Chapter Text
Office Hours
Will shifted from foot to foot outside the office door, torn between knocking and turning away. The nameplate gleamed quietly:
Dr. H. Lecter – Behavioral Psychiatry
He didn’t know what unnerved him more—the fact that Professor Lecter had already learned everyone’s names on the first day of class, or the way he said Will’s like it had texture.
Will knocked once. The door opened almost instantly.
“Mr. Graham,” Lecter greeted smoothly, stepping aside. “Please, come in.”
His office smelled faintly of cedar and something darker—like spiced tea and ink. Books lined every wall, but there was no clutter. Every item had a place, every surface immaculate. The kind of order that made Will feel... messy.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt anything,” Will said, hesitating near the door. “You said office hours were open, so—”
“I hoped you would come.”
Something in the way he said it made Will glance up. That voice. Velvet and venom.
Lecter gestured to the chair across from him. Will sat, not quite relaxed, not quite upright.
“I was curious about your thesis proposal,” Lecter continued, lacing his fingers together. “You wrote: ‘Empathy as both lens and liability in investigative profiling.’ That’s not a student’s phrasing. That’s a wounded man’s.”
Will blinked. “That’s... direct.”
“I don’t believe in wasting words.”
Will swallowed. He wanted to argue, but the worst part was—he felt seen. It was too much, too soon. Just like the stranger he’d been messaging online. The one who responded at 2 a.m. with quotes from Foucault and asked questions that made Will spiral inward until his chest ached.
Only that stranger made him feel safe, too.
This- this was different.
Lecter tilted his head slightly. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“No, I just…” Will exhaled. “You remind me of someone. I’ve been talking to someone online. A... friend.”
He regretted saying it the moment it left his mouth. But Lecter’s smile didn’t falter.
“Someone close?”
“We’ve never met.” Will rubbed the back of his neck. “He’s... sharp. Makes me think too much. Calls me out on my avoidance issues.”
“Sounds insufferable,” Lecter said smoothly.
Will huffed a laugh. “Yeah. I guess that’s why I like him.”
Lecter didn’t respond right away. Instead, he stood, moving to the nearby shelf. His movements were precise. Almost feline.
“He might know you better than you think,” he said finally, plucking a book from the shelf and setting it on the desk between them. Will glanced at the title: The Divided Self.
“For you,” Lecter said.
Will stared. “This is a first edition.”
“It is.”
“I can’t take this.”
“You already have.”
Will opened his mouth to protest, but Lecter was already speaking again.
“Tell me more about your friend,” he said, tone casual—but there was something else in it now. A flicker beneath the surface. “What draws you to him?”
Will hesitated. The truth hovered on his tongue.
“He doesn’t ask me to be anything but what I already am,” he said quietly. “And he sees the parts other people want me to hide.”
Lecter’s smile was a razor wrapped in silk.
“Then I suspect he knows you quite well.”
---
The next day
Lecture Hall
The lecture hall was dimly lit, warm with the ambient hum of a dozen minds pretending to be elsewhere. Will sat near the back, one leg bouncing under the desk, fingers pressed into the hinge of his jaw.
Dr. Lecter stood at the podium, an island of calm in a sea of distraction. He wasn’t lecturing—he was performing. Every word paced, every pause intentional, like he was tasting the silence before filling it.
“Understanding the criminal mind,” Lecter said, his gaze sweeping the room, “requires more than analysis. It requires immersion. You must let the darkness brush against you—not consume you, but touch you. That is the only way to know what it means.”
Will didn’t move, but something in him flinched.
Brush against you.
That sounded familiar. Too familiar.
His mind drifted—despite the danger of doing so in Hannibal’s class. He’d forgotten to respond earlier to his friend. The man he still only knew by a username: Ravenstag1. They’d talked philosophy, fear, empathy. Lately, there had been... teasing, too. Subtle, precise. Flirting dressed up in metaphors. Will wasn’t sure what it meant, only that it made him feel seen. Lighter. Like someone was unraveling him gently, instead of dissecting him coldly.
He slipped his phone from his coat pocket under the desk.
[W]: Sorry for the late reply.
Had a long day, didn’t feel like being perceived.
A beat.
Then he added:
[W]:
You ever listen to someone talk and feel like they’re peeling your skin back without touching you?
He hesitated. The words felt dangerous, even in a text box.
But he hit send anyway.
At the front of the room, Hannibal glanced down at his wristwatch, then looked up again, gaze drifting toward the back row—where Will sat, head tilted down.
“I see some of you are already... immersed,” Hannibal said softly, the faintest curl of amusement in his voice.
Will’s head snapped up.
Was that directed at him?
But Hannibal had turned away again, continuing the lecture, his voice steady. Still—Will felt the pull of that attention like a thread around his throat.
His phone buzzed.
[Ravenstag1]:
Perception is invasive, isn’t it?
But some people don’t just see you.
They know what you’re trying not to say.
Is someone doing that to you now?
Will stared at the message.
It was uncanny. Too precise. As if—
No. He shook it off. Coincidence.
Still, his fingers hovered before typing again.
[W]:
You always know when something’s bothering me.
It’s unnerving.
A few seconds passed.
[Ravenstag1]:
That’s because you’re more transparent than you’d like to believe, Will.
He blinked.
He hadn’t told him his name.
Will stared at the message, stomach dropping just slightly—an elevator between floors.
Had he? Had he slipped?
He looked up, toward the front of the lecture hall.
Dr. Lecter wasn’t speaking anymore. He was watching him. Calmly. Intently.
The lecture resumed a moment later, but Will wasn’t hearing it anymore.