Losing You Terrifies Me

Chapter 1

**Update!*

Someone has been lovely enough to start translating this into Turkish for me. Only the first chapter is up so far and is on wattpad, but if you would like to read it is done by @delayedventura and a big thank you to them as well!
https://www.wattpad.com/user/delayedventura

****

He couldn't remember having felt this empty. Not for a long while. The last time he had felt like this had been when his sister had died.

But this man wasn't his sister. The way this man clung to him wasn't like his sister. The way this man's eyes begged for something else to be the truth and what had happened to be a fake reality that they were all trapped in was not like his sister.

The cry of shock and pain still clawed to the air, the man's mouth hanging open in surprise as a warm stickiness collected between their tight bodies.

The hope that had been in Will's beautiful blue eyes was gone, replaced with betrayal that Hannibal knew all too well. But the longer Hannibal looked, the more he reconsidered Will's eye color.

It wasn't really blue. There wasn't really a color blue, just a lack of pigment refracting light particles with the shortest wavelength, like the sky.

The sky...

It felt like he would never see the sky again. Not with how Will tumbled from his grip and to the kitchen floor, the darkness of his blood now mixing with the other's blood that was already puddling.

They were supposed to go together, but Hannibal hadn't been blind. He had been giving and taking, pushing and pulling, hoping beyond hope that Will would see like him.

And oh, Will saw. It was one of his greatest weaknesses and one of his most fascinating aspects. But it wasn't enough to see. It had never been enough to see. To do. Now that was what Hannibal had wanted. Will to do something, something beautiful and breathtaking like Botticelli.

Will had been Hannibal's Botticelli. From the moment they had found each other, he could see Will as a great renaissance artist and Hannibal the humble canvas or the guiding mentor, sculpting Will into the God that Will deserved to be.

None of that mattered now. And it hadn't since the phone call, though Hannibal would be lying if he hadn't found the act endearing.

Will had wanted Hannibal to run and whether or not that was the once upon a time teacher channeling Hannibal himself from the Garret Jacob Hobbs' case or genuinely concerned for Hannibal, Hannibal couldn't say.

And the rain was cold, Will's warmth falling away into the night along with everything that Hannibal had allowed himself to grow comfortable with. He had broken his own careful rules and it had led to this. To him having to destroy something he had come to love, if this is what love felt like.

He had loved each person that was left for dead. They were his friends, or he had come to think of them this way. And what was blood and games between friends?

An end. That's what it was, what it was always going to be. Just because he had grown attached didn't mean that he wasn't going to protect himself. He came first, always first.

And not even Will Graham's tempera blue eyes would come before self preservation.

***

Eyes fluttered open in the darkness, shirt drenched with sweat. It took a moment for breathing to return back to a normal pace and it gave Hannibal a sense of amusement that even killers could have nightmares.