It was a rare afternoon in autumn when Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter were untroubled by one of Jack Crawford's cases. Since solving a particularly grizzly abduction, the two men had lived comparatively peacefully in Will's secluded home. At that moment, Winston was enjoying a leisurely scratch behind the ears while his boyfriend waited for Will's move.
"It's your turn, Will." The psychiatrist reminded him gently.
"I know, I know." He murmured distractedly, surveying his useless tiles with dismay. "This is why I hate scrabble, Hannibal, you always get good tiles - and the words you come out with! Syzygy, come on."
"It is an alignment of three celestial bodies, perfectly accep-"
"No, I know it is." Will smiled at him fondly.
After another deep frown at his rack, he sighed and placed two tiles down.
CAT.
"William Graham."
"What? I have crappy tiles - God damn it, not another c." Will exclaimed as he withdrew his hand from the tile bag.
"My condolences." Hannibal smirked as he lay down CAUSTIC.
"Caustic?" Will lay his head in his hands.
"It means -"
"I am aware of what it means, Hannibal. It's just... How do you think of these things? And on a triple word score?!"
Hannibal Lecter smiled at his lover's exasperated gesticulations, finding his groans of defeat simply adorable. He leant across the board to push an errant curl out of Will's eyes, breaking his firm concentration on finding a word better than Hannibal's own. Instead he leant forward to press their lips together, the moment of intimacy seemingly stretching on for hours upon sunlit hours.
"Oh!" Will broke away suddenly, looking down at his tiles and smiling. "I have it."
He gathered all but one of his cream-hued squares and laid out HANNIBAL, fitting it perfectly between an existing A and L before looking back up triumphantly.
Hannibal himself chuckled, but said only: "As sweet a gesture as that is, Will, no proper nouns."
"Damn." He cursed with mock bitterness. His finger tapped the table absently as he began to remove his tiles from the board. Only the H, however, had returned to his rack when he smiled again. "I can just do this."
He took up the letter C, and placed it down with pride.
"Ha ha." Will laughed victoriously, his rejoicing eyes looking up at Dr. Lecter's face. It was a little tighter than before as his eyes, now conveying no emotion, rose slowly from the word CANNIBAL to the other man's jubilant features.
After a moment, Will Graham looked back down with a frown, rereading the word as he heard Hannibal give a long-suffering sigh. In his peripheral vision he saw the doctor rise and do up the button of his suit jacket.
"Shit." Was all he could say before he was tackled to the ground by his newly-ex-boyfriend, scrabble tiles flying across the room.
As he wrestled with the surprisingly strong hands around his neck, Will Graham began to wonder how he hadn't seen it before. Then he wished, futilely, that he had simply declared the scrabble match, perhaps instead followed Hannibal to the bedroom or got him to make some fancy omelette for lunch.
Even as his hands searched blindly for a blunt object, Will silently lamented the fact that, however this fight turned out, he was never going to eat Hannibal's delicious food ever again.
But remembering his final scrabble move, he thought that that was most likely a good thing.