"A Dark Abyss"
"Do you ache for him?" Bedelia asked, her words pouring over him like warm honey. Will felt, as he often did, as though he were trapped in the question. It was not the answer he had been looking for, if it could be considered an answer at all. In fact, it only solidified the answer he had already created in his own head. It was not a question of whether Hannibal was in love with him, it was a question of whether Will was in love with Hannibal.
Will sat up a little straighter and averted his eyes from Bedelia, licking his lips absently. Bedelia smiled lightly and leaned forward, closing the space between them. The nerve had been struck. Like a violin string, Will bowed in and out; vibrating with the emotion of realization.
"I find Hannibal to be..." Will began, closing his eyes for a moment. The words were there, but they were wrong. He needed to find more eloquent words to describe the intricate feeling of his relationship with Hannibal...or at least what he perceived the relationship to be. Hannibal was an elegant creature. Desire didn't suit to explain a man of such complexity.
"Complex," Will finished finally, opening his eyes and finding Bedelia all but hanging on the spaces in time he had created between the question and the answer.
"Complex?" she repeated, leaning back again. She seemed almost disappointed.
"Hannibal doesn't love like you and I," Will began to slowly explain. Bedelia smiled. "He loves like a newborn child loves; with curious unbridled fascination. Only, unlike an infant, he has the ability to act on his curiosity in bountifully creative ways."
Will almost sneered at his comparison. He cleared his throat, threading a smile across his face, stitch by stitch. To anyone else, it would have been an insult. For Hannibal, it would have been a compliment. To Bedelia, it was the answer she was looking for.
"And because Hannibal loves in a way that the rest of the world doesn't," she said confidently. "You find him equally as fascinating."
Will took a deep breath and rolled his tongue across the roof of his mouth. He shifted slightly in his seat and rubbed an open palm across the course fabric of his jeans. He let out the breath he had been holding.
"Delving into the black abyss is, to me, the keenest form of fascination." Will expertly recited the H.P Lovecraft quote, the smile fading from his lips. He, habitually, removed his glasses from the bridge of his nose and wiped a bead of sweat that had been gathering beneath them.
Bedelia nodded, "Perhaps you'll find out," she said. "What happens when two people delve into the same dark abyss together."
Will looked away, toward the closed curtains of the dimly lit office. "Maybe." he whispered, placing the glasses back onto the bridge of his nose.