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Will snorts and glares down at his knees, which keep bouncing up and down. He refuses to acknowledge the fact that he is not enjoying this moment at all. After all, this is supposed to be a wonderful stretch of time he has been waiting for forever, and he is supposed to be savoring every second of it.
He should be enjoying a whole week free from an alpha who is excessively possessive, territorial, and selfish—one blissful week without a husband who clings to him like an octopus.
He has a long, long, looong list of things he wants to do. A list of indulgences that are absolutely impossible when he has a husband who does not understand the concept of personal space and insists on holding him at all times. He should be checking them off with enthusiasm.
And yet, Will finds himself back in the king-sized bed he left barely three hours ago, spending what might be the most pointless time in the universe staring at the empty space where his husband should be.
Every so often, he rolls over to his husband’s side of the bed. He buries his nose into the pillow and takes a deep breath, only returning to his original position when he fears his own scent might overwrite the alpha’s. The crushing reality that he has to make do with nothing but the lingering traces for an entire week is almost unbearable. He even briefly considers sealing the pillow in a plastic bag right now to prevent the scent from fading.
No. Will does not allow himself that.
He is an independent omega. A self-sufficient omega. He is not some fragile creature who cannot survive without relying on an alpha or being protected by one.
Before a self-righteous alpha ensnared him, filled in every escape route, and trapped him with flowers and incomprehensible poetry (and penis), he lived alone—and he was perfectly fine.
Will swings his legs off the bed and stands up, then marches downstairs with determined steps. If he happened to hug his husband’s pillow one last time and rub his cheek against it before leaving the bedroom, that was purely an accident.
“Hi, babies.”
Winston, Buster, and Zoey snort in a mix of complaint and welcome at the return of the dad who had abandoned them for far too long. Will pets each of them in turn and murmurs an apology before heading for the kitchen. Today, he doesn’t stop them from following him past the threshold they’re usually forbidden to cross.
He is going to tackle the first item on his long, long list. He is going to prepare a greasy, unhealthy meal—the kind his health-obsessed alpha would never allow him to eat.
Perfect for lunchtime. Cereal made of a hundred different food colorings. Pancakes made from nothing but fake butter and sugar. An omelet stuffed with rubbery cheese. Crispy bacon of indeterminate meat origin that shrinks to a tenth of its size by the time it’s done. Normally, all of these are hellish entities forbidden from ever crossing this house’s threshold, so what he ends up with will probably be something like them. Still, it’s worth trying.
Maybe he’ll go to McDonald’s. Or Taco Bell. A week alone means he has roughly twenty meals’ worth of freedom. He could do bingo with the names of every fast-food place in the neighborhood, order pizza or Chinese takeout, maybe even dedicate an entire day to nothing but candy and snacks.
Excited by the colorful images running through his head, Will opens the refrigerator to soothe his suddenly dry throat.
――Darling, I hope you will take good care of your body.
The note is taped to a stack of neatly arranged food containers. Will peels off the extravagantly decorated memo and tells himself it’s just his imagination that he’s smiling—and that his vision is blurring slightly.
Every container is meticulously labeled: which meals are for breakfast, lunch, or dinner; how to reheat them; which spices to add at the end. His husband’s handwriting is immaculate, and the sight of all of them lined up together looks almost like a curated museum exhibit with a very specific theme.
Yes. Of course his husband—the alpha, Hannibal Lecter—would do this.
He would never allow Will to abuse his body and turn himself into an unhealthy foie gras. Nor would he allow him to waste away like he had when they first met.
The morning after they shared a bed for the first time, Hannibal dragged Will into an extremely long discussion about his protruding ribs—one that only ended when Will climbed back into Hannibal’s lap and shut him up with a kiss.
Will takes one container from the display and spoons some pasta sauce into a frying pan. Then he fills another pot with water and prepares to boil the homemade pasta stored in the freezer.
He can’t believe he never noticed this massive stockpile. But since moving in with Hannibal, he’s probably opened the refrigerator fewer times than he can count on one hand. These meals must have been prepared little by little over a long period of time.
Living together has made it painfully clear just how much Will relies on Hannibal for his meals. Whenever he wants, a glass of ice water with floating lemon slices, fragrant coffee, or a rich smoothie appears at exactly the right moment.
“It’s okay, babies. Papa didn’t forget your sausages.”
Before Hannibal comes home, Will plans to eat every single prepared meal. He can already imagine the alpha smiling at the empty refrigerator and at Will, healthy and glowing with good color.
At times, it makes Will feel like a kid. A little kid who obediently follows his parents’ rules, hoping to be praised.
Now, Will’s body is shaped entirely by his alpha—his meals, hair care, nail trimming, skin creams, even what kind of pajamas he wears.
Does he accept all of this just to make his husband happy? Yes. Yes, he does. The reverent murmurs his self-righteous husband makes while massaging Will’s feet make him feel wonderful, even if he has no idea what language they’re in or what they mean.
Will takes out his phone and unlocks it from the wedding photo of the two of them. The last message is, as always, one of Hannibal’s whispered declarations of love.
He sends a new message.
――The babies are demanding more sausages.
The reply comes almost immediately. Will briefly wonders if Hannibal is really working at a conference at all. The mental image of an alpha like a college student secretly tapping away at his phone under a desk makes him giggle.
――Do these “babies” include you?
――Of course. I always want a special “sausage.”
――Oh, how greedy you are, my darling. Go to the bedroom. I’ve saved something special for you in the second drawer of the nightstand.
Will clatters his fork onto the plate and bolts for the bedroom.
The omega can’t stop laughing.
The image of the brilliant, elegant Dr. Hannibal Lecter engaging in crude, shameless texting under a desk and calling an oversized silicone dildo a “sausage” makes Will feel like he’s about to burst with some unidentifiable emotion.
After returning downstairs to give the babies their real sausages, Will finally sits down to enjoy the meal prepared just for him.
⸻
By the third day, Will has settled into a routine.
He wakes up in a bed that feels as vast as the universe, takes a few deep breaths and masturbates on his husband’s side of the mattress, then makes his way to the bathroom with sticky hands and a heavy, listless step. There, he spends an hour staring at the two toothbrushes standing together in a single cup, washes his hair with his husband’s shampoo, and then goes downstairs to eat with the babies.
He wears Hannibal’s robe directly over his bare skin, but only because his own robe happens to be in the wash. As for the rest of his clothes, Will cannot even manage to wash them properly, thanks to his husband’s insistence on installing an unnecessarily multifunctional, high-performance washing machine. The instruction manual was once accidentally dropped onto a plate of snacks by Will and subsequently torn to shreds—murdered by Buster.
And so, with no other option, he wears the alpha’s clothes. In any case, there are hundreds of times more of them than there are in Will’s wardrobe, so it hardly matters.
After lunch, Will curls up with the dogs on the sofa in Hannibal’s study. Beneath Ellie, sprawled across Will’s chest, Hannibal’s checked suit jacket is crushed into a wrinkled mess—but that is Hannibal’s own fault for leaving clothes around in a house where three dogs live. In truth, the jacket had merely been “left” on a hanger in the closet, but the distance Will moved it would amount to no more than a fingertip’s error on a planetary scale.
After that, Will plays with the dogs in the yard until dinner, washes the mud off in the shower, then eats dinner wearing his husband’s pajamas.
Full and back in bed, Will realizes he has energy to spare. Quantico’s students have been taken out on a field exercise by another instructor, so there are no classes, and for once, the fact that serial killers all across America are lying low does him no good at all.
He begins to suspect that Hannibal is not attending a psychiatry conference, but has instead gone on some sort of serial-killer-hunting leisure tour—or perhaps a social trip with serial killers.
The silicone sausage has already lost Will’s interest by yesterday. Now, instead of using it on himself, he is content to lay it down on his husband’s pillow as a stand-in for him. It is an extremely foolish sight, but at least Will is not alone in this bed.
Will reaches for his phone and opens his messages. The last exchange is always a whisper of love from Hannibal.
――Did you know that alphas who neglect pregnant omegas have a higher chance of being served divorce papers after the birth?
――…Will, are you pregnant?
――No! Are you an idiot? Silicone can’t ejaculate!
――Darling, you seem tired. Get some rest.
⸻
――Hello, darling. How are you? I’m texting to check on you.
――While you’re enjoying yourself with your pretentious work colleagues and completely forgetting the world’s cutest husband, do you have any idea how a poor omega abandoned in his nest is spending his time alone? Fuck off, alpha! I didn’t think you were such a cold man!
――Will, we spoke on the phone just thirty minutes ago.
⸻
Hannibal exhales at the thought that he will finally be able to return home after a full week. The Bentley is speeding well above the legal limit, but the alpha does not care in the slightest. If there were police to stop him, he would deal with them until they were no longer an obstacle.
Fortunately, the drive back from the airport goes smoothly, and no officers go missing tonight.
When he arrives home, the alpha’s eyes instinctively take in the exterior of the house, checking for any abnormalities in their nest. The security system is top-of-the-line, but there is no shortage of fools who would try to steal a beautiful omega, so one can never be too careful.
He had whispered suggestions into Jack’s ear, steering the FBI’s children into leaving Quantico. Professor Graham had no classes to teach for a week and was effectively granted a vacation, spending his time at home grading papers and preparing for upcoming lectures.
Of course, Hannibal had stocked the refrigerator with the murderers who had recently been encroaching on his territory before leaving for the conference, ensuring that his omega could spend the week safely in the nest with their furry children, without ever needing to go out.
Opening the front door, Hannibal relaxes as the longed-for scent of home washes over him, while at the same time pricking his ears. It would be a lie to say he had not hoped for his husband to greet him—to be welcomed with sweet embraces and sweet kisses.
Will is never a stereotypical omega, and Hannibal does not expect him to behave that way, but if his omega had missed him enough to rush into his arms, eager to see him again, Hannibal would have felt as though he were ascending to heaven.
Still, even without that, he is not disappointed.
It has been some time since they met, and nearly two years since they married; by now, Hannibal knows Will far too well.
Until Hannibal takes Will into his arms, tells him how lonely he was without him, showers him with kisses, kneels before him, whispers poetry about the joy of seeing him again, and spends an entire night apologizing for leaving him alone for a week, Will will ignore him.
The image of an omega too stubborn to be honest, desperately pressing his aching fingers into his own shirt to keep himself from clinging to Hannibal, fills Hannibal’s chest with an almost painful love, sending him soaring not just to heaven, but beyond the farthest reaches of the universe.
“Will?”
Hannibal moves through the house, smiling at the empty refrigerator as he calls out. Yes—his omega has taken proper care of himself. Preparing all that food had taken considerable time, but Hannibal has no intention of letting his carefully crafted work be ruined by a foolish conference. Nothing in the world matters more than his omega’s health.
“Now then, where is Daddy?”
Hannibal smiles at the opportunistic children who finally appear at his feet as he opens the refrigerator. They had established the equation “Papa equals the person who gives wonderful sausages” at a very early stage. Since that served as an excuse for Hannibal to approach Will—and effectively made them cupids of love—Hannibal could never help but indulge them.
“I’m home, good children. Tomorrow morning, I’ll make you the most delicious sausages first thing. If I give you snacks too late, Papa will get scolded by Dad.”
Winston and Zoey accept Hannibal’s petting and wag their tails contentedly. Buster, on the other hand, pushes Hannibal’s hand away with his nose and glares at him, furrowing brows he does not technically have. It reminds Hannibal a little of Will, and he briefly imagines that if they ever had a baby, this might be what that child would be like.
A matter they will need to discuss in the near future. They both waver between wanting a baby and wanting to selfishly keep each other to themselves a little longer. Scratching behind Buster’s ears as he finally accepts Hannibal’s hand, Hannibal thinks that it may be time to break that stalemate.
Just as he is imagining an unseen future child, the sound of footsteps from upstairs brings a smile to his face.
Ah. How rude. How adorable.
Yes—his omega is very angry. And impatient.
Hannibal urges the children back to bed, turns off the lights, and climbs the stairs. As his mate’s scent grows stronger, his heart pounds, his jaw aches, and his throat goes dry. As he quickens his steps toward the bedroom, he thinks that tonight he will thoroughly spoil his omega. He will atone for his absence, praise the omega who guarded the nest, and make up for the lost contact.
Will deserves to be adored every day and treated with care. Hannibal accepts the guilt of leaving his precious omega alone and prepares to face the accusation of being a cold alpha head-on. His mind begins calculating ways to soothe and satisfy the many demands his displeased omega is certain to make.
And so, when he bursts into the bedroom and is greeted not by the familiar sight of an omega wrapped in sheets in mock anger, but by something entirely bizarre, Hannibal’s mind glitches—just a little.
“Will, darling? Why is there a dildo behaving like me in the bed? And… why is my pillow sealed in plastic?”
Hannibal turns in search of an answer, and when a ferocious omega launches himself at him and clings like an octopus, he laughs and allows himself to be pushed down onto the bed.
As night deepens, the adorable octopus with separation anxiety sleeps sprawled naked across Hannibal’s chest, drooling onto his chest hair. Their bodies are slick with various fluids, and that is just fine. Hannibal gently strokes the dark circles beneath his omega’s eyes.
He murmurs his countless apology and softly turns off the lamp.