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Abigail sat dead-eyed and rigid on a throne of antlers. She jolted forward with a gasp, her mouth hanging open, as blood oozed through her pale blouse like the spread of an oil slick. She pleaded with her eyes, but he couldn’t save her.
He couldn’t move.
He jerked against his own prison of white bone. Sharp points cut him in retribution as Abigail coughed up a splatter of blood. He thrashed and his skin tore. He couldn’t scream.
“… help me.”
He found pieces of his voice in the pain and suffering. “Abigail?”
"She tricked me... she knows everything."
"W-who? Who knows everything?"
“Her…”
Abigail turned her head and he followed her gaze. The Chesapeake Ripper’s tableau; the woman skewered like meat on the rack of antlers. Details identical except…
He sucked in a startled breath.
The skin had been peeled off her face. Her vacant eyes bulged from their sockets, the visceral tapestry of muscle and blood drawn tight over bone. Dead—or was she? Her chest heaved with a suddenness expected of life and gurgled over broken windpipes. She raised her arm, pointing… at him.
“See?” Airy laughter. “See?”
Will Graham woke with a start. His eyes ping-ponged and struggled to grip reality as the sound of his heartbeat roared inside his head. He reached out for something, anything , and his fingers dragged across the wood grain of his desk. Out of desperation, he grabbed onto the edges, gripping them, to find his grounding solidarity. This was his reality. In that moment, he was alive. It had been just another nightmare then, penned by madness as they always were. Meaningless and profound. Mystery framed by revelation. Garbled images that meant little yet held a significance all at once.
He took a steadying breath and then rubbed his eyes. Readjusting his glasses allowed him to focus on the open cavity of the lecture hall. Faint light illuminated chairs and ghosts of students while lectures and homicides echoed against the walls. Dark and empty—save for two lone figures.
Garett Jacob Hobbs and Dr. Gideon grinned their dead carnival grins.
Will flinched and looked away, down, anywhere but at their dead faces. He didn’t need to see them to remember the bullet holes, the spray of blood—didn’t need to squeeze his hands to feel it on his skin. The guilt of taking their lives had diminished to a dull ache. And as their haunted chuckles scraped at his brain, he reminded himself how… good it felt to kill. Reminded himself, too, by how far he’d fallen from grace.
He needed his sounding board, his gauge. The unfailing metronome of his sanity.
The clock face glared at him with silent accusation. 5:32 PM.
He should be home.
:::
Will rang the doorbell. He ran his fingers through his damp hair and then shoved his hand in his pants pocket. The bottle of pills rattled and the noise brought with it a sense of clarity; a whisper in the dark that he was still here—whatever here meant. Alive, at least. In how many pieces, he didn’t know.
He winced at the sudden stab of a headache, fidgeted as a bead of sweat rolled down his spine. Perspiration pooled in the hollow holes that a lack of nourishment had left behind. Many pieces, was the answer, strung together by desperation. He rang the doorbell again as his heart thrummed a familiar tune—Abigail, Abigail. Notes of anticipation punched at the pulse point in his neck.
The door opened and Dr. Lecter darkened the doorway. His long shadow incited a riot in his bones; a conflict between fear and something else—appreciation, a lull in the splintered craziness of his mind. Something else, too, darker, its meaning unimaginable to name. His gut twisted, but not because of hunger. Excitement pinpricked his insides and he held his breath.
"Will." The exotic lilt of his accent slipped through his skin like a scalpel. “I wasn't expecting you.” His eyes missed nothing. “Are you all right?"
Will stood there, his vocal chords severed. The good doctor stepped out into the cold, studying him with dark eyes. His skin crawled with it. In that moment, he’d forgotten why he was here. Too lost in the maze of his mind to notice that he was staring. Dr. Lecter’s face committed nothing in the way of emotion; blank as it always had been, strong jaw and pronounced cheekbones etched from marble. Clean lines—all of him—from the evenness of his shoulders to the tailored simplicity of his black suit. Even his tie, a myriad of red-patterned dreams, provided the balance of a straight, hard line; one that he was infinitely crossing.
From patient to friend, to—
The intrusion of Dr. Lecter’s body heat soaked through his clothes. Inches apart, the good doctor angled his head down, a cant to the side, breaching the protective rim of his glasses. Their eyes met.
“Will?”
He forgot how to breathe.
“Are you—“
“Y-yes—no,” he corrected. “It’s Abigail.”
Will collected his wits and pushed past him. Inside, the fragrant air warmed his skin. Dinner, meat of some sort, churned his belly. It growled with need.
“Abigail? Miss Lounds and I were just talking about her.”
“Freddie Lounds?”
His voice shattered over incredulity. Dr. Lecter opened his mouth to respond and Will turned, stormed off, leaving him in the foyer. The textures and aesthetics of his home bled together in the smear of an artist’s brush stroke; colors and rich depth forgotten in his hurry. The dining room opened up to him with an alarming number of sensations; sights and smells that short-circuited his taxed brain. The lively scent of meat and fresh herbs clashed with the blood-brilliance of her hair, her smile dead on her face. Focus lighting on the back wall—meant to accent the mounted planters—painted a red halo about her head.
The she-devil among sinners.
Freddie Lounds sat at the lacquered dining table, her plate a picture-perfect masterpiece of vegetables. She feigned a false smile, her discontent obvious still. He read it in her body language; her stiff spine, the up-tilt of her chin and the defensive frame of her shoulders—pulled back and even.
"Mr. Graham," she said, tone snipped like a surgically removed organ. Her eyes tore through him. "Why is he here?"
"Will is his own man. He comes and goes as he pleases."
The good doctor’s unseen smile—it touched the darkest part of him.
“Dr. Lecter and I were about to discuss a business arrangement. In private.”
"What does Abigail have to do with a—a business arrangement?" Venom spoiled his tongue. He threw a glare over his shoulder. “Did you know about this?”
“No. But it's not unexpected." Dr. Lecter motioned to the table, a simple gesture to suggest that he take a seat. The ghost of his touch swept over the small of his back. Hidden like a secret, almost unnoticeable to anyone but him. Will steeled against it with a hard swallow, clenching his fists at his side. Always calm and in control, Dr. Lecter took his seat at the head of the table and focused his attention on Freddie. "Miss Lounds is always the opportunist. Aren't you, Miss Lounds?"
Will stepped forward and gripped the back of a chair, for balance, to fortify his sanity. He focused on the liquid silver of the carving knife, calculating in its position beside the ornate piece of meat. Drown himself in its shine, that was his intention. Anything to cancel her out; anything to keep him from imagining what it would be like to slit her throat.
"It's a dog eat dog world,” she said. “Survival of the fittest and I plan to survive. That means taking every opportunity I can. In this case—"
Her voice whistled and cracked over a broken windpipe—a familiar sound that drew his attention. The sight shortchanged his lungs of air. As Freddie droned on, the exposed muscles in her face contracted and pulled, loosening and tightening under blood and gore. The skin… ripped back like a curtain on a macabre play.
Will jerked his head, tore his eyes away. And then he remembered.
The dream. Abigail.
"It's you."
She tricked me. She knows everything.
"You tricked her.” He swallowed around the invisible hand clutching his throat. “You know everything.”
Freddie stared at him. "Are you ill, Mr. Graham?"
"Is this about Abigail, Will?"
His voice lured him, guided him through the chaos of his mind. He found Dr. Lecter, a king at the head of his table, through the skull-crushing pain of his headache, the ebb and throb of his brain. Will nodded.
Dr. Lecter slid a knife through his meat, dark eyes swinging like a bladed-pendulum to his dinner guest. "Miss Lounds, is there something you're keeping from us?"
Freddie tightened; the steel wire of her shoulders a taut line. "I didn't want to do this in front of him…" Her bulging eyes burrowed holes into his skull. “Abigail Hobbs helped her father kill those girls. She butchered Nicholas Boyle—and you helped her hide the body.” A haggard breath, and then… "Yes, I know everything and I intend to use the information however I see fit."
"Blackmail?" Will hissed.
Dr. Lecter smiled around a bite of meat. "And how did you come across this information?”
“It was willingly given.”
“How.” The word dropped like a bolder from his own mouth.
"I don't see how that's any of your business—"
"If what Miss Lounds says is true, and Abigail committed these crimes, she wouldn't have admitted to them under her own free will." Dr. Lecter inspected his meat-skewered fork like a victim. "Hypnoanalysis, then?" Freddie’s silence became her unwitting answer. "Did Dr. Bloom oversee these sessions?"
"Abigail gave me her consent.”
"Did she? Or did you trick her?" Will cut in.
"I did what I had to."
Dr. Lecter positioned his fork and knife on either side of his finished plate. Straight and perfectly spaced apart. The confession hung in the air, spread open wide; its guts hanging on the hooks of her sins.
"You realize that these allegations will ruin my reputation, destroy the life of a young girl.” Dr. Lecter wiped the corners of his mouth with a napkin. "I simply cannot have that."
"Then you'll agree to my terms,” Freddie stated, bolstered. “And while I can't promise Abigail's story won't be leaked, I can assure you that yours, Dr. Lecter, is safe with me… if you give me everything you have on Will Graham."
“Why me?” Will croaked.
"You're the big story waiting to happen, Mr. Graham. Just one step away from the edge. You'll kill. And I want to be there when it happens."
“One step away?" He laughed, on the verge of hysteria. “I'm already falling."
"I believe Miss Lounds has overstayed her welcome." The smile in his voice— "Don't you, Will?"
The sickness in his brain had already begun fabricating the ways he’d peel her. Imagined the sound of her screams, anticipated the warmth of her blood on his hands. His fingers wrapped around cool steel and her smile curled in on itself, pulled back to an ‘o’ of horror. He yanked the carving knife free—
—and stood at the kitchen sink. The running faucet hissed and carried his eyes down, along its powerful stream—to the knife in the sink, to the blood coating his hands. Will jerked back from his own skin. Lost time, the scene between its pages gone. His stomach clenched at the smell, the rush of confusion making his head spin. He wanted to escape, cut off his guilty hands and run, but all he could do was stare. Blood pooled in the creases of his skin, dripped down his wrists to pitter-patter on steel. He clenched them to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. Fingernails bit into his palms, the crescent-shaped pinpoints of pain bringing shape to his muddled reality.
I killed her.
Another voice invaded his head.
See? See?
A touch to his shoulder jolted him. Next, the flush of body heat; an intoxicating trade-off for the lonely chill of madness. Dr. Lecter sidled next to him at the sink, impossibly close. A scent as exotic as he was teased at his nose; the notes of his aftershave, a cologne maybe, something light and elegant.. dangerous in its temptation.
Will closed his eyes. Part of him wanted to pull the veil over his mind, to shield himself from his unforgivable act. But most of him wanted to savor their closeness. His skin ignited when Dr. Lecter slipped an arm between them, reaching out to pump the soap dispenser once, twice. Without a word, the good doctor grabbed his hands. Together, their fingers stripped away the red ink of his guilt, sliding over one another in a way that was… too easy. Dr. Lecter thumbed soap over his knuckles, kneading each palm with strong yet surprisingly gentle—and soft—hands. Too pristine for a once-practicing physician who had been elbow-deep in body cavities so many years ago.
He concentrated on the skin-on-skin contact, chewing back his nagging question. He didn’t need to ask the question to know the answer. But—
"Did I—" His voice crumbled with fragility. "Did I kill her?"
He didn’t dare to raise his eyes. He stared into the stream of water and wondered what it would be like to drown.
"Yes, Will. With a brutality I never expected from you."
Something chipped at the volcanic glass of his voice; something he couldn’t quite place. Was it the muted judgment and horror of his psychiatrist? No. It was morbid satisfaction.
Pride.
There was starvation in Dr. Lecter’s eyes; a need to satiate. Too intense, Will closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on something else, anything else. His hands again, caressed and scrubbed clean; the languid drag of fingers on the back of his. Dr. Lecter began to pull away and Will grabbed his wrist. The safety in his touch, the complete and utter trust; it tethered him back to Earth, anchored him to the smallest island of sanity he had left. And Dr. Lecter let him, for the breath of a second.
Then he twisted his wrist free.
The absence of him, his safety net, left him cold. Will snapped his eyes open when his glasses were lifted from his face. Dr. Lecter pressed a warm, wet towel against his skin and he leaned into it. Will studied his face. Beneath age and graying hair belied a wise-old grace, refined and classic like vintage wine. Elegant. Somehow… deadly. Dr. Lecter smiled, the guarded kindness gathering at the corners of his eyes.
His world tilted on its axis when the towel came back red.
The staunch smell of blood set his body to waver and sapped the strength out of his knees. The room began to spin. Dr. Lecter noticed his distress—he always noticed—and touched his forehead. "You have a fever."
He was staring at the edge of his sanity.
“Help...” me.
Please.
Dr. Lecter smiled like a jackal. “You needn't worry, Will. I'll take care of it."
— of you.
Will closed his eyes and smiled an empty smile. And then he opened them… and gasped.
His face, Dr. Lecter’s, skinned like a deer.
“Will.” The monster stepped forward. "What do you see?"
He squeezed his eyes shut. Dr. Lecter’s voice echoed beyond his grasp, distant. Disembodied. A ghost in the graveyard of his broken psyche. His body trembled, unraveling at its edges. He was falling apart.
He stopped thinking and jerked out a hand. His blind fingers fumbled for the carving knife, found it and brought it to bear. The faceless monster caught his wrist before he could swing it and gripped it. Hard. Pressing down on the tendons with iron-vice fingers. Numbness shot up his arm, the loss of sensation like a guillotine on his wrist. The knife clattered on the tile floor. Panicked, he swung his other arm in defense. The monster raised his shoulder and the attack thumped ineffectively against the bulk of flesh and bone. The skinless beast rushed in and grabbed his face.
He snapped his eyes closed as if it would save him from death.
It didn’t. Death never came.
“Will.” Dr. Lecter’s voice. Will opened his eyes. Dr. Lecter’s face. “It is 7:35 PM. You are in Baltimore, Maryland, and your name is Will Graham—"
The voice message of instability.
Will reacted without thinking. He sought heat and safety, protection that only he could give. Their lips met in a stolen kiss, his desperation and hunger returned with an iciness he could feel . Dr. Lecter released his face and backed away. The composed doctor stood there, unresponsive; the stoicism on his face like unyielding stone.
“I—I’m sorry,” Will stuttered out. “I wasn’t thinking…”
He expected a sermon, the commandments of patient-doctor relationships preached on high. Instead, Dr. Lecter said nothing. He ran a thumb along his bottom lip and leveled him with dark eyes. His stare intense. Predatory.
“Will.” His name hot and burning, fired over dark coals. “What am I to do with you?”
Punish me.
There was an unsettled silence before Hell broke loose.
The turn and forward push disorientated him. Dr. Lecter gripped his hair hard and bent him over the pristine countertop, pushing his head down. The cutting board scraped his cheek and the thrill of it all—the bedside kindness, the gentle touches gone—twisted his gut. Rougher treatment was his punishment, like a slab of meat yielding to the hands of his butcher. Suddenly, he didn’t know which he wanted more: for his skull to be cracked open, the damaged brain meat scooped out; or for the good doctor to split him in two. The choice wasn’t his—he didn’t want it to be.
Dr. Lecter reached around him, assertive fingers skirting his hipbones; just the tease of a touch, a nuance and nothing more. Enough for his brain to send a bullet train down to his cock. Impossibly hard, needy, Will whispered his approval, a sweet noise in the back of his throat. It existed somewhere between a groan and absolute surrender. Unaffected, Dr. Lecter removed his belt with surgical efficiency, tugged down his zipper—no hint of desire, no fevered sweetness. Clinical. Frustrating in its leisure.
Will pushed his hips back.
Dr. Lecter yanked on his hair, pulling up, bending his spine. The pain on his scalp, the harshness of it—Will winced and then stilled as lips brushed the shell of his ear.
“Impatience is a bedfellow of the rude.” The words snaked across his skin. “Do you consider yourself a rude man, Will?”
A question disguised as a threat; the wolf in sheep’s clothing. It promised pain and pain kept him grounded, here. Pain kept him alive.
He needed pain.
“Yes,” Will said breathlessly.
Dr. Lecter smiled like a blade against his ear.
He forced his head down again. Will grimaced as his face hit the cutting board with a thump. Then those devilish fingers let him go. It was the final meal before the slaughter; the gentle word before the killing blow.
Punishment required expectation, but punishment didn’t come.
Will smelled it before he saw it. Olive oil, rich and thick, slipped between his long fingers, over his cock, as the steel of his face fought against its undoing. Beautiful in its resistance; breathtaking in its surrender. Dr. Lecter closed his eyes and his groan—quiet, reluctant—rolled languidly up his spine. Will cut back a breath when Dr. Lecter turned to him, his eyes blown wide with sex. Beneath that gaze, he’d forgotten everything; the guilt, the blood on his hands; how good it felt to kill. No longer was he Will Graham, Special Agent to the FBI; the psychopath pretending to be a man. He was a tool, an instrument made to break. He needed an adept craftsman to put his broken pieces back together again.
He wanted to be remade in his image.
Hannibal stood there in the cold light, no longer his psychiatrist, but a man; his dark savior. Will yanked down his pants and underwear and angled his hips back, spreading his legs wide. Prostrating himself, served up hot and ready like a fine, expensive dinner.
And it was taken in one greedy bite.
Unprepared, tighter than a cross-examination, Will swallowed back his scream as he was torn in two. He dropped his hand like a butcher’s knife against the cutting board, clenching his teeth in unspoken pain. The thrust hadn’t been brutal, but hurt all the same. As if to placate him, soothe him, fingers nestled in his hair but didn’t grip or pull. Easy strokes through dark curls, the brush of a thumb against his ear. Gentleness veiling the underlying need to hurt him. He could feel it in every touch; its bitter venom, like dark chocolate laced with poison.
Fingers slid up the back of his neck, into his hair, gripping hard for just a second before releasing. Rinse, repeat. Will pressed his forehead into the cutting board, exposing his neck for more. As the pain died down, as the sensation of full became difficult to bear, Will bumped his hips back. Urging him.
Hannibal didn’t take the bait.
“How do you feel, Will?”
“How do you feel?” He bit back like a snake.
A beat and then.. “Like a god.”
“Are you developing a god complex on me, Dr. Lecter?” He grated out, mockingly. The irony.
Nothing. A silence shocked by his audacity.
“Fuck me,” he growled out.
Make it hurt.
The affection in his hands ran cold. Fingers tightened, hair pulling at the follicles. Will winced and clenched his teeth. The force of his thrust broke him apart. His body burned with pain, his whimper masked beneath the ruse of a groan. The strong scent of lubricant olive oil pulled him out of his torture, distracted him from his hurts. There was a joke to be made here—extra virgin—but it was lost to him in the moment something had changed. It started to feel good.
Impossibly good.
It stopped hurting completely somewhere around the tenth thrust; each one becoming more punishing, more impatient than the last. Bordering on an animalistic claiming. Something other than pain burned low in his gut, inching up his spine, spreading like a disease through his skin. As Hannibal took all of him , as the pleasure unraveled him, the urge to touch himself became irresistible. Will bit his lip as another jarring thrust jerked him forward. One hand flew out to brace himself against the backsplash and the other—never made it close to his cock. Hannibal wretched forward, grabbed and jerked at his wrist, pinning it at the small of his back. Pain and numbness slithered up his arm, but the denial was worse than any of his discomforts combined.
Hannibal fucked into him harder, rougher, with his arm locked behind his back. He groaned, whimpered—he couldn’t tell. Too gone to care. The control, the power he exuded titillated him. Will let out a long groan, using his legs to slam back as hard as Hannibal rocked forward. They met somewhere in the middle with an obscene slap of wet flesh; Hannibal’s noises like little gifts to his ears; rare, expensive. Cherished. He gave his everything to hear more of them, accepted the pain and punishment with submission.
But the good doctor wasn’t satisfied.
Suddenly, his world changed with a feverish pitch. Tight fingers traded hair for his throat, pulling back until the line between their bodies had blurred. His spine adopted the curve of Hannibal’s chest and they were one; body against body, back-to-chest. Their erratic rhythm didn’t slow, didn’t stutter. It was fluid. Meant to be.
Criminal.
Teeth nipped at his jaw line, a growl rumbling against the shell of his ear. Will had to think of murder cases, of throats cut and bodies mutilated, to keep him from coming. He let out a breathless groan when Hannibal yanked his head to the side, to expose his neck—
And bit him.
The sound that came out of him—it was trapped somewhere between a gut-punched moan and cry of pain. Will threw his arm up and over, grabbing at hair; not in defense, but in encouragement. Hannibal mouthed his skin, his thrusts harder, faster, jerking his entire body. Will rolled his head back and Hannibal sucked at his neck. The good doctor was coming undone; he could feel it. Knew it in the way he panted hot and needy against his throat; the way his noises had become strangled, suppressed. Desperate.
Suddenly, there was a sick need to gain control, to make a composed man utterly undignified. Will arched his back, teased Hannibal’s earlobe with his lips.. then bit. And that was when he heard it; the open-mouthed groan against his skin, the release of pleasure—freedom. Benediction soaked in sin.
Here, pressed against him, Will surrendered.
His orgasm rushed over him like waves, dragging him down, down, leaving him gasping for air. Somewhere in the madness, between murder and hot skin, they had found the same kind of crazy.
“I think we’ve blurred the line between patient and psychiatrist, Dr. Lecter.”
Will chuckled shallowly then smiled.
This is my design.