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Chapter Text

Will likes coffee when he wakes, and the first time Hannibal deems him healed enough to drink it, he moans.

It is still dark in the mornings, cool fog curling outside the windows before revealing the trees beyond. Far enough away from the coast and the cliff to keep the worst of the memories at bay. The wounds still heal on them both; Hannibal tends them and Will lets him. There are no dogs, though Hannibal has made it clear that should Will wish to begin to acquire another family of strays they would be welcome. There are no gaudy decorations in this house, though it is well-appointed.

It is a new life for them both.

Hannibal watches Will, sitting by the bed while Will is still in it, and tilts his head just enough to suggest a smile.

“You didn’t have to,” Will murmurs against the crisp white mug, cradling it in both hands. Hannibal draws a breath and Will lifts his fingers, just two. “I know. You wanted to.”

“Precisely so.”

Will draws his knees up beneath the heavy, smoke-grey blanket and rests his wrists against them. The position hurts to hold, cracked ribs still knitting back together, but the worst of his injuries are superficial. He’d suffered no compound bones in the attack or the plunge that followed, and Hannibal acquired a few lacerations and sprains; there are bangs and bruises, bumped bones, and the cut that caught Will’s cheek like a fishhook tearing clean. But that is the worst of it, and better than what might have been, thanks to Hannibal’s careful angling of their fall that pierced them through the water like cliff-divers.

The coffee, even left to cool a little, is still shockingly hot against the inside of his mouth, but Will keeps the observation to himself and takes another sleepy sip. “Aren’t you having any?”

“I did, before my run.”

“You went running.”

“A few miles, only,” he says. Will’s attention directs to Hannibal’s middle, and this time, it is Hannibal who raises a gentle hand when Will takes a breath to speak. “I would not have gone if there were a chance of it reopening. I appreciate your concern,” he says, a curl of amusement warming his words as he lowers his hand to rest atop Will’s foot.

That simple touch is warm enough that Will swears he can feel it through the blankets. Even another mild scald to healing skin when he sips isn’t enough to ease his sparking static nerves or relax the twist of muscles in his stomach. The touch is welcome and wanted, soulfully satisfying in its simplicity. Will wiggles his toes once beneath Hannibal’s palm, and squints through steam.

“You’re making me look bad. Running with a sprained shoulder and a bullet-hole in your belly.”

“I didn’t know you ran,” Hannibal replies calmly, letting the corners of his lips tilt as his eyes narrow. It is a forgiveness and a reminder that Will need not push himself, not until he’s ready, and only then for himself.

He needn’t impress Hannibal when he is Hannibal’s whole world.

Their days are passed quietly together, slowly setting up a home now that they have time. Books and music, mysterious boxes that show up on the front doorstep once in a while containing both Will’s things and Hannibal’s. Will wonders every time one arrives how long this has been planned, how long he has been part of a bigger picture without realizing it. Perhaps it was always inevitable that they would find their way together again and again.

“Shall I make us breakfast?”

Will tries to hide his smile, only succeeding when he rubs the mug softly back and forth against his bottom lip. “Are you asking permission,” Will muses, “or forgiveness?”

Hannibal’s thumb strokes once against the inside of Will’s foot and he curls his toes, a tug of muscle as if to withdraw that earns an equal and opposite reaction in a scarce curve of Hannibal’s hand to hold him in place. “Forgiveness,” he finally says, and before Will can stop himself, he grins.

“There wasn’t any way in hell that you were going to wait for me to wake up to start it,” Will says, pleased. For as many times as he’s misjudged his instincts, for as many times as they’ve lead him down paths best described as close-but-not-quite, it’s something of a relief that his empathy hasn’t left him entirely. One never knows when such things can come in handy.

Even if it is just surmising Hannibal’s innate obsession with commandeering the kitchen.

“And if I say no,” Will muses. “‘No, Hannibal, you shan’t make us breakfast’ then what will you do, since you’ve already started it?”

Hannibal raises his eyebrows as though genuinely surprised and considers his answer. In truth, he is used to hunger, prison had made it easier to slowly wean himself down to the bare minimum his body needed to function. If need be, he could forgo breakfast and lunch and dinner as well.

But he hates to see Will starve. He hates to see anyone go without a meal.

“Then I will wait patiently for you to make it,” Hannibal replies. “Since that is obviously what you’re implying.”

Maybe Will misjudged his intuition a little.

It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.

He finishes his coffee and sets the mug aside, and beyond the flavor of the drink itself, it tastes unpleasantly bitter. Beyond navigating injury and space, they have had to learn this too in the month since the fall. How to speak to the other without masking their meaning to opaque depths; how to converse without threat. How to joke and how to laugh and how to breathe, away from the pervasive harm that wrapped barbed wire over everything they said for years. They are unraveling it, inch by inch, but it is slow work, and not without pain.

Will slips lower in the bed, and works his toes beneath Hannibal’s leg, offering a smile that he doesn’t try to fight away like the others before it.

“I was kidding,” Will says. “You know your cooking’s better than mine. I would love breakfast.”

Another gentle squeeze to Will’s leg as a reassurance. He knows. They will get better, in bodies and in minds, back to how they were before the suspicion and the pain, before the flood of blood on the kitchen floor and the tears that followed in the rain. Before, before, before.

They will have it again.

They have fought too hard to let it go now.

“Perhaps it is too late,” Hannibal considers, standing. “Perhaps I am offended.” A lifted eyebrow and Will snorts, watching Hannibal circle the bed like a predator. He settles casually into the other side of it, clothes and shoes and all, folding his elegant hands on his chest and turning to look at Will. “Perhaps I will lie here and allow myself to relax.”

Will stretches his legs out, too, and slides flat beneath the blankets. With a feigned stretch he turns away from Hannibal a little, then rocks towards him, and finally completes a turn to his side. Watching from beneath a spill of curls, Will’s smile grows aching with every evenly measured breath of the man beside him. The mountain winds have made his cheeks red, a constant blush beneath his eyes and over the bridge of his nose. The cuts they took at the end of a dragon’s claws will soon heal to thin scars, adding to the ones Will knows already by heart.

Slender fingers emerge from beneath the sheets, and Will reaches to trace the scar on Hannibal’s cheek with his fingertips. Scarcely there, a touch so near it’s almost not a touch at all, and Will tries not to think of Muskrat Farm and to replace that memory with this one instead. A quiet morning, one of many, and another beautiful thread that helps to form the complex tapestry of Hannibal Lecter.

With a little sound of contentment, Will’s hand slowly disappears beneath the blankets again.

Hannibal’s brow lifts, but there’s no more reaction than that, and it makes Will feel like a giddy teenager. He’d laugh, quick and nervous, if it wouldn’t strain his stitches and ruin the moment of pretended peace between them. His breath flutters in his chest anyway, like the wings of a caged bird flapping closer to freedom. He swallows, and his throat clicks.

“Isn’t breakfast going to burn?” he finally whispers, eyes narrowed in delight.

Hannibal considers him, a gaze lazy and warm from the corner of his eyes, before he blinks, and with a slow groan pushes himself to stand.

“I can’t possibly serve you burnt crepes,” he sighs, put-upon, his elaborate bluff called by a clever and beautiful man, as always. Hannibal bends to straighten the blankets he had laid on, and without thinking about it, he leans to press a kiss to Will’s bottom lip, chaste and gentle, parting his own when Will does before kissing him properly.

Will leans into the kiss, fingers curling against the sheets beneath as he pushes himself to sit higher. In the month they’ve had together, he can count on one hand the amount of times they’ve kissed. Two hands, if they start with the promise sealed between them on the cliff. Nevermind. It doesn’t matter. How many times, for how long, none of it matters at all when Hannibal’s lips move to match his own, closing together, parting, shared breath and shared movement and heads tilting in tandem.

Their noses bump, and Will’s wrinkles with pleasure.

Hannibal doesn’t kiss like anyone else who has ever shared one with Will. There is an insistence to his movements, a firmness that demands Will know the depth of his affection. Will shifts to drag his legs beneath him and he curls a hand against Hannibal’s cheek, only to find Hannibal’s hand against his own in return. Strong fingers slide into his hair, curls looping around them, and when he softly closes his fist Will shivers, goosebumps spilling down his skin. A little sound rises from his throat as Hannibal bears him gently back.

Why can’t it be just a kiss, enjoyed for closeness rather than as means to an end?

Will draws a breath and tilts his lips aside, making another soft noise against Hannibal’s cheek. Hannibal lets him go then, reluctantly, pressing their foreheads together and allowing his lips to click quietly when he presses them together and parts them again.

“You will distract me enough to have me go back on my word,” Hannibal whispers, voice gently roughened. He tilts his head and rubs his nose softly against Will’s once, again, before letting him go and stepping away, making his way out of the bedroom again and downstairs to the kitchen.

Will notices that he takes the mug as he goes, that he leaves the door open for Will to follow when he wishes. Always thoughtful, always aware.

Will thumbs against his lip, as if he might press the feel of Hannibal’s kiss against it again. He sucks it between his teeth, to taste him there. Will’s heart speeds, their fondness shown always in sudden bursts of heat and light like little stars born against a field of black. Not only like this, but in clasped hands and nudges shoulder-to-shoulder as they share the work of washing dishes. In the moments when their words dance as quick and easy as they once did, without the threat of blades held behind backs and in times when they are content to remain quiet. In coffee mugs brought steaming to bed and breakfast cooked without needing to ask permission, but asking anyway.

Even if he did already start it before.

Will presses the back of his hand against his healing cheek and grins as he sets his feet to the floor. The polished wood is heated from beneath the floorboards, the whole house warm despite the wintry chill outside. How many safehouses the man keeps, Will doesn’t know, but this one - this one Will knows he chose for them to share together. Surrounded by evergreen forest and high enough in the mountains that Will still gets a little dizzy from it, with space outside the wide glass windows for dogs to maybe play someday. A comfortable room for Will to use when he needs to be alone, with his old familiar chairs somehow manifested from Maine, and a study for Hannibal with ever-increasing books and a drawing table, when he wishes space of his own.

Neither of those rooms have seen any use.

“I never told you that I like crepes,” Will smiles, feet clicking against the tile floor as he pads into the kitchen. Hannibal’s sweatshirt sleeves hang long over Will’s hands, sleep pants pooled around his feet. He doesn’t remember when he took to wearing Hannibal’s things, but now he tells himself it’s a game, to see when Hannibal will say something about it. It definitely isn’t so that he can imagine how they fit against Hannibal’s ferocious frame, all tall and broad-shouldered. And it certainly is not done so Will can duck his nose beneath the collar and breathe him in. “How did you know?”

Hannibal considers a moment, carefully folding a newly-cooked crepe and setting it to a plate with two others. He pours batter onto the huge flat pan and uses the strange utensil in his hand to turn it into a near-perfect circle to cook.

“A year or so ago, I made them as an appetizer for a luncheon you did not attend,” Hannibal says. “My guests did not have the pleasure of tasting them either, as you made short work of clearing the plate as we spoke in the kitchen.” There is a playful glint in Hannibal’s eyes as he looks at Will. He passes him the plate and gestures to the choice of sauces he can pour atop. It seems that roasted walnuts, coconut and lemon already rest carefully folded within the soft cake for Will to enjoy. “I merely made a guess.”

“Good guess,” Will agrees, around a forkful of breakfast before he’s even touched the sauces. He takes a drizzle of each - chocolate and hazelnut, fresh boysenberry, vanilla cream - before leaning against the counter beside Hannibal, who glances to him with a smile in the corners of his eyes.

“There is grapefruit juice at the table.”

Will glances to the cup of pulpy pink juice and nods, brows lifting high beneath his hair as he swallows. “Where did you find grapefruit, during winter, in the middle of the Cascades? You must have had a hell of a run.”

“And yet for such a seemingly remarkable feat, there it sits, untouched,” Hannibal teases, smile widening.

Will watches as his eyes catch the light, bright as amber, with shadows stretching dark along the wrinkles beside them. Hannibal’s pleasure unfurls before him like a resplendent bird ruffling its feathers; Will’s guilt makes it hard to swallow when he reminds himself that he would have let him remain caged, his plumage dulled to prison-grey. He accepts the next crepe when it’s offered to him, and strokes the backs of his fingers down Hannibal’s arm in thanks before finally making his way to the table.

The windows that form the front of the house are mirrored on the outside, allowing for privacy from without and an unadulterated view of the mountains from within. Will sits and sets his feet against the glass, splaying his toes as he watches the snowy landscape sit quiet before him, like a Breugel painting. It is peaceful here. Will has managed to sleep here, with Hannibal always near, touching only when he jerks awake in a cold sweat, or when he is in danger of ripping his stitches. Never pressing, never forcing.

Never pushing for more.

Always thoughtful, always aware.

Will is, too.

Of the subtle shifts in barometric pressure between them, of the snap of lightning the strikes cloud-to-earth when they touch. It is a stormcloud hanging just over the horizon. Will can feel that pressure build to sharp ozone within his chest. His pulse patters like quickening rain when the wind of their breath gusts close between them.

He turns his head incrementally when Hannibal moves behind him, his own plate in hand, though less lavishly lashed with sweet dessert. Hannibal sets another cup of coffee beside Will and sits next to him to regard the winter world outside.

“Perhaps a dog,” Hannibal says after a while, fork working expertly to slice and fold his crepe. “You will have time to train it, while the weather is harsh, while you can’t run with it.”

“Says the man who ran to Florida for grapefruit,” Will teases, but he lets the suggestion linger and tug his heart a little faster. He clears his throat, brows knitting. “There’s a commitment in that.”

“Are we not?” Hannibal asks, and Will lifts his gaze to the treeline stretching without end before them, on and on and on.

“Committed?” he responds. “We should be.”

With a note of regret, Will presses his tongue to his bottom lip as if to clear away the unfortunate joke. He hears within himself a distant gallop of thunder, and shakes his head to try and clear it again. Another twist of barbed wire works itself free from them. Will accepts the prick of pain in penance.

“Yes,” Will finally answers. No qualifications and no omissions, no conditions and no weaving of words to hide his intent. Obfuscation between them has lead to destruction, every time.

There is no doubt that they would not survive it again.

“Yes,” he says again, smiling softly as Hannibal twines a hand in his hair. “I wouldn’t have thought you liked dogs,” he adds, more than a little pleased. “You’re full of surprises today.”

“Perhaps I should slow down. Otherwise I will use them all up in one day, and then where will we be?” Hannibal’s eyes narrow once more and he takes a sip of his coffee, turning to face the window again. There is a tension in Will that Hannibal wants to dissipate. It will never go away, he would hardly be Will Graham if it did, but Hannibal still wishes to see Will relax more. As he had long ago in Baltimore, long ago when he would come for evening talks and stay for hours until predawn.

Hannibal misses his laugh. He hopes to hear it again.

He takes up their dishes when they both finish; he talks to Will over his shoulder where he sits at the counter. It is easy, it is lazy and it is warm. They have earned that.

Will folds his arms on the counter and rests his chin atop them, watching Hannibal work.

Perhaps the storm will pass, and if Will were to draw attention to it, he would cause undue alarm. Perhaps he’s inventing it entirely, old worries creating new problems where there aren’t any. It wouldn’t be the first time Will has done so, his imagination running away with itself, drawing from situations etched in his thoughts but not of his own doing. He draws a breath as Hannibal sets aside the neatly folded dishtowel and turns to him, resting his hands atop the black and grey marble counter between.

His hair, silver and gold in the glinting morning sun, hangs in front of his eyes, and Will reaches to slide it from his brow. When his hand is softly ensnared, Will sighs. When his palm is kissed, Will feels his cheeks warm. When thin lips follow the length of each finger in turn, Will turns their hands together and matches their fingers one to one, Hannibal’s longer than his own, and then he twines them together.

Now, Will tells himself. Now is the moment of morning peace when you tell him, now when there is nothing but warmth and clasped hands between you, now before your worrying becomes anxiety and reaches a tenor that Hannibal will surely sense in scent or touch or taste upon the air. Like a bloodhound catching the scent. Like a wolf downwind a potential threat.

Now, Will.

Now, Will.

“Now then,” Hannibal murmurs, dark eyes dancing devilish as he brings Will’s fingers to his lips once more. “Perhaps there is a way for us both to make amends for our caloric sins.”

Will’s breath catches.

“You’ve already run today.”

“Something more rewarding than that, perhaps, though done right, no less physically engaging,” Hannibal answers. The tilt of his head is subtle, almost serpentine, though his smile’s warmth doesn’t lessen. Will knows that he knows, though the form and shape of those unspoken words is not yet clear. He knows he hears the thunder too, even if he doesn’t yet see the storm.

How does one speak their own truth when it has always been treated as unnatural?

How does one convey the unique movements of their own heart when they are at odds with the beat of another?

In what possible words can Will make himself known, in full and open honesty, and convey with greater passion still that it is not a rejection of the extraordinary man who he loves beyond reason?

I love you, but I don’t want to make love with you.

I worship you, but I have no need to know you in that way.

I revere you, but my reverence doesn’t reach between my legs.

Will laughs, helpless, and tightens his fingers against Hannibal’s own to bring the older man’s fingertips to his lips instead. “With cracked ribs and a healing gunshot wound, doctor? I think we’re more cut out for the couch today.”

A hum, then, narrow-eyed delight, but Hannibal allows it. Will can tell, too, that beyond the beautiful veneer of placid comfort, Hannibal hurts. He hurts because he is human too, because he doesn’t have to pretend here, and because he knows Will has seen him worse. He hurts, and he gets tired.

“And what, my dear Will -” Hannibal’s voice purrs caramel against Will’s skin. “- shall we do on the couch?”

“Metropolis?”

Hannibal’s eyes narrow, and his smile splits as it so rarely does to show his uneven teeth, beautifully suited to his face. He inclines his head, agreement, and lifts just his eyes to regard Will before him, watching him with a look of cool, almost childish relief.

“Nearly four hours, and with the mist outside...”

“We can light the fire.”

“We should light the fire,” Hannibal agrees, bringing up his other hand to rest his cheek against. He watches Will, adoring, loving every part of him, scarred and marred and hurt but never broken.

His gaze is soft as silk against Will’s skin, and the younger man shivers, embarrassed and delighted both to be the recipient of such attention, from someone so remarkable. The threat of inclimate weather roiling within his head eases; the clouds part. Will brings Hannibal’s fingers, still locked with his own, to his lips and tilts his head back and forth, brushing his lips against Hannibal’s knuckles.

It is enough to stir him, and spur his heart to a gallop.

It is enough, just so.

Will’s grin widens, a flinch lessening it just a little as he stretches new skin. He squints, mischievous and delighted already by the day ahead - ordinary, serene, domestic. Words that he never might have imagined would apply to them. Words that belong to them now for as long as they can keep them.

“The movie. The fire. You,” Will says, pushing a kiss against their woven fingers. “And maybe I’ll make drinks for us later.”

“It’s not yet noon,” grins Hannibal.

“And it will be past by the time we want them. Let me,” Will insists, releasing Hannibal’s hand with a smooth push from the counter and a smile across his shoulder. “It’s the least I can do.”

Chapter Text

Will agrees to be surprised, and Hannibal agrees to surprise him.

The little bundle is delivered several weeks after Hannibal makes the two hour drive to meet the breeder, and make arrangements. It is delivered with all the essentials, a crate and blankets, toys and a bed. Bowl and a bag of the food the dog has so far been raised on, advice as to which to transfer him to once he has grown.

Hannibal decides not to tell the man that the dog will be getting his own gourmet dinners within the week.

It is early yet and Will still sleeps, insisting on sleeping pills the night before while a heavy rain raged outside. It will be a good thing to wake to, Hannibal thinks. Final goodbyes are said, and once Hannibal closes the door, he opens the crate to meet their new companion.

The pup is large already, though only several weeks old, with long limbs and large paws and a furry muzzle and a huge tongue. Hannibal allows the little thing to nuzzle his hand, to gently hold it down with its heavy uncoordinated paw. He had chosen him to keep them occupied, both. He has always been amused with Will’s assumption that he doesn’t care for dogs. He had them, in Lithuania, long and lithe hunting hounds he had watched grow from puppyhood. This boy reminds Hannibal of home.

He takes him free of the crate, and murmuring warmly in his purring foreign tongue, he takes the heavy bundle with a wagging tail upstairs to the bedroom.

Beneath the blankets, piled four high, lays his lover in a lump. Snoring softly, Will’s only movement is the rise and fall of his sides beneath the pile in which he’s wrapped himself. He doesn’t awaken from the sound of panting puppy breaths against Hannibal’s cupped palm. He doesn’t awaken from the sound of puppy tail slapping against Hannibal’s side. Will doesn’t awaken at all, or even stir, and Hannibal channels his sudden overpowering joy into a wide smile, pressed to their puppy’s head.

Silent socked steps carry him to the bed, and he sets the puppy down upon it, stepping back to watch. With a crisp shake from snout to tail, the puppy shakes himself and sniffs the air. Clumsy paws pick their way over the bed and over Will’s legs in turn. The man makes a sound, fussy and small, and draws his knees up closer to himself, but the puppy pursues, and when he discovers Will’s face in a corona of blankets, he barks.

He barks, and he licks him, again and again.

Dogs know their allies, Hannibal supposes.

Will jerks awake with a gasp, pulled suddenly to the surface of consciousness from the depths of drug induced-sleep. He blinks, uncomprehending. His eyes widen. Will meets the pale blue eyes of the little - no, the big puppy who regards him in return, and he laughs, running a hand over his saliva-damp beard.

“Oh my God,” Will laughs. “What have you done?”

Hannibal grins and sits on the end of the bed, watching the new dog wriggle his entire back half in excitement as Will works his arms free of the blankets and wraps them around the dog.

“Silly thing, hi,” Will sighs, pushing himself to sit up further, wincing gently as the puppy immediately follows and sets heavy huge paws to his chest. “God, you’re just a pup, aren’t you?” He strokes over the floppy ears, over the wiry fur of the muzzle, over the slippery tongue that tries to lick him everywhere at once. He looks at Hannibal and shakes his head.

Surprised, as he had asked to be.

“The name is up to you,” Hannibal tells him, settling a knee against the bed as the pup turns back to wiggle towards him too, woofing happily as Hannibal allows him close and takes his muzzle to gently shake. “But I took the liberty to select the breed.”

“Hannibal, he’ll be huge!” Will laughs, sitting with his arms wrapped over his drawn-up knees.

“Oh yes,” Hannibal agrees. “Irish Wolfhounds tend to be.”

All at once, Will comes alive again. As when the boxes arrived in bits and pieces, reconnecting him with familiar pieces of his former life, so too Hannibal watches as another missing fragment of Will is restored. He laughs bright as the puppy bounds between them, unable to decide who he wants to be pet by more. Will’s scar has healed, shining dark but free of pain and stitches, and the light burns brighter in his eyes.

“Don’t take this as any other way but how I mean it, right now, only now,” Will says, “but you’re insane.”

“I’ve been told,” Hannibal agrees, allowing a smile as Will scoops the puppy up beneath his front legs and brings him close.

Will has missed this. He has missed this with an ache he would not allow to be expressed even in his own thoughts. Molly took their dogs with her when she went, but knowing that they’re cared for has hardly stopped the pangs that twisted sharp within him when he found himself listening for clicking claws that never came and seeking out warm furry bodies at night. Beyond providing ample comedy fodder for those around him, Will’s dogs were always a solid ground when his worlds were in tumult. Reassurance of his own reality, a focus on which to hone. Kind beings that loved him no matter the chthonic depths to which his thoughts wandered; loving beings that by needing his care, gave Will the wherewithal to continue caring for himself.

Will breathes in deep the scent of sweet puppy breath and looks past floppy ears to the man who watches them, warmth softening his eyes but for where a smile draws them narrow.

“Titus,” Will decides.

“‘Title of honor’,” Hannibal answers, and Will snorts a laugh as he lays back with the puppy against his chest.

“Sure,” he grins. “Or like the Titans, since he’s going to be massive. You realize he’ll take up half the bed, right? He’ll be taller than you, on his back feet.”

“There isn’t half the bed to take,” Hannibal counters, amused. “As we each take half of it already.”

“He’ll find a way,” Will guarantees, gently squeezing the soft puppy-fat around the dog’s neck until he whines happily in puppyish joy, paws splayed to show his huge toes. He is very young, relatively, and he will need a lot of attention and training. Hannibal already expects the puppy will sleep most of the time he is inside, he will run himself ragged in the snow with Will, he will eat half his weight a day in meals.

He cannot wait to raise him with the man he loves.

“He will chew,” Hannibal warns, though he knows he hardly has to. “But I have been informed he has been taught to ask to go outside to relieve himself. I do anticipate accidents, however.”

“Shit happens,” shrugs Will, a laugh breaking free again at his own terrible joke. The sound is warm as sunlight and Hannibal allows a shiver from the sudden and unexpected joy of it. For years, he assumed one would see their end at the other’s hand. For years after that, he imagined he would never see Will again without bulletproof glass between them.

He told Will once, long ago, that he gave him a rare gift.

What Will gives him now is rarer by far.

Will works velvety soft ears between his fingers for a moment more before allowing Titus his freedom to march across the bed. He settles atop Hannibal’s pillow and Will tucks a grin beneath his arm, eyes crinkled in their corners before he turns his gaze to Hannibal instead. He reaches for him, fingers splayed, and when Hannibal takes his hand, Will pulls him close.

They arrange themselves close, lying long and pressed together. Tangled legs and arms draped over the other, their bodies sink together in close comfort. Will spreads a hand along Hannibal’s cheek, up through his hair and down against his neck. Behind Hannibal, their puppy huffs a sleepy contentment, and Will grins so wide his face aches from it.

“See?” Will says. “Half the bed for him, and half for us. We’re already learning how to compromise.” He pulls his bottom lip between his teeth and releases it in a soft smile. “Thank you. For all of this. Everything. Hell,” he laughs, cheeks burning sweet embarrassment.

Hannibal takes a deep breath and releases it in a heavy sigh that is echoed by the dog behind him. Already, Titus’ large feet slip from the pillow as he grows lank and sleepy, too much excitement for such a young thing in one day. He will wake, soon, and play, and explore the house, but for now, it seems, he is content to snooze beside the two of them, growing used to their smell. Hannibal leans in to kiss Will’s smile, to trace his jaw, to cup his cheek and hold him close.

Hannibal shifts just enough to press a leg between Will’s, to draw up his knee to rub between Will’s legs, just to stimulate, to rock them both to gentle pleasure.

Lightning strikes without warning. No rattle of thunder, no darkening clouds betrayed its coming, but it snaps through Will all the same. It isn’t wholly unpleasant, it can’t be, biology being what it is. Nerve endings respond whether Will wants them to or not. But the sensation that sparked through him is gone as quickly as it appeared, and while Will doesn’t realize he’s tensed, Hannibal does.

The look that passes between them drops the bottom out of Will’s stomach, like an elevator lowering too quickly. Hannibal doesn’t say a word but Will wants to grasp him and tell him not to apologize. It isn’t his fault, it isn’t anyone’s fault. There’s nothing wrong and there’s everything wrong and Will only remembers to breathe when Hannibal spreads his palm against Will’s back and holds him close.

“I,” he murmurs, “am going to set away the dog’s things. Even though he will never see the inside of his crate, nor the soft pad of his dog bed.” He kisses Will softly, on the cheek, not the lips, and expertly extricates himself.

He draws a heavy hand through Titus’ scruffy fur and plays with his ears, and then he goes.

There is a tension in his shoulders but no anger, there is exhaustion but not pain. Hannibal disappears downstairs and Will can hear him shifting the new things for the dog to the storage room. The only reason he restrains the curse that itches against his lips is not to wake the puppy beside him. It’s unfair that years of unlearning shame - a remarkable feat for one who trusts his own thoughts so little - now amount to nothing; he is choked by guilt so suddenly, so starkly, than he can hardly draw breath.

It’s unfair that his wiring is fucked, and he can’t allow himself to think of it now as normal, or okay, or anything other than a mistake.

It’s unfair that he reacted, that he didn’t just go with it, that Hannibal compromises again and again and works so hard and asks so little and Will can’t.

He can’t.

In good fucking conscience, what little remains of it now, he can’t. For all the childish anger he holds against life’s unfairness, it feels crueler still to imagine trying to fake desire for something he neither wants nor needs - that he never has, from anyone of any gender. Hannibal would know in an instant that Will’s heart wasn’t in it, he would see it writ in body and face, he would see it writ on Will’s soul bared before him.

The exhaustion that Hannibal carries in him now would pale by compare to the injury that would do.

Will moves in inches to fill the space that Hannibal occupied moments before. His warmth is there, the warm familiar smell of him on the sheets, their Titus just beside. He spans his hand through wiry brindled fur and tries to listen for the sound of Hannibal below.

He hears nothing, and turns his face to the pillow to bury his groan of frustration.

Hannibal tilts his head at the sound, and gently lowers the bag of food to the pantry, dusting his hands against his thighs.

He thinks, perhaps, pain. Pain writes itself against everyone slightly differently, sometimes as tension, some as a physical response to jerk back or curl up. Will is healing but not healed, he has scars that are invisible and untouchable and so many are caused by Hannibal himself. It is his fault, in that regard, that he had expected more from Will, more quickly, as though it means nothing at all.

He will wait.

He will, somehow.

With everything set away, Hannibal mounts the stairs quietly again, eyes just skimming into the bedroom as he passes it. Titus has unfurled, like a little caterpillar with too few legs, and Will rubs his belly but his heart isn’t in it. He has his head buried in the pillow and lies almost entirely still, except for his hand that expertly scratches the puppy’s tummy.

Hannibal keeps walking.

He needs time. He will wait.

Will buries in his throat the soft sound that rises when Hannibal doesn’t return to him.

He will wait.

Hannibal ensured there were more rooms than they needed when he bought this house. There are others, in different locales, other formations of structure that might have been better suited depending on how the events of the last few months played through. This is the house that he held in highest esteem, were he and Will to escape together, were Will to want to run with him at all. It was never a certainty; more often than not, it was far from it. But this place was built for them, a home lacking only the hearts to beat within it.

They are there now, steady and secure, but kept in separate chambers whose locks Hannibal has yet to learn how to pick. Still more than he had hoped for; still more than he might have wished.

But for the first time since they arrived, he seeks out his study to collect himself.

Within, the study resembles his old office. The rooms on the third floor of the house are two stories high, the windows reaching from floor to ceiling, and Hannibal had installed a small mezzanine for his library around the remaining three walls. He feels tense, here, now, when before this room would have calmed his nerves.

He considers the morning. He considers the weeks before, the two months, more, now, that they have lived together. Will shows no signs of distress, he shows no signs of regret for choosing to come with Hannibal, here, after they had planned it together. In fact, Will is more relaxed here, happier, than he has been for years. There is no longer that smell of panic on him, no longer that exhaustion that smells like old sweat and heavy cologne.

And yet -

No kiss has been met with resistance, many initiated by Will himself, leaning close on sleepy early mornings, or passing Hannibal in the kitchen. Touches, against his skin, against his clothes, soft and gentle and warm, always. And Hannibal wants him. He wants him, he always has.

He drops himself into the large desk chair and leans back in it, watching the snow outside the window, easing now as winter leaves them slowly to seep to spring. Hannibal’s hand rests on his leg and his fingers gently rub there as his other hand presses cool fingertips to his lips. He listens to the quiet breathing in the other room, the happy whines of puppy joy as Titus gets acquainted with one of his new keepers. Will is happy. Will is happy here, he is content and warm.

But that tension… Hannibal allows his hand to slip between his legs and cup himself. Why had he tensed? What did Hannibal read wrong?

Will reached for him. He pulled him near and closed the distance between them. Hannibal’s remark about the separate sides of their bed did not go unnoticed, and Will sought to remedy it. He remarked, even, that they fit together on one side.

They fit together in every way.

So why not this?

Hannibal’s fingers spread against himself. His cock responds with swift stiffening, growing full beneath his soft strokes. He doesn’t bother to calculate how long it’s been, the answer would only dig the knife further and twist. There were reasons before, despite instances of closeness and whispered tension on shared breath. They were not in a place, as individuals or together, that such acts could be consummated.

But here. Now. They touch and kiss and cleave together as lovers, but a barrier remains and Hannibal imagines severing it and he cuts the thought short. He’s tried that enough, and rent wounds through the man he loves that he thought irreparable. There will be no more breaking down of barriers by Hannibal’s hand. It must be Will who decides to surmount those obstacles.

“Fuck,” Hannibal hisses, beneath his breath, an allowance to be uncouth wrought from raw frustration.

He palms harder against himself, his cock providing resistance in its throbbing and his pants a delicious friction between. Even the simple slide of his leg between Will’s own was intoxicating; the thought now, dizzying. He slips his zipper quietly downward and lifts the waistband of his briefs to bare his cock to the crisp morning air.

He lets himself imagine yielding, instead of resistance.

Strong legs and scarred lips part themselves for him. He rubs himself against his palm; he rubs himself against trembling thighs and a taut erection tenting threadbare boxers. Hannibal’s thumb takes the place of Will’s mouth against his own, pushing his lips out of place with a rough kiss and a moan. If the Will that lays upon their bed will not have him this way, then the Will that exists idealized in his mind will.

“I love you,” Hannibal whispers. “I need you.”

He imagines soft hands and whispered words, he imagines heavy breaths and smiles. He imagines the kisses, ardent and intentional. He imagines not the tension that coils through Will after, but the pliancy of pleasure that would unfurl him writhing and glorious. Hannibal makes a sound, a little thing, barely heard, and bites his lip, allowing his head to loll against the back of the chair unsupported.

Against the doorframe, Will watches. He watches the way Hannibal’s hand works against himself, quick and graceful, long fingers and his hot, thick cockhead, the foreskin pulling back to reveal it on every downstroke. He listens to the heavy breaths, panted warm into the cool room.

He is beautiful. Lord, he is beautiful.

Will’s blood heats just from watching him, and his cock stirs in his pants seeing his partner so undone, so entirely vulnerable in the pleasure he gives himself. He thinks of the moment on the bed, when they had pressed close, when hips had rubbed with hips and they were so near to this, and yet -

This feels right. This feels so much more organic, so much more intimate to see Hannibal stroking himself to the thought of Will. And it is the thought of him, his name whispered and worshipped past parted wet lips as he parts them with his thumb. It is Will’s name that wraps warm around the pad of Hannibal’s finger, pulled against his tongue to suck. This man who carries himself as a god, who has refined and perfected every part of himself, for Will becomes altogether human.

Hannibal imagines thick curls vining around his fingers. He whispers against Will’s mouth that he wants them to share this, he knows this pleasure is unfamiliar but he will guide him through it - they will learn together. They always have. Hannibal loves him, in every way. He wants to love him in every way. Hannibal would not take him roughly, no, he would be as patient and gentle as Will needed, however he needed, legs curled against Hannibal’s hips or hands pressed to his belly as Will arches astride him.

It is this that snaps his resolve in two with a moan, the creak of leather stilling as his body stiffens. Shoulders bending, Hannibal fists his cock in long, shuddering strokes. Every thick splatter against the floor beneath plucks Will’s heart faster, hand across his mouth to stop himself from being overheard in hitched breaths and found out. He commits the image to memory of Hannibal beautifully unmade. He turns away before he can see what follows, before he is found out.

Will realizes his body has responded when he has to correct his stride along the way. It feels good, the shift of sensitive skin against his cool boxers. It’s like a secret just for him, to honor Hannibal’s own act of worship with one of his own, in the best way he knows how. Will rarely touches himself - it almost never crosses his mind to do so, but for moments of physical response wherein ignoring arousal would prove a greater strain than simply resolving it. But heat flourishes not only between his legs as Will shuts himself into the bathroom; it spreads between his ribs and makes it hard for him to breathe to think of sharing this with Hannibal, even at a distance.

No one else could move him so.

No one else has in many years.

Will bends and catches himself against the sink, one hand curling against the cool ceramic, the other down to work free his sleep pants and reach within to grasp himself. The effect is immediate, biological responses aside. Will’s entire body feels alight with sparks of pleasure, he strokes and imagines Hannibal near, watching as Will had watched him, letting his eyes devour Will with such adoration as to be palpable.

Will can almost taste it on his tongue.

He bends lower to bite his knuckles as he continues to stroke, not wanting Hannibal to know that he had taken such pleasure in seeing him so secretly undone. Perhaps he was not meant to see. Perhaps he was. The thoughts mingle with Will’s own bodily responses, unusual and unfamiliar and so good he could weep for it.

He imagines the soft lips that kiss his own every morning, he imagines the fingers that curl just tight enough in his hair, the hands that touch, the skin that feels always warm against him, the breath that stirs shivers through him in affection.

Everything. Everything that he already shares with Hannibal pulls Will to the edge of his orgasm and over, dripping to the floor as he softly whimpers his release. He feels exhausted with the onslaught of emotion and reaction. He feels guilty, immediately, for enjoying this so much on his own and not sharing it with Hannibal. But the thought of more, of Hannibal touching where Will had, of Will touching Hannibal where he had stroked himself, does not pull sparks of desire through him as the idea of something so illicit alone.

Will releases his teeth from his fingers and leans back to see the marks he had left. His body trembles and he takes a moment to settle himself again. Then he goes to gather toilet paper to wipe the floor, he tosses it and flushes, washes his hands in the sink and refuses to look in the mirror. He splashes cold water against his face to soothe the blush there until he hears a gentle whine and the tiniest of scratches against the door.

He hears footsteps approach and soft murmurs as Hannibal bends to take the pup up and comfort him. He listens to the steps pass, and move on down the stairs towards the kitchen, and then, only then, does Will open the door to follow.

Chapter Text

“Sit.”

Will spreads his gloved fingers, palm down, and lowers his hand. Fierce spring wind shudders the cedars and pulls at his hair, tangling it shaggy curls in front of his glasses, tugging at his warm woolen scarf. Before him, Titus tilts his head and settles to his haunches, tail sweeping up dry tufts of grass where winter’s brown gives way to sprigs of green.

“Good boy,” Will tells him. He crouches and offers his hand, palm up. “Shake?”

He grunts, laughing, as Titus drops a heavy paw in his hand. Already their puppy’s head reaches Will’s shoulders when they sit like this, a big boy getting bigger every day in the month they’ve had him. Will gives his toes a squeeze and releases him.

“Good boy, Titus.”

The dog grins, delighted, knowing those words, now, knowing his name, registering the smile on Will’s face. He yips, head lifted and sharp bark carrying, before setting both feet to the ground and wriggling on his bottom for more commands, and more play. Will laughs, stands again and pulls a rubber ball from his pocket. Titus nearly loses his mind in joy.

“God, you have a world of energy,” Will murmurs, drawing his arm back and flinging the ball to the far end of their enormous garden. He watches as the little wolfhound streaks off after it, long legs flailing and tail held high. He is an uncoordinated and clumsy little thing, joyful in his mishaps and delighted to get up and try again. He is easy to train, and responds well to them both.

Will whistles sharp and the dog makes an attempt at a sharp turn and ends up rolling on the grass instead, pushing himself to stand, shake and run quickly back to Will again, ball in his mouth.

“Sit,” Will laughs, motioning again, as a string of drool drips past the ball to the grass and Titus obeys, nearly unseating himself with the wagging flurry of his tail. He takes the ball and wipes it on his pants, before pitching it again. Grasping his shoulder, he rolls it beneath his hand as Titus barrels off again.

A shiver prickles along the back of his neck not from cold, but from the sound of the glass door sliding shut behind him.

“He’ll exhaust you, before you, him,” Hannibal observes, as Will turns towards him with a smile. He takes in the fit of Hannibal’s sweater, its collar high against his jaw, scarf tucked beneath. The spectre of prison has faded from him; his clothes fit perfectly to his body once more, well-fed and comfortable. Three months now since the fall, three months here together. Three months in which they’ve learned to live alongside each other, and allow their love to flourish, carefully and mindfully tended by both.

Will accepts the mug of cocoa that he’s offered, and it fogs his glasses as he sips.

“Not for lack of trying,” Will answers, as Titus fumbles again and chases the ball along the grass. “Maybe I’ve been going about it wrong. Surely he can’t outpace us both.”

The ball is returned with the dog, and Titus sits obediently at Hannibal’s feet next, accepting the gentle rub between his ears from his other master, delighted to impress and please him as well. Hannibal takes the ball and pretends to throw it, watching Titus run a few paces before turning back, head cocked and tail gently swaying as though uncertain if he should wag it or not.

“Clever boy,” Hannibal laughs, producing the ball in his fingers again to the joyful bark of their little - not so little - dog. This time, he throws it properly. “Together, perhaps,” Hannibal murmurs, stepping closer to Will. “We can tire him out.”

Will leans against him, drawing comfortably near when Hannibal rests an arm around his shoulders. He takes another sip of hot chocolate, not a powdery mix but real chocolate melted into milk, a hint of cayenne pepper within, and marshmallows that Hannibal has made for just such occasions. It warms him, through and through; Hannibal’s nose against his temple warms him deeper still.

“How’s the news?” Will asks, wind-burnt cheeks deepening their red when Hannibal brushes a kiss to heat the chill away.

“We are still dead to the world, though they’ve stopped writing about it as much. Reflection pieces now, on the noble agent willing to sacrifice himself to stop a monster.”

Will snorts, grinning against his mug. It’s been a relief to see that their demise has been so readily accepted, though neither deludes themselves enough to think that all involved parties buy it. But the fears that kept Will up at night - that they would be found, forced to run, driven away from the home Hannibal made for them - have faded. He sleeps now, nightly. He does not wake with nightmares or a frantic need to ready a bag to run.

Hannibal keeps his nightmares away, and Will doesn’t doubt anymore that Hannibal would never let harm come to him now.

The ball rolls to their feet, pushed nearer by a snuffling wet nose. Will lifts a brow and tilts his head towards Hannibal, watching him peripherally as his smile widens.

“Alright,” Will grins. “Step back. Don’t want to get caught by this one.”

“I‘m terrified,” Hannibal confirms, moving back a pace to allow Will to toss the ball as far as he can for their puppy to chase. He is beautiful. He is stronger every day and more and more confident in himself. More and more he runs in the mornings, he sings when he makes coffee, sometimes bright falsetto when he gets into the mood for Queen or the BeeGees.

Closer and closer, they get to becoming what both have so long wanted. He watches Will sip his cocoa, watches him shift from foot to foot as their dog turns to bring the ball back, and he leans in.

“We should run,” he breathes. The puppy lumbers closer and with a laugh, Hannibal winds his arm through Will’s and tugs him back. “Now!”

Cocoa spills as Will’s pulled laughing. He ducks for long enough to plunk the mug to the ground before catching the ground with his heels to run alongside Hannibal. Arms together, though Will is slightly faster and Hannibal’s legs slightly longer, they pick up speed beside the other. Behind them, big puppy paws tear up earth and dead grass, a low woof trapped behind the ball in his mouth. The wind snaps crisp against their cheeks, it pulls their laughter from chapped lips. All around them trees and mountains and sky and earth. All around them giddy joy, boyish and bright, allowed to play as they’ve not in years.

As they’ve not maybe ever, and certainly not together.

A glance to Hannibal strikes Will suddenly - beautiful, beautiful, beautiful - a refrain distracting enough that he stumbles. His snared arm is held to right him before he can fall, but he is stumbling from the forward force of motion, brought to spin against Hannibal as Titus collides with their legs.

Hannibal kisses him, hands against Will’s cold cheeks, eyes closed to everything but the sensation of the man he loves against him. Titus jumps up to press his messy cold paws against both their legs, seeking pets and cuddles. He drops the ball to the ground and gently scrapes against them, whining for attention.

Hannibal cannot bear to drop a hand to touch him. He is consumed entirely by Will, entirely by the warmth and life and love in him.

He wants him. He wants him more than he can comprehend, and he makes a small sound, helpless, in his throat as they continue to kiss. Will’s fingers twine through his hair, his other hand against his cheek. He bends when Hannibal leans against him, pressed tightly together, pushing back with hands and mouth and a sigh loosed when they part for long enough to breathe.

“Throw it,” Hannibal whispers, voice rough in a way that sprinkles a shiver down Will’s spine. He ducks to grasp the ball and pitches it hard, their Titus kicking up grass in his wake as he bolts off after it. Will’s eyes hood as warm lips graze his bearded cheek, kissing up the smooth skin of his scar, seeking out his ear to nibble softly. Titus catches his quarry and flops to the ground to chew it, as Hannibal’s teeth against his ear tugs Will’s attention back.

They become more frantic, urgency tugging their mouths and pulling their breaths to pleasant panting against the other. Hannibal slips his hands down to hold against Will’s hips, arching closer, rubbing them together before relenting and letting Will come on his own, hands seeking up to his hair and to his face again.

“Will,” he breathes, turning to nuzzle against him, accepting the kisses pressed to his cheeks and throat, arching his head back to let Will get to the scarf and nuzzle beneath it. “Will, please.”

Will makes a small sound that’s lost within another tangled kiss, lost to the wind, to the whisper of fingers against fabric as Will grasps Hannibal’s sweater and Hannibal slips his hands to free Will’s shirt from his pants. They press to his back, warming him even through gloves. Will twists away from the kiss but sighs pure pleasure as Hannibal sinks against his throat instead.

Will doesn’t tense. He stops it before it can come to bear, before he can wound Hannibal again in that way. With good intentions, Will remains pliant and soft; with good intentions, Hannibal accepts what must feel like invitation.

It isn’t. It isn’t at all. This isn’t what Will wanted when they collided together, this isn’t what he wanted the time before or the time before that, when gentle touch and delightful kisses build outside his control, when the safe harbor of Hannibal against him roils like the sea in a storm. He takes a step back, and Hannibal holds him secure, as if he’d stumbled.

He did, Will supposes, he did and he doesn’t know how to not.

“It’s too cold,” he whispers, turning their cheeks together, nuzzling against Hannibal’s hairline.

Hannibal kisses him.

“We can go inside,” he breathes, cupping his hand against Will’s temple as he turns his head away, to plant another kiss against him. “We can go anywhere. The couch is near, the rug is always an option, we could take the stairs at a stumble and make the bed just in time,” Hannibal laughs, childish in his giddiness for this, that Will would want this, that he would be so open as to invite it, suggest.

He loves him, he loves him so much.

Will doesn’t take another step. Not forward, not back, his heels driven into the ground and eyes closed as if he might somehow undo what he never meant to start. His hold tightens in Hannibal’s sweater as Will shivers not with pleasure but with a sudden cold panic that if Hannibal steps away now, Will won’t be able to stand. If Hannibal steps away now, he might not come back.

“Inside,” Hannibal whispers again, and Will leans into the hand that curls through his hair.

“Hannibal, I - I was playing with Titus -”

“I think that you’ve won,” Hannibal says, gently. “He’s exhausted himself, comfortably asleep.”

Will sucks his bottom lip between his teeth and doesn’t open his eyes to look, at their dog or their home or their life or Hannibal. The older man draws a breath, comfort quickly shifting to concern, and Will empties his lungs all at once in a gust lost to the mountain wind. Will loosens his fingers. He drops his hands. He won’t fight when he goes.

He has no right to fight for this, when what Hannibal wants is something Will can’t provide.

“I don’t want to have sex,” Will whispers.

Hannibal holds him a moment more, and then his touch shifts away. It’s like an ebb of a wave on the shore, a tingling of fingertips left against Will’s skin as Hannibal withdraws his hands and just watches him instead. His brows furrow, his lips - kissed red, still wet - part on a sigh, and with a slow blink, a brief jut of his jaw, Hannibal ducks his head in understanding.

“Of course.”

“Hannibal -”

“Your chocolate will be getting cold on the ground,” Hannibal points out, gently gesturing towards the mug still steaming where Will had set it down. “There is more inside, should you wish for it.”

And then he turns, pushing his hands into his pockets to make his way to the house again.

Will’s breath that was lost to the ceaseless wind is not regained. The cold that Hannibal kept away sinks where warm lips pressed and fingers spread against him. He draws his jacket tighter and folds his arms as if it might make up for Hannibal not being in them and Will watches him go, unable to give voice to the thousand thoughts that blur to white noise in his head.

He has no right to fight for this, when Hannibal gives him so much and asks so little.

He has no right to call him back, when he can’t -

He can’t.

But he has to try.

“Hannibal,” Will calls, long strides carrying him back across the grass before he can let himself hurt Hannibal more with reconsidering, with his own confusion, with his own lack of right words at right times and right feelings at right moments. Hannibal turns toward him from where he’s ducked to remove Titus’ ball from between his paws, and Will comes nearer, together, and kisses him soundly. “Maybe something slower,” Will offers, managing a hopeful smile.

Hannibal regards him, considers the ball in his hand and the puppy at their feet who stands, wagging his tail, to greet them both. Hannibal tells him softly to go home, and Titus, after a few gentle repetitions, makes his way towards the glass door leading to the living room. Then Hannibal turns to Will again.

“Why, Will?” he asks him.

“Why?”

“Why,” Hannibal repeats, “when you would find no enjoyment in it. When you would tense and stiffen, and smile weakly at me when I reassure you. I don’t - that isn’t what I want for us. That is not something that should be forced. I will not force it. I will not let you martyr yourself for something you feel I want, when you don’t want it.” Hannibal swallows and turns the ball over and over in his gloved hands, eyes down to it. “I just wish I could understand. For a moment, just a moment, you wanted this too.”

Will blinks. Behind his glasses, his eyes widen and he shakes his head. There is no reservation here, no forced feelings. He closes the distance between them and sinks his arms around Hannibal’s middle, cheek against his shoulder.

“I want this,” he says, certain, so certain. Will has been so sure about so little in his life but this, he knows he wants. This, he knows he needs. “I want you. Us. Hannibal -”

“Please,” he whispers. “You needn’t do this.”

“I just don’t want that,” Will finally says, the words tangled in his throat, pulling heat into his eyes. He draws back enough to meet Hannibal’s gaze, or at least he tries, but when the muscles beneath Hannibal’s eyes rise in something far from a smile, Will’s voice raises, desperate. “Hannibal, I love you. You - you have to know that.”

Prison bars rattling closed.

“Please tell me that you know that.”

A blade flashing in the dark.

“Hannibal,” Will pleads, “please.”

Vibrations across his brow, cutting through bone.

“I love you,” he whispers.

Hannibal’s blink softens his expression to something younger, something tired, something entirely vulnerable. It is so rare that Will gets to see this part of him, this human side. More and more in these last few months than ever before, but it is as hard for Hannibal to control his mask as it is for Will to not drown in metaphor. They are learning, they are slowly learning.

Hannibal’s arms come up to rest around Will as well, where he continues to cling to him, and with a sigh, he raises his eyes to the sky and just watches it, holding Will close, soothing the trembling from him with gentle rubs against his back.

“We’ll freeze,” he says after a while, just softly. “And the dog will grow restless. We’ll need to clean his feet before he comes in.” Hannibal moves as though to kiss Will’s forehead, but changes his mind, turns to just rub his cheek against his hair instead. When he lets Will go, the cold does not rush against him as it had when Hannibal had turned away at the other end of the garden. This is not a letting go, it is merely motion.

Hannibal goes to the door and clicks his tongue when the puppy attempts to rush in. He holds up a hand, a single finger and the dog settles on his bottom again, feet shifting as he waits. Hannibal gathers a rag from a small table nearby and goes to rub the little pads of his toes clean from the mud outside. One foot after another, training the dog now so that when he stands taller than the both of them he will not lumber mess through their home.

Then Hannibal lets him inside, holds the rag between his fingers and then turns to Will again. After a moment, he holds his hand out in invitation for Will to take, if he wishes, and pushes the door wider for them both to come inside.

Will breathes. He pulls cold air into his lungs and lets it warm. He sighs it out with a spool of grey that fades. He breathes with less weight against his chest than that which crushed him moments before; he breathes because the only way he can is with Hannibal alongside him. Will takes Hannibal’s hand, and slotting their fingers together, pulls himself close.

Beyond them, Titus bounds into the house and directly to the kitchen for water, tail thudding against a barstool at the island as he goes. Will stops Hannibal before he can follow, and loosens their hands only to reach for his scarf and work it free from beneath his sweater. What he cannot easily voice, he can show; what he can convey through touch he hopes is enough.

He rests the strip of blackwatch plaid across his arm and with a silent question, reaches for the zipper of Hannibal’s sweater. A gentle inclined nod is his answer, and Will smiles a little, pulling it low and skimming scarlet knit from Hannibal’s shoulders. Will pushes to the toes of his boots and leans in but Hannibal leans away, and Will kisses his cheek anyway, with a laugh that’s gentle and helpless all at once.

“It’s okay to kiss me,” Will asks him. He shakes his head and adds, aching, “Please kiss me.”

Hannibal doesn’t kiss him.

He swallows and tilts his head, just softly, just enough to be a shake, and sighs. “I can’t,” he says, gentling Will’s tension with a hand against his shoulder. “I can’t, because I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what this means or what you want.”

Hannibal looks at Will, entirely helpless, and shrugs his shoulders, raises his brows. For the first time, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t understand and he wants to, and he is helpless to this without Will’s assistance. Any touch that had passed between them before confuses him. Were they wanted? Were any wanted? Where they ever? Had Hannibal so cruelly misunderstood?

He strokes the backs of his fingers down Will’s cheek as Will turns away.

“I told you what I wanted,” Will says, as booted steps thump him towards the kitchen.

“You told me what you did not want,” Hannibal reminds him.

Will sucks his bottom lip between his teeth, as a warm ruffling of Titus’ fur eases the whining pup to peace again. Even he can feel it, the crisp chill of ozone in the air, the whispering crackle of static. The roll of thunder more felt than heard that betrays the storm upon them. Will ducks to take up Titus’ water bowl and fill it, and he doesn’t look to the presence he can feel in the kitchen with them.

For a moment, he thought he fixed it. For a moment, he thought it was simply a stitch snapping and now Will can’t help but feel that the whole gory wound has reopened between them. He fills Titus’ bowl and as the water runs clear, Will runs a hand across his belly. He has to say more. What else can he say? He has to fix this. Hasn’t he already broken it again?

Isn’t he already broken, into pieces fine as dust that can no longer withstand repair?

“Will.”

He takes the bowl from the sink and returns it to the floor, crouching beside Titus who clambers against his legs and licks his face again and again.

“Help me to understand,” Hannibal asks.

Will’s throat clicks and his brow knits. Not once has ever been able to make sense of this to anyone else - hell, he’s hardly been able to make sense of it to himself. He’s made it work and he’s found ways around it but he doesn’t want that here. Not here, not now, not with Hannibal.

No lies.

No omissions.

No masks.

Not ever.

Will pushes his hands against his knees to stand as Titus goes to his bowl. He removes his gloves finger by finger, his scarf after. He doesn’t go to Hannibal, despite every aching part of him that wants nothing more, but stops instead by the counter and settles to the stool there. Barometric pressure bends his shoulders, and he fumbles with the fringe of his scarf instead of lifting his eyes to see the stormclouds building.

“Is sex the only reason you want me here?”

Hannibal’s shock is entirely genuine - Will can feel it against his skin even when he doesn’t look up. That, at least, is a relief. That, in fact, is relief enough for Will to start to properly breathe again.

“No,” Hannibal tells him.

“But you want me that way?”

“Yes,” Hannibal agrees, setting his hands against the counter as well, bending to rest his weight against his elbows. “I do. I have. But you have always meant more to me than that.” He considers Will before him, he considers him sitting unmoving and slowly breathing, gathering himself. Hannibal pushes himself up and turns to set the kettle to the stove, for more chocolate, or tea.

“I love you,” Hannibal tells Will, turning back. “I always have, Will. Such a thing is hardly a barrier, I merely -”

“Assumed I would want it too?”

“You never gave me reason to think otherwise,” Hannibal replies, apologetically.

Will draws a breath and holds it as he nods. His own apology, unspoken but just as genuine, before he works the lump from his throat and forces himself to speak. Without the light of honesty between them, they take to shadows.

Not again. Not ever again.

“I’m sorry,” Will says, “for not being clear. I didn’t know how, and when it became that -”

“Sexual.”

“When it became sexual,” he repeats, allowing the gentle correction, “it startled me and my alarm hurt you and I don’t want that, Hannibal. We’ve hurt each other enough.”

Hannibal nods, understanding, and watches Will a moment more before turning to take down mugs from the cupboard. And then he laughs, the laughter low and deep and delighted, coming from the depths of his chest, a sound Will knows by touch and taste and sensation all, and it is so unexpected here, so strange.

It is not malicious. It is not patronizing. It is not cruel.

He is genuinely amused.

When Hannibal turns back to Will, clearing his throat in apology, he gestures gently to the door.

“I believe I must retrieve your cocoa before I can offer you tea. Excuse me,” he smiles, enough that his eyes narrow, that they wrinkle gently at the corners. When he passes Will he sets a hand to his and squeezes, holds until Will squeezes back, and then continues through the house to retrieve the wayward mug from their garden.

Will watches him, feels his chest swell and his heart beat too quickly and his eyes prickle with familiar unwanted tears. It will be okay, he thinks.

It will be okay.

Chapter Text

They eat together. They drink tea together, and soon change to wine.

They share the couch with Titus and they talk of him and the weather, and what to plant in the garden when the weather warms. In this, there is a particular comfort, planning for months ahead that they will in theory spend together.

They share dessert, a truffled chocolate mousse that leaves Will groaning and dismayed with delight that Hannibal could concoct something so decadent so far from civilization.

They don’t talk about what happened in the garden. They don’t talk about the stilted, fleeting conversation that followed.

It follows them instead, like a shadow at their heels that belongs to the other and not themselves. Careful steps and glances shared, cautious movements and sparse touches. The warmth between them seems to cool and every breath begins to ache. They play at this being any other night, but even when they are in discord with themselves, they are keenly attuned to the other.

They feel the storm’s battery in every breath.

And when Will begins to nod from reading too long, and Hannibal has read the same sentence a dozen times over without comprehending it, Hannibal finally moves first to breach the unspoken question between them. He takes Will’s book from him to set it aside. Their fingers brush.

“Will you come to bed?” Hannibal asks.

“Will you?” Will answers.

They go, together.

They prepare for bed as they always do. They share the bathroom to brush their teeth, Hannibal takes a shower, Will doesn’t. As they head to bed, Hannibal catches Will’s hand and pulls him near.

“Tell me,” he says, smiling. “Teach me to understand.”

Will just blinks at him, and feels his own smile tilt his lips as he turns his head with a brief shrug.

“It’s hard to explain something you barely understand.”

“Then explain to me what you do, and we can learn the rest together,” Hannibal suggests, raising an eyebrow. “For instance, should I wish to kiss you, where?”

Will’s smile widens a bit more, his blush darkening in turn. He holds his bottom lip between his teeth and releases it slowly, touching a finger to his cheek. “Here.”

Hannibal ducks his head and holds his lips just where Will’s finger pressed.

“Here,” Will says, pointing to his brow, and he draws a deep breath that fills him entirely when Hannibal kisses there, too.

With a little grin, Will touches his bottom lip, and he doesn’t need to say anything at all for Hannibal to tuck their mouths together softly. When Will spreads his lips, so too does Hannibal; when they close, they close together. Each follows the other’s lead in gentle exploration, and Will can’t help but feel as if they’re kissing for the first time.

Maybe in some way they are, now that they are bared to the other so entirely.

Will keeps Hannibal’s hand in his own as he backs onto the bed, careful not to disrupt the puppy who’s already claimed his share of it. Hannibal follows him and he doesn’t let go, their fingers interlaced as they work themselves beneath the blankets. Will sighs long, easing tired muscles in a languid stretch, and he turns to his side to watch Hannibal watching him.

“All the places you have before,” he tells him, his smile coming easier now. “Hell,” he laughs, “you’re a great kisser.”

Hannibal smiles, ducks his head in understanding and files that information away for future use and knowledge. For a moment, they don’t talk. Hannibal drops a hand to stroke over the head of the heavy puppy who stretches all his lanky limbs across the bed and off them. He licks his lips and narrows his eyes in contemplation.

“You do not want sex,” he confirms, watching Will nod. “Do you enjoy sex?”

Will considers his answer and with a sigh just tilts his head further against the pillow. It has always felt like a necessary transaction with certain partners, the knowledge that they wanted it, and his choice to be with them dictated that he should allow for that, to keep everyone happy.

“I tolerate sex,” Will replies honestly. “I get aroused, biologically there’s nothing wrong with me.”

“I hardly think anything is wrong with you at all,” Hannibal points out and Will snorts, both of them smiling a bit at the little white lie there. Enough is wrong, with them both, to be a concern. But, perhaps, not this.

“I get aroused and I enjoy my body, I enjoy masturbating, when the need arises. I just...” Will sighs. Hannibal watches him.

“Is it the thought of another touching you in that way that you find unappealing?”

Will swallows back the bitterness on his tongue that tastes like pills, like therapy, like foreign fingers probing unwanted against mind or body alike. He turns to his side and brings a hand to Hannibal’s chest, fingers brushing through the thick, soft curls of hair there before he stops himself, and curls his hand against his own chest instead. Hannibal isn’t psychoanalyzing him. He isn’t prying.

He’s asking because he wants to know.

He needs to know.

“It makes me uncomfortable,” Will says. “I feel exposed like that. With someone else like that. I get tense and I overthink and I don’t enjoy it. I don’t feel that way when it’s just me touching myself. Been doing that since I was a kid,” he snorts, his rueful smile drawing up the corners of Hannibal’s eyes in turn. “Is it trite if I tell you that it isn’t you, it’s me?”

Hannibal tilts his head, considering, allowing perhaps for an affirmative, and Will laughs, a breath only, but there.

“I find you attractive,” Will says. “Ridiculously attractive. I could watch you all day, doing anything at all.”

“How does that feeling of attraction manifest?” Hannibal ventures. He lifts a hand but stills it, quiet permission asked and granted when Will nods. He sets his fingers to the younger man’s curls and strokes them softly, again and again.

“In wanting to be near you. Next to you. Talking. Cooking. Reading. To touch you and kiss you and be touched by you and held and kissed and - and everything,” Will shrugs, with another wan smile. “Maybe not everything.”

“Everything but that.”

Will closes his eyes beneath another curl of fingers, prickling goosebumps across his skin. His heart isn’t racing, but it beats elated and bright. Every word between them is relief, every allowance of understanding eases tension that has always built unrelieved until it snaps. He furrows his brow, though, and asks with genuine curiosity, “How should I touch you? Can I? I don’t want you to -” He sucks his lip between his teeth and frowns, pensive. “I don’t want to frustrate you.”

“Does it bother you that I would?” Hannibal asks. “Get frustrated?” He watches the brief flicker of pain in Will’s eyes and is quick to amend. “Not with you, Will, but because I function differently. Because I enjoy sexual contact with another. I want to be close to you, I want to kiss and touch you. But my… my body will respond to you.”

Will feels his smile raise just a little. “Good,” he says softly. “I like knowing you want me that way. I simply… selfishly can’t reciprocate.”

Hannibal considers this and strokes his hand through Titus’ wiry fur until the puppy groans in sleep and stretches his paws a little before curling them.

“This isn’t selfish,” Hannibal assures him. “It’s merely different. You and I have never felt the need to fall to societal norms, though, have we?”

Will’s laugh is genuine - tired, so very tired in so many ways - but genuine. “No,” he agrees. “Never.”

He makes a little sound when Hannibal kisses his cheek. His smile widens when Hannibal kisses his brow. And when he ducks his head Will lifts his own to meet him in a kiss, soft and simple and sweet. Will rests his fingers on Hannibal’s cheek and follows the scar that runs across it.

“It’s asking a lot,” Will considers, when their lips part and he tucks closer, his head beneath Hannibal’s chin.

“We always have.”

“But to not be able to give you that, when you enjoy it. When you want it. To expect that you would go without -”

“Will,” Hannibal breathes, ducking his head to tilt his nose against Will’s hair. “I would rather have a quiet morning over coffee with you and not have that, than have that and lose you again.”

The words shiver through Will enough that he curses, relief and surprise and love, overwhelming love so full in his chest that his breath shakes into another laugh. After all they’ve done to the other, after all that’s been done to them, after everything that brought them here together, it seems suddenly and wonderfully absurd that this would be what breaks them. If knives and death and grief and pain were not enough to cut the threads that bind them, this is but a twist in the tapestry, and not the immolation that Will had feared.

“Besides,” Hannibal shrugs, amused, “I am capable of handling those needs myself.”

Will blinks, and lifts his eyes, aghast. “Did you just -”

Hannibal hums.

“Did you just make a masturbation joke?” Will grins.

“Once in a while,” Hannibal muses, “I find myself in desperate need to drop the facade of a man without humor.”

Will laughs and Hannibal holds him close. They talk a little more, of mundane and simple things, of their home and their pup, and when both have found comfort in the confirmation of their domestic stability, they sleep. Will shifts to spoon with Hannibal against his back. Titus snores softly against Hannibal’s own.

Will wakes to a rearranged bed. The puppy has migrated to sleep between himself and Hannibal and Hannibal has moved to accommodate. Will watches Hannibal a moment, glasses on as he reads from his tablet, and maps every scar and every wrinkle with a fond look. This man had not forced, he had not pressured or guilt-tripped Will into something he found unpleasant.

He simply listened.

He listened and he had heard.

“Does Freddie still speculate we're enjoying Europe?”

“The Maldives,” Hannibal replies, smile tilting his lips. “When I checked last night. This morning I have a far more fascinating topic to study than Ms. Lounds’ erroneous assumptions regarding our taste in expensive seafood.”

A moment passes, another, and Hannibal passes his tablet to Will so he can look.

Will squints against the screen's brightness, the blurred words coming into slow focus as he turns to rest his head propped against Hannibal's shoulder, hips askew to allow Titus his room between them. He mouths the word asexual as his eyes skim over the study's brief, and then he reads it again. And again.

And then he snorts.

Hannibal lifts a brow.

"You can take the doctor out of the research..." Will begins, with a blush and wry amusement, and Hannibal's eyes soften in their corners. He turns his nose against Will's hair and breathes him in, no distress or fear or anxiety, beyond the baseline that always thrums a constant and unsteady beat within him.

"I have never been able to grasp you fully," Hannibal tells him. "You have always been an extraordinary mystery. But one cannot be faulted for attempting to know the unknowable," he says, as Will scrolls down the page.

There is no judgment in Hannibal's words, no dismay or repressed displeasure. Will was braced for rejection; he dreaded the simmering resentment more. Murmurs of concern for medical conditions, pills to make him hard - no matter that he didn’t need them - superficial acceptance and lingering unhappiness. Too many times his admission of sexual disinterest came to that; enough times that Will more often than not avoided attempting intimacy at all in any form.

But pressing warmth against his skin and willingness in his words, Will can read readily - more easily than he can read the page before him - the truth of Hannibal’s response. He is curious. He is still a little uncertain. But nothing in the breath that shifts Will's hair or the arm around his shoulder or the tabs and tabs and tabs of reading gives Will the sensation of this being anything other than what Hannibal has offered him.

Support.

Interest.

Understanding.

Will draws a sudden breath, dizzied as he surfaces from within Hannibal’s mind, and he watches him with nothing less than awed disbelief.

If only they could have gotten their shit together years ago.

"So tell me what you learned," Will suggests, handing back the tablet and turning to rest his cheek against Hannibal's shoulder. "You probably know more than I do at this point," he adds, wry.

Hannibal hums, amused by the thought. He could know more in statistics and analyses, he could know more in his collected reading about the people who are asexual. But he could never know what it's like to experience what Will experiences. He could never know more than Will himself.

“It is a spectrum,” Hannibal says first. “A thorough and intricate one with several branches regarding those who occasionally enjoy sex, some who enjoy loving rather than being loved, those who feel no romantic attraction but can have sex to satisfy biological urges.”

“Shit,” Will laughs. “I didn't know people actually bothered to classify this.”

“More and more new research weekly, it seems,” Hannibal says, scrolling absently through the tabs before closing his tablet and setting it away, glasses atop. “It is an exciting and relevant new branch of study for people, and those who fall on the spectrum are the perfect people to ask regarding their preferences and the intricacies of their appreciation and desire for affection.”

Will allows himself the pleasure of Hannibal's fascination, purred warm beside him. He stretches languid and slips flat in the bed again, squinting up at Hannibal who watches him with interest and amusement both. This is a thrill for Will, to feel worthy of attention. It is a thrill for him to feel wanted and desired. It is a thrill to feel cherished, for all his eccentricities and peculiarities.

"Ask," he says, smile spreading as Hannibal hums. He lifts a hand and Will watches as it hovers above him.

"Do you enjoy being touched?"

Will shivers and sucks his bottom lip between his teeth, releasing it slowly as he nods. "Above the belt," he clarifies, cheeks heating bright beneath his eyes.

Hannibal brings his fingers through Will's hair, tugging just enough to straighten his curls and relax them. Were Will a feline, Hannibal imagines he would purr, splaying his body long and stretching pleased from the touch. He follows the scruff along Will's broad jaw, down the curve of his throat. He traces along the collar of his shirt to a scar on his shoulder that Hannibal knows is there, an old knife injury and younger scars from bullet holes. Down Will's chest, over soft white cotton, along his ribs to his waist.

There he stops, for a moment, seeking instead to follow the rise of gnarled skin that bisects Will's belly, over the soft sweep of his stomach and up again.

"God," Will sighs, almost a groan. He doesn't fear the rising pulse now, the oncoming storm that always thundered distant warning. As often as not, he ignored those preludes, hoping they wouldn't come to crescendo and a bolt of lightning. He trusts now that it won't, and his heart beats faster not in dread but in delight.

"I would watch you," he whispers, and Hannibal meets his eyes, brows twitching upward. "If you wanted to - with yourself -"

Hannibal’s hand stops its movements for a moment and he regards Will curiously. The younger man blushes, he can feel his face heat, and tries to find the words that explain.

“You look beautiful, when you -”

“You’ve seen?”

“Just once.” Will’s cheeks grow redder still and he watches Hannibal for any sign of displeasure or repulsion, but he finds only keen and genuine amusement instead, narrowed eyes and lips pursed in a delighted smile. “Just once and you looked.. you were so vulnerable. You looked like you had found bliss.”

“Did you respond to it?”

“Yes,” Will sighs, pressing his face to the pillow again, watching Hannibal through his fringe. Hannibal blinks at him, watches Will try to hold back what more he wants to say and waits, patient, for him to say it regardless. “I touched, after, thinking of it. It felt fantastic.”

Hannibal brings a hand up to skim knuckles down Will’s cheek, thumb gently rubbing smooth the corners of his eyes as Will relaxes his face from its embarrassed tension.

“I want you,” Will tells him quietly. “I love you, and I want you, but… there are certain things I can’t do, and I’m sorry. But please don’t think, not even -”

“I know.”

Will believes him. He believes Hannibal knows the words Will doesn’t speak, and those that lie between the ones he does. He believes Hannibal knows the truth of his heart and for whom it beats. Will turns his cheek against Hannibal’s fingers and brushes a kiss across the tips of them.

Since the fall, they have ascended a hierarchy of need. Shelter first, in the form of a home high in the mountains, protected by pine forests and ceaseless wind. Sustenance next, as they learned to fill their lungs with air and push out words, to speak not as enemies but as friends. As lovers. As two halves of the same whole, no matter how their bodies do or do not fit together. They healed their wounds and tended to the other, and when they grew strong again, they added another to their care.

And surely Titus is only the first of their little family.

Will imagines a final snag of barbed wire yanked free from between them, left behind to do no more harm in barricading one from the other. He seems a storm too long suffered finally pass.

He sees Hannibal, beside him, and for the first time truly believes that he will always be.