worry that Will would rob a police officer in such a state, and risk being caught. He will not voice those words aloud, knowing well enough that Will’s response would be to do far worse to spite Hannibal’s control, but it is enough for now to stymie his anger in a brooding patience.

There will be time enough to punish the boy once his mind has cleared.

The second cuff comes quicker, with Will’s fingers just copying the motions that he used to get the first unlocked. He leaves the belt for the moment, the knot easy enough to work once he can properly see it, and shoves the paperclip through one of the holes to hang there till morning. He stands then, swaying slightly and catching his balance against the back of the chair as he watches Hannibal work his fingers back to their dextrous functionality once more.

He knows he will feel them against his throat, over his skin, bending bruises into him until he weeps. He knows. And even so his smile is warm when he presses it against the chair, eyes barely open but meeting Hannibal’s when he turns.

“Truce?” he asks. “‘Til morning. I’m hardly here and you will hurt yourself trying to hurt me, when your arms are as they are.” He holds his hand out, palm up, for the man to take if he wishes.

Hannibal regards his boy balefully, before setting his hand in Will’s, unable to squeeze it yet but finding himself grasped instead. He stands, stepping out of his pants in one easy movement, and slips his arms around Will’s neck, over his shoulders.

“I will punish you as you have punished me,” he murmurs against Will’s hair, sighing when his boy leans into him in return. “When you are alone, at peace, seeking no more trouble than to finish a book on a quiet evening. Then, little wolf, once enough time has passed that you are certain I’ve forgotten, I will bind you to the bed and strike marks into your skin. I will have you, as many times as I see fit, until this debt has been repaid.”

He leans back, just enough to push their foreheads together and swallow a kiss, warm and hungry both. With a smile, genuine and dire both, Hannibal promises, “I will show you an abuse of power that you will long remember.”

Chapter Text

Will wakes early, enough that Hannibal has not yet stirred and the sun just barely crests the horizon. He watches it, lazily, over Hannibal’s shoulder through the large balcony windows, until it cuts his vision and then he closes his eyes and burrows against the man beside him.

He smells as he normally does in the mornings, clean from the shower the night before, clean sweat just beneath from the night’s warmth coupled with Will’s heat against him. He smells like Will, just a little, just enough, and it makes him smile.

He wonders why he’s in such a mood, they rarely strike him. He remembers at its most intense he had held Hannibal at arm’s length, missing his life in Baltimore, mourning for a chance to work in the FBI, be with his friends, find lovers, be normal. He had been so angry, he had been so upset by it. He had just wanted the feeling gone. And it’s similar, now, a strange tug of nostalgia but not to there. Not to a place he no longer wants to return. No, this is a longing for something he hasn’t had yet, something he could have, instead.

Will hums and kisses behind Hannibal’s ear, settling and not bothering the man any further, content to wait for him to wake up in his own time.

Hannibal turns from the sun, slashing bright where he rests, and settles against Will. He hides his face against his boy’s neck, beneath his chin, and in a rare moment of clumsiness, made heavy with sleep, twines their legs together and drapes an arm across Will’s waist. Even in this dawn of wake and rest, he knows his boy from all others, he knows him from any other person who walks the Earth or ever has. Each rise of bone or slope of skin, each soft curve and hard angle, each scar and mark and freckle is as known to the man as if it were his own.

Something in the thought pulls a sleepy sound from the man, and he brushes a kiss across his throat, lips touching to the hollow, nestled between collarbones and sternum, and the graceful length of vulnerability above. Will wraps an arm around him in return, fingers up to twine in his hair, to keep Hannibal’s head just there, close against him.

They are silent for long moments, just humming sounds or breathing against the other, slowly reminding themselves that they are here, that they are theirs and safe and contented. Will draws gentle patterns over Hannibal’s back and strokes over his scalp with light nails.

“Are you going away this week?” Will asks him quietly, voice still mumbled and rough with sleep, eyes barely open as he watches the rise and fall of Hannibal’s back as he breathes.

The stark sun of reality heats orange behind Hannibal’s eyes, and he hums in thought. He tries to find in Will’s tone any reason for asking about this so early, and finding little more than the uneasiness that always accompanies Hannibal’s absences, he hums.

“I had not intended to,” he says, voice rough, deeper so early. “Next, perhaps.”

Will’s fingers still for an instant, before bending again to draw his nails down Hannibal’s neck. “For how long?”

“A week, perhaps two,” Hannibal considers.

“Where?”

Now, his eyes lift, hooded heavily and dark, despite the sun that casts redness across them. He watches Will, the slight twist in the corner of his mouth, neither frowning nor smiling, just tension held in a single muscle. “I have not given it thought, in truth.”

Will swallows, doesn’t draw his eyes to Hannibal’s yet, just rests back and touches him. After a moment he considers allowing Hannibal’s words to just lift from the air between them. He always goes, he always comes back. Routine, habitual, practiced. But that tug, that curious fish-hook sensation beneath his skin pulls Will to take a deep breath instead.

“Please don’t go,” he says. No pleading, no desperation, just a soft request. “I ache when you go. I play it coy, I tease and I laugh it off but I hate it when you go.”

It’s so raw, so honest, that it leaves Hannibal speechless for a long time, and Will finally drops his eyes to his and smiles.

A gentle kiss is caught between them, before Hannibal shifts higher to share Will’s pillow with him. He studies the wideness of his eyes, and wonders how long he’s been awake. More, he wonders what has kept him awake, and slowly, Hannibal skims his thumb along Will’s cheek, following the curve of his jaw, touching over his lips.

“I thought that you enjoyed the time apart,” Hannibal murmurs. “That you wished to have space to yourself, time to - do the things that please you. I did not know it made you unhappy.”

Hannibal hears the past tense in his words only after he speaks them, and his brows knit.

Will turns more on his side to face Hannibal and hums, turning gently into his hand, kissing against the pad of his thumb, but not drawing it into his mouth as he would on a morning when he was playful. There is a sweet intimacy in this.

“It was novel, at first,” Will admits, eyes narrowing in thought as they glaze a little and he looks just past Hannibal before blinking him back into focus. “Endless parties and fucking and drugs that you knew about but couldn’t stop me doing.” He snorts softly but it’s humorless, thoughtful.

“I don’t -” Will holds his breath, releases it and nuzzles into the pillow a little before looking up again, cheeks warming with his admission, as surprising to him as it is to Hannibal, apparently. “I don’t want that anymore. Faceless strangers and the pressure to be this… thing that I’m not anymore. I don’t want you to come home and be jealous anymore. I don’t want you to worry, while you’re gone, that something will happen to draw me away. It won’t. I won’t be. I want you and -” Will sighs, letting his eyes drift to Hannibal’s lips almost sleepily. “And that’s it.”

Hannibal’s throat works to ease down a swallow, and his brow creases a little more. He would be lying to himself to deny that he has wanted this - a possession, certainly, but the kind that only be given, not demanded or coerced or forced. His jealousy has always been cruel and unrestrainable, driven by the envy beneath it for the others who - meaningless, always - see and touch the only boy that Hannibal has ever wanted to keep.

The only boy that he has brought back to life, rather than taking it from him.

And forced to do so by the hand of another who wounded Will when Hannibal would not try to control his independence. It has haunted him, since then, since he brought Will home and tried to stop him leaving - the first and last time he ever did, because Will always returned to him, as he promised he would. It did not ease the simmering greed, the bitterness, the fear that roils every time Will goes without him, or Hannibal leaves him alone.

“Beautiful boy,” Hannibal whispers. He spreads his hand over Will’s cheek, up into his hair to sweep it from his eyes. “You have me. And if you -”

Hannibal’s greatest defense, his words, fail him. He does not know how to ask for this. How to accept it. He has never wanted nor needed to before.

“If you want all of me,” he says, for the first time between them truly uncertain, “I am yours. Entirely. Only. No other in the world moves me as you do.”

Will smiles, that gentle and nervous little thing he so rarely wears, and just watches the man before him. Neither had wanted this, they claimed. Neither had wanted connection. Neither had wanted intimacy. It was to be possession and good rough fucking. But slowly, Will had moved further and further into Hannibal’s life. Slowly, other boys left it, and he rarely hunted alone. Slowly, they settled. Two monsters who would work with no one else.

“I want you,” Will tells him, moving a little closer with a pleased sigh. “All of you. With me. Take me with you when you go. Wake up with me, here, if you don’t.” Will smiles wider. “Do not fear that I will go home with another. I have lost my taste for them.”

In truth, a while ago. When the parties ceased to be genuine enjoyment and proved to be a cover and a distraction for something deeper. When he would wake up curled on Hannibal’s side of the bed breathing him in, missing him. When he would wander the house in a daze and end up curled in his chair or reading through his notes, or tracing sketches with delicate fingers.

When a kill wasn’t thrilling but necessary, unless they were killing a boy in tandem. Then he knew.

“Quite a way from five hundred dollars, we’ve come,” Will whispers, fond.

Hannibal slips an arm beneath Will’s side, the other around his shoulders, and rolls to his back, dragging his boy atop him. His boy, always, and now his, entire. Hannibal’s heart rattles against his ribs and Will rubs a hand across his chest as if to soothe it, pawing slow and steady to ease it to resting once more. Grasping Will’s hair in his hand, fingers curled against the back of his neck, Hannibal smiles against his cheek.

“To think that I was going to eat you,” he muses softly. “More than once.”

“Have you lost your taste for that too?”

“No,” the older man rumbles, warm. “The others, though - after so many, I believe I’ve reached a point in which they interest me less in my bed than on my cutting board. And I would give them all up in an instant to know that I need not share you with anyone else.”

Wrist turning, he brings Will firmly, gently, to face him, bending him back to bare his neck and reveal his eyes, brilliant blue. “Little wolf, you are the only one I have ever loved,” he murmurs. His dark eyes brighten, as he asks, “Should I tell you, then?”

A shiver ripples through Will and curls his fingers against Hannibal’s heart. “Yes,” he whispers.

“No more,” purrs Hannibal, resonant with pleasure. “You are mine, alone - beautiful, miserable boy.”

Will’s eyes are hooded, lips parted, and he watches Hannibal as his lips slowly curl into a grin, teeth press softly together as lips stretch across them. He wants nothing else. No more clubs filled with waifs he no longer is, no more music so loud it resonates down his bones, no more drugs from strangers just to feel the rush. He has enough rush. And if he ever wants them he knows where to go.

“I am yours,” Will agrees, entirely contented. “Yours alone.”

He sets his knees around Hannibal for balance and leans down to kiss him, soft and slow, breath pushed hot against Hannibal’s skin as their tongues stroke and slide against each other. There is a weight that seems to have lifted, a welcome agreement that both had been cautiously tiptoeing around, unable to voice their concerns and their needs and wants for the other, and from them.

“We will hunt together,” Will murmurs. “Share the killing, share the meals. But anyone who attempts to claim you, or want you…” Another shiver, in anticipation and pleasure both. “I will peel them apart.”

Hannibal’s gaze softens, a curious warmth in his grin as it appears in a flash of teeth, before he smooths it into a smile instead and rubs his nose against Will’s cheek. “I will revel in it,” he sighs against his boy’s ear. “They will not have me.”

“They cannot,” Will corrects him, nuzzling with a grin.

“You will not let them,” Hannibal sighs, relishing the words in all their forms, the thought behind them all that Will wants is him, alone - that the tiresome maintenance of a life that increasingly holds less interest for him can be relinquished. It has become a chore. For the few moments of delight in bringing back another bright-eyed and suspicious boy to whatever room Hannibal has in whatever city, the tedium of their dreams, the dreary droning of their desires, have lost their hold on him. They are all the same. They all waver and bend and fuck and die the same.

They are not Will.

“I will not need fear for you,” Hannibal says, letting his hand slip from Will’s hair to his chest, across his heart and back to his shoulder, following every curve of his body with his palm. Down his arm to a slender wrist, across his belly to the scar lateral across tender skin. “I will be able to breathe you in when you return to me, only you, without the ghosts of others on your skin. My little wolf,” he sighs, “we will rend to pieces any who touch you.”

Will just kisses him, deep and warm, eyes closed and heart hammering. He wonders if this is panic or delight, he wonders if this is what happiness feels like. He can barely remember a time he wasn’t happy, when he was with Hannibal. Always some level of genuine contentment and comfort, of being wanted and wanting, in return.

They have both grown since the night where Will spat blood to the floor and giggled. Hannibal the first to decide he wanted no other, Will still collecting potentials, just in case, just in case, Hannibal never came back, so he could be tethered to another, and not be abandoned a little while longer. But they were poor proxies, all of them, more delight in killing them and fucking them than wanting to spend time with them.

Will wants no other.

He needs no other.

And now neither will have another, not unless they both want to, not unless they both descend like valkyries upon a hapless idiot, to play with and kill and feast upon together. Like wolves in a pack. Like they have always been destined, perhaps, to be.

“Are you going away this week?” Will asks again, smiling when Hannibal’s lips tilt beneath his own. With a sigh, the man shakes his head.

“No.”

“Next, perhaps?” Will whispers, turning to nuzzle Hannibal gently when he shakes his head again.

“Not without you.”

Will laughs, biting his lip, so childishly happy he can barely contain it. He closes his eyes and settles over Hannibal again, nuzzling him over and over as though determined the man not forget how it feels, how they smell, together, mingled this way, always.

“Where are we going?” He asks.