“Today I have so much to do”

                                     — Anna Akhmatova

All I need is a stream. Put my head back, close my eyes, wade into the quiet of the stream.

Freeing yourself from me and… me freeing myself from you, they’re the same.

It’s been a little while now since Will and Hannibal had first started seeing one another.

They use the term, ‘ seeing one another ’ loosely. Everything that had gone down between the two of them needed to be kept solely between the two of them; a unique, dark, sordid secret. Will is supposed to be fishing, luring, hunting Hannibal Lecter, not romancing him. But it’s not like he had intended for it to happen. He knows that it is entirely unethical.

To say that Will had been unaware of the tension between himself and the Doctor would be a complete lie, but it had never truly taken a sexual turn until more recently; until Will’s ‘fishing’ had started to turn around on itself. It was then that he’d started to question if maybe he liked pretending just enough to make it… well, not so pretend anymore.

Perhaps being the other piece to Hannibal’s puzzle had struck a dangerously pleasant chord within Will. Maybe, regardless of the animosity between them, there lingered the possibility for more. And with this new game they’ve started? It made it so much easier for Will to see those other possibilities.

The first time he’d put a leather collar around Hannibal’s neck, it hadn’t been anything serious— just something fun added into the mix during one of their heated fucks. Playful. Experimental. Taboo. What Will hadn’t anticipated, however, was how much he had delighted in it - in something to tug on and make himself feel as though he held all of the strings in their exchange. It’s nice to be the one in control every once and awhile when your partner is Hannibal Lecter.