We Grow Accustomed To The Dark

Chapter 3

"The fire can't touch me, for I have burned one too many times and the sea can't harm me, for I've been drowning all my life. Oh but you could rip my heart open, darling, for I have never known love before."
― R. / asthreria

***

Dinner had become a once a week occurrence. Their weekly therapy was a much nicer conduction around a meal than it would have ever been in an office. It wasn't orthodox, but Will was an unorthodox patient. Still just as closed up as the day they had met, but Hannibal was certain he would slowly be able to break the man down. It was already becoming easier to speak to the man and Hannibal found himself enjoying their conversations despite the fact that they continued to dance around the dangerousness that was between them without actually voicing anything about it.

Nothing more had come from their kills either. Jack hadn't asked Hannibal to come back to any crime scene since the butterfly shadow box display. Hannibal must have upset the man with how he had pulled Will away from the scene before it was done being processed, but even Hannibal had some consideration for Will's mental stability. He did find himself caring for some of his patients in some aspects, though they were few and far between. Will's just weighed a little more heavily.

Will did need help with his mental stability. Hannibal had thought the man was perfectly in control of himself after their second dinner when he found a much more relaxed Will, but after one crime scene Will had come to him in tatters. Hannibal had been surprised that the man had been able to drive at all.

Hannibal had had to cancel his afternoon appointments to take care of the man who could barely breathe through his tears. Body trembling and weak as it fell against Hannibal to keep himself on his feet. Will's empathy had done more than enough damage that day. Instead of the killer, Will had found himself in the victim's head.

A young girl who had had her achilles tendons cut in both legs, unable to walk. She crawled through a basement of broken glass until hands and legs were nothing but tatters just like Will's mind. She was made to think she could escape before she was pulled back and used for pleasure and her throat was slashed. He didn't finish until she was dead. Possibly not wanting to accept his preference of necrophilia. It was quite a morbid picture, even for Hannibal.

It took more than one glass of his best scotch and gentle words to calm Will down. Hannibal had spent hours pulling the information from Will and coaxing the man into some semblance of put togetherness, though he wasn't together enough to go home. Will had spent that night in one of Hannibal's guest rooms after having to have dinner shoved down his throat.

The nightmares had been something that Hannibal hadn't necessarily been expecting. He should have had more foresight into the fact, but for some reason he had thought Will capable of handling them himself. That was until there was a knock at his bedroom door at three in the morning and he had groggily fetched his robe and opened his door to find a sweaty, twitchy man in the doorway.

Will's behavior had been rather childlike, but Hannibal could in no way blame him. Not when Will had lived through that girl's murder and sexual assault. Not when that was what his nightmares held. Somehow, despite how hard Hannibal tried to get Will back into his own bed, the man had ended up in Hannibal's. A stuttering, shaky man curled up on the other side of his large bed. Other than waking up with the man tucked protectively into his side and quickly scrambling away the moment he had woken, nothing more had come from the incident.

That was the closest they had been since then. Will had taken special care to keep his distance from Hannibal in the several weeks that had passed. No more kisses, though the teasing hadn't let up. No more touching, though the flirting was constant. Nothing physical and Hannibal could feel the embarrassment rolling off of Will anytime that Hannibal would touch the small of his back when passing in the kitchen.