Chapter 2: Lust

Will's father had never been much of a church goer as an adult, but there was a period of time – roughly around when Will had first started to show signs of hitting puberty – that the subjects of his dad's conversations had begun to draw from the strict religious upbringing he'd been subject to as a kid. Will could still remember vividly how his face had looked the first time he had touched upon the subject of 'sin' with him. Coloured a deep unnatural red from the roots of his hair to his jawline, his eyes had been cast down at the threadbare carpet of Will's bedroom as he had spoken to him. It was at bedtime, and although he had long been too old for stories, that night his dad had insisted on tucking him into the covers the way he had when he was younger, and seating himself on the side of the bed with one hand resting on Will's hip.

"Now you're getting older kiddo, I guess maybe there's some stuff that really needs to be said about...the things you've been…starting to feel lately. And maybe do."

Clearing his throat awkwardly, his dad had seemed unable to look at him, and Will's heart had begun to race with apprehension at what he was about to say. Had his dad discovered the fires he'd been setting in the woods on the way home from school? Or the tiger-trap he and Bill Sullivan had dug in Bill's grandma's backyard and covered with branches? His dad hadn't given him a beating for anything for years and it didn't seem like he was mad enough now, but Will still remembered the last time his father had taken his belt off to him as if it was yesterday and a faint sweat broke out on his neck at the thought.

"I guess I was around your same age as you when I started having…thoughts about…things that I guess…I'd never thought about before. Confusing things about other people, neighbours, school friends and such, that made me feel, well…strange and kind of…stirred up. You know what I'm talking about Willy?"

Cold saliva had filled Will's mouth, and he started to shake his head, "No daddy. No…" even though his heart was now galloping at what felt like a million miles an hour.

His father's face had furrowed in a deep frown, the hand on his hip gripping harder, even hurting a little.

"Oh c'mon now Willy, now you're just playing dumb." His eyes had fixed on him, knowing, accusing, "You thought I wouldn't find them? C'mon boy, this ain't a big place. It's not like you even hid them too well, though I told you before not to play out in that old pig pen."

Will's head had continued to shake, his eyes wide, because now he really didn't have a clue what he was talking about.

"Hid what daddy? I didn't hide anything!"

Hissing a harsh breath out between his teeth, his father got to his feet and stalked from the room, returning a few seconds later holding a handful of old torn magazines. Throwing them down on the bed sheets beside him, he fixed him with an angry, red-faced stare.

"You know, if there's only one thing I hate worse than a goddamn pervert Willy, it's a bare-faced goddamn liar."

Gesturing to the pile of paper, he gave his head disbelieving shake.

"I honestly have no damn idea where you'd even find something like this around here? I mean, who got you these things? Was it that Billy Sullivan's brother, always hanging around with the bikers round the back of the diner on Saturday nights?"

His voice was rising in pitch along with the colour of his face. Stepping closer, he stared at him with a pained expression.

"Did he…has he touched you Willy? Has that boy done anything to you he shouldn't?" His eyes moved to the magazines and away again as if he couldn't even bare to look at them, "Good lord above boy, please tell me he hasn't done anything to you."

Will's breath stuttered in his throat, his eyes jumping from his father's face to the photographs in front of him. It took him a moment or two to realise what he was seeing, and when he did it seemed like his mouth has suddenly gotten drier than the Sahara.

The pictures were all of naked men. Men with their arms and legs wrapped around each other, men with their lips on each other, men stretched into all kinds of weird and frankly pretty goddamn athletic positions with each other, and all of them had the biggest dicks Will had ever seen in his entire life. Staring at them in amazement, he felt his eyes getting wider and wider, while his brain slipped into a kind of oily neutral, and without thinking he reached for the nearest magazine to turn it the right way round.

"God DAMN IT boy!"

And then his daddy's hand was wrapped around the meat of his forearm, dragging him out of his warm soft bed onto the floor, while his other hand was unbuckling the belt from the waist of his trousers.

"Goddamn it Willy, I wish to GOD you hadn't made me do this, but there's no damn way I'm letting any son of mine go off down this road. Even if I have to beat the goddamn sin right out of you with own damn belt!"

It had taken just over two weeks for the marks on his back to fade, the pain only a day or so, but the tight heavy feeling in his chest that he later learned to identify as shame lasted much longer. And afterwards it seemed like his dad was always watching him whenever they were out together, anywhere where there was a possibility of him spending time alone with other boys. It wasn't until Will was thirteen and Jessi Hardwell had come calling for him one Sunday afternoon to go swimming at a well-known local make-out spot, that he'd finally seems to relax a little. He'd even smiled crookedly when Will had returned later than his curfew, despite his dinner being spoiled.

"She's a peach that little Hardwell girl, ain't she? Just chock full of sunshine and juice."

And Will had nodded and grinned in return, like he'd agreed with him wholeheartedly when in fact he found little Jessi Hardwell as dull as ditch water. Her tall golden-eyed brother Kyle, on the other hand, was a whole different matter.

Will wasn't sure what he had been expecting to find inside a room devoted to the glorification of lust, but that the memory of those tattered magazines had immediately swum back into his awareness as he pushed open the door had given him some kind of clue. Not that he wasn't interested in seeing women's bodies inside, just for some reason they always seemed to recede into the background for him when there was a choice between the two. Maybe though, he told himself, that was more about how rarely he saw other (living) male bodies these days, rather than about a lesser attraction to women. Because, despite anything his daddy or one or two male lovers had suggested, he had never considered his sexuality anything other entirely fluid. Much like his imagination, it seemed to defy the boundaries so-called 'normal people' insisted on applying.

Bathed in predominantly red light, the Lust room was dimly lit with strobes which pulsed in counterpoint to the thumping music that filled every crack and crevice between people. As Hannibal made his way ahead of him, Will marvelled silently at the graceful assured way he moved between the writhing bodies, seeming every bit as at home surrounded by the deafening sound of club music as he was with the Goldberg Variations. Heading towards the back of the room, he appeared oblivious to everyone around him, although it seemed to Will as if every purposeful turn of his body through the crowd cut a deliberate path for him to follow.

Reaching a small clearing in the throng he saw Hannibal pause, bending slightly at the waist to speak to someone Will couldn't see seated against the wall and then, with maybe just the slightest flicker of a look in his direction, he moved out of sight. Several people were blocking Will's view and with a touch of impatience he shouldered past them only to find, standing where Hannibal had been, two slim silver-blond young women, identically dressed in the attire of young Italian noblemen. Leaning forward towards him, they each spoke into one of his ears, their voices perfectly synchronized.

"Your friend said you should come with us."

A slim-fingered hand slipped into each one of his and Will found himself tugged forward, resisting only very slightly, behind them. At the back of the chamber the room divided off into several small dark alcoves, the walls clad with a facsimile of rough, crumbling ivy-clad stone and he was reminded of the networks of catacombs beneath old European cemeteries. Only within these individual tombs, bodies that were very much alive could be seen, and Will's lips parted as he glimpsed the sight of several women through the gap in a set of drapes, semi-naked flesh and lips sliding against each other as they lay impossibly entwined in each other's arms.

"Where are you taking me?" he asked, but the tone of his voice was soft and amused even to his own ears, he didn't even care about the answer.

Although it didn't seem as if she was responding to his question, the girl on his left suddenly paused at a set of heavy purple drapes, and pulled them slightly aside. Inside, the small room was decorated with what seemed like hundreds of different sized mirrors and tiny glowing lights that flickered like candles, and a warm, sweet scented mist hung in the arm. Turning his body gently, the right hand girl pushed him firmly back onto a velvet chaise longue, while the left hand one turned briefly to the side to adjust some hidden control. The mist that wreathed through the air increased, and Will felt his head start to spin a little. Somewhere in the back of his brain, a familiar, slightly anxious voice told him to hold his breath, that he had no idea what he was taking into his body, but then another one – one that didn't sound like his own - said something softly and firmly about learning to let go occasionally. Taking a deep breath, he felt a pleasant kind of tingling warmth spread through his body.

"What's in the mist?"

"Just something to…"

"…relax you a little."

One girl spoke and the other finished her sentence. Standing either side of him, they smiled, and then with perfectly synchronised movements started to unlace his shirt and trousers.

"You're so beautiful."

The voice seemed to come from one or both of them, their fingernails trailing spirals across his chest and abdomen, and Will breathed out an astonished laugh as both their fair heads bowed to his chest. Pointed tongues circled his nipples, sending a spark of pure sensation crackling out across the surface of his skin like electricity seeking an earth, and his cock pulsed into sudden vibrant life. A hand slid beneath the waistband of his pants, followed by another and throwing his head back against the pillows, Will stared wide-eyed at the ceiling, feeling a smile slowly spreading across his face.

It took him a hazy moment or two of staring upwards to realise that the mirror hung above the chaise did not reflect the view of himself from below as the ones either side did, but instead was angled to reflect the room immediately next door. And, focusing on the sight in amazement, it took Will a few longer to realise exactly what it was he was seeing. Stretched out on a chaise identical to the one he lay on, Hannibal lay on his back, arms flung out to the side and the black shirt he had been wearing pulled up to his clavicle. The expanse of his broad muscular chest was exposed, the warm gold of the skin covered with a mass of soft grey-brown hair that – until that moment – Will hadn't even known existed. Lazily reaching down with one hand, the other tucked behind his head in a relaxed pose, his long slim fingers unlaced the fly of his trousers and then gestured to someone Will couldn't see.

Two hands appeared, resting on Hannibal's thighs, and Will's breath quickened as he felt the exact same touch mirrored on his own body by his companions. Their voices were soft, murmuring little sounds of passionate admiration to each other, but rather than turn his attention to them, Will found his gaze riveted by the scene unfolding in the mirror. As he watched, a figure came into view, ambiguous in gender but wearing the same cream linen shirt and dark brown pants he was wearing himself. The figure's face was obscured, but from the side he could see the mask was also a perfect match, as was the dark curling hair. The hands moved to Hannibal's waistband, tugging downwards, and Will breath caught in his throat as he realised what was about to happen. The soft flat plane of Hannibal's pelvis angled down into a dark V of pubic hair and, as the hands tugged harder, his stiffly erect cock came into view between the laces, the arch of it lifting the head slightly from the flesh of his belly as his companion pulled it free.

"Oh fuck…"

The sound escaped Will's lips completely unbidden, and he closed his eyes for a moment with a deep shuddering breath. The red circling pool of warmth that had been sitting in the centre of his body raced like wildfire down his chest and buried itself deep in his groin, and he was suddenly almost painfully hard. Either side of hips he was dimly aware of movement and, looking down for a moment, he found his two companions pressed either side of his erection with their eyes sparkling. Glancing upwards, the one on his left, grinned mischievously at the scene in the mirror, while her friend bent down to gently brush lips along his exposed length. She laughed, and her breath tickled against his pubic hair.

"It's kind of like one of those 4D cinema experiences…"

"….You just need to keep your eye on the screen."

A soft, hot mouth traced the skin around the head of his cock, and Will's eyes snapped back to the scene overhead. Hannibal bright amber-gold gaze was now seemingly fixed on him, his lips parted and moist, as the figure kneeling between his thighs lowered their head to his open fly. Reaching downwards, Hannibal's fingers tangled deeply in the soft dark curls so like Will's own and lifting his chin, he arched to push himself roughly into the unseen mouth. The sound Will made as he felt himself simultaneously engulfed, rocked him from the pit of his stomach to the top of his head.

Over his head, Hannibal's throat moved, swallowing and constricting as the dark head bobbed between his thighs, the muscles in his forearms cording as he gripped at the other man's shoulders. Reaching for Will's own hand, one of his two companions threaded his fingers through her silky hair, breathing a laugh against his skin. Letting the strands slide between them, Will groaned as he saw Hannibal do the same, and suddenly the overload of sensation overwhelmed him. Hannibal's cheeks flushed with blood, his silver blond hair sticking damply to his cheeks as his smile widened in seeming acknowledgement of Will's heightening state of arousal. Arching his back, he bit down on his lower lip, gripping the base of his partner's skull with wide stretched fingers.

Feeling his own orgasm fast approaching, Will's pupils dilated, his mouth falling open as he realised that Hannibal's movements had synchronised perfectly with his own, his lips silently forming words he couldn't hear. The sounds coming from his own chest were completely involuntary now, deep rolling groans that crested with every answering noise from the next room, and with each breath outwards he felt himself arch towards the face in the mirror, his fingertips mutely describing the shape of Hannibal's face, his shoulders and arms, his nails digging into the perfect hollows of his hipbones as they ground against the figure that looked so like him. But it was only when he finally recognised the shape of the name Hannibal's lips were forming as he came, that he came himself, so fucking hard that he saw stars explode behind his eyelids.

It was 9.45 am when Will arrived for his 10 am appointment the following day, and unwilling or unable to take a seat, he stood in the centre of the waiting room. Although his shirt was clean on that morning, it already felt as if it was sticking to his body, a sheen of sweat covering his lower back and pectoral muscles, sending tiny rivulets running down his torso to gather in his pubic hair. Scratching at the skin of his forearm, he berated himself silently yet again for the decision that had led to the predicament he now found himself in. Officially or not, Hannibal was his therapist, and what they'd done last night was so far outside the bounds of what Jack would deem professional conduct, he didn't even want to imagine what he would do to them both if he ever found out.

Frowning, Will rubbed the palms of his hands on his thighs, and took a tentative step towards the exit. In truth, he wasn't even sure if turning up for his usual appointment had been the right thing to do. Perhaps just a formally worded email, telling Hannibal that in light of what had happened the night before he'd need to find himself a new therapist. That, he decided, would be the most professional and – in the long term – the least problematic way to handle what had obviously been a lapse in judgement on both their parts.

Before he could turn the handle and make his escape though, the door to Hannibal's office opened abruptly.

"Will! You're early!"

Hannibal's expression was the exact same warm, welcoming one he wore every time he greeted him, without a trace of surprise or even mild embarrassment. Dressed in a sharply cut suit of peacock blue, complimented with a deep red paisley tie, he looked as alert and perfectly rested as he always did which, when Will considered it, made less than no sense. It had been at least 3 am when he'd left the club, and as far as he could tell Hannibal had still been there. Even allowing for four hours of solid sleep, there was still no way that a man almost ten years his senior should look this good when he looked and felt so damned crappy.

"How do you do it?"

The words fell out of his mouth before he'd even thought about them, and stepping aside to let him enter, Hannibal quirked an eyebrow in reply.

"How do I do what?"

Moving to the desk, he poured from a pitcher of water and handed Will a glass as he bent to sit down.

"How do you manage to look so good first thing like this?" Will sipped from his water, shaking his head with incredulity, "What time was your first appointment? 8am? I had to lever myself out of bed with a spatula this morning at 8.30. I could barely focus on the road on the way here."

Pressing his lips together, Hannibal took his seat. For a moment or two he genuinely appeared to be considering Will's question.

"Well, I imagine I need a little less sleep than most people, I trained myself to sleep deeply for short periods while I was on surgical rotation. But frankly I'm of an age now where the old adage 'early to bed early to rise' is more than just a dull platitude," his smile warmed, eyebrows drawing together, "I'm sorry to spoil any idealised image you might have of me as a tireless socialite Will, but most evenings I'm usually in bed before 10pm with a good book."

Sitting back in his chair, Hannibal poured himself a glass of water too, and reached to straighten his tie.

"Last night was rather an unusual one for me, it has to be said, but I have been known to break my habits on special occasions, even though it sometimes means I'm a little less bright-eyed and bushy tailed first thing," taking a sip from his glass, he raised his eyebrows questioningly at him, "And, after all, how often is it someone of Ms Netrebko's talent graces our fair city with her presence?"

Confused, Will felt himself blink several times before he answered.

"Ms Netrebko?"

Hannibal's eyebrows lifted higher, "Anna Netrebko? The Russian soprano? She was a last minute addition to the programme at the Lyric last night? I'm sorry Will, we seem to be talking at cross purposes. I thought Jack must have told you that I had offered everyone tickets?"

A breath released itself from Will's lips, and he felt himself still in his seat. The wide band of tension that had formed across his chest an hour or so before, suddenly felt impossibly tight. Placing his glass down on the table beside him, he looked into Hannibal's eyes. The same bright, golden-brown eyes that had stared into his own less than eight hours before, as he'd come harder than he'd ever done in his entire life.

"So you're saying you were at the Opera last night?"

"I was."

"All evening?"

"All evening."

"Watching...a famous Russian soprano?"

"Ms Anna Yuryevna Netrebko. Yes."

"Alone?'

Hannibal's mouth quirked downwards, and he gave a small desultory nod.

"Sadly. Alone, yes."

Setting his glass on his own side table, he crossed his legs in an exact mirror image of Will's own.

"I very much wish you could have been there though, Will. Although I can still enjoy an incredible performance on my own, it adds so much more to the experience to have someone whose company you value share it with their own eyes, don't you think?"