"How did you first meet Will Graham?" Hannibal asks during their fourth session.

"It wasn't a formal meeting if that's what you mean. I saw him coming out of your office last week just before my appointment," Tate tells him as he fidgets with the hem of his long sleeve, staring at the floor. "At first I wanted to engage him. Talk to him. But I didn't."

"Why didn't you?" Hannibal presses.

He leans back in his chair to gauge the troubled young boy's body language. Tate's eyes shift a lot, suggesting deception, but Hannibal has found the kid to be quite charismatic. Hannibal can pick up on Tate's type right away and if Hannibal wasn't as observant as he was, then he's sure Tate could've knocked him for a loop.

"He left quickly before I could say a word. Seemed to be in quite the hurry..." Tate trails off, getting lost in his thoughts for a moment as he pictures that day in his mind. Tate sighs and shakes his head. "I couldn't think of anything to say, anyway. All I could do was stand there in awe of his presence. Watching him walk away long after he was gone."

"Are you saying that the mere sight of Will left you speechless?" Hannibal inquires with a curious lilt in his tone.

"Yes. Very, very much," Tate admits, unabashed. "The first thing I noticed about him were his eyes, even though he tried to hide behind his glasses. I could still see how haunted they looked. All the anguish and beauty they held. It felt like I was slowly drowning in the blue of them."

"As if you had found yourself falling in love with him?" Hannibal presses further.

Tate seems to consider this, shifting his gaze from the spot on the floor directly in front of him towards Hannibal's feet. He scrunches his brows under his slightly frazzled head of hair and was about to nod his head when he stops in mid motion. Tate grimaces at the thought of love, but doesn't reject it altogether.

"Most people who use that word don't mean it," Tate goes on to say instead, biting the inside of his cheek.

There's no comfort to be found in this answer and Hannibal is perhaps a little displeased. Tate's deflecting a question he definitely knows the answer to and it secretly makes Hannibal's blood run even colder. To think that he could ever lose Will to a kid like Tate. Will is Hannibal's, even if Will doesn't know it yet.

"You seem to have a very big issue with dishonesty," Hannibal points out, noticing a change in Tate's expression.

"It's disgusting," Tate spits with distaste. Not at Hannibal directly, but at the mention of the word.

"Are you afraid that Will might have been dishonest with you? Is that why you didn't engage him in conversation?"

"I don't know. Maybe?" Tate got this sad, lost puppy expression on his face with his doe eyes drooping down a fraction as if he might cry. "I'm afraid of getting too close and seeing people for who they really are. I guess I didn't want to encourage the possibility of Will being the same."

"A predator doesn't hunt knowing what it's prey will be. It hunts solely for the thrill of the chase," Hannibal explains, offering some kind of an analogy the kid could understand.

Hannibal folds his hands together leans towards Tate. This prompts Tate to look up at Hannibal with his depthless eyes that pierce right through him with such darkness. He's seems to have made up his mind about the whole thing and Hannibal waits patiently to hear Tate's decision. Hannibal feels a little uneasy for encouraging Tate to pursue Will, mostly out of jealousy, but he's curious to see how this progresses.

"Suppose you're right," Tate replies slowly. He cautiously scans Hannibal's face, suspicious. "How do I know the chase is worth it?"

"Will is a good man, if not a little troubled. He keeps things to himself, even from me, but secrets don't make a person dishonest," Hannibal responds, unwavering even as his eye twitches just slightly. "Will is worth the hunt."

Tate doesn't respond to this, having found what he wanted to hear. They spend the rest of Tate's hour talking about random things on his mind, but Hannibal knows where the boy's mind drifts to the most. He knows what thought is on the tip of his tongue and it slowly eats away at Hannibal for the rest of their session.

Right now Tate is picturing what he'd do to Will, Hannibal assumes. After all, the kid is seventeen and sex is more than likely on his mind at the moment, especially if it's bent over Will. Will is undoubtedly a handsome man and something would seriously be wrong with Tate if he wasn't fantasizing about him.

A few weeks pass and even more sessions later, Hannibal finds himself sitting across from Tate once again. The kid stares at him with a soulless gaze, entrancing Hannibal into the dark black pools of his eyes. It's unsettling how Tate manages to get under his skin with the smallest of quirks. Hannibal imagines this to be because of the audacious attempt of Tate trying to integrate himself into Will's life.

Tate was a deeply disturbed kid, Hannibal soon realized. This didn't come as some big revelation, however, since Tate showed all the warning signs prior to this particular visit. It seemed Tate's obsession with Will Graham had started to take a turn for the bizarre in the recent weeks and Hannibal had admit to himself that it wasn't just an odd case of infatuation.

This thought burrows it's way into Hannibal's brain as Tate just sits there in silence without uttering a single word. It's been nearly five minutes and Hannibal doesn't know what Tate is getting out of this muted conversation of stares and subtle body language. Hannibal almost wants to say something, to make Tate's hour productive instead of whatever this is, but refrains from it for some reason.

"I had a really good week," Tate finally says during their seventh session. He lets a faint smile flit across his face briefly.

"That's tremendous to hear, Tate," Hannibal offers in his most friendly voice to congratulate the boy.

There's a pause and Tate furrows his eyebrows a little when Hannibal doesn't go on to say anything else regarding the news. Hannibal hates the way Tate sets up obvious cues to bait him into curiosity.

"Aren't you going to ask me what I did?" Tate inquires with an almost mischievous undertone.

"If you feel comfortable sharing it with me, yes," Hannibal replies.

"I saw Will this week," Tate tells Hannibal, leaving his suspense behind.

"And how did that go?" Hannibal asks, trying not to let his curiosity or jealousy get the better of him. "Did you get the chance to talk to him?"

"Not yet. I've just been watching him and biding my time," Tate alludes with a cryptic lilt.

Hannibal tilts his head slightly and lets his eyes drift down towards Tate's lap, noting the way he idly picks at his thumb nail. Hannibal watches Tate bring that same nail up to his mouth to gnaw on it, not out of nervousness but impatience. The vague remark makes Hannibal's stomach turn at the inclination but equally curious as to how far this obsession with Will was going to go.

"I follow him around whenever I can. To the store, to his class, even listening in on his lectures sometimes. I find him here more often than other places, though," Tate discerns, giving Hannibal a quizzical look that borders on suspicion. "I don't believe it's always appointments either."

"They're not," Hannibal states, matter-of-fact, though he hates how Tate makes it sound even when it's the desired effect Hannibal wants. "Will and I have a professional relationship. I help consult on cases with him. Give him a nudge in the right direction, so to speak. I also have a deep seeded fascination about him, no different from yours. Except my methods are more... ethical."

"They may be ethical, but that doesn't necessarily make it any better than how I gather information," Tate informs, challenging Hannibal ever so slyly to fight over Will.

"Do you ever desire Will sexually? Fantasize what you would do with him?" Hannibal asks, changing the subject before he murders this kid himself.

"You mean, what I'd do to him," Tate rephrases, turning it to sound more dark than it should. Tate shrugs, looking off to the side to eye a painting on the wall briefly. "Sure I have. Plenty of times."

In fact, Tate jerked off picturing it last night. He fantasized about making Will struggle until the fight left his body entirely and then Tate got to the real fun. He raked his chewed nails down Will's chest to make him flinch and pull against his binds, leaving fading welts in his wake and there wasn't a preamble.

Tate didn't waste time trying to prepare Will. In Tate's fantasy he just takes Will in his entirety, thrusting himself harshly into Will's yielding body to claim him as his own. Tate can practically hear the noises Will would undoubtedly make during the rough violation as he's fucked into next week. Occasionally, Tate likes to imagine biting viciously into his skin to leave suck bruises behind as a souvenir for Will.

"Do you imagine him as your lover?" Hannibal presses, feeling an overwhelming wave of envy cascade over his being.

"Not in the traditional sense. I see Will as something to be discovered and then destroyed. Like an industrious village to be pillaged."

Tate gets this amused little smirk on his face and resigns to shaking his head just at how twisted he sounds. The feelings he had for Will were confusing as hell. One moment he wants to make Will his and be oh so gentle with him and then the next moment he wants to utterly ravage the man. There is no in between. Though, he can admit to being more drawn to violence than intimacy.

"I see Will as a victim in the making."

"And, in your fantasies, how do you ensure Will as your victim?"

"By making him suffer. How else?" Tate inquires. "Men like Will were made to suffer. How pretty would he look drenched in panic? Marred with cuts and bruises all over that body. Fucking fantastic. Only then would he look truly beautiful."

He almost sounds as if he's done this before and it gets Hannibal's mind whirring with so many questions. Hannibal doesn't know what to ask the kid or even how to begin to phrase it, because the thought of it paralyzes him. Eventually, Hannibal musters up the vocal stamina to ask one question on his mind.

"Do you ever think about killing him?" Hannibal questions then, engrossed with Tate now.

"Hell no," Tate answers immediately, sounding disgusted by just the mention of it.

That puts Hannibal at some ease, though. Will is Hannibal's and if the time for Will to stop breathing comes, it'll be by Hannibal's hands and no others.

"Just wanna make him bleed and scream. Maybe tie him down by his wrists so he can't get away or fight back, and he would fight," Tate states with a tiny smirk, thinking of all the ways Will would beg for him to stop. "Especially if I were to wrap my hands around that neck of his and choke him to near unconsciousness. Will might even like it. He seems like the masochistic type, doesn't he?"

Hannibal wants to say no but knowing how hard Jack and him push Will, including Will himself, Hannibal would be lying. Will always had a penchant for abusing himself as well as letting others do so too. He opts to say nothing on the matter whatsoever because he doesn't trust himself to condone Tate's statements. Then again, Hannibal is also intrigued by them in a purely sadistic way.

"I bet he's a virgin too. Can you imagine how tight he would be?" Tate hums with amusement, fidgeting in his chair to conceal his arousal just at the mention of if.

Yes, Hannibal can imagine how tight Will would be, virgin or not. Hannibal can see Will not being a virgin in that particular department, so much as inexperienced.

"What Will would look like all tied up and squirming to free himself as I fuck him harshly into his mattress. All those strangled moans and sobs..." Tate gets lost in his own thoughts for a moment, trying not to palm his erection in front of Hannibal. "Will would cry out and scream, but no one would hear it and his pleas would go unacknowledged."

Hannibal is absolutely taken aback by the blonde's boldness and depiction of varying degrees of violence, as well as implying rape. And yet... Hannibal doesn't want Tate to stop explaining all the ways he'd break Will Graham because, as much as he hates to admit it, Hannibal quite enjoys hearing it. All jealousy put aside, Hannibal likes the way Tate thinks.

"I'd take him apart piece by piece."

Tate unconsciously bites his lip as images of Will dance across his mind, painted in bold and vivid strokes. Hannibal looks down at his watch, noticing Tate's appointment is just about over. And Hannibal is perhaps a little relieved by this or else he'd be listening to Tate all night.

"I'm afraid our hour is up," Hannibal announces, clearing his throat to muster up some kind of resolve.

"Already? In that case I better get going," Tate responds.

He stands up and walks over towards Hannibal to shake his hand in appreciation, grinning deviously.

"I have big plans for him, Dr. Lecter," Tate informs, hinting at something bigger. "And tonight, when I follow him home, I'm gonna show him everything I told you. And more."

They let go of each other's hands and Tate wastes no time in vacating Hannibal's office for his next patient. The door clicks and Hannibal is left sitting there with an ultimatum. Tate has basically informed Hannibal that he plans on assaulting Will in his own home in just a few hours. This admission could be taken lightly if it weren't for Hannibal's keen sense of observation. Tate seems like the type to follow through on his word.

Hannibal looks down at his watch once again, noting he has a few minutes before Franklyn shows up, and rises out of his chair to stride over towards his desk. He circles around and picks the phone up off of the receiver, punching in Will's number by memory hastily. The phone starts to ring and this goes on for a moment until Will finally picks up.

"Hello, Will," Hannibal greets.

"Oh, Dr. Lecter," Will acknowledges instantly from the other end. He sounds almost pleasantly surprised. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"There's something I have to tell you," Hannibal proclaims solemnly.

"What it is?" Will inquires slowly, detecting a hint of worry in Hannibal's tone.

Hannibal goes to open his mouth and hesitates just before the syllables can leave his throat, making the silence on the other end stretch. He glances at the time. Franklyn will be here any minute now, but still enough time to warn Will...

"You know what? I've completely forgotten," Hannibal lies, setting his decision in stone. "I'm so sorry."

"It's okay," Will tells him. "You can always call me later if the thought comes back to you."

"I could."

"Well, I got to go. I have one more class. Goodbye, Dr. Lecter," Will concludes before he hangs up.

Hannibal is left with a dial tone and he continues to hold the phone up to his ear until he drops his hand down and sets it back on the receiver. Hannibal knows what Tate is going to do to Will and he still has the power to stop it. He could still call Jack and warn him that Will might be sexually assaulted tonight and to send a unit down to Wolf Trap to apprehend the disturbed, young man. But he doesn't.

After all, Hannibal is curious of how Will's mind might cope after being psychologically scarred in such a scenario.