Chapter Text
It began innocuously enough, as most things with Doctor Lecter seemed to. His therapy sessions had never been orthodox, but a little picking and probing in the corners of Will’s overactive brain was to be expected. To his credit, Dr. Lecter rarely asked about Will’s parentage: the “low-hanging fruit” of psychiatry. Their conversations drifted lazily around the darker, deeper recesses of his imagination, sliding from one subject to another with all the grace and ease to be expected of a slithering serpent.
That was what he was, after all. Dr. Lecter was a serpent, a venomous monster, and Will was tasked with bringing him to heel.
It was easier said than done. As much as he hated the man, Will was not so ignorant of his own inner workings that he did not recognize the way he was helplessly drawn to the doctor’s darkness. It was insidious, and seductive. He’d told Jack he was a good fisherman, but it was closer to the truth to say that he was a lure.
He just wasn’t sure who was holding the fishing pole, yet.
Will would be lying if he didn’t say that Wednesday was his favorite day of the week. It was a midweek respite from over-eager classes and demanding FBI agents. As loath as he was to admit it, to sit across from Hannibal Lecter, sipping wine in the shadows, their faces warmed with fire and their bellies warmed with provocative conversation, was damned near the most content he’d ever felt in his life.
And the worst part was, it was working . The therapy was good. Will had been in therapy of one form or another, off and on, since he was five years old. Psychiatrists fumbled about in his head like a freshman with a panty girdle, desperate to make headway, panting for a sliver of recognition. He hated them. He could talk circles around them, see their salivating ambition, and he hated them for it.
How ironic was it that the only person to ever help him was the damned Chesapeake Ripper?
Still. As clever and irritatingly helpful as Hannibal was, the man was still a psychiatrist, and so on principle, Will had to hassle him a little when his long, wicked fingers probed his mind a little too deeply.
If it hadn’t been mid-May, Will likely would have gotten away with it, clean.
As it was, his cross nature got the better of him, no less than twice in one session. Hannibal accepted his snapping with grace, leaving Will wondering if he would be next on the dinner menu for his impudence. Hannibal had offered him a drink, as was their custom, but Will was in no mood for expensive wine that evening. It was raining, and he had wanted whiskey. Hannibal was out, naturally, because that was the sort of day Will was having. It was unfortunate, though surely not an offense worthy of Will letting him know precisely what he thought of pretentious snobs with more money than sense who didn’t keep their liquor cabinets well stocked. That didn’t stop Will from biting the words out anyway.
Hannibal lowered himself to the opposite chair, fingers wrapped delicately around the stem of a wine glass, and Will immediately wished he’d accepted what was offered without complaint. Hannibal’s amber eyes were studying him closely.
“Feeling tetchy, Will?” he murmured, and brought the glass to his lips.
Will met the intense gaze with resignation. He was definitely on the dinner menu. At least, as a backup protein, if rude accountants weren’t in season.
“Yeah. Sorry.” He shifted in his seat, a muscle in his jaw twitching. “Long week.”
“Is Uncle Jack pulling at your strings again?”
“No.” Will rolled his neck, fingers drumming on the arms of the chair. “It’s been… unusually quiet.”
“Springtime is made for lovers and children. The urge to procreate overrides the need for death. The world blossoms, and softens the compulsion to dip one’s hands in blood. The predators of the world slumber and wait for the bite of winter’s chill.”
“That is the most asinine thing I’ve ever heard.”
Hannibal blinked, slowly, and once more brought the glass to his lips.
Maybe he’d serve him on the appetizers. Little bits of Will Graham on crackers, topped with a blob of cheese and a toothpick.
Will huffed. “Serial killers are not seasonal, Hannibal.”
“All things have their season, Will.” The doctor tilted his head, studying his companion with curiosity and the slightest touch of hunger. It was a look Will had become too familiar with, and it made him uncomfortable, mostly because he was 99% sure his expression was much the same. “You are a creature of the outdoors, Will,” Hannibal continued. “You know this.”
“People are different.”
“I disagree.”
Will pursed his lips and leaned forward, clasping his hands in a mirror of a stance he had seen on the doctor a hundred times before. The gesture did not go unnoticed; Lecter’s mouth twitched in a half smile. “People are… so much more complicated than anything in nature,” Will mused. “They say we are a higher form of animal. That is impossible. Animals are driven by simple things. The need to protect themselves, their territory, their offspring. Primal things. Hunger. Fear.”
“Sex.”
“Yes.” Will licked his lips, and the whiskey eyes darted down to the movement. A quiet thrill settled in his gut, and he licked them again, just to see the two faint spots of pink rise in the doctor’s sharp cheekbones. “Yeah, sex. The need to procreate. So I’ll give you that, nature has its seasons. But people… we are different. The need to hurt, to cause suffering and pain, that never sleeps, Hannibal. You of all people should know that.”
“Still.” The doctor uncrossed his legs, leaning forward, closing the space between them slowly, as if Will might dart away. He did not. He stood his ground, chin lifted, pale, turquoise eyes boring into the fathomless depths of the serpent’s. Hannibal was pleased. “You cannot deny that spring has a distinctive pull on humanity. That’s why there are spring weddings.” The amber eyes twinkled. “And winter babies.”
Will laughed at that, and this was why he liked Wednesday nights, dammit. The man was a cannibal and a serial killer and a pompous ass, but he made Will laugh. It wasn’t polite, and it wasn’t forced. If anything, it shocked its way out of him, a true chuckle that flashed his teeth and made his eyes dance. It was always a surprise, and it never failed to pull a grin out of the doctor, which seemed to surprise him as well.
They stared across at one another for a full minute before Will ducked his head. “Yeah, I guess so,” he admitted. “I’m probably not the best authority on human behavior. Especially the whole drive to procreate.” He waved his hand a little. “Never really felt the urge.” He lifted his eyes again, and Hannibal was quirking an eyebrow at him. Will flushed hot. “I mean, I’ve felt the URGE..” He snapped, and once more, Hannibal smiled. It looked feral. “I just mean.. The whole parenting business. Not my thing.”
“I see.” That stupid eyebrow was up again.
Silence reigned for thirty seconds, before Will blurted, “What?”
Hannibal exhaled through his nose, setting his wine glass to the side and surveying him thoughtfully. “It occurs to me that perhaps you are not being altogether truthful with yourself.”
Will pictured himself as a cartoon, sitting in an overstuffed chair, back hunched, steam rising visibly from his nostrils. “Is that so?”
“I only mean that your resistance to parenthood does not extend to all aspects of your life, Will. You were very paternal towards Abigail Hobbs.”
Fury, immediate and searing, burned in Will’s veins. It stayed there, throbbing in his neck, until he could trust himself to form words. “I don't want to talk about her.”
Hannibal shrugged. “It was merely an observation.”
“It was a tasteless one.” He was really testing the limits of Hannibal’s patience today. Rudeness came naturally to Will, though, and he found he was disinclined to hide his nature at the moment. After all, wasn’t that supposedly the point of all of this? The acceptance of his true nature? Well, at the moment, his nature was impolite and irritable.
Hannibal took it in stride. He leaned back in his chair, impossibly long legs crossing once more. “I’d like to talk about your mother.”
Will’s brows shot up. That was unexpected. “There’s nothing to say,” he said, a little stilted. “I told you, I never knew her.”
“And yet her presence can be felt keenly, if only in her absence.”
“I disagree,” he parroted back at him, blue eyes narrowing.
“How so?”
Will growled under his breath. “I never felt her absence keenly,” he replied, a hard edge creeping into the rich drawl of his voice. “I got along just fine without her.”
“You and your father.”
A momentary pause, and Will gritted his teeth. “Yes, me and my father.”
Frequently, in session with Hannibal Lecter, the silences that stretched between them like wire strung on a harpsichord spoke more than actual words.
“Do you know,” Hannibal murmured when the quiet became too uncomfortable to continue, “that anniversaries take on a life of their own?”
Will’s eyes met his.
“Dates are powerful,” he continued, as if Will didn’t know, as if he didn’t lecture on the subject every semester. “Our minds receive and remember, cataloguing the smell of the seasons, the times and movement of light. Traumatic events implant themselves, stamping the moment in our foreheads, and as desperately as we try to file them in boxes in the backs of our brains, inevitably the moments will rise again. Smells will stir old memories. The filing cabinet will open.”
“Killers are often triggered by specific dates.”
“Yes.” Hannibal’s head cocked in that peculiar way that reminded Will of Buster when he was confused.. which was frequent. “I find that we are all… triggered… by specific moments in time. Unexpected emotions, drudged up from the inky pools of our…”
“Can you please get to the point?” Will interrupted, weary.
Hannibal’s mouth clacked shut.
Maybe he’d serve Will as a main course after all, Will thought. At this rate, he might not bother to cook him. A little Graham tartare, anyone?
He watched Hannibal take a deep breath. It was a rare moment of truth, naked irritation. Will felt rather privileged to see it.
“My point, dear Will, is that Sunday is Mother’s Day.”
The flush that warmed Will’s entire body was wholly unanticipated, and humiliating. He sat, motionless in the chair, hands clasped, eyes round. He could hear his heart beating. He could feel it, pounding a furious rhythm, demanding to be set free from its cage of bone.
Hannibal watched him. Will’s eyes were unfocused. The doctor could see he’d struck a nerve, and he didn’t even have the decency to be happy about it. He looked concerned, damn him.
“Will.”
Will shifted, unable to stop the gooseflesh from skittering down his arms.
Mother’s Day. He didn’t know why the hell it should matter. It was a made up holiday, something to guilt grown children into purchasing expensive flowers that would wither and die, just like the relationships they allowed to wither on the vine. It was an entire day to celebrate the reproductive system, a great hurrah for the wombs which bore the fruit of humanity, a day of frantic scrambling for subpar bouquets of pink roses and restaurant reservations.
And oh, hell. Had he just said that out loud? Yep. He’d definitely said all of that out loud.
Doctor Lecter was eyeing him with amusement, and Will looked down at his lap. Great. Now he sounded bitter, and he wasn’t. Not at all. At least, not about the fact that he never had a mother. He said as much, and the psychiatrist nodded.
“I believe you,” he said softly. Will glanced up at him, startled by the gentle admission. The fire was dying, and Hannibal’s handsome face was in deep shadow. The orange light glinted off of his features, making him look warm, and kind. How foolish human perception was. “You are not bitter at the woman who birthed and abandoned you. You are not bitter at the father who raised you, a strange, quiet, wary little boy.”
“No,” Will whispered. He could not pull himself from those burning eyes. “He did the best he could.”
“But it wasn’t good enough, was it, Will?”
“No.”
“Tell me.”
Will felt as if an elephant was sitting on his chest. The words came out, hoarse and painful. “He forgot things.”
“What kind of things?”
“Things a mother would remember. To pack me a lunch for school. To buy shoes and clothes that fit. Groceries.” Oh, hell. It hurt. It hurt more than it should, all these years later. Will felt as if his chest would burst open. Something inside him was clawing to get out. It frightened him.
“Stay with me, Will.” The voice came as if from a great distance, and it was soothing, calm, comforting. He closed his eyes, letting the lack of sight enhance his other senses, and he reached out mentally for the source of that comfort. He found it: a wispy, black smoke that caressed his skin, murmured into his ears, pet at his subconscious. “Stay with me,” it whispered, and he swallowed thickly.
“Tell me more about your father,” the smoke commanded, and Will complied.
“Just… a typical single dad. No education to speak of. Raised me as best he could. Knew engines better than people. Never let me have a dog.”
“Why not?”
“Another mouth to feed.”
“Were you a burden to your father, Will?”
He shook his head vehemently. “No. He never made me feel that way. I… helped, when I could. As soon as I was able to hold a wrench, I helped.”
Hannibal hummed, and Will felt the black smoke billow, thicken. “Did you work for your father?”
“Yep. Down at the docks every weekend, kept me out of trouble.” Will smiled wryly. “Kept me close so he could keep an eye on me,” he amended.
"Did anyone else keep an eye on you?" Hannibal asked quietly.
There was something underneath the words, something in that question that made Will pause. "Meaning?"
Hannibal met his gaze evenly.
Will's mouth tightened. "No one bothered me down there, if that's what you're implying."
"I'm not implying anything."
"It was always just me and my dad."
"Your father had no friends?"
"Some."
"What sort of men were they?"
"The sort I wouldn't let a child be around."
"Yet you were around them."
"I wasn't an ordinary child."
Hannibal breathed shallowly through his nose. "Did they pay attention to you, Will?"
Will's eyes slid shut. He remembered the smell of engine grease, water, and sweat. He remembered the fleeting glances, curious and cautious. Being young, being delicate, being the object of suppressed and silent desire, being uncomfortably aware. His father’s watchful eye and steady hand. "No one touched me,” he muttered at last. “They looked. I know they looked. I felt their eyes on me. But nothing happened. My dad looked out for me."
"All the time?"
"No. Most of the time, I looked out for myself."
The doctor shifted in his chair, and Will wondered if he was picturing him, skinny and tanned, shirtless, barefoot, covered in a sheen of perspiration as he worked the docks alongside his father every Saturday. Hannibal's voice betrayed no emotion. “What about your friends?”
A snort. “I think we established that I didn’t have friends, Doctor Lecter.”
“Always the new boy.”
“Yeah.” Will inhaled, imagining the black smoke sliding up his nose, into his lungs, wrapping itself around his heart.
“Was he afraid you’d get into trouble?”
“Mm.” Will imagined the smoke settling lower, filling his stomach. His groin tightened uncomfortably. “More like… afraid of what would happen to me.”
“The other children didn’t take kindly to you.”
He laughed. “No.”
“Because you were the new boy?”
“Because I wasn’t like them.”
“What were you like, Will?”
Will’s eyes opened. There was no smoke. There was only the silhouette of the man in front of him, a blacker shadow in the black shades of the room. The fire had gone out. They sat in darkness. “Different,” Will replied, his lips and tongue stretching carefully over the syllables.
Hannibal breathed softly, and Will could feel his scrutiny like a tangible tentacle, wandering his body and slipping up his neck and face. It felt wet. Curious.
They surveyed one another until the clock struck the hour. It was late.
“I should go.” Will stood, stretching, glad for the break in the tension. “The dogs worry if I am not home on time.” He didn’t add that their separation anxiety was directly related to the fact that he’d been locked up for fucking months thanks to the dickhead cannibal in the room, because what would be the point? It would probably make Hannibal smile. He picked up his jacket from the back of the chair. Hannibal was standing as well, looking contemplative, and Will chewed on his lower lip. “Sorry,” he muttered, and the doctor looked up at him in surprise. Will was rather surprised, himself. He coughed. “I, uh… didn’t mean to be a bitch about the..” he gestured to the liquor cabinet.
Hannibal froze for a moment, one hand in the process of buttoning his jacket. The ghost of a smile washed over his exotic face. His stupid, exotic face. Will looked away.
“No apology is necessary,” Hannibal replied smoothly, and stepped in closer. Will resisted the urge to pull away. He was the lure. He was supposed to be attractive, and running away was probably not the best fishing strategy. Still, he didn’t fancy the way his heart was slamming, and he didn’t fancy the way Hannibal looked at him like Will was a chocolate eclair and Hannibal was STARVING .
Liar. He damn well did fancy it, and that was the problem. That was… a huge problem.
“If I may.” Hannibal walked him to the door, and caught Will’s wrist as he tried to hustle himself out of the office, into the safety of the pouring rain. The whiskey eyes captured his again, and they stood in the doorway, too close, blinking too slowly, breathing one another’s air. Hannibal inhaled, and Will wondered if he felt the smoke, too. “I would like to continue this subject at our next session, Will,” he whispered. Ignoring Will’s blanched expression, Hannibal raised the slender wrist, gripping it gently with long, musician’s fingers. Artist’s fingers. Killer’s fingers. “I would venture to guess that your recent distress has a direct correlation to the impending parental holidays.”
Will stiffened. That was right. Father’s Day was just around the corner, too. Damn it. He would need to send his dad a card. Something with dogs on it, or fish. He’d need to call him, too, for their annual awkward conversation about his lack of a love life and how he should have been an electrician.
Dammit all to hell.
Will pulled away, scowling, eyes downcast. “Don’t push it, Hannibal,” he snapped, and he scurried away, refusing to look back. It didn’t matter. The smoke followed him home.
“YOU’RE NOT MY FUCKING FATHER, JACK.”
The room went quiet. Will’s mouth hung open, the words still hanging in the air, so thick and bitter he could taste it on the back of his tongue. For several seconds, every soul in hearing range stood stock still, eyes wide and faces petrified. Hovering over the corpse on the steel slab, Zeller and Price very slowly slid their eyes to one another, and as if a bugle sounded to alert the entire building, there was a swift and silent march towards the nearest exit.
There were fourteen people in the room. They all left, en masse, one hive mind with the same purpose: get out, get out, get out.
It was almost a thing of beauty, like watching fish scatter from a large predator. They moved as a single unit, and Will watched them go, his chest rising and falling deeply. He didn’t blame them. They could hardly be faulted for wanting to get out of the way before…
“Mr. Graham.” Jack’s voice was quiet. Oh, hell. It was bad when Jack’s voice was quiet. Yelling, Will could deal with. He could block that out. But quiet was dangerous. He winced.
The last intern disappeared around the corner. Will swallowed. “Jack, look..”
“Will, you are going to shut your mouth now, and listen to me.”
Will bit the side of his cheek.
Jack was angry. He was the kind of angry that made his doctors worry about his blood pressure. Will would bet it was too high. Too much fast food. Too little sleep. Too much stress. As he spoke, Will had a hard time focusing on the words. He was too busy looking at the vein pulsing in his temple, the flare of his nostrils, the flex of his knuckles at his sides.
“Do I make myself clear?”
Will blinked. He opened and closed his mouth, and Jack’s face darkened. “Y..yeah, yeah, clear,” Will stuttered.
Jack turned on his heel and walked away, leaving Will embarrassed and confused. He had no idea what Jack had said, but he could guess. He’d been impossible to work with lately. Their little “fishing” game wasn’t going according to plan. Will had become waspish, sensitive, unreasonable… and damn if Hannibal Lecter hadn’t been right. Now, he was lashing out at Jack, for no good reason, other than the fact that he knew, he knew, he had to buy a card with a fish on it, and call his father in a few weeks.
Why it bothered him, he couldn’t tell. But he really hated it when Hannibal was right.
He told him so, over a glass of whiskey in his office. Apparently, Hannibal had restocked, and he’d restocked with the good stuff, which went a long way to smoothing out Will’s ruffled feathers.
“You hate when I’m right.” Hannibal poured himself one of the same, and Will watched him with a measure of cautious respect. He never pictured the hyper-groomed man with anything but a glass of fine wine, and found he rather liked the look of a whiskey tumbler in his hands. Not that he was thinking about his hands. He was just admiring the liquor.
Instead of sitting opposite Will, Hannibal leaned casually against the edge of his desk, taking care not to wrinkle his latest sketch. Will didn’t look at it. It would be a church, or something with posh architecture, or a replica of a Boticelli. Possibly a picture of a mangled corpse covered in some fancy-ass flowers. Maybe a sketch of Will’s dick.
He snorted into his drink, ignoring the peculiar look Hannibal threw his way. The taller man sipped at the edge of his tumbler gingerly. “I should think you would prefer a psychiatrist with accurate insight,” he purred. “But perhaps I am mistaken.”
“Insight is one thing. Driving is another.”
“Do you believe I am driving you, Will?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I know what driving feels like, and this isn’t it.”
“You accuse me of a crime for which I am not guilty.”
“Seems only fair.”
Hannibal nodded at that, amused with their quick discourse.
Will was amused, too. It was always like this with Hannibal. Thoughts coming to the light, rapid fire, like bullets from a semi-automatic.
The doctor licked the burning whiskey from his lips, and now it was Will’s turn to stare, watching the tip of his tongue catch golden fire and drag it back into the pouting mouth. Yes, pouting.
“I’ve been thinking about your recent…” he paused, and Will supplied the word.
“Bitchiness.”
Lecter exhaled. “Irascibility.”
Will laughed heartily. “That is by far the most polite way to say bitchy that I’ve ever heard.”
Hannibal joined him, chuckling deeply. At the sound, Will sank back in his chair, feeling the comforting heat of the fire, the alcohol, and the company warm his bones.
“I’ve given it some thought,” Hannibal continued, a smile still gracing his (stupidly handsome) face. “I am going to speak, Will, and you will stop me if I am incorrect on any point.”
Will nodded, too pleasantly buzzed to care about his serial-killer psychiatrist’s monologuing. He leaned back, slouching, legs spreading, arms slung casually over the chair, and he pretended not to notice Hannibal noticing him. He also pretended not to notice Hannibal pretending not to notice how Will was noticing how good he looked without his plaid jacket on, with his tie slightly loosened, hair just askew, his shirt sleeves rolled up, and graphite smudges on his fingers.
Nope. Nothing to see here.
“Go on, then,” Will grunted, and took another drink.
Hannibal mused a moment, and Will thought perhaps it was simply to observe him for a moment longer. He was sure he made a picture, all rumpled and still on edge after the confrontation with Jack.
“When your mother left you,” the man began, and Will had to bite back a groan. He leaned his head back, gazing up at Hannibal with lidded, tired eyes. Hannibal wasn’t looking at him. He was focused on the garish curtains on the opposite wall. “...your father never spoke of her again. He was a practical man, and practical men don’t cry over what they’ve lost. They pick up the pieces, and they move on.”
“Correct.” Will raised his glass in a mock toast.
“You never had to wonder if your father loved you. He showed you in his work, in the labor of his hands. There were never enough groceries in the house, but it wasn’t for lack of effort. His zeal for labor was overshadowed by a lack of education and marketable skills.. And an affinity for the bottle.”
“Right on all counts.”
“Work dried up quickly. He had relatives, but he would not go to them for help. He was a proud man, and he wished to bring his son up to be a proud man as well.”
That one brought a flush to Will’s cheeks. He felt his mouth go dry, and he pressed his lips together.
Hannibal took his silence for assent. “At some point in your childhood, they tried to take you from him.”
The flush drained. Will went grey.
“You fought them, tooth and nail. Despite the fact that he was negligent, despite the drink and the destitution, despite the unstable life he had created for you, you wanted to stay with him.” Hannibal fixed Will with a look that skated too close to sympathy for Will’s tastes. “You had already lost one parent. You would not lose another.”
“Hannibal.”
“You never had a childhood, Will.” The doctor turned, taking two steps to halt at Will’s knee. He crouched down, amber eyes catching swimming sapphire. “You were a grown man from birth.”
Will’s throat was swollen. He couldn’t form words. Words were hard things, sharp and cut like diamonds. They scraped his insides, hollowing him out.
“This time of year is difficult for you,” Hannibal was whispering, and Will didn’t understand how words were so easy for him. Why didn’t they seize on his tongue, catch on his throat, shatter his teeth? He clenched the glass in his hand, trying not to break free from his mortal coil from sheer panic alone. A warm hand came to rest on his knee, and Will stared at it, arrested by the gentle pressure. “You worked for your father, fought for your father, ached for his approval, for his love. Tell me, Will, did he ever say it? Even once?”
Stubbled scraped the back of Will’s teeth as he chewed on his lip.
Never. Not once, not ever, in all the years he’d known the man.
Hannibal heard the answer as if he’d spoken it aloud. The hand on his knee slid up, into his hair, into the thick mass of curls on Will’s head, and he gasped as Hannibal was suddenly in his space, forehead to forehead. Will clutched the arms of the chair, barely breathing.
“You were never a child,” the doctor whispered.
Will was shaking.
Dry lips brushed his ear. “Neither was I.”
Will surged. Hannibal retreated, wisely, and watched as Will began to pace, his movements twitchy and agitated.
“Why do you have to do that?” he demanded, hands on his hips, whiskey spilled on the carpet. Hannibal bent to retrieve the glass, but made no move to clean the stain. He let Will pace, and his calm only served to irritate the younger man even more. “Why do you… you just… you find the cracks, yeah? The crack in the glass, the little scratch that's scabbing over and then you just pick. You pick, you pick, and pick, and pick, until it’s not a fucking scab anymore, it’s a gash, and it needs… fucking surgery.”
“Good thing I was a surgeon.”
The sass stopped Will in his tracks, and he peered over at his companion with an incredulous look. “You can’t fix this, Hannibal,” he said lowly.
“No.”
“No one can fix this.” Will jabbed his fingers at his own chest, and oh, the pain was there, like an infection taking root. Damn Hannibal for dredging this up again! “You can’t fix my childhood, Hannibal. It's too late. It's gone.”
“It isn't gone,” Hannibal amended. “It was never present. You never had one.”
Will sneered. “Neither did you, evidently.”
“No.” Hannibal lifted his chin, and was it Will’s imagination, or were his eyes glistening? “No, I did not. My parents were killed when I was but a child, and I became a man and a pseudo-father at far too young an age. I am cognizant of the changes it effected in me. I am cognizant that it altered the path of my life, and my adulthood.”
“I’m very fucking cognizant, thank you very much.”
“You are aware. You are not cognizant.”
“What’s the difference?”
Hannibal approached him with caution. “Awareness is an act of the mind.” He reached out, and pressed two fingers to Will’s brow. Will leaned into them, unconsciously. “It is a distant thing, divorced from feeling. Cognizance is an act of acceptance, rather than resignation. It is an act of the heart.”
They stood in silence. Will did not move, even as Hannibal’s hands fell to his sides.
“So you want me to, what… find the lost little boy inside of me?” Will bit out at last, not quite able to meet Hannibal’s gaze. “Seems a little hokey, Doctor Lecter.”
“Not a lost little boy.” Hannibal lifted Will’s chin, forcing the blue eyes to find his own. He smiled sadly, and Will felt himself drowning. “I do not think you were ever lost, Will. You are, and have always been a blinding light, a spot of illumination to the poor, lost souls listing in the fog around you. Even I find myself drawn to your piercing light.”
“A moth to the flame,” Will heard himself breathe.
“Yes.”
The air was heated between them. Will’s knees trembled, but in the next moment, Hannibal was removing himself, and Will sank against the wall, his heart racing.
Hannibal turned his back to him, and Will wondered if the tremor he heard in that rich baritone was real, or if he was hallucinating again. “I do believe it would be advantageous for us both if we were to indulge in a little therapeutic exercise. Allow time for the children we never were to come out and… for lack of a better word… play.”
“Role play, Doctor?” Dammit, he hadn’t meant it to sound so filthy. It did, though, and Will stuck to his guns, tossing Hannibal a searing look when the man turned around to smirk at him. “I'm not letting you hypnotize me. I won't stare into that light again. I'm not letting you age regress me, either.”
“Hardly.” Hannibal sank to sit on the arm of his chair, and it was so casual, so human, that Will couldn’t help but stare. “Role play can suit very specific situations, and..” He pulled a grimace. “...very specific people. However, for our purposes, I think that a change of scenery is in order. Removal from one’s state of reality is essential.” He pursed his lips. “This sort of therapeutic exercise would not be as effective in short doses. Any strides we made would be instantly choked by your obligations: to Jack, to your students, to your animals.”
Will rolled the words over in his mind, trying to make sense of them. In the end, he only came up with, “You want to take a trip.”
Hannibal’s head bowed slightly. “I believe it would be helpful.”
“With me.”
“Going without you would be counterproductive.”
Very slowly, Will turned in a circle to assess his surroundings. It certainly felt real. He opened and shut his mouth, enjoying the way Hannibal’s eyes darted to his lips every time they moved. “Let me get this right,” he mused, sauntering to the stag statue and running his fingers over the antlers. They were cold. “You want me to go on a trip, with you, to… access my inner child.”
Hannibal hesitated. “A crude analysis, but in essence, yes.”
Will’s look over his shoulder was withering.
Hannibal sighed heavily. “You are oversimplifying, Will. Or perhaps, not simplifying enough.”
“There’s just no pleasing you, Doctor.”
The graceful hands spread in placating fashion. “I am simply suggesting a few days away, from the FBI, from your dogs, from the demands and restrictions of your very stressful, very adult life.”
“The way you say 'adult' makes me sound like a porn star.”
The sigh this time was exasperated. “Will..”
“I know.” He rotated on his heel, fixing the other man with a hard stare. “I get it, Hannibal. I’ve been stressed. I’ve got parent issues. I had a shitty childhood. But didn’t everybody? Doesn’t everyone have some kind of daddy issues?”
That sounded filthy again. Will ran a hand through his hair, making a silent vow never to say “daddy” again out loud.
Hannibal didn’t seem to notice. “Of course. That’s what therapy is for.”
Will laughed, a breathy, bitter thing. He crossed his arms, holding himself and shuffling closer. “And this would be… therapy?”
“Yes. What else?”
“What else.” Will had to admit there was a certain appeal in running away from it all for a few days. Jack could puff and blow all he wanted, and Will could cite doctor’s orders. He could say it was part of the game. Part of the lure. Jack would let him go, then. He would believe him, because how could he not? They’d all believe anything he said now, because they didn’t believe him before, and guilt was a powerful tool in the right hand. His were the right hands. “Where would we go?”
“Wherever you like,” Hannibal replied quickly, and held up a finger. “With one caveat. It must be someplace you have never been, someplace you wanted to go as a child. Someplace your father could not take you.”
“That’s like… three caveats.”
Hannibal did not reply. He gazed steadily at Will, and the shorter man squirmed under his scrutiny. “Okay,” he muttered, scowling and beginning to pace again. “That shouldn't be hard. I mean.. I never really thought about going on vacation as a kid. We only traveled for work.”
“I’m aware.”
“And I kinda hated it, so I didn’t really think about going anywhere else. Going on vacation was something other people did.” His eyes lifted. “Not us.”
Hannibal eased himself into the chair behind his desk, and picked up his pencil. He went to work on the drawing, which Will could now see was a finely detailed rendition of St. Basil’s cathedral in Moscow. It was three quarters of the way finished, and Will was afraid to venture too close, fearful of blocking Hannibal’s light, or knocking over his inkwell.
Who the hell had an inkwell on their desk, anyway?
“Perhaps a national monument or a park you wished to see?” Hannibal suggested lightly. “I know how fond you are of the outdoors. I have personally never been to Yellowstone, or the Pacific Northwest.”
Will eyed him from a few feet away. “A park,” he repeated. “You would go traipsing through the woods with me?”
Hannibal nodded.
“Outdoors, in the woods and the dirt and the mosquitoes.”
“I admit to a bias against mosquitoes.” Hannibal glanced up from his sketch, a gleam of mischief in his eyes. “It is my preference to dine on the less fortunate, and not to be dined upon in return.”
Will sank into the armchair, rubbing his face. The cannibal puns were going to kill him. He pondered the conversation, the reasons behind it, and came to the inevitable conclusion that this was a spectacularly bad idea. He could just picture it: Hannibal, sporting some ridiculous, expensive gear, sitting across from Will by a fire, roasting the limbs of some unsuspecting, rude tourist before they retired to a fifteen-thousand dollar glamping tent for the night… Will blushed, looking at the carpet, and the whiskey stain that was still there. He wondered if Hannibal would have to replace the entire rug.
Hannibal had returned to his task. The pencil made soothing, soft noises against the paper as he moved his hand. “I would, however, brave the Great Outdoors, mosquitoes and all, to contribute to your good mental health, Will,” he murmured, and Will swallowed thickly. “So name the place. I do ask that we remain stateside. No need to alarm Uncle Jack.”
“None at all.” A terrible, wonderful, wicked idea had sprung in Will’s brain, and for a brief moment, he wondered if he should get another brain scan. Surely this was a fever talking. It was insane, quite literally. Hannibal was evil. He was a soul-sucking cannibal. He was a sadistic psychopath, a serial-killer, and the only reason Will wasn’t being served under glass for his next swanky do, was that Hannibal found him mildly interesting and fun to play with, like a cat with a mouse. He also was beginning to suspect Hannibal liked his ass. Whether that was sexual interest or culinary, Will had yet to ascertain. He shouldn’t poke the bear. He should tell him this was a bad idea, or maybe they should follow Hannibal’s suggestion and see Yellowstone. Or the Redwoods. Or Mount Rainier. Or….
“Disney World.”
Aaaaand he'd said it out loud. Damn, Will really needed to learn to keep his mouth shut.
The pencil in Hannibal’s hand made a screeching sound as it stabbed through the delicate paper, leaving a dark line in its wake. A pity. The drawing was ruined.
In the deathly silence that followed, Hannibal lifted his head slowly, eyes round, lips parted. Will sat frozen in his chair, his muscles clamped up. In this moment, he was rather sure this was the closest he’d ever come to death. The black smoke was back, swirling in his mind, but it wasn’t so friendly this time. He could feel its billowing breath, hot and furious, pulsing in panic and fury.
He wondered if Hannibal could use the gelatin in his fingernails in his dessert course.
“What?” It was all Lecter could manage, and Will felt a little surge of self-congratulation at having stumped the genius. It was all it took to steel his resolve.
“You… said someplace I always wanted to go as a child, someplace my father could never have afforded. All the other kids got to go. They came back with stories of the rides, and the food, and the music, and… well, I was a weird kid, but I was still just a kid.” He shrugged. “Of course I wanted to go. I never would have told my old man, but… yeah.” It was actually true. Will felt rather embarrassed admitting it.
“Disney World.”
“Yeah.”
“The place with the..” Hannibal winced. “Cartoons.”
Will shrugged again. It was probably for the best. He was having an admittedly difficult time distinguishing between his desire for revenge, and his desire to punch Hannibal's face until he bled, and his desire to shove his tongue down his throat.
Camping was a terrible idea, too.
“You said any place.” He lifted his eyebrows, but inside, he was preening. He’d called Hannibal’s bluff. There was no way the doctor would ever go to someplace where turkey legs were a staple, and oversized cartoon characters offered hugs on every corner.
The psychiatrist looked positively stricken. He gazed down at the beautifully rendered drawing, now marred by an un-erasable mark, and he crumpled it with a sigh. “Florida has some lovely beaches, Will.”
“I’ve been to the beach.”
Hannibal’s throat bobbed, and Will was entranced by the movement. He waited, while Hannibal digested this information. When no sound was forthcoming, Will rubbed his hands on his legs. “Unless you don’t want to go,” he offered helpfully, and he didn’t miss the flash of relief that passed over the doctor’s face. Will stood, shaking his limbs out. “It’s fine,” he smiled. “A trip isn’t necessary. I feel better. I really do. I mean, it was just a stupid...”
“We’ll leave on Sunday.” Hannibal stood as well, tugging his vest primly and swiping a hand through his gold and silver hair.
Will blinked once. Twice.
“I will inform Jack, and have Alana cover your classes. You will need to make arrangements for your dogs. I can help defray the boarding costs, if they are prohibitive. I am sure last minute accommodations are steep.” He retrieved Will’s coat, and held it out for him.
Will stammered. “Wh.. No. No, Hannibal, I don’t think…”
“An afternoon flight, I think. I will text you with the details.”
“Hannibal.”
The taller man glanced at his watch. “I am sorry, Will, but we are out of time. Your dogs are waiting, and I have a great deal to attend to. I will touch base with you tomorrow. For now, do be careful on the drive home.”
Will’s mouth felt sluggish and stupid, unable to form coherent sentences as he was bustled swiftly out into the patient exit, and the door clicked shut behind him.
He wavered, his feet taking him out to his beat up car, brows drawn and eyes cloudy.
What in the actual hell had just happened?