Chapter Text
When Will was ten, he fell off the pavement and scraped his elbows and knees raw. It wasn’t a bad surface but it was a bad fall. It taught him the difference between a misstep and an intentional shove. Inertia, gravity, etcetera.
The road - He never looked at the road. As inanimate as it was, it should have worn some proof. Something to tell the tale of his ‘accident’. Confirm or deny.
Like the bruise on Hannibal’s left cheek that’s blooming vibrant purple as the time passes. There’s a raw red center from where the skin’s broken. It may scar, it may not. Will wishes for the former.
“You might need an x-ray if you can’t extend all your fingers,” He murmurs, just between them. Taping the end of the crepe bandage when he’s done wrapping and he looks up at Will.
There’s a split to his lip too. On the same side of his face; right (makes sense as Will took a swing with his left). The blood has clotted after it was smeared.
Will reaches out with his uninjured hand to touch. Hannibal lets him. Just like he let him have that punch.
He doesn’t lean into it. Will doesn’t linger longer than needed. He sniffles as he pulls back, straightening up in his seat, which is on a toilet seat cover. Hannibal stands up first. Will goes second, then stops to watch what’ll become of his wedding ring on the counter.
Hannibal looks but doesn’t touch. He deposits the bowl into the sink with a dull clatter and turns the water on. “I suppose you don’t want this back?” He asks against the stream.
Will moves to take it and jams it up his fourth finger on his right hand. “Whatever you mean by that,” he snorts and steps out of their master bathroom.
-
When they first met, he was sixteen in the principal office.
He got called in for a brawl that wasn’t initiated by him. Hannibal was there playing the good neighbour to the other boy’s mother. Will’s palm was bleeding from the cut he got, stopping himself getting stabbed by a broken bottle end. He clenched it into a fist and punched it deeper into his jeans pocket as if that could help stop it.
Everything else was a cacophony of nothing.
From the shrill voice of the boy’s mother to the placating tone of the principal and his teacher, Mr Lewington, looked as harassed as Will felt inside. So he looked away and met a pair of cool, composed eyes that seemed to study him with interest.
He levelled them with a stare. Perhaps he was challenging. Perhaps he was trying to calm his own nerves down by clinging to those steady eyes.
Eventually, they decided to let them go. With a suspension letter rolled into his left fist, Will tried to flee first but the mother and son duo nearly shoved him up the wall on their way out. He let out a sigh and tried to wrap his head around the repercussions of it all.
That’s when they first spoke.
“May I see your hand, please?” The man asked. His unbothered eyes now seem appropriately bothered. Like adjusting temperature on the thermostat knob to level heat and cold. As if one can have such control at all.
“No,” Will denied him.
Why bother when he’s with the other side of his story. The team who spun a tale and put all the blame on him. Terrific, now he had to go home and explain to his father why he’s out of school for the next two weeks.
“You’re bleeding,” the man said. He looked fairly young to be the father, unless - Well.
“I know.”
“You might need stitches. I’m a Trauma Surgery resident. Likely, the best person for the job.” He held out his hand. “Hannibal Lecter.”
He didn’t put the title before his name. Will stared at his hand then his own pants. Almost the entire right leg is blood stained. He clenched his jaw and pulled his fist out.
Hannibal Lecter met his eyes before he pried his fingers open. It felt like he was unraveling a secret. He remembered his breath getting caught in his chest. The rise in his heartbeat and the shock when his homeroom teacher alerted them to his presence.
“Jesus, Graham,” he’d said. “Come on, I’d show you two to the nurse’s station.”
-
Now Will listens to Jack Crawford’s voicemail interrupting the revelation of a different secret.
“I’m such a bad cop,” he says, when it ends. He puts the phone back on the bedside table and turns around to look at his husband.
He doesn’t know if it’s the moon tonight or the light shed onto the deepest, darkest corner of who he is, but Hannibal looks different. Will laughs, bitter with disbelief. It feels like the most appropriate reaction at the moment.
“You fooled me for years,” he blames.
Hannibal keeps his eyes fixed out the window. As if he’s waiting for the police siren to come. Or the FBI to break their front door and put a bullet through his head.
They won’t because Will hasn’t told a soul but Hannibal doesn’t know that.
“You’re not a bad cop, Will,” he says. “I won’t listen to you belittle yourself like that.”
“Why?” Will snorts, derisive. “Because you love me?”
“As difficult as it may be for you to believe, yes.” He turns around then. “I love you.”
The wind howls outside. The branches from their Autumn worn cherry blossom tree tap against the window with growing urgency.
Will looks at the black claws, hears the whistling breeze as it travels down the road and he tells Hannibal with a voice scraped raw by his vocal cords: “Not enough for you to stop killing.”
-
The next time he met Hannibal, at least the one that mattered, was seven years out of high school.
He’s just finished his training. Got stationed in New Orleans and his boss sent him to Baltimore for a course on how to stop child-trafficking. It was a boring weekend. On the last day, Will went out with the guy he got paired with to represent New Orleans and watched him get shit-faced at the local bar.
It would have ended only a bad night if the guy - William, he remembers - didn’t decide to catcall a number of college girls standing outside and in return received a well deserving punch to his face. The kick to his gut and the knife to his arm was a bit too much.
He rode the ambulance with Williams to John Hopkins wondering how the hell could he explain this to the Deputy. That if they got lucky and the Chief of Police didn’t hear about it.
He registered William at the front desk, thanked the paramedic and went to look for the idiot.
The nurse at the station pointed him left without looking up from her notepad. Will spotted William almost immediately when he turned. “There you are,” he let out a breath.
“Will Graham.” Hannibal Lecter looked up from the papers.
It’s been a few years since they last met but he barely looked older. Will noted with a nod that he’d exchanged the Dr. in front of his name to a Mr. Lecter embroidered in fine blue thread over the upper left corner of his white coat since they last met (which was when he got his stitches removed seven days after).
The smile he received was unexpected but extremely nostalgic that it brought one out of him.
“Hi,” he said. A little breathless. The crush he developed while he watched Hannibal Lecter suture his wound into a neat fine line seemed to come knocking at the front door now. “Hi,” he cleared his throat again, forgetting he’d said it the first time.
Hannibal Lecter’s smile quivered. “Is this your friend?” He asked, nodding at a passed out William.
Will frowned. “A partner,” he reviewed the title. “He, um. We got paired up for a weekend course here. It’s - I don’t really know him except that he’s from the same station.” He settled.
“Station?” Delicate brow arches.
Will wet his lips and tried to not blush. “Police Station in New Orleans,” he answered. “I work there now.”
The smile widened as brown eyes twinkled. “As an officer.”
If he wasn’t blushing then, he definitely was now. “Yep,” he rubbed the back of his neck. Skin prickling.
William let out a groan and stole Hannibal’s attention from him. Will braved to look up then, rubbing his cheeks with his palms. “Will he live?” he asked.
Hannibal laughed. “Yes. For better or for worse.”
He glanced over his shoulder as he moved to William’s left and pulled up a stool. There’s a tray of disposable kit on the bedside table. “He only needs some stitches to the laceration over his arm. Otherwise, the hangover will be the worst thing he’ll have to nurse come morning.”
“Great.” Will said, for the lack of anything better. He fidgetted where he stood, watching Hannibal open the disposable kit and dump a pair of sterile gloves on top of it. Will noted the large 8 on the glove package.
“Would you like to help?” Hannibal asked.
Will blinked, pointed at himself and his voice came after, shocked. “Me?”
“The rule is: you see one, assist one and do the rest.”
“Not in my profession.” Will deadpan. But the look on Hannibal’s face was inviting.
“Nevertheless,” he said. “I could use your assistance.”
He’s guided through the handwash, how to don the sterile gloves while all the time he wondered why Hannibal even bothered. He could have called the nurse at the station. She looked busy but she would have helped and it would have been much quicker.
But he didn’t bring that up. Waiting with his sterile gloved hands palm down inside the plastic wrap of the disposable suture kit, he watched as Hannibal prepared the topical analgesics before he put on his own pair of gloves.
He helped dab the blood when it oozed. Helped hold the knot so it wouldn’t unravel with a pair of forceps and helped water that bed of crush-fucking-blossoms that are shedding their old dried leaves and sprouting greener healthier ones as he breathed the same air in proximity with Hannibal Lecter.
“You’re a quick learner,” Hannibal commented at the end. Taking the used gloves from Will and bunching it up together with the suture kit before he disposed of them into the clinical waste bin.
“Maybe next time I can do one,” Will joked.
“I would trust you as much.” Hannibal smiled. He stepped aside as he dried his hands while Will took his turn. “Do you visit Baltimore often?” He asked.
Scrubbing his palms and the webs between his fingers, Will shook his head. “No.”
“Just a one time occurrence?”
“For the time being.” He pulled out the tissues from the dispenser and wiped his hands.
Hannibal caught his right hand as he tossed the ball of tissue into the bin. It missed. He stops breathing at once, attention narrowing to the light pressure along the line of scar on his palm. “It seemed to have healed beautifully.”
Will burned. There was no part of him that he associated with that word. But he couldn’t draw his hand back to himself. He gulped. “Credits to the Trauma Surgeon resident who stitched me up then.”
“Trauma Surgeon now.” Hannibal smiled. Almost a grin. His teeth showed but not too much. Will had a sudden overwhelming desire to make him laugh.
“So it’s not Doctor now?”
“Mister.”
“Why?”
“Old school thoughts and traditions.” Hannibal said, letting go of his hand. “Surgeons were not educated in medicine then. Skills valued more than theory. Which is, of course, no longer the case now.”
“Butchers.” Will wrinkled his nose.
Hannibal smiled. “In a barbaric point of view.”
“Are you calling me barbaric?” He laughed. Joked, tried to keep Hannibal longer because he could see the end to their meeting coming as it was.
“I wouldn’t dare.” Hannibal said. Then, “I should return to my duties.”
“Must you?” Will winced. “Sorry. I shouldn’t.”
Hannibal cocked his head and regarded him for a moment. Will opened his mouth to say that he should be going but was quickly interrupted.
“I’m hosting a dinner party this Saturday,” Hannibal said. “You should come.”
Will doesn’t do well with crowds but for Hannibal he wanted to try. “Okay”
-
Even now, he wants to try.
“Come here,” he pads the side of the bed where Hannibal sleeps. “Talk to me. I want to know.”
The urge to pull a trigger never came. He already put a fist to Hannibal’s face and made him bleed. After that, he doesn’t know what the worst that can happen. “Hannibal,” he calls and watches him move as if summoned.
For all that Will wants to talk, they sit in silence for a long drowning moment. He feels washed by waves after waves of feelings and nervous anticipations. He keeps expecting himself to be slaughtered but he doesn’t fear it. He’d thought about it last night in his office.
Envisioned the blood pour like fountains from wherever Hannibal cut him through and he saw himself go down with a smile. Everytime.
Because he loves Hannibal and Hannibal loves him all the same. So, “Why can’t you stop?”
“I did,” Hannibal breathes. His hand on the bed is a half formed fist. Knuckles white in the dark, gold wedding band gleaming and Will takes his hand into his.
His mind goes back in time. Counts all those dates backwards and flick through the records he’d memorised for years. “You stopped when we got married.”
“I made a vow.”
“Or you found it harder to hide your hobby when we shared the roof.”
“You’re not always home,” Hannibal points out. “I stopped because I saw a future with you.”
Will tries to tuck his thumb between the wedding ring and Hannibal’s finger as he asks, “And now you don’t?”
Hannibal’s glare is biting. The last time he saw that was ages back when they first started dating and Will questioned his intent out of his own insecurity. Now he holds Will prisoner under an icy stare and says, “Not since you’re trying to kill yourself in the name of saving others.”
Will swallows. Dry and numb. He lets go of Hannibal’s hand and rubs down his face. They’ve talked about this before.
“You made a vow to me too, Will. Do you not remember?”
“Hannibal,” Will sighs through his teeth. “I don’t see how that is relevant to this.”
“Can you not, really?” Hannibal laughs. A short burst of humourless breath.
Will looks at him with mouth agape in disbelief. “No, Hannibal. I can’t.”
The glare disappears. Leaving cold indifference in its wake. “I suppose with all your insurmountable insecurities, it’s punishing to believe that your husband couldn’t envision a future without you by his side.”
“So you decided to kill it for both of us?”
“I decided to drag us through hell if that’s what you want.”
-
“Formal suit and tie. This is one hundred percent not my thing.”
“But you came,” Hannibal smiled, ear to ear and it's that same small grin which begged for Will to turn it into a laugh.
“You’re lucky.” He told him.
Hannibal took his overcoat and folded it over his arm. “Does that mean I can ask for something else as well?”
He nodded ahead and they walked into a room where he hung Will’s coat among the rest. It’s pitch black when the door closed. The small sliver of light extinguished leaving them in complete darkness.
Will felt for his collar and shoved a finger in the space between the fabric and his skin. He rubbed along the line trying to loosen the gap. Hannibal pulled the door open and let the light back in. But his hand stopped Will on the way out
“Stay after dinner, please.” He said.
Will nodded. He didn’t ask why and Hannibal didn’t offer why. He grabbed a champagne from the passing waiter and handed it to Will.
“Please enjoy yourself, and if you’re craving some space, the study is upstairs, to the left.”
Needless to say, Will retired almost immediately to the study. Hannibal found him afterwards with head lolling on the chair. An open book resting over his chest, hands fallen loose by his side.
“Will.” He called, standing with his back against the table.
Will startled with a curse spilling out of his lips. Hannibal caught the book before it fell and Will spewed a mountain of apologies, sprinkled with more cuss words.
“Please,” Hannibal chuckles, bright even in his exhaustion. “It is no matter of grief.”
Will rubbed his hands over his face, realised how bad he’d fucked up and sat immediately up with his spine straight. It was then he saw Hannibal; out of his tuxedo, left in his white shirt and suit pants, sleeves rolled up to his elbows.
“I missed dinner, didn’t I?”
“You did,” Hannibal smiled.
Will squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed another curse down. “I’m so sorry.” He said instead. “I didn’t mean to -,” he waved at the room in general, failing to explain but Hannibal understood him anyway.
“You’re exhausted,” his hand found the side of his face and Will helplessly leaned into his palm. He rubbed a thumb under Will’s eye, over his cheekbone and pulled in a sharp breath. “I’m afraid I cannot allow you to drive back home with good conscience.”
Will thought of bunking at a cheap motel nearby but he shrugged. “I’d manage.”
“Sleep here,” Hannibal said. “I have a guest room. If there’s anything short, I can compensate but first. Dinner.”
In the kitchen, he pulls out a plate filled with a little bit of everything put together for a single person serving.
“You kept this for me?” Will asked, sipping on the wine to hide his smile.
There’s a flush of warmth that came with the thought of someone caring enough about him to put something aside with him in their mind. He could only imagine Hannibal thinking about him as he arranged this plate. If he wondered where Will was, and if he worried about that.
“I came to fetch you in time for dinner but you were asleep. You looked exhausted.” Hannibal explained.
“I had a twelve-hour shift yesterday. Between picking up the suit and driving here, I think I got about four hours of sleep.” He took a bite of the tartlet and frowned. “I’m not sure.”
Hannibal hummed. “Start with this,” he picked up a small cracker with tiny caviars topping and held out for Will to bite. Salt burst on his tongue. More delicate than brine. Like the taste of the deep ocean in the winter. Will closed his eyes and savoured.
A press of the thumb to the corner of his mouth chased the crumbs left behind. Will opened his eyes and saw Hannibal cut the meat with a fork and knife. “You were willing to deprive yourself of sleep to come here.”
“I wanted to see you,” Will said. Honest. He couldn’t stop thinking about Hannibal after last Sunday. Couldn’t stop the flush of blood through his veins at the very thought of him.
He wanted, and he needed Hannibal to know; all of his cards laid bare between them. Will had never been one to beat around the bush. Especially with Hannibal, he knew that honesty and directness would be appreciated. With both of their jobs and the distance; Will wanted to show him that he could put the effort but he needed Hannibal to know what his intent was to begin with.
“As do I,” Hannibal held the cut meat and Will bit. He watched as Will chewed and swallowed. “We have a ten year gap between us.”
“Does it bother you?”
“Doesn’t it bother you that I first saw you in school?”
“Are you married? Engaged? In a relationship?”
Hannibal laughed.
That smile that stretched only wide enough to show some teeth now rippled with low timber spilling out pink lips. Crinkled eyes and laugh lines, a small cleft form between Hannibal’s eyes and a brand new ambition bloom in Will at that sight. As much as he wanted to make him laugh, now he wanted to kiss that sound from his mouth.
“No.” Hannibal answered after. He poked some greens and held it out for Will with a hand cupped under the offering. Will grabbed onto his wrist as he opened his mouth to accept it. Brown eyes twinkled as he held them captive.
“What would you like to be?” Hannibal asked. “Boyfriend, fiance or husband?”
Will coughed and spluttered. He glared as he took the water. Once swallowed, he said. “All.”
“Is that so?” Hannibal tipped his eyes like he did in the hospital. Intrigued, Will observed. And something else.
Will stared him dead in the eyes and demanded, “Why? Are you scared?”
-
“That’s not fair.” Will stands up. He marches towards the window and stands there until his breathing evens out.
He closes his eyes and hears Hannibal whisper in his head. Those times way back when he practised calming tricks while Will played patient before his psychiatry examination. Before they got married. After Will had gone down on one knee and pulled out a ring he’d been keeping buried for over a year under his mattress.
He feels for it next to his wedding band. The silver besides the gold. An inscription bearing Hannibal’s name inside of it because that’s the kind of simplicity Will adored. But Hannibal likes extravagant things. Banality disgusts him so, he cannot blame Will for questioning why he settled for someone so boring as him for a husband.
Someone who can’t participate in his party and opera and orchestra without looking like a lost deer in the headlights. Someone who wears flannel and jeans and hates suits and ties. Someone who escapes for McDonalds and Burger King and sighs like he’d found the oasis during his work trips.
Will thrives in normalcy and simple life. He likes munching on greasy fries and shaking the last crumb of salty chips out of the family sized bag.
He also likes the defeated look Hannibal gives him when he finds fast food wrappers and empty chips bags in the trash can. Sometimes, Will leaves them there on purpose. He’d bullied him into getting a dog for heaven sake and Hannibal let him.
Just as he let Will punch him in the face tonight.
Guilt ruptures like a blister in his chest. He glances over his shoulder where Hannibal’s sat. “You’d have to cover that bruise,” he says. Nodding at his face. “Or call in sick.”
“I have Franklyn tomorrow,” Hannibal sighs.
“So?”
“So, you know why.”
Hannibal’s too uptight to roll his eyes so Will rolls his own eyes for him. “You should have stopped me,” he traces his way back. “I know you can.”
“Of course I can.” Hannibal meets his gaze, head tilted upwards and he closes his eyes when Will catches his chin. He traces a thumb, just over the skin, not really daring to touch where he’d broken it. With the other hand, he cups the back of Hannibal’s head and pulls him in until he’s pressed to his abdomen.
It's not that he can or can't. It's that he will or won't.
“I don’t want to go through hell with you, Hannibal. I want to live with you,” he tells him.
“What if you have to?” Hannibal asks, muffled in Will’s sleep shirt.
Will grabs a fistful of his hair and holds on. “Then I will. But if there’s any other way we can avoid that, then that’s the road we’re taking.”
“Even if the hand you hold is dripping with blood?”
“Yes,” Will said. “In sin and hell.”
Hannibal props his chin and looks up at Will. “I don’t think that’s how the vow goes.”
Will kisses the top of his head, and whispers, “Well now they do.”