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Winter makes business dull to watch.
It’s harder to coordinate shipments when so many people refuse to brave the water. Stock is harder to store, thus harder to hide. More than anything, the underlings find themselves busy only because their alternative is losing use of a hand or a knee, and everyone seems fond enough of those.
Winter brings whining. Winter brings boredom for Will Graham.
He’s in the business in so far as his name is attached to it, he rarely cares for the process beyond what his father makes him know. He remembers, but he doesn’t actively learn. He exists for the luxury and the lavish. The cars, the suits, the cigarettes. The women and the men both, beautiful and stupid and easily manipulated.
He looks every inch the part of the eloquent businessman, and is every inch the part of a spoiled brat. Though, anyone unwise enough to point that out finds themselves without the use of much more than one limb.
One thing Will does do that makes his father proud, is remorselessly kill. Not that he would ever tell his son, no love lost between the mob boss and his heir. Will lives by his own code and, reluctantly, by his father’s rules. In so far as his father knows what he does.
What he doesn’t know can’t hurt him. Or come back to hurt Will in turn.
But Will’s found that although his father’s spies - masquerading under the weak cover of ‘bodyguards’ - are easy to escape, a pair of eyes always finds him in a crowd.
The most dull man with the most dull job.
A different sort of masquerade that tugs at the very edge of Will’s curiosity.
Hannibal Lecter doesn’t hold himself like an accountant.
No, instead he slides beneath his tailored suits like a snake just about to outgrow that exquisitely styled skin of his. He holds himself still and impeccable, and it is in that very stillness and conservation of movement that he begs the notice of the other predators. The line of his back is a clear punctuation, always, that stayed just this side of careful. He made a point not to threaten, but at times it came through anyway, sliding out from beneath the slow, thoughtful serenity he wore like Cleopatra's asp from its basket of figs.
Just as real and just as poisonous.
When the dark eyes settle on Will, he feels them, light touches from beneath the heavy lids - and tracing the source, he always seems to find them moving away again. Hannibal is very careful never to linger.
There is not much mystery there, save that what Will has seen defined is very carefully so. It is a mask built of strips of bland colored cloth, unusual patterns that the eye still seemed to slide off of without noticing that everything was exactly, perfectly cut. Like Hannibal's suits, Will supposes.
Boring man, boring job, boring life. It seemed the picture that he was perfectly content to present, even when his eyes slid up occasionally from his work and pinned themselves not quite heavily on Will Graham before returning quickly to the page, laying out lines in his precise, measured handwriting in the many ledgers of his father's many books. He could somehow keep the lines from crossing, and keep everything neat on paper, everything arranged just so.
It might be the very uniformity of the tidiness that calls Will's attention to it, that wakes his desire to pull one string free and see how far it unravels.
Gently.
Since it’s the man’s eyes Will feels against himself, he starts with understanding them first. What they seek, why they never linger.
He knows it’s more than the desire to see power and be near it, that particular look feels like a dirty weight Will’s lips turn at. He knows that look, has washed it off himself with liquor and too many late nights. Hannibal’s look feels like a caress, like a possessive thing. It smells of cigarette smoke and late evenings in fall.
When next he feels the look against himself he arches, rolls his shoulders and neck in a languid stretch. The look lingers, Will feels it slide lower to where the rest of his body sits still. When he shifts his legs to cross them, the look slips away.
After that, it’s a game. A cat and mouse chase where it’s hard to tell who chases whom.
Will takes to curling his lips around the filter of the cigarettes he smokes with more careful deliberation than before. Tilts his head to exhale. Brings his hand up to draw the flat of his thumb lightly over his bottom lip. On evenings late in his father’s apartment, bored with reports and affairs and the dull talks between him and Hannibal, Will makes a habit of loosening his tie, undoing enough buttons to show the shadow of the curve of his collarbone, leaning his weight against the table and looking just past Hannibal’s seemingly uninterested face.
He’s learned that in the evenings it’s much easier to catch his eyes.
Will is somewhere in the middle of running the backs of his knuckles under the line of his jaw, applying just enough pressure to stretch and pull the skin, just enough for a little friction at his reappearing stubble, when the attention suddenly slides off him completely.
Hannibal does not close his eyes, but instead something with in them closes, perhaps at the sudden awareness of how long his gaze had lingered in the presence of Will's father. If the man ever allowed himself to play the game, it made sense he would be cautious about it.
"I've marked the goods up twenty five percent as we received them," he finishes. "It hides some of the profit and we can slide money into legitimacy by simply augmenting what's 'paid out'."
The tone of his voice remains level, but at the end of speaking he swallows to clear his mouth of whatever taste - phantom or real - had disturbed him. Will's father is pleased, with more of a head for figures than Will had. Will keeps his eyes on the accountant, waiting, but the dark eyes don't lift back to his own anymore.
Even as he gathers his things to see himself out, he only looks up at last, and that with only professional care, his hand on the doorknob.
"Good night, Mr. Graham," he tells Will, carefully professional, and then on the tail end of it his mouth twists into a smile that Will can almost feel against his own mouth, sliding whiskey-fine past his lips. Then Hannibal is gone, the thick books within which he works tucked under one arm rather than into a briefcase.
It’s words that Will tries next, forcing himself to listen, understand, grasp the concept of what Hannibal does so he can simply talk to him under pretense of business.
He finds that beyond garnering an odd look from the accountant and an amused word from his father suggesting that he has to find out which girl he’s out to impress with his sudden new interest, words get him nowhere. Not then.
The stint, however, does get Will more interested in the comings and goings of stock and product within their organization. He feigns indifference now, where he had once feigned interest. He remembers. He catalogs and plans. After a month, his father lets him lead the meetings, allows a flutter of pride to reach Will in a way that has the younger man twisting.
It’s not the approval or attention he wants.
Discussions of profit become subtly veiled innuendos, insinuations and suggestion. Will plays with the words as he so easily plays with his gestures, his ability to mimic and reflect.
And still all he garners is a polite farewell. One lingering smile.
Will never second guesses himself. He does not for an instant disbelieve what he had seen when Hannibal had first started looking. Neither does he disbelieve that it still remains, but that for whatever reason, Hannibal has chosen to set it aside.
Suddenly, he has ceased to be boring or easily definable. Will Graham isn't certain if he feels fingers twisting in the other end of the string or if Hannibal Lecter is afraid of discovery.
He finds his opportunity to press at the family Christmas party, as much a business one as any of those held on Wall Street and likely any imaginable percentage more fun. Will drinks, and thinks about how his father is taking his new female toy along on a winter vacation, a private cruise someplace warm that they won't look at much between trips down into the cabin.
He thinks of his week alone, as sweet liquor and cola pass over his tongue, and supposes if there's one thing he inherited from his father without trying, it's the man's appetite.
Will orchestrates the thing carefully, sending a pretty girl to distract his guard. It keeps the man's eyes pinned on something else for long enough that Will can escape to the study in time to catch his father retreating up the stairs with some working minx, but not so quickly as to make himself obvious.
He catches Hannibal exiting the wash room, with his coat folded over his elbow and his sleeves pushed up, though he is restoring them to position.
"Will you be working all evening, then?" he asks the accountant, and revels faintly when he registers surprise that someone else was here in a place that was off limits to the party, save for those who spent considerable time in the house anyway.
Hannibal spent more time in the study, Will suspected, than he did in his own apartment.
“I had hoped to take your father’s rather pointed advice, and enjoy my evening.”
Will’s eyes narrow at the slight tilt of the words, the implication behind them. He wonders if the suggestion is one his mind has treacherously placed there, warmed by alcohol and lulled by the distraction of a crowd.
“By all means.” Will leans crossways in the doorway leading to the main party, and the only viable exit. “Enjoy.”
The look he gets is almost infinitely patient. The line of Hannibal’s shoulders tightens for a moment in what could have been an exasperated sigh in anyone who didn’t have the iron control over their body that Hannibal seemed to.
Will feels himself smile, enough to stretch his lips but not show his teeth.
“I’ve never seen you take pleasure in anything but your work.” he adds. “Don’t tell me petty concerns and inebriation will drag you from it, even at my father’s word.”
"I sometimes enjoy conversation," Hannibal allows. "When it is intelligent enough to hold my attention. I see what's on offer has failed to satisfy yours."
He leaves the rest of the implication heavy and unkind in the wake of his words - if whatever they were talking about could not hold even Will's attention, Hannibal needn't even bother with the attempt.
"As for alcohol," Hannibal picks up again before Will can gather himself for a response, unfolding his precisely turned cuffs with elegant, deliberate motions. "Haven't you heard that's illegal?"
Some teetotaler. Will almost laughs in spite of himself - if it hadn't been a joke, it was funny anyway - Hannibal's efforts were what made getting it into the country in such quantities as to allow the excesses of the party beyond possible. His morality on the subject could not be in earnest.
"You won't enjoy the fruits of your labor?" Will asks, staying in place and watching the way Hannibal's body moves as he pulls his suit's jacket back on, pulling the lines straight in his particular way. He thinks, viscerally and in a way that tastes satisfying, about rumpling it in his fists as he pulls it off the man.
"I have all week to enjoy myself and the fruits of my labor," Hannibal answers, and there is a touch of irony to his tone, dry and applied only carefully. "I'm to stay on and keep track of your father's affairs - which he considers to include you."
Will blinks, a strange annoyance at the indignity rising up in his chest before he sighs and lets it settle. Until he’s of age he’ll be pursued by bodyguards and rules. After, he’ll be pursued by twice as many. Though he supposes of anyone his father could have chosen - asked, most likely, in his distracted state - to keep Will’s head turned towards the business and not towards the night, Hannibal is the most interesting.
“Do you keep a book on me, Mr Lecter?” Will asks, tone coy, smooth, “A list of my comings and goings? Misdemeanors?” he grins, raises his chin a little, adjusts his position blocking the door.
From above, comes the unmistakable sound of pleasure and Will’s jaw tightens, though his eyes don’t move from Hannibal’s.
“Am I an interesting study? Or will the week drag on without my orchestrating some event?” he draws his teeth over his bottom lip just enough to press the color from it. “Or escaping one?”
Hannibal considers all of the questions presented, waiting for them all to spool out of Will. He does not so much as acknowledge the low sounds of sweet pleasure interrupting them, the knocking of more than an opportunity Will intends to make what he can of.
"I do follow the family's expenses," Hannibal allows, and then he smiles again, in his slow way, only to this one there is a depth of knowing. "I am not certain you're as unique among your age group as you think, Mr. Graham. You certainly spend money the same way."
He arches his brows, turns his head, and the smile for a moment is a showing of teeth, a coup counted when Will's anger rises at the sting and must make itself plain in some sudden tenseness in his features.
"As for your misdemeanors, I can keep a secret."
Will directs his eyes, for a moment, upwards. Keeps them pointedly aimed towards the source of the sounds before rolling them in resigned irritation and blinking. When his eyes open again they’re on Hannibal.
“Certain secrets of mine can be kept and known only if one shares the same ones.” he points out softly, allowing his mind to slip back to the darker of the parties he’d been to, the alleys some of his meetings had ended in. He has found that living like Dorian Gray is easier when death is too far to grasp.
“So which of your secrets am I keeping in turn, Mr Lecter?” Will smiles, an expression that mirrors Hannibal’s own. “Quid pro quo.”
Hannibal arches his eyebrows, and tilts his head, finally moving forward to challenge Will's personal space for re-admittance into the rest of the party.
"Understanding does not always come from sharing, Mr. Graham," he answers, his tone modulated low. "But if you can find my secrets, you may oblige yourself to keep them."
It does not quite seem a threat, rather on the cusp of something dangerous without tipping itself over. Will wonders which of his secrets that Hannibal thinks he has - and if the man intended to hold them over him with his father.
He wonders how hard he'd have to squeeze at the man's neck for a gasp, for a squeak, for any sign of fear. His intrigue piques further - perhaps the man had gotten so far only by playing this game of danger, but Will does not believe anyone so firmly grounded could pose him a genuine threat.
"A challenge, Lecter?" he asks, before he shifts himself to move aside, lifting his hand to catch at Hannibal's cheek, turning the man's head so they are forced to meet eyes. Hannibal's dark eyes touch Will's for a long moment, just long enough to make implicit the crossed boundary, to make an attempt at a threat, but then he drops them, slides free of Will's grip, and moves beyond.
A challenge, then.
-
Will has always had a keeper, always a watcher and a guard. When he was younger, he felt powerful with it, as he grew, he learned quickly how to lose a tail or distract one.
With Hannibal, he does the exact opposite. He keeps the man still, bored with Will’s utter inactivity. He goes nowhere, sees no one, doesn’t drink and smokes less. The epitome of the chastised youth, if only both didn’t know better.
Again it becomes difficult in the chase to see who’s ahead, if perhaps their paths are curved and the leader is not the one being followed but the one ahead enough to do the following. Will watches Hannibal work. Hannibal watches Will without looking at him. Their impasse stands and neither move to break it.
By the third day, Will resigns himself to his room, leaving it only to meander, messy-haired and bare-footed, to the kitchen for water, coffee or a simple meal. He ignores Hannibal beyond running his fingertips over the side of his desk, upsetting his papers with every pilgrimage to the main room.
On the fourth day, Will finds his patience rewarded.
The tail he’d set on Hannibal was an obvious one, deliberately clumsy in his attempts. The second he had hired watched from the shadows and reported back the one trip Hannibal had made to the other side of town, jumping cabs and trains and buses. He had made one phone call, he man on the phone tells Will, as the other rests his feet on the wall above the sofa he’s reclining on in the main room, spoke of nothing of import.
Will doesn’t thank the man when he hangs up on him, he has enough.
Years of losing tails had taught Will well enough to plant his own, and recognize others.
-
It’s after dinner - a dinner Hannibal had taken alone and Will had sashayed by to collect the leftovers for - late enough that the streams of cars on the road below have slowed to a trickle, when Will finally leaves his room dressed to go out. Grey suit, matching tie, a white opera scarf long and heavy over his shoulders.
He walks through the study, feels Hannibal’s gaze settle briefly before sliding away, and doesn’t quite make it through to the main room. The insinuation is deliberate, careful, but far from slow. Will pushes himself to sit over the current reports, the pages and papers of hand-drawn tables and marks, and sets one foot on each of the arms of Hannibal’s chair, pinning the man to his position.
“I admire your ability to avoid what you want.” Will tells him, rests his elbows on his knees and smiles. “The deliberate diligence. But why, in the week you have no restrictions, do you not just take it?”
Hannibal deliberately finishes the mark Will's settling had done his best to interrupt, caps the pen carefully, and sits back. Below, on the page, the ink is still shiny wet and black, slowly drying and soaking down into the thick paper he works on. Hannibal never works on scratch sheets, never makes mistakes, he commits all of his work to permanence.
The eyes snag on the white bunch of fabric at Will's throat, before he leans fully back in his chair, his hands extended on the desk without touching, the pen still folded in the fingers of his right hand.
"Is there something I want that I haven't achieved?" he asks, elevating his tone with only a splash of curiosity, a sweet, lingering intent that sits in Will's mind like a hot needle before he realizes he is being baited.
"The restrictions still exist, Mr. Graham. They are suspended, hanging above, even if you do not see them," he suggests. "What is it do you suggest they're deterring me from?"
“Me.” Will responds simply, just letting his eyes move between Hannibal’s own a moment before his smile widens, “You want me.”
He lets the words hang, knows that with the caution Hannibal does everything, he will not simply take what’s offered, he has to be made to. He swallows lightly and leans back a little, back straight, feet sliding to rest tilted against the arms of the chair Hannibal sits in.
"Your father," Hannibal begins, but Will interrupts him - he will play the game his own way, now that he holds more pieces.
“But I’m secondary. The books, the apartment, this life, it’s all secondary.” he chews his lip, wondering how long he can drag this out before Hannibal simply leaves, his perfect composure in place.
“If I cared about my father at all I would pity his blindness.” he says softly, tilting his head, eyes just barely narrowed. “To have someone so close in his confidence, so far into his trust. And to have that person be a federal agent?” he clicks his tongue lightly, feels his smile widen when, for just a moment, Hannibal’s mask cracks.
“Pity.”
Hannibal sits straighter, and then his eye contact does not waver, even as he leans closer - close enough to settle himself neatly at the level of Will's knees, trapped as he is by the cage of them. He sets one elbow on the work surface, mindful of his suit and the books both, and levers his own hand against his mouth. Appraising.
He measures Will, as he had been measuring Will always - taking in every sinuous twist, every arch and line of coercion he had made with his body and that Hannibal had left safely in the realm of forbidden.
How much of that had been related to Hannibal's assignment, if he had been trying to keep his hands clean with that last line of distance, but now it feels as if there is none at all, Hannibal's eyes on his, measuring if he is telling the truth or bluffing - a heart against a feather on the scales of some old god.
He judges that Will has the whole of the matter, and not a guess, by the way he leaves the ball in Will's court - and Will sees the realization wake slow as to what that threat was, as to whether or not Will's father already knows.
Will counts his own coup with a smile, a vicious one that he allows to twist his mouth past alluring and into true pleasure.
Hannibal responds with a beautiful nervousness, a clear unsettling, though his eyes finally drop away. Uncertainty suits the man, though not nearly as much as pliant subservience. Will has worked to get this far, he is certain that working to get all the way to what he wants will be worth his while.
"It’s not my place to tell him," Will reassures, "He’s always taught me that in our family we own our mistakes. He brought you in, trusted you… his failing. Not mine."
He grins, and waits for the reality of his power over the accountant to sink in, watches the path of the man's throat when he swallows down the taste of his loss and discovery. A fine agent, Will allows.
“I just want to see what that mouth of yours can do when it’s not kissing his ass.” Will laughs, the sound sliding smooth and warm straight where Hannibal doesn’t need it, “But you are more than welcome to kiss mine. In fact… you should. Work your way up.”
Hannibal just watches him, meets Will’s sly expression with his own - lost, nervous, and underneath it all beyond pleased with this turn of events. Without a word, he closes his eyes, brings a warm palm up to hold Will’s calf, and turns his head to kiss his leg through the fabric of his suit.
His fingers press strong and talented into the muscle they touch, and make a promise to Will's senses, his mouth stays until Will can feel the temperature through to his skin.
Above him, Will bites his lip.
This, he’s used to.This control and ease with which others accept it. This, Will understands and knows how to manipulate. A part of him is curious if the obedience is blind, due simply to the fact that he has enough hanging over the man’s head to drown him. Or if that want, that hot caress of every gaze against him, is there.
For the moment it hardly matters. He’ll condition the want back, if it’s missing now, if it was never real.
He sighs, pleased, soft, and moves to rest his hands behind him on the desk, stretching his shoulders back, opening himself up. He’s seduced enough of his father’s employees, the age difference isn’t new, the entire situation… except for the fact that he has a lion nuzzling his leg, as dangerous to Will as Will is to him.
It spikes the heart rate, brings Will’s lip between his teeth again and his smile wider.
“Slowly,” he murmurs, head tilted, lips parting in sympathy as he watches Hannibal’s jaw work.
The motion is a slow one, a devouring motion, as Hannibal - and Will wonders briefly as to the source of his ridiculous name, if the pretentious nomer is his true one - consumes his own pride. Will promptly decides he doesn't care - it suits him, Will can make him take it and keep it, regardless.
Hannibal lifts himself forward in his chair, moves his mouth next to press to the lowest point of his inner thigh, first on one side, then the other, his fingers resting on the desk now to settle him in a predator's crouch or a supplicant's devotion. He does not hesitate, lifting his eyes to watch Will, to gauge him and his every response.
"There it is,"Will purrs, when he can see that the animal brightness in Hannibal's eyes isn't all fear - it's equal parts desire that Will does not belive wholly feigned. He will make it real, if it is, he has no doubt in his own abilities. "Isn't it better to allow yourself-"
Hannibal lifts himself further, slides his mouth in a hot line that leaves it open enough to apply a damp streak of dark fabric in a clear line along Will's thigh, and Will lifts his other foot to press against Hannibal's chest. He applies pressure, just below the throat, until Hannibal eases back in his chair.
"I said, slowly."
The look that meets his is in no way chastised. Darkly amused, perhaps, hungry. A thrill slips down Will’s spine knowing that it’s just words between them that are keeping Hannibal from splitting the seams of his calm and lashing out - perhaps appropriately.
The feeling of control consumes him for a moment, sends a shiver, pleased and brief, though him.
He watches as the man leans in to start again, keeping the same slow pace that Will had demanded. There is something unbelievably arousing about that gaze finally settling on Will in this context. He wonders how long he can play with him.
There are two more days until his father returns.
After that it’s simply a matter of timing, a well-phrased warning.
“Yes,” it’s a sigh, not praise, nothing even aimed directly at the man effectively kissing his feet, and Will rests back on his elbows and tilts his head.
“I knew there was more you took pleasure in than work, look at you.”
It earns him the closing of teeth at the protruding bone of his inner ankle, a scissoring of incisors that pinches skin even through the thin, wool sock. Will cannot quite erase the jump at the sudden change of motion, but he eases it into a chuckle.
Will is pleased that even when he holds this weight over Hannibal, the other does not flatten entirely, it is a pleasant thought to own something this way. For a brief moment, William understands why his father works so hard at times, to keep what he has.
Stopping when he arrives at the hard leather of Will's shoe, just beneath his ankle, Hannibal looks up, leaning back, looking briefly, infuriatingly smug. "Have you not just made this work?"
Will sits up straighter and measures the look he's given against the time he has to finish this properly, and allows himself a smile, leaning forward to curl his fingers behind the thick knot of Hannibal's tie so he can feel the noose of it around his neck when he pulls. His other hand falls loosely over his own crotch, palming himself just lightly through his pants and feeling confined.
"I trust you'll do excellent work, then, Hannibal. When I ask you to, that is. Whenever I ask you to, down to the letter of my instruction," he tips his chin up, feeling the pulse through the tight loop of fabric, though he's uncertain if the beat of it is his own through his tight fist or Hannibal's.
"Do you understand me?"
He is rewarded with a nod, and something darker moving behind Hannibal's dark eyes, some desire rising up sludgy and sluggish from the depths that will shape itself huge, cunning, and swifter than one might expect.
He releases the tie, and with his feet on the arms of Hannibal's chair he pushes the man back, enjoying the unmelodic shriek and scrape of the chair's legs against the wood floor. Will rises slowly to his feet, very slowly, without allowing Hannibal enough room for personal space. He lingers for a very long moment with his crotch at a very suggestive level and proximity, and he passes his hand over himself again, watching Hannibal's eyes follow the motion, before he steps back, slides out from between the agent-cum-accountant and his desk.
"I'll be late for the opera," he observes, orchestrating a haughty and indifferent tone into his own voice that pleases him.
With a brief smile, a flash of teeth, he turns to go, perfectly content in knowing that he’ll have something to sate his boredom for winter this year.