"Let me love you. Let who I am and what I feel live in your heart. I promise it won't hurt you."
🔥 Hannibal's undoing 🔥
Will Graham's world was fading away and Hannibal knew exactly why. If only he could, if only he could make him understand. Sitting across from him the young profiler's blue eyes can't take what his heart has been enduring for months, not anymore. The tears burn and come slowly but steadily. Hannibal knows he has won but why then does he not feel victorious?
- Is it the encephalitis again?
Hannibal's office was Will's safe place, and it certainly filled the psychiatrist with a joy he had never felt before. How many words had it been? How many whispers?
- No, Will, it's not the encephalitis.
- So? What's wrong with me, Hannibal?
In the name of Hannibal Will seeks the understanding that the rest of the world couldn't give him, or didn't know how to give him. His head always in the clouds, his heart wrapped in something that wanted to be a barrier but couldn't quite reach it. Will Graham felt strong in his loneliness and, at the same time, he sought the company of the only one Hannibal had allowed him to seek: himself.
- You know what happens. The dreams. What you don't say. What you...feel.
Will looks away as he does every time Hannibal reaches for him a little, pulling away. What is he afraid of?
- Look at me, why do we have to keep lying?
- I don't lie.
- You hide. It's the same thing - he gets up from his seat and walks towards Will - Until when, mylimasis? Until when?
Hannibal kneels at Will's feet looking for his gaze and when he finds it, he too feels like crying. What he had achieved had a price, and Will losing his way was one of the possibilities.
- Would it be so horrible if you loved me?
Will clenches his fist over his knee. He feels like punching him. Hannibal's arrogance is mixed with fear of who he is and how he feels. Hannibal covers Will's hand with his hand, twitching, reading part of what the profiler is thinking.
- Would it be that bad, Will? Tell me.
- It's...it's not that.
- I fell in love with you that day, with Jack as my witness without knowing it was. You're the most interesting person I've ever met, the only one... the only one I've ever wanted to stop being alone for.
Maybe it's the sweetness of the hand in his, maybe the words again have the desired effect on him. Will looks at him and sees everything so clearly that he hates himself a little for not doing it sooner.
- I've never been with a...man. I don't even know if I want to.
- You're going to be the death of me, darling. You already are.
Hannibal rises to his knees and kisses Will, who does nothing to pull away. And what in the first few seconds is a kiss with no more movement than Hannibal's hands on his face, soon becomes the wildness of finally feeling alive in the world, alive. Will lifts Hannibal by the shoulders and, without stopping kissing, rests him on the desk.
- What have you done to me? I'm fucking burning up. I need...
- You'll get it. Everything I am, everything we'll ever be belongs to you," Hannibal unbuttons his trousers and unzips them, slipping his hand under Will's underwear. Let me show you how much I'm yours, mylimasis, and I'll never let you feel lost again.
Will nods. He kisses, presses against his body. He bites, and in the midst of it all, he discovers that in the virtue of being loved is the virtue of loving in the same way. And that, whether he likes it or not, is the engine that moves the world.
