The sensations, overwhelming and yet muted, like Will had receded in his head, a tide pulling farther away from the shore, minimizing impact, his body and mind in concert to protect him.
A weight, unbearable on his chest, along the length of his body. Warm breath on his neck, on his face.
Will opened his eyes.
Saw Hannibal, poised above him, laying atop him. Felt the warmth of the man's skin on his. The trail of his lips on his skin.
Will moaned and closed his eyes, brain skittering in panic and unwanted arousal.
Felt it, and his mind immediately walled his response away, as he felt Hannibal's arousal, naked against him.
Will shuddered, closed his eyes, the crash of sensation warring with the drug-induced haze.
No, no. It wasn't happening. Just as it wasn't blood he drank, nor offal he'd tried to eat.
The weight, immovable on him.
Will dragged his drug-heavy eyes open again. It was the stag, raven-feathered, crushing him. Come for him at last, pressing into him, rigid prongs pressing into him, clasping him, digging into soft flesh, and him immobile.
The stag, black, with coal-dark eyes devouring him. Breath blown across his skin.
The stag's weight shifted, lowered, and the creature began to devour him.
Will cried out, eyes ricocheting around the room his room the barking of dogs at the door, answering his cry, scratching, barking.
Hannibal's sharp voice, silencing them.
Will struggled to lift his head from the mattress, tried to lower his arms to push the imprisoning weight off his ribs, off his hips.
His hands were bound to the headboard with something strong and silken.
Panic battered in Will's chest as he wildly tugged at the bonds, simultaneously bucking his hips as much as he could.
"Shhhh," The stag again, in his mind. Suddenly the dark eyes became Lecter's, the face morphing into the angular planes of Hannibal's etched-in-stone countenance.
"No bad dreams, I promise." The words his colleague had spoken seeming eons ago, when Will had agreed to take the sedative.
"I-I-I-" Will hated the stutter of fear, the choking sensation of being immobilized.
"This is not a bad dream," Hannibal's voice, the Stag's eyes, pinning him.
A hand trailed down Will's chest.
Better to wall it away, to go into the drug haze. Escape.
A tongue swirling on his skin as the creature tasted him again. It trailed down his skin, followed by chills marching in its wake, then uncontrollable shudders. Then a pressure, along his side, along the floating ribs, a wet pressure, suction, a mouth, pulling at him, gaping. Sucking so hard it hurt.
Will struggled to build forts in his mind, at the same time his body fought to break through the forts, to respond to the overwhelming stimuli, autonomic, uncontrolled, painful.
Pleasurable.
A hand on him. Gripping tightly his painful hardness.
It broke him. The touch, a violation. Will, a bundle of raw sensation, convinced he was dying. Ready for it.
Eternity, a moment, drawn out and building to a shattering of himself. Breaking, everything spilling into nothingness leaving only self-loathing.
After, awareness washed out of him, drilling persistently through the top of his skull. He barely felt the sting of a needle in his arm and the subsequent tender swipes of a rough cloth across the wetness on his stomach and chest.
Will allowed the needle to lead him, let the drug take him father in his head, no longer wondered if he was the prisoner of a madman, or the madman a prisoner in his own head.
He felt…accepting of it. Of the end, the fracture of his mind. No more struggling, no more pitying looks. No more wondering when he would fall over the edge…it was all over now.
The stag watched him, its presence warm beside him. Love in his eyes.
Love.
And possession.
Will let his eyes close for good this time.