cthonical:
hushthenoise:
#there’s meta on this gif in another post about how Will’s starting to get bad vibes from Hannibal #but that’s not what I get from this at all #because Will Graham is doing the opposite of putting himself into a defensive position #he puts his arms on either side of himself (even a little behind) #where someone feeling that they need to be on the defensive would usually cross their arms over their body #Will doesn’t form a protective barrier or assert his personal space with his arms #he arches his back - exposing his chest #he tilts his head back - baring his neck #he’s not being defensive #he’s being /submissive/
Yes I am going to reblog a million versions of this with different meta and stuff ANYBODY WHO KNOWS ME AT ALL KNOWS WHY akjsdhdhjfff this moment is seriously just straight from a fucking fic and his fucking NECK and opening up his personal space with the way he pulls his hands back a little and jfc i’m never getting over it ugh I JUST WANT HANNIBAL TO HOLD HIM THERE AGAINST THAT LADDER AND NOSE AT HIS THROAT AND MAYBE DRAG HIS TEETH OVER THE SKIN A LITTLE JUST TO FEEL WILL TREMBLE OK IS THAT SO MUCH TO ASK
NELL APPARENTLY IT’S NOT SO MUCH TO ASK WHOOPS.
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Will’s breath stabs him in the ribs as his heart punches him in the throat. The ladder digs thick fingers into his spine. “Didn’t realise this was a… a standard therapeutic technique,” he says, voice in pieces, thrown to the ground like an offering.
Hannibal takes a step. And another. “I thought we agreed we were simply having conversations,” he says, somehow flat and teasing and not quite a question all at once. Another step, and Will swallows. The ladder grips him by the shoulders. “Besides I think we both know standard techniques are useless for you, Will.”
The air’s turned to soup, bubbling and steaming down his windpipe. His hands find the ladder and return its hold, like they’ll each fall without the other. Hannibal’s eyes track the bobbing of his throat.
He knows he should be doing… something. Saying something. Anything at all that isn’t what he actually does, lining his body down the unyielding ribcage of the ladder and feeling himself uncurl against it from the centre of his chest.
Between the fluttering curtains of his blinking Will can see Hannibal almost right against him, calm and controlled and not hesitating even slightly as his arms extend and his hands press Will’s tighter to the ladder. Something that’s mostly empty space shouldn’t feel so much like a solid wall.
“Will,” Hannibal says, looking at him in a way Will can feel moving over his skin even if his eyes won’t settle on Hannibal’s face. “You need more than words strung between a doctor and his patient can provide, we both know that.” He’s so close now, dry palms on the shivering back of Will’s hands, the tiny hairs there crinkling over Hannibal’s life line; fate line; heart line.
It doesn’t feel like Hannibal’s moving closer, it’s like the air suddenly has hands and fingers and it’s carrying him into the narrowing soap bubble of Will’s space. The ladder feels cold, and there’s heat slipping over Will’s skin like fire on oil.
“I—” he starts, and sounds like a stranger to himself. He swallows again, and Hannibal’s head tilts slightly as he watches. “I don’t—”
“Will,” is all Hannibal says, four letters stacked into a barricade, admonishing in a way that shouldn’t work but just compels him to stop talking, turns lead fingers in his gut and makes a bead of sweat roll down his face. He turns his head slightly, like Hannibal’s too bright to look at, or too dark, some instinct saying if he looks at it head-on then his eyes will sear and his mind will fry.
Hannibal’s fingers are between his now, cool where his are burning. Will makes an animal sound and Hannibal’s body shuts out the light from behind him.
Then there’s a tiny brush of colder air, and his brain sluggishly registers it’s the indrawn breath Hannibal’s taking against his neck, from the jut of his Adam’s apple to the hinge of his jaw, one steady stream that peels away from Will’s body and takes so much of him with it.
“Would it be so terrible?” Hannibal murmurs, a living thrum that buries itself in Will like a hook. “To admit that you need something? That you feel trapped and need help to escape?” Another stripe of scent and air carved from behind Will’s ear, and this time he can feel the shape of Hannibal’s mouth, the brush of his lips when he talks. “I could help you, Will,” almost a whisper, almost a crowd bellowing in his bone marrow. “Just let me help you.”
I don’t need your help, he thinks, but it’s quiet and shut away in a dark room at the back of his skull, muffled in a shrinking space with no air.
There’s pressure around him, weighing on his shoulders, and he almost gives in and lets his knees buckle, but Hannibal has him shored up against the ladder and wrapped in the ivy tangle of their fingers.
If he makes a sound when the blunt anvils of Hannibal’s teeth touch his skin, then it’s lost in the whine inside his head and the hammering of his pulse. He knows he jerks, or twitches, but Hannibal seems suddenly so strong, not physically but like a natural force, as firm and balanced as the gravity that nails him to the floor.
His entire body narrows to that one point, the tiny pinpricks of contact. Hannibal isn’t moving, not even barely, but the pressure spreads through him anyway, shreds down through layers of skin and slices into muscle and bone and the fundamental nothingness between every fleshy atom that makes him up.
It shouldn’t feel like he’s being eaten alive, not even when Hannibal’s teeth slip back along his throat. No touch this small should feel so all-consuming.
Will isn’t breathing, he can tell by the ache in his chest, but the air’s abandoned him along with the light that doesn’t reach his eyes and any smells that aren’t the icy, pervading ones that Hannibal is seeping into him.
There’ll be nothing left, he realises, when – if – Hannibal lets him go. Nothing left of him at all, just fingerprints on a ladder and scuffmarks on the floor, scrapbook memories like whatever scent of him is caged up in the folds of Hannibal’s lungs.
Floating in a void sea of dark eyes and gleaming teeth, Will can almost believe that’s an escape after all.