Will could never be sure how much time had passed since that moment. Will could never be sure about time. Does it even pass anymore?
Sometimes when he's drenched in sweat and looks away from Hannibal's eyes he feels time slowing down to a halt. He feels everything. The salty sweat dripping into his mouth, the hot and sticky skin of his own body merging with the other on top of him, the two rhythmic heartbeats. It all happens at once and he perceives it in one moment of time. Nothing else matters, nothing else happens. He is he.
More than once Will has asked to be hurt by him physically. An unanswered request. More than once Will has clawed and bit and shoved, and not once has he been reciprocated.
"Masochism in sexual acts isn't uncommon Will, but you are," he retorts in the kitchen after the sweat and the sex.
Will doesn't respond. Instead he looks away into his wine glass, paying close attention to his distorted reflection. The sofa he sits on smells of the other him.
Everything smells of Hannibal.
Except Will.
"Domination as a form of foreplay is often asked for by a partner who is of an alpha position outside the bedroom. The paradoxical role of someone in complete submission brings out a heightened sexual fervor in the alpha. Do you feel like an alpha Will?"
"Stop saying the word 'alpha', Hannibal."
"Spilling your blood was a necessity due to your betrayal. Do you want to be hurt by me again because you're planning on in turn, hurting me?"
"Trust the past, you would know if I planned on making a few calls to a few old friends," Will looks into Hannibal's eyes ahead of him.
Sitting across each other, wine, the warm hearth, a fresh kill being digested within them both, it feels like this moment has been on a constant loop since the start of time. A separate universe just with them and their wants.
"Alright then, if you don't want to talk about it, we won't talk about it," Hannibal says with a smile.
He almost seems human sometimes. But so does Will. And they both know neither is true.
"I want to feel…" Will starts, clenches his teeth and exhales. "Real." Will completes.
"Turning the unsavory to something much more than savory with me doesn't make you feel real?"
"What I do with you isn't the issue. It's you that's the issue. You make me feel like smoke,"
"If everything real is everything that we perceive, isn't the sight of dissipating smoke and its suffocating presence in our nostrils enough to make it real, Will?"
"Fire causes the existence of the smoke. It is real only because something else wants it to be. You burn, Hannibal."
"And smoke is the first sign of burning logs from miles away. That would mean that you're my signifier, Will."
Dr. Lecter the therapist never leaves the room. He infiltrates the air around him and rests in your lungs.
A pause in the warm room.
"Are you not real Will?"
"I can't seem to tell anymore. Can you?"
"You felt real to me this evening, as you do every evening. You were real to me and the rapist plumber this morning when you bludgeoned him with his own toolbox. You are real to me when you sit next to me and across me. You are real to me right now, Will. Am I real to you?"
"I feel like a speck of dust in the dark. Floating through. Hannibal, I don't remember what it's like to not float,"
"Would you prefer to be in the light? To be seen, and perceived, and affect?"
"The darkness is not the problem. I am seen by you. That is enough."
"Then tell me Will, what would it mean to not be a speck of dust?"
"To know for sure there is blood within me. I feel it, I hear my heartbeat, but I can't be sure it exists anymore. With every hunt my heartrate declines. Your scent permeates everything and its presence everywhere creates a dreamscape that I wake up into every day. I open my eyes and they're not mine anymore. I perceive the world through your eyes. You tell me, Hannibal, am I real?" Will grits his teeth and walks towards the kitchen counter to exchange his glass of wine with whiskey.
"Does it bother you to see the world through my eyes?"
"No." Will sits back down and sips the stronger drink.
Hannibal lets another moment of silence pass.
"Just fucking bite me during sex Hannibal."