Changes are not easy to digest, especially when it comes to relationships. Transitioning from friendship to romance is not that uncommon but in most cases it feels odd for both parts at the beginning.

At first, in an attempt to cover their insecurities by pretending simplicity, they agreed that there was no need to twitch anything. Internally they new that wasn't true.

I love you for who you are, people say and others may get angry if they feel their partner is 'trying to change them'.

People shouldn't force you to change your essence but sometimes you have to be mature enough to see that changing to make things work between you and someone you love is worthy and it doesn't have to be a extreme make over.

There are walls people built to protect themselves since they are young. Some seem to be impenetrable fortresses but there's always a way to go through them whether is from the outside or inside out. If there's a barrier between two people they can't see each other. You may talk, sound can cross walls, but that's not enough. You can't really appreciate someone if you can't even see who they are.

Since they met they found a way to remove some bricks, sometimes it looked like there was nothing else between but giving in wasn't so easy.

For Hannibal it was hard to open up about his life and his true self. Just like his house, he looked intense, interesting and scenical but that facade was so adorned and superb that no one could see what it was made of. If you paid close attention to it you'd see that it actually felt quite empty. To the common eye there probably wasn't anything to say about it so why would they ask? But the young professor could feel there were things he was keeping locked behind several doors. Everytime the conversation was starting to change its direction to go and rummage into things of the past Hannibal managed to evade the topic or turning their talk into something completely different. It was subtle at first but his partner noticed it and he was worried about him. He felt that if there was something so serious to keep it locked like that he should know, but in due time.

In Will's case there wasn't much he could hide about himself, Hannibal could see through those brittle barriers. Even though at first it seemed like Will had much to hide it was just fear of getting close to someone, he was unaccustomed to that one could say. If he didn't say a word about himself it was because no one had ever taken the time to ask. Just like he was not used to talking about personal matters, physical contact startled him most of the time. Most people he had known only looked for that, to them that was the point of a relationship. Will wasn't the kind of person to give in to the mundane. The problem was that even soft touches could make him flinch sometimes. Hannibal knew that his lover initiating any sort of affectionate contact was something really unlikely to happen. Attentions in the form of gifts also seemed to rub him on the wrong way, he barely accepted anything Hannibal bought for him. If he wanted to approach Will he had to be careful; the last thing he wanted was for his lover to feel uncomfortable around him and under his touch

Both acknowledged their weaknesses and wanted to turn them into something different, not only for the other but for themselves, but it was a complex issue that would take time.

The work days weren't very different than before. They went to work, they had lunch together and hung out, maybe now a little more than before and the atmosphere between them was obviously quite different and so were the activities they did together. Some days Will would go to Hannibal's house and he would cook dinner for them but then he'd go back to his house.

And for the weekends they agreed, after a month and a half, to spend that time together. One week they'd stay at Hannibal's house and the other at Will's; two days was the maximum time he would stay away from his dogs. Hannibal had suggested that he could bring his family of strays to his place, he had a back yard where they would run and do whatever dogs did, but Will told him that such thing could be bad for them. Animals get stressed out going to one place to another if they weren't used to travelling. Besides, being inside a moving car was a living nightmare for some dogs.

Slowly, Hannibal was trying to drag Will into to his world in other ways. He wanted their lifes to merge. Will had been the first one to say that he wanted to be closer to Hannibal, but he still showed insecurities. The way he wanted things to happen weren't the same his partner pretended to carry out. Theater, opera, any kind of art show was an event Hannibal didn't want to miss and of course he needed Will by his side. Both enjoyed the arts but the smug atmosphere that prevailed in those events was something that made Will sick. He already had a hard time with any sort of social occurrence but in these special occasions he felt completely out of place. Even though Hannibal didn't actually had friends in that scope, he enjoyed talking to them from time to time or even invite them to his house for a large dinner party. Will only agreed to participate on that one time, just to make his partner happy and to see how it was. Awkward flashbacks of his adolescence haunted his mind all night. He wasn't the only one who noticed he didn't belong there, everybody seemed to be judging him with their eyes, wondering why he was there.

- "Are you embarrassed of our relationship that you don't want me to introduce you as my boyfriend?" Hannibal asked when trying to convince Will to have dinner with him and other people.

- "I just don't want your status to descend in front of them when they notice you're dating a plebeian."

He could pretend to belong to that circle, he didn't lack acting skills. He just wasn't interested of wasting energy in something vanal like that, not even for Hannibal's amusement.

On the other side, the few people with whom Will had any sort of relationship were soon incorporated into Hannibal's guests. One day Alana saw him waiting for Will outside work and they simply started to talk. By the time Will went out of work it seemed that she already knew their relationship. That smile on her face said nothing more than I see why our date didn't work. At first Will felt his privacy had been invaded, but having her for dinner without thinking of her as a potential romance was actually very pleasant. Plus, it was nice to have a friend with whom he could talk about his love life without being judged.

- "Why won't you move out with me?"

Silence. It wasn't the first time Hannibal suggested that but saying 'no' wasn't getting easier for Will.

- "You know why." Will replied without taking his eyes off the material for his next class which he was checking.

- "We can look for another house if you don't feel comfortable moving into my house. Maybe we can find something a little more... green."

- "Why the rush?"

- "It's not rush... Only hunger for adventure." He had never lived with a partner before, Will haven't done that either but Hannibal was sure that they would enjoy their mutual company. More time together wouldn't become a burden, the time they're sharing didn't feel like enough. Everyday it felt less...

- "If you're feeling adventurous why don't you come fishing with me? Even better, we should go noodling."

- "Noodling?" He asked curiously.

- "Is a form of fishing. It is to capture a catfish using only bare hands."

- "With my bare hands? That sounds too intimate. I'm not sure if we're ready to take that step. In the future, maybe."

In the future. A week after that conversation fate seemed to act in favor of Hannibal's wishes, though not in the most pleasant way.