august: two blowjobs, one fic

by whispered

Summary:

For a moment— maybe all of them even— it strangely reminds the former surgeon of the act of falling. And not just falling off a cliff or falling in love, but falling in general.

There's always been a great divide to him when patients so-often expressed personal griefs with acts of falling, equating them to failing or failure when they could be looked at as anything but. Still, no matter which act itself, no matter which way one actually fell, it always evoked a sense that— whatever was happening, was probably the most important thing that could ever happen.

He's got his eyes lost in the same thoughts as Amsterdam brings morning into early afternoon. His hand is on the door of a tiny little building when Will asks something before he can even get the thing halfway open.

"What are you smiling about?" It's soft.

Notes:

so i owe everyone a huge apology. like, beyond words sorry for this, but i really screwed up with the music thing.

i tried to keep all the songs aligned to their proper years, but of course i wanted to invent time travel or some shit and just had to throw in some noah kahan, who had absolutely not dropped the orbiter quite yet.

so yeah, i'm sorry.

 

anyways, here there be ageplay and sex. see ya!

😆

planetarium

 

 

"You know, there's a variety of alternatives to this," the doctor's motioning across the vast of kitchen island with the open of his left palm, "if your end goal is simply avoiding tomorrow."

Will, like always— as always— for better or for worse, is sat on the edge of said island, feet hung off and both hands covered with so much flour that Hannibal's heart explodes like a star. "Baby."

"It was this," and despite the rudeness (or because of it), the empath sweeps yet another bite of raspberry cake into his mouth, icing smeared across lower lip in the aftermath, "or handcuffing you to the bed."

It almost feels like the kitchen is laughing in it's own form of amusement with what it sees— with what it feels— evening tickling against the walls and the doors, moonlight trickling in and touching their backs and their bones.

Some of it catching the highest point in Hannibal's smile when he answers back.

"You have handcuffs?"

The same light threatens to reveal the one Will's currently trying to hide. "You didn't know?"

It's almost dull and non-newsworthy to note that Amsterdam hasn't changed but: Amsterdam hasn't changed. She's still dull and achy around the edges as Summer meanders by, promising only hope for a cooler autumn and softer months ahead. Ones with gray hairs sweeping in fuller, ones with days shifting slower and slower at each and every turn.

They've never been better.

Will's looking a little petulant, a little too playful for this late in the evening. To the point that the doctor knows it's not just the sugar. "I thought I'd found them all."

He dismisses the distance between them then, crossing across and standing near enough where one of two bent knees tap his hipbone on the left, fingers eyeing the half-slice of cake on the counter.

"You already brushed your teeth, silly boy." His voice is everything the opposite of his words, all coated in warmth and affection, almost as sweet as the raspberries in the base of the birthday treat on the marble below. "How long have you been hiding down here anyways, darling?" He brushes the younger's opposite knee, watches as crumbs threaten to fall.

"And please tell me this was your only slice. Otherwise, we will be brushing again."

Will speaks around chewing, years coming down by the mouthful. "Only slice." He swallows again, orange glow from above soft against his Adam's apple. "Episode ended. Got bored."

Hannibal doesn't reply right off the bat, hums under his breath at the same time that he swipes crumbles and dried icing from the corner of his counterpart's mouth.

The younger almost bites the offending thumb with intention. "Hey," and he sweeps back and away at the second passing, gray strands turning cream under the same warm light. It makes something fuzzy grow in the depths of the doctor's stomach. "Hannibal. Hey— Christ, you're annoying."

Something he doesn't know the name of just yet. "I know."

Will's smiling at him then, both palms flat on the edge of counter now, sock-covered feet kicking back and forth.

Socks covered in butterflies and kittens chasing after them, of course. "Annoying."

The echoed word makes a smile bloom across the older's lips and he leans in to hide it against soft curls at the fringe. In between and scattered across, the low creep of nighttime and dull, achy glow of orange light trace between their wrinkles and their touches, trace between the words they still haven't said. The something part.

Hannibal lets his kiss linger against tanned skin for some time, not yet ready to let go in the same way he still can't place that feeling swelling deep in his gut, something else he can't keep when he doesn't even know its name. "Reckless little boy."

He exhales hard, eyes closed, feeling very much like the day is not going slow enough, that it's slipping through his fingers faster than he can grasp at, each hour passing by one another before the first is even over.

Like none of this is ever going to be enough. "Let daddy make your bottle and we can have a talk about tomorrow."

But much less than Will likes only once slice of cake and optimal bed times does he like talking. His heels prove his point by hitting wood below twice over as he leaps off the counter, one foot after the other, kittens catching butterflies at bony ankles.

"Don't wanna talk." He makes a face, wonders when in the world all the ages fell off at the edges and why he didn't even notice they'd come off in the first place. "Don't wanna bottle."

The kiss this time is brief, just north of eyebrow on the right. "Of course." He steps away then, light once again touching the shine of silk pajama top and bottom, sunflower yellow tracing his own years young like he's not yet ready to let go of them either.

"Finish your cake, sweetheart. Otherwise, daddy's throwing it out."

The soft glow follows him all the way to the sink, follows his hands to gather and to collect from cabinets and pantries, follows him the same way that the empaths eyes do: with something that feels strangely familiar of hope and persistence mixing together to make something else, something new.

There's a soft shift of music in between their shadows, the near silent piano tune from earlier replaced with something else that screams that it's on anything but a playlist, and that Will's taste for talking and bed times is much like the songs on the actual list itself: shuffled all around and an absolute fucking mess.

He spends his nights in California. "I wasn't really trying to get out of 'tomorrow'."

Watching the stars on the big screen. "We both know your stomach doesn't tolerate well with late night eating either, baby."

Will's got his chin tucked over his shoulder to watch the opposite, fork stuffed of cake and cream on the right, waiting just like him to be devoured. "Doesn't mean cake leads to me not going to the zoo."

The face that Hannibal makes says otherwise. His low back is to the edge of counter, hands dry and damp at the same time, rubber-tipped bottle cast to the background behind pots and pans. "Doesn't it?"

He looks up with a little smile at me and says, "Just scared."

If I could be like that, I would give anything. "Daddy knows." The older's facial expression is soft, gentle like guitar strings along the chorus. He's got his arms crossed at the chest, shoulders dropped and relaxed in such a way that makes butterflies on socks and feelings in stomachs all start to sound exactly the same.

"What's got my little one so riled up about his birthday trip to the zoo?"

Hannibal's taken a few strides to be closer, fingers and eyes edging for more than just a taste of cake. "Not— not my birthday."

"It was." He's perpendicular now, maybe a foot, foot-and-a half away, arms folded so he doesn't accidentally steal the fork and take what he wants for himself. "And the zoo was one of your presents." He stops then, tongue peeking past parted lips, breathing stilled between gaps of ribs.

"However, birthday sat aside, what's got my lamb so fearful, sweetheart?" The question breaks through bone after bone to find it's way out.

But the answer doesn't even have to try and escape, comes out just as reckless as the last. "Not— not my birthday." The fork's set aside, face forward, eyes to the floor below where the kitchen light makes the tile shiny and egg white. "That— it's not even until next month, Hannibal."

And the real answer feels like the lyric pleading out overhead: is that too much to ask? Like something that Will just doesn't know the answer to. "I don't know. The public. The people. I'm in my head about it, I know."

The doctor's in front of him then, completely parallel with fingers on wrists, sliding between sleeve and skin to take hold. Will's still not looking at him though, refuses to look at anything above the belt buckle whatsoever, but Hannibal's face is the softest it's ever been in the quiet of the night, answering the question 'is that too much to ask' with the only answer he can give for something like this: "Daddy will keep you safe."

"Hannibal," Will swallows the name in the same way it feels like the floor could swallow him whole if his hands let go of the edge, in the same way he knows he's always going to let his daddy take him, even if he does let go— "It's just— we've never, not with people around." Even if—

The older has index finger and middle finger slid under soft cuffs on both sides. He can feel a beating pulse beneath his fingertips with his palms turned down, sharp nails being dared not to rip the pink-and-yellow unicorn long-sleeve off it's owner and onto the floor below instead.

"We have before. They'll hardly notice and they'd have no reason to otherwise."

Fingers shift, circling wide around wrist with thumb and pointer. "Is it really that, darling?"

"Yes," is how the former agent answers, and "I guess," is how he knows he doesn't know the answer himself. If there even is one.

(What's the story really about anyways?) "I don't know."

All she wants is just that something to hold onto. "Can daddy tell you what he thinks?" That's all she needs.

Where the gap of space exists between their chests, the orange flood light from above grazes across and pulls them closer despite the noise and the unknown. It's a tug that they both feel, something made from the heart and not just hurt by it, something that feels more like an answer than a prayer.

Something that feels like the teacup's reversing.

And Will isn't on his knees when he whispers, "yes," under his breath, but Hannibal still feels like a god when he hears it, so he takes it for what it is, what every single word Will ever utters is: worship.

"Alright." There's silence after and a flood of chorus repeating over and over, and in the same stanza, fingers graze one another, skin-on-skin, all the inhales and exhales caught between twenty-four ribs and all his answered prayers.

It's only then that Will looks up, eyes hooded and shadowed underneath, but with worry no longer there. Never with daddy. Just a little boy looking for something to hold on to. "Daddy?"

The third-remains of cake lay forgotten, song soon come to an end. Even the moon peeking through the far end of the kitchen seems to pay no mind to the world they've found theirselves in, the place where a fill-in-the-blank waits to be filled-in with an answer. With daddy's answer.

Lord, what would I do? Yeah. "Daddy thinks it would be very much weird if you weren't scared." He stops, presses index finger down into smooth wrist on both sides. "And that if his little boy weren't so nervous, then we'd actually have a reason to reconsider tomorrow."

He's standing close still, tall enough where his shadow looms over and the kitchen is— for once— not the answer.

"Daddy thinks that his lamb might need to feel scared sometimes, so that his daddy can take care of him." The song's almost over, lyrics caught between light, a blank line still waiting for its punctuation. He speaks softly, between the reckless playlists and the colors fracturing, between the unused knives and the forever prayer for more. The forever need for—

Falling in— "I think that you really want to go to the zoo, sweetheart. To see the bugs and the giraffes and all the exhibits that they have." His fingers have fallen to the counter below, tips to cool granite where icing is waiting to be cleaned. I feel I'm falling in to this— "But having something you want might be the scariest part of all."

It's quiet after, lyrics absent as the music proves its chaos once more, leaving them both with bated breath and only the fear of the (un)known ahead. And Will's looking down now, gaze lost somewhere before the end of the last song and the older's honest words.

When he speaks, it sounds like the tears have already fallen. "I promise I want it."

Hannibal barely gets out his soft, "I know," before the next song takes off.

Screen fallin' off the door, door hangin' off the hinges.

Will doesn't even know what playlist he had going when he pulled the leftover birthday cake from the back of the refrigerator, doesn't know what he was thinking when he climbed off the bed mid-episode, running away like he did with his real daddy, doesn't know anything but: "Even when I want it, I don't know how to have it."

We lifted this house, we lifted this house.

"You don't feel ashamed by it much anymore, do you?" He doesn't carry an affectionate term at the end, doesn't need to, because he already knows the answer, already knows that the story was never just about the shame.

"Not really."

It's carried into later, lyrics slipping fast and bed time crawling close.

He'd left Olive on the bed too, when he ran off earlier. He doesn't know if he pressed pause, only that he liked how the backside of the remote felt against his cheek now that daddy made it all smooth.

How do you know? This house is fallin' apart. "I don't know what to do with what you keep giving me."

Hannibal swallows, mind on the lyrics screaming hard about fumblin' round the back, a house falling apart and everything he wishes he could give to his little boy instead. "I promise we can figure it out, if you let me give this to you." A pause, then an answer written beyond a blank and beyond its punctuation: "But I need you to know that you've already been doing a wonderful job at that already. Daddy can see it, through and through."

There are tears now. Maybe because of Olive, maybe because of brutal honesty and correct answers on fictional exams, he doesn't know. Thinks it's okay that he doesn't.

(Thinks he absolutely knows it's because he's never heard anything like that— ever— in his life. Never, ever, ever.) This house is fallin' apart. This house is fallin' apart.

"Shush darling." The older's fingers have moved and replaced where remote once was, holding his little boy by the curves of his soft cheeks. He doesn't turn Will's face up, but his thumbs have already stopped wet tears in their tracks. "No need for that tonight. We can talk later about some of this, but for now we have an early morning ahead of us."

And the prospect of bed sends Will into another sensation, another fill-in-the-blank to be done, sniffling hard then pulling his head back even harder.

We're gonna rattle this ghost town.

"You plan things out." He speaks quiet between another lapse of lyrics, an interchange of yet another song, all of a sudden time taking the seconds— minutes— hours in ways that scares even monsters who dress up like cannibals. "You have things imagined about the future that I don't even know about, don't you?"

"Yes," the older has to whisper it, sometimes blunt truth still so foreign to his tongue. "Decades beyond, darling."

"Hannibal," he says it between days on a Bruce Springsteen calendar and dried tears under both eyes. "Daddy."

And then he speaks again, but not before a sob and a choked-back laugh comes out, not before the song in the background slips into a soft honesty with its very first line: happiness was just outside my window.

"You're ridiculous." Its a gentle kind of truth that feels very much like what this story could be about. But happiness, is a little more like knocking on your door, you just let it in.

"Barely so." Hannibal's smiling when he says it, fingers turned nail-down to knobby knees and a soft overhead glow pressing just as gentle into salt-and-blonde bangs that the empath finds himself wanting to touch.

The song turns into a line about sorrow and so the doctor leads by example, stealing a kiss to the cheek (left) and adding punctuation to his answer (love). "Come, bed. It's getting late, baby."

Will responds tearful, between soft words and guitar strokes colliding under orange and yellow kitchen light. "Not bedtime, not little."

Despite his answer, his hands have moved from thigh and his arms slipped across the chest, defiant as any four year old would be with the prospect of sleep on the horizon. "Not even that late, daddy."

His limbs stay folded, right foot so, so close to knocking life into the wood at it's heel. There's even a little dip between his brows, where thick thatch near the center furrows in resistance.

"And I still should have put you to bed sooner." Hannibal's lingering state is gone then, sliding china against marble as he clears the spread.

Careful child, light the fuse and get away.

"Hannibal." The former agent's off the ledge then— ledge of a cliff, ledge of a pool, ledge of a fucking kitchen counter. "I'm in boxers." 'Cause happiness throws a shower of sparks.

The tears are still there too, stained but present, here to be marked for attendance.

Hannibal's looking at him like he's perplexed that Will hadn't put this answer into a blank already, right hand on a bottle filled with honey-coated milk and a mind derailed all over the place, peeking in at all the questions, demanding all the answers.

Yeah, happiness damn near destroys you. "I never said to sleep, did I?"

His little boy looks up so fast that Hannibal thinks the story might not just be about love either.

Raising his hand, Will answers like any four year old would: on the tip of all ten toes, index finger nearing the mouth and with the promise that sleep would be getting nowhere near him if he had anything to say about it.

So he says just that. "Cartoons?"

Happiness, it's like the old man told me: look for it, and you'll never find it all. But let it go, live your life and leave it.

Then one day, wake up and she'll be home. "Baby."

*

Regardless of whatever the story's supposed to be about, the morning after has its own promise that it brings in with breakfast in bed. One that's coated in the remains of blueberry pancake on fingertips and with the scent of cinnamon rolls and coffee beneath tucked shirt collars.

Will's breath smells a bit like coffee too, something like chocolate milk coming through in the aftermath as he wiggles back and forth in the passenger seat. He's got the sunlight to his right cheek, legs hanging outside the open door. "Still don't know about this, Hannibal."

He'd fussed the entire car ride there. "Don't feel great about it."

Hannibal's knelt outside the truck door, knees to the warm cement and two hands against the cool of guardrail. "I promise there's nothing to worry about darling."

The sun's touching his hair in a way that makes it look white. It doesn't happen often and Will has to fight the urge not to reach out, more than he had to last night even.

"There are people though." He speaks between his fingers on the right, all five of them curled into a soft fist against chapped lips. "What if someone sees?"

And he knows he's being silly about it, considering the fact that he's behaving exactly how he'd never want anyone to see, but he tacks on, "scared," against the curve of wrist like maybe he just needs his daddy to see, not anyone else.

Between them, where music doesn't lay out and the car rests quiet with early morning heat exhaustion, Amsterdam spills all of her Summer glory onto the pair from up above. Every cloud and every ray beckon for the empath to emerge, pleading for a chance to peek at the shy little boy who has yet to come out.

Hannibal's got his fingers curled around the former agent's knees on both sides. "Darling, it'll be alright."

Between them, where sunshine reaches the deepest, the older whispers quietly: "No one will see, baby."

Will blinks behind wet lashes, gaze bravely seeking out voice. "Daddy." His fingers press into lower lip.

"There's barely a dozen people here, Will. Probably the most there would be on a Monday." But Hannibal's not looking up at the opposite now. Not anymore. His gaze is out far, focused wide and deep against the empty rows and rows of parking lot.

He's sure if he asked Will to count them, he would do just that.

"I promised to keep you safe."

He's still not looking but they both know he doesn't need to.

The hand against the younger's wet mouth is gone. "Daddy." Then, more urgently, "daddy."

Hannibal can't help but look over when called, eyes impossibly soft for someone whose been cast to play God one too many times in a single lifetime. His nails edge in and Will realizes that even the day of the week had been curated, that daddy did every, single, thing for him.

"No one will see, darling."

Will's face (and resolve) crumble, something about the Amsterdam sun and clouds pushing him the final distance to wrap his arms around his daddy's neck. It feels like every age falling from the outside in as he succumbs to his need for this, and then for a new sensation he'd never, ever felt before, a need for his daddy.

For a third time, whispered¹: "daddy."

They don't talk right off the bat, simply pressed together and pressing out the remaining rays of light between their chests. The breaking clouds above make the sun jealous that it doesn't get to touch them anymore.

The doctor has his mouth against Will's collarbone, face dipped down while both palms press to the pavement below, barely able to hold steady leverage.

"Scared someone will see, daddy." Will's quiet against Hannibal's short cut hair, the position awful and his racing thoughts going faster than they had on the highway this morning. He's barely hanging on himself, thick thighs off the truck seat and weight fully against the doctor.

"I know." He's speaking against damp neck where he tastes cinnamon, mouth soft and wet at the same time. "I promise you that we do not stand out, Will. That's never a thing I'd do to you."

Will can smell blueberry batter around all his troubles and worries. "Daddy."

"I've got you, baby." The angle, the position, is absolutely awful but Hannibal presses forward, strain running through his back and through his very next words. "Daddy promises, alright?"

On the next exhale, his little boy finally nods. It's barely there, then: "okay." His fingers haven't let go of their hold. He whispers again, voice so damp that it promises to smear his shirt sleeve dirty. "Okay daddy."

They walk together from truck to entrance, fingers intertwined between bodies. And sure, Will's heart is racing at least five hundred times faster than Hannibal's, but he's out of the truck.

The empath's motions are slower than usual, one step and a half behind the doctor's at a time. But still, he moves forward, letting the sunshine and the need for something guide him from the folds of security and to something (maybe) not so scary at all: Artis, the oldest zoo in Amsterdam.

Will's got his gaze cast across the last few rows of the parking lot, watching as the only thing that skitters about is the refracted rays of light and no more than four Toyota Yaris's parked way too close for comfort.

Three fingers squeeze firm against the doctor's when they cross the main road.

"Hannibal." The names falls off awkwardly, just like his last step from street to sidewalk. "Hannibal— wait."

Ahead of the former surgeon, it's just as quiet as he'd hoped— as he'd prayed. The signs and welcome are all there, decorated bright and labeled across every which way, and there's even a handful of employees roaming from place to place, left and right, but it's just like he'd promised outside the truck: like no one would see.

Just like he promised on a single knee outside a bar in Dublin, Ireland too: like he wanted everyone to see.

He's got his free hand around the strap of a familiar leather bag, stopped and turned to face the empath from the side. "I won't force you, but I'm asking you to trust me." He looks like he'd be more than willing to go to his knees in the middle of the parking lot if he had to.

The former agent's stopped in his tracks, both shoes on the sidewalk's edge and his heart racing a million miles per hour second.

The zoo's entrance is right in front of him, colorful signs calling for attention.

"Okay." He swallows but he's smiling after he says it.

We can do anything we want to.

Part of him even knows which bug he wants to see first. "I trust you."

Standing there against the Eastern European morning, he looks a little out of place yeah, but one way or another, Velcro shoes on the pavement: he's here. Cake eaten, out of the car, feet across the street— he's here. And he's dressed just as daddy had dressed him two hours ago, denim on the bottom and soft pastels on the top. The lavender on his long sleeve matches the pink across both his cheeks when he rubs at his nose again.

There's smeared snot along his upper lip. "Wanna see the animals." The three fingers around the doctor's thumb tighten. "Please."

Hannibal has the tip of his tongue pressed to the back of his teeth where words can't seem to escape. His facial expression softens even further, years falling off by the second as a moment of ease graces the confines of his stomach heart, settling in like a meal worth the work.

It's something he's not used to (this side of the Atlantic nor the other). "Good boy."

A free hand comes up just as gentle as his words, touching the low, low of Will's back with an open palm and fingers outstretched. "I've got you, alright?"

The empath is flush turned red, eyes blinking faster than his heart which feels nearly impossible. Words come though, a moment later, exactly how he answered in Dublin, Ireland and with the very same number of the speedometer: "'kay."

He tries to keep it together — he does, all the way from sidewalk and up the long ramp to the zoo's entrance where the signs are larger and the welcome even brighter. It's empty all across, more workers than actual guests, but the empath also knows that without a crowd, it's much harder to hide, much easier to stick out.

And it's not that he feels out of place, no, it's not like that in Amsterdam. Or at least that he's noticed. Even with blood on his hands, he never thinks he'd feel out of place — not with a madman at his side. It's just, well, he doesn't want anyone to notice him—

To notice— "Hannibal." To notice him saying things like: "daddy."

Or pointing out things like: bug exhibit, closed through the month of August.

At times, Hannibal really did wonder if there was a god and if the act of cannibalism was right in the lord's eyes too. "Baby. Will."

The empath's stood square in front of the offending plastic sign, arms crossed and frown spread wide like the sun against the clouds.

Hannibal's facing him, dressed casual with pleated slacks and a loose polo favoring milder tones. Peaches, creams, even some maroons at the collar. "I'm sorry." He really is.

And Will's face looks absolutely broken, smile turned upside-down and nose scrunched in so much that it looks like a flat tire. His two-day old scruff screams the difference of all the ages presented, all the places the empath is capable of going if his hand is held tight. "Wanna go home."

Going my way?

"Yeah, that one's my favorite. It was last minute too." The man— the kid— looks just as young as he sounds, voice as European as they come. He's got eyes forward on the same plastic notice greeting the crowd. Or lack there of. "Bringing in a few new colonies so they've got to rework the exhibit to make room."

Hannibal's mouth inches apart (unknowingly), but it's only because he's short-circuited on what to do first: make sure Will hasn't crashed out on the ground or actually saying something back.

Bugs. "That's welcome news at least." Ageplay. "Is there anything similar?"

Besides him, where an empath who's somewhere between the ages of three and forty-nine, the sun crashes down like the truth at charge: Hannibal keeping his promise.

Daddy. The name sits behind enamel and leftover stains of stolen cookies as Will keeps his mouth closed and eyes lost, lets his head fall back into a stream going one way and one way only: his way or the highway.

"Amphibians you say?" But Will's curls are still soaked in the undercurrent, gaze unfocused and thoughts relentless.

"Till two today." The words bounce off each other and in between the sunshine and waves. "I'd still go earlier. Nocturnal, you know?"

And Will can't see at first, vision completely routed off with the laze of the waters and the rough of her swells, but the conversation goes on just as pamphlets are passed off and smiles are exchanged. Even when words slip mute and he blinks three or four times in a space where only once is needed, he still feels like the ocean is at the reins, still feels like there's something else out there besides the Atlantic that dreams of taking the both of them.

Something else out there that's starting to feel like the something that this story might just be about.

"Yeah, so again, sorry about the bug exhibit, but there's definitely some cool things to check out too." The kid— the man— is smiling, teeth just as white as his uniformed top and bottom. "Recommend the penguin exhibit too. It's small but there's babies." He hasn't walked away but his right foot looks ready to take that first step. "Anyways, entrance is that way. Enjoy your visit, yeah?"

The back of Will's neck feels damp from nerves-gone-wild but he looks over, blinks five or six times in a space that feels like could last forever. "Penguins?"

It's very bright when Hannibal glances back and his hands are wrapped around the folds of paper and too many things that remind him of cardboard boxes, how he may still have some of his own left to open.

They remind him of things like: "penguins, Will." And things like: "he mentioned frogs, too. Did you hear, darling?"

With the stream quiet and his arms folded across, the empath swallows hard, realizing too many truths all at once. "Hannibal?" It's quieter than the prior question asked.

But Hannibal hears it — daddy hears it. "Will?"

He blinks one more time and loosens his arms until they're inches from unlatching. It feels like pressing the brakes when you exit the highway, but even then, you never let go. "Still scared," is what he starts with, but when he looks over the rays of August morning stretch into the bluest hues Hannibal's ever seen. "But wanna look at the penguins."

The doctor's answer comes with his hand catching the empath's falling wrist (left) and eyes looking wild, young.

"Baby penguins, little one."

*

Will's shy all the way through the birds and the birds and the.. birds.

"I'm tired of birds, Hannibal." Shy all the way until the former surgeon is nearly at his wits end with two hands digging nails into palms and the vow of a headache on the horizon. "Is there anything else to even do here?"

The summer sun had pressed into their shoulders most of the morning, quiet between and only soft words murmured when the empath felt safe enough— felt brave enough— to let them out. She played friendly against his cheeks, even when he was riled up and pink across, eyes glancing left and right for any onlookers before promising more trouble than two aspirin and a lobotomy could ever take care of. "It's boring."

"Will." Hannibal answers soft, patiently, eyes closed and two fingers pressed to the center of his forehead. "Will." He sometimes wonders if maybe he meant to cut through his own head back in Italy.

Well, not really. "We have something booked in an hour plus two stops in between. Will you please slow down, darling?"

They're stood along a long pathway, gazes pointed north, sneakers and dress shoes touching beneath tall, tall elm trees. It feels almost foreign if seen from the outside, feels like they jut out in all the wrong places but in all the right ways. And it probably seems that way to all the other employees, all of forty-six other guests, all the birds and birds and birds, but Amsterdam doesn't stop pressing in, promises over and over again that if they keep letting her through their windows and doors, into their boxes and hearts, she might just give them something besides a story if they're willing to listen. "I'm not even— you're slow."

"Will." Hannibal has his hand removed and twisted around the former agent's wrist instead. They're still paused, sun and wind against aging backs from the south. "Hey," comes out at the same time that the doctors hand pulls forward. "Hey." Informality packed for the zoo, "I know you have been fretful all morning but we do not act that way, regardless of age."

"Hannibal—" it's said automatic and with pupils blown wide. The light from the sun slips through the narrow space between their chests, breaths matched in, then out. "I—" His eyes dart left to right. Still just them. Still under tall, tall trees.

"Stop, I've been— you're not— you don't get to. Not here." Still fighting.

"I absolutely will." The doctor loosens his restraint regardless, leaves only index and thumb to hang on. "Now behave. Or else your first punishment is missing the reptile exhibit."

The younger's pulse dilates so much that Hannibal puts the other three fingers right back where they should have never left. "Reptiles?" It comes out breathless, like another box that's not fully open but whose seal has been more than just broken.

Hannibal's face softens, perhaps cranial saws and raw decisions unnecessary. "Yes, darling." He blinks but when his eyes reopen, Will's got his free hand tangled into the end of his shirttail. "Frogs, snakes, amphibians." His eyes flick to the sun behind the younger's head. Still hours to go until it reaches the highest point of the day. "Things of that nature. You like them, correct?"

Out of breath: "Yes."

The sunlight scatters through and against them when Hannibal leads forward, proving he's anything but slow by step number three.

For a moment— maybe all of them even— it strangely reminds the former surgeon of the act of falling. And not just falling off a cliff or falling in love, but falling in general.

There's always been a great divide to him when patient's so-often expressed personal griefs with acts of falling, equating them to failing or failure when they could be looked at as anything but. Still, no matter which act itself, no matter which way one actually fell, it always evoked a sense that— whatever was happening, was probably the most important thing that could ever happen.

He's got his eyes lost in the same thoughts as Amsterdam brings morning into early afternoon. His hand is on the door of a tiny little building when Will asks something before he can even get the thing halfway open.

"What are you smiling about?" It's soft.

And for a moment more, glass pane wide open and his heart just the same, Hannibal almost tells him. Tells him that doing this makes him feel like he's falling, like he's falling in love a hundred times over— a thousand times over— And that even though he's still a bit winded about his little boy making faces at the birds earlier, he wants nothing more than to find the highest cliff the Amsterdam International Zoo has to offer and see if that's something they can conquer too.

"Hannibal?" Will asks again, eyes up and sunlight warm to his back.

The doctor's smiling. When the rays stretch across his sternum and collar, they make his shirt look rosy pink. "I like reptiles too."

He doesn't wait for a response before ducking into the darkness within and holding the door open, wide of his arm extended out. "Come on, you."

The sun tails Will in all the way to the blue heels of his sneakers. And maybe because it's actually dark inside, that when the empath whispers, "wait!" out loud, it sounds like it's coming from a boy who might be afraid of more than just the word itself.

"You're the one who said daddy was slow." Hannibal's maneuvered behind the younger, mouth close and body even closer.

"Hannibal." It's quiet, like the entire room is. Well, more like the entire building.

It's all shadow-like inside, like the exhibit has more secrets than the two of them put together. "Stop," Will urges between clenched teeth as he takes his first steps in.

For the empath, all of this is nothing like the act of falling— love, cliffs, through and around ages he hasn't even met. None of it whatsoever. Instead, it feels something like not knowing what to do with it when you have it— a murderer, a second chance, someone who loves you back— when it's less about caring for others and more about caring about yourself.

It's what makes it feel like little sparks of electricity running throughout the halls and walls of the zoo's little reptile exhibit, in between their hearts and their frequency for falling. The doctor's leaned back, watching near the door as his counterpart eases his way closer and closer to walls and walls of glass and foliage.

And Will practically looks like he's falling as he creeps towards one enclosure in particular, hands deep inside pockets and mouth open like he wants to say something the complete opposite of stop a second time.

"Frog," he says instead, neither looking left nor right to check before, nose inches from the reflection of a kid who's more than ready to jump. "Hannibal."

The doctor approaches from the back, quiet like the room and the creatures inside of it. "Tell me about that one," he whispers under the warm yellow overhang light, voice close once again, chin dug into bony left shoulder.

Will swallows before he answers, eyes ahead and nowhere else. "It's a poison dart frog." His face is painted in the same glow and shadows. "They're toxic, from Central America. South, too." His hands get cast in the same gold tint as he raises them, fingers desperate to find a way inside. "Hard to tell the gender but they're endangered— and females, they uh, they're highly sought after. Even on the black market."

"Would you want one darling?" Hannibal asks. He's got his hands placed on each of the younger's hips, holding him like he knows what being sought after means.

It takes Will an extra two blinks to respond. He checks side-to-side then; still empty though, still just falling. "No— Hannibal, you're— Christ— stupid. No," he sighs dramatically, shakes his mop of curls and refocuses back on the blueish spotted creature on the other side of his reflection. "They could kill you."

"Daddy would still get you one, if you wanted." The doctor's nails dig in. "Tell him more."

"Hannibal." But despite the heat, the warmest thing around them had to be the little frog glowing beneath it's own burning flood light, making it look almost purple with huge red eyes.

"They're toxic because of their diet." He's got five fingertips to the glass and as he explains everything, it feels all too much like Hannibal may be falling alongside with him. "When they become captive, they lose their poisonous traits." His index finger smudges up and the amphibian follows his movement. "The ones in the wild though, they uh," and the former agent's just so quiet as he speaks, each word like a whisper upon the last, "adult ones, they can kill elephants."

He's watching as the frog watches him right back, flicking a limb out and then plopping it right back down into the dirt. "They're good parents though. Diurnal too, have to be careful in the wild because of it."

"Diurnal?" Hannibal asks as if he doesn't know. His fingers are gone, chin lifted, but he has all his words pressed between two kisses on the left side of cheek. "Sleep during the day, right?"

"No." Will's looking over now, brows narrowed and curls more wild than all the reptiles in the Americas put together. He makes a face, less lemonade and more limeade. "They sleep at night, feed through the day." When he lowers his hand, four and a half fingerprints remain. "Their colors fend off predators. Make it so they don't have to hide."

"Good parents will make sure of that." Hannibal knows it's not the same, but he still says it anyways.

He moves after he says it, eyes focused on another series of enclosures and the onlooking amphibians held within their confines.

"None of those are poisonous." Will says quietly under dull light, following after like he's tethered by a string. "That one, down there," he's pointing towards the smallest enclosure on the far left. "I had one of those as a kid. Probably more than one, I don't remember."

The doctor's turned at an angle to look at the reptile and his opposite at the same time. "I've never had a pet." The orange glow from the warming lights makes his face look softer, like the ocean waves didn't take all the years from him when she tried to drown them. "Tell me more."

Will's face does look like he drank sour lemonade then. "Really?" It shouldn't surprise him and he knows it, but it still does.

Thank god he loves lemonade. "I wasn't allowed them in the house but I kept them out back. Not a bunch or anything. Mostly frogs, lots of bugs."

"Not a bunch, but lots." Hannibal's smiling, not an ounce of energy, but lots. He makes a face of understanding that only things like The Atlantic could make you find peace with.

"I am sorry that the bug exhibit is closed today." His eyes are back on the frog that he finds himself jealous of. It's ancestor had years of Will's mind that he's never had and it makes him feel a different kind of hunger. "You could keep some at home, if you'd like."

Will hesitates but not because of fear.

Above them, speakers bellow out specifics about the zoos collection in a monotone voice, echoing words that could never appease the doctor's appetite.

"Maybe." He's not looking at the older when he says it and instead is on his haunches, both palms to the cool of stone next to an enclosed gardener snake. The light from inside makes his face look somehow older, but what he says next makes Hannibal feel like falling doesn't just happen while going down.

"I've always wanted one. Dad wouldn't let me."

Overhead the lights still glow dull yellow and the dreary voice keeps spewing facts, words over words over, "tried to keep one in the dorms while coed, but the RA called us out." Will's thumb slides against the glass, irises on the camouflaged reptile behind green vines. "Think they're pretty cool, still want a dog more though."

Above him, the doctor watches as a glimmer of shine reflects and refracts off the pearl on his mother's mother's mother's ring. "Soon," he says, and then lowered with his good knee to the ground below, mouth-to-ear, "daddy would let you have anything, sweetheart. You only ever have to ask."

Will's a little surprised. He laughs before he checks the doors but he's not one to turn down a chance at— "A dog?"

There's a smile all the way across, can't be helped. "Soon I said, darling boy." And he's still so close, hands clasped at the front, forearms against his bad knee. "Tell daddy what else you might like?"

In a way, it does feel like electricity, all these things that make the empath feel like he gets to have anything he wants: his daddy, a dog, the way his tummy feels when he hears the words, I like reptiles too.

The Golden Poison Frog is considered one of the most toxic animals on Earth, carrying enough nerve toxin in its skin to kill ten to twenty adult humans or two full-sized elephants, the voice drones out from up high and at the same time, Will looks over with eyes that look as blue as the poison frog four containers above their heads.

And it's not even that he's slipped down to an age that neither know the number to, falling doesn't just happen inside the confines of a zoo's reptile exhibit on a Monday afternoon, but the former agent does know one thing for sure: it's made him feel like he was the most important thing in his daddy's life.

He blinks back wetness, feels like he's swallowing hotness. "See more frogs?" His bangs are loose and curly over his forehead, soft at the ends like his face and like his eyes are. "Penguins, too?"

"Alright sweet boy," the opposite murmurs, elegant and foreign at the same time. The same way Will takes his eggs, over easy.

He's got his index finger lifted to the younger's chin, angles the soft corner up so light touches away the rest of the ages. After the eggs hatch, a parent carries the tadpoles on their back, placing them in individual pools of water or bromeliad leaves to safely develop, echoes ten times louder than their voices. Many biologists proclaim the poison frog to be the amphibian's best parents species-wide. Mother's, at least!

"Lead the way," he whispers, thinking the very same thing he thought just three weeks, two days prior: I could do this forever with you, for every month and year you'll let me. I'd trade flesh and blood for you like this each and every day of the week. I'd give you what your daddy could not and let you have thirteen dogs plus one if you truly wanted, all of them, anything. I still have no idea, Will, not a single clue. I don't think I ever will, even after we do. Take it all, take it with your hands, take it like you've taken my entire life: like I'm the most important thing that's ever happened to you.

"I've never known you to want things," the doctor says softly as he rises to a stand, right hand extended, always ready to barter. Father frogs no longer care for their young after they've found water for their eggs to metamorphose in. Sometimes they will be abandoned at earlier stages in life. "But I'd like for you to learn how."

Will's face is set back to sour and his fists go tight at the sides. Take it all, take it with your ageplay, take it with your cardboard boxes and Pastel-Pretty-Pink Play-dough, Hannibal thinks as he watches his little boy's face transform right in front of his face. Take it like you've taken me: like I let you.

"Frogs, Daddy," he says it like he's maybe eight, like maybe he wants to be even younger if he's allowed to. "You're so weird."

Like you've taken everything, Will: like you love me too.

"You and that word." It's all affection, all under the glow of yellow and orange lights, all the reptiles and amphibians and tiny little frogs watching them in ways no one's ever seen before.

"What on earth am I going to do with you?" His fingers underneath jawline, wiping away spilled milk. He's blushing too, warming lights making pink burn red.

The doors of the tiny little building swings open before Hannibal finishes his words, "now tell daddy about those frogs."

He's not holding his little boy anymore, not by the chin, not with his words, but Will still looks him straight in the face and says, "snakes too, daddy," like he was being held anyways.

"Snakes too, darling."

Like he wanted to be held.

*

The metamorphosis of mood carries over from reptiles to butterfly garden where lunch comes with hungry bellies and soft smiles.

Will had eyes across the empty causeway, watching as a very business-like gentleman and a very non business-like gentleman were having lunch together like them.

There aren't many butterflies around to be quite honest but at least Hannibal makes a decent turkey and cheddar on rye. Plus, he even brought along an extra pack of Scooby Doo fruit snacks. Hard not to be anything but— "Hannibal, come on."

He's got elbows planted on the wood of their picnic table, both feet crossed at the ankle below so that they don't swing back and forth. "You're teasing."

Hannibal clocked him at seven earlier, back when there was a fuss over leaving the snakes and the frogs, and when his little boy held hands without needing to ask first. "Alright," he answers underneath sunshine cast across all four ways. "No other sugars until tonight though."

Will makes a face, takes the package and makes a scene all at the same time. "The worst," he moans, body turning around and legs kicking out instead. The rays of light touch him from knee down and make his sneakers look like they need a wash (or two).

"Are the penguins soon?" His fingers have dipped into the metallic packaging, tearing through the treats like he's tearing down the ages: seven, six, five.

"Don't talk with your mouth full," Hannibal clocks him again, sans number. "Planetarium first. There are set times."

He's turned out then too, lunch left forgotten and legs extended long as he sits side-by-side with his counterpart, touching from shoulder south to thigh, all four eyes forward and nothing out here whatsoever to fall from. "Are you having fun sweet boy?"

The doctor's looking at him, right hand slipped down and fingers finding fingers. "And penguins after, I promise."

"I—" the hesitation exists, will probably always exist, but it lingers less and less each time. Something else Hannibal's also clocked— "Yeah," Will answers with his chest tight and a stolen glance to the left, sees nothing but two employees and the leftover stories he's made up in his head. "Liked the frogs," the former agent adds on, thumb finding home around Hannibal's at the same time.

"Still scared, but.." and yeah, his chest still feels like his ribs are caving in one-by-one and he can't make himself look over at his daddy at all, but he doesn't lie when he says, "happy."

His eyes are on the two men again, thoughts twirling when Hannibal answers back. "Good."

It catches Will like it's something more than just good, like it's something more than just falling or cracked ribs and fingerprints on glass enclosures. "I feel small," and while he sounds nothing like what he's saying, he's still not lying. "I just don't know what I'm doing."

In the space between them, the empath waits for an answer he so often expects to already be there without need for expectation.

The doctor doesn't give one though. He's got his gaze forward, clouds reflecting off both irises and a look on his face that screams that he'll never move on from the word happy. "Don't think on it," and he knows it sounds nothing like what he'd proffer east of the Atlantic, but he says it again because Will's always been the best thing that's ever happened—

"Don't think on it and let me take care of you." His voice stretches across the sunshine and it's rays touch all ten of their fingers at the tip. "Alright, darling?"

"Hannibal." It catches like the answer he's been waiting for.

An answer he's always had. "Daddy." He exhales out, looks off to the distent men and their own forgotten lunches, their own made-up stories. "You— ugh, stop that." His fingers jam hard into the plastic container, picking out three sweets at once (a magnifying glass, Fred's face, Scooby!).

"Annoying," comes out alongside the scent of strawberries and mustard mixed together. "Can't go any— when are we going anyways?" He's got a lime gummy wrapped around the upper half of his thumb, "seat's not comfortable."

Hannibal wholeheartedly agrees that the seats aren't the best but— "It's in half-an-hour."

He shifts then, sits up proper with the edge of the actual table to the mid of his back. "Restroom first though. Your hands are—" His words are eaten when he looks over. Another finger in, sugar painted lips, name falling out, "Will."

The empath has the wide of his right thumb hooked into his cheek, busy smearing sweetness between teeth and tongue. "Don't need to." And he's not even lying but, "they're clean," isn't exactly the truth either. "Want penguins."

Will's eyes are on the doctor then, wide and expansive, like they've slipped past some doors and through some ages to get here, repainted the walls in their palace and threw up some crayon-colored pictures instead.

It comes out like his daddy's just walked in after working all day on the Alabama oil rigs. "Will."

And just like back at their quaint little AirBnB four hours south, Hannibal finds himself wanting to say so many things. So, so many things. Things like the ones from an hour prior, from three weeks prior. From that tiny little hotel room in Wolf Trap, Virginia and from hole-in-the-wall bars with Santa statues at the door— things like: I could do this forever with you, even when you say you don't what you're doing.

Instead he says, "there's a gift shop by the toilets," which is brilliantly close to burn it all and give me this, there is nothing else, but Hannibal's never been good with asking for things without knives and Will's never been good about listening with any ear, so he just doesn't bother.

"If you wash your hands first."

When he blinks out of his thoughts, out of his wants, the sun is at it's highest point of the day and the butterflies have finally come out to play. "Alright?"

The fingers in the younger's mouth are sticky and the tips remain on his lips when he answers like he knows exactly what he's doing. "Toy?"

Hannibal watches as the blunt of thumb makes chin and cheek sticky too. "Perhaps." He's up then, hands at the side and turned with the sky and her endless clouds at his back. "Come help clean up."

Still nothing to fall from, "please."

They work quietly, warm weather over and cocoons hatching. And it's like another metamorphosis when Will's tucking things away, slipping ages back and forth the same way he slips his hand into the doctor's a second time.

The businessmen have left, like everything else, completely forgotten.

The sun's over their shoulders when they have twenty-six minutes to go before showtime, and even though Will really doesn't know what he's doing— what he's doing with any of it, he says something that makes Hannibal think otherwise.

Something that makes him think his little boy might just want this forever too. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," he answers, sneakers and dress shoes on sidewalk, fingers between fingers, transformation nearly complete.

"Lead the way, little one."

And he doesn't know where he's supposed to be going either, not really, but he doesn't let go because it feels like he's gonna fall anyways.

*

Given the size of the restroom, it really isn't meant to occupy two men, but it also wasn't meant to be the first stop in the order of operations either.

"Let go, let go." Nor anything like thank you or please or letting daddy do anything for you apparently. "Daddy."

"Stop, come here." His words are terse, eyebrows furrowed with a little more dedication than necessary for things like soap and cherry-red lip balm on a Monday afternoon. "Sweetheart."

The tiny eighteen-by-eighteen single unit bathroom remains eerily silent despite the empath's obvious need for one of two things: a meltdown in the middle of the fucking zoo or cold-blooded murder in that very same place. One or the other.

Both? Both.

"They're dry." He's cornered into the v of the sink and neighboring wall, hands knotted by the doctors own at the wrist. "Hey!"

"Settle you." The light is florescent between them, glowing and buzzing at a frequency that makes them flicker every eighth second. Hannibal's got fingers working miles between the layers of a wet wipe, two of them at once, eyes closed as if in prayer or pain.

Both? Both.

"I don't know why you fret so much."

But Will refuses to look at him, still has his entire spine pressed into the tight corner of blue and red tile, has his sneakers so firm into the floor below that they squeak. "Was supposed to look at toys first," he says it only when he hears water running, "you said so."

"I did." Hannibal's got palms flat together under the flow. "And we were," he reiterates. "But this was the more efficient option. And you're only making it less so with your whining."

And that does make the empath look over. Makes him answer too. "My what?"

"You heard me." The doctor hits the knob with his wrist and matches Will's gaze under the same flickering lights. Something about it makes him dry his hands twice. "Now go do your potty."

The word makes the former agent feel like the corner's not deep enough, makes him wish he could climb up the walls, out the windows, through the ceiling. He doesn't know. It feels like the floor wants to eat him alive, and while he's pretty okay with cannibalism at this point in the latter half of his life, well— he just doesn't— "I don't have to do that, Hannibal."

Not really.

But he also thinks he doesn't want to die either. And he's pretty sure that's what's going to happen if he keeps trying to meld his spine into the zoo's restroom or some other psychopathic bullshit like that. "Can we go now?"

Hannibal's staring at him with hands still damp at the side. He has a headache, a growing one. "No." It's buzzing louder with the water off, everything humid from the summer heat and sticky from all else. "But you can try to do your pee before we do."

"I don't—" The empath has his left palm pressed so hard into the edge of the counter he feels like he might draw blood if he keeps pushing. "Daddy—" It's like pulling at the last corner of the box, tearing at the last wall that needs to come down. It's like he knows he wants to fall but he's too scared to jump by himself.

"Alright." The doctor's eyeing him but it's not serious and desperately screams tired in more ways than one. He doesn't explain what it means though, what alright truly stands for, and instead he moves in front of the white circular basin, fingers knuckling at the buckle of his belt.

"Daddy—" But daddy is already focused elsewhere, already started, already going.

His cock's slipped out and in between the folds, three digits holding it firm as piss kick starts into the toilet with an actual splash. "Just a moment." He's faced forward, eyes closed, all the definition of tired written out on stone in the much-too-small restroom. The sound of it makes the room feel even smaller too, like even though Hannibal had said, you can try to do your pee before we leave and Will had denied it, he wants to do nothing but.

"Daddy," he whispers it this time, two fingers brought up without thought. His mouth makes them wet to the first knuckle.

"Will." He's still pissing, eyes still forward, closed, exhausted.

But never not hungry. "Come here."

The hand pressed into the counter doesn't let go— refuses to— but all ten of his toes curl inside of his sneakers. "Hannibal." It's mumbled around his index finger, pushed in halfway and spoken wet. "Daddy. Don't need to."

When his finger comes out, Hannibal's still not looking but there's a line of spit that trails from lower lip to jawline.

The doctor says, "Will, come here," like he sees it anyways.

It's the sound of stick that does make Hannibal look over, eyes dull and gray around the rims. His piss is still going too, fingers tilting the flow down and loud at the same time.

"Don't—" This time it's around thumb, one that's fully jutted into the deepest part of his mouth. Neither can hear it, not over the sound of piss meeting water.

He takes one step at a time, doesn't necessarily drag his feet but doesn't make it easy either. His free hand is at his side, curled into a fist with the end of his shirt balled tight at the center. "Said I don't—"

But his words are cut off between the third and fourth step, gone and replaced with the thought that his daddy's pee is really, really yellow. He sucks hard on his thumb, saliva still falling, age completely flat on the ground.

He's almost rooted there too, feet square between ugly-beige colored tiles, but Hannibal's watching him, a free hand extended far out. "Come here baby."

He looks young like this, feels young like this, all the mess and unkempt curls betraying the fines lines and wrinkles that come from the ages he keeps trying to run from. "Don't gotta—" and then he just sounds that way too, left hand starting to reach out and the thumb in his mouth all of a sudden not at all close enough to what a little boy like him truly needs.

When their fingers meet, Hannibal's urine remains as nothing more than a dribble, pebbling out to a point that Will wants to lean over and see if it's really his daddy's pee or not. "Daddy's almost done. Are you sure you don't want to try, darling?"

The empath looks up then, but the older's not looking at him anymore. He's got his eyes towards to the wall, closed, like he's waiting for impact from whatever his little boy could bring, whatever the waves of the Atlantic had left in them.

"Don't wanna." Their index fingers and thumbs are connected, barely a foot apart, florescent loud across every which way.

"Don't want to," Hannibal starts, piss stops. "Or don't need to?"

Will inhales, shoes micro-shifting on the floor with their little squeaks. "I—"

When his counterpart starts to tuck himself back in, he finishes his answer. "— don't wanna."

Beneath the light, cock half-in, half-out, the doctor doesn't exactly ask a question with, "you can try or you can put on your diaper," but the way the empath reacts makes it seem that way.

"Don't— need—" His fingers fight to let go, to fall away like the years, but Hannibal's got the slender side of thumb and index wrapped firm, pulse underneath proving anything but a cliff worth fearing. "Not— daddy." He's pulling so much in his right shoulder that his feet inch back, sneakers go squeak-squeak and his cheeks flame redder than the color of his daddy's shirt, all the way to his neck where his shirt collar looks nearly pink.

Despite the protest, the doctor mimes his penis back into the folds, tucks everything away and zips up the rest to go. "I can help you go potty if you'd like." His digits tighten, over button and over vein, over his own exhaustion that won't seem to let go. "You have your pull-ups, if they make you feel better."

He doesn't flush the toilet yet, turns instead to face his counterpart, his little boy, whatever age he may be, whatever tides left turning. "I'll always be careful with you."

Will swallows, stays red. "Daddy," he says it without age, without need to know one. It wouldn't matter anyways.

Many biologists proclaim the poison frog to be the amphibian's best parents species-wide. Mother's, at least! "Let daddy."

When the pink-and-purple pull-up gets pulled up, the younger looks like he hates it all the way until it rests against his stomach, all the way until five fingers meet the pink and purple flowers on the outside and he can't help but— "daddy."

Hannibal lets his pointer finger pause movement, rests it along the ridge that's apparent enough to be called cock. He looks up from his squat position, eyes very much tired, knees very much the same.

The lavender tones on Will's shirt reminds the doctor of his stuffed animal, the one named Violet because of the color purple. Or maybe it was the other way around. "Will." He has no clue when— "Will, baby."

Above him, the empath's got one hand half-jammed into his mouth and the other bunching up the end of that purple-violet-whatever colored shirt.

The way the glow of the overhang light stretches out makes his little boy look like he has a halo above his head too. It forces Hannibal to say the name again, just in case, just because. Waves or something. "Will."

Love or something.

Father frogs no longer care for their young after they've found water for their eggs to metamorphose in. "Daddy."

He's got his mouth half open, thumb loose and hanging out. It looks all shiny and slick from saliva. "Achy."

Then he inches his feet forward, pushes his groin the very same direction. "All morning." His chest rises and falls with little hitches in between, shoes doing the squeak-squeak on the same floor where his age is left spread out for anyone to see.

"Sweetheart," Hannibal murmurs quietly, against right upper thigh and a place in his heart he has not yet found, "darling boy."

He doesn't think he'll ever understand how his father never.

Sometimes it feels like it's the only thing left he knows, that he ever wants to know. "Not here, honey." He says it against cloth-covered cock and a place in his heart he didn't know he was supposed to find. "Not now."

Will hikes his shirt up a little more and it reminds Hannibal of the little red rocket ship taking off, how falling stars are meant for catching and how his wishes just keep coming true, over and over and over again. "Baby."

The light above makes it look like everything in the sky is exploding. "Feels funny."

The smell of piss remains, water left filthy to the right. "We can't—"

They both know he's lying. "Please." His shoes don't squeak because he's on the tips of his toes instead, soft scent of diaper right at the forefront of the doctor's face.

He's always dreamed of his little boy like this— of Will like this— so willing, so open. It never comes easy, thinks it never will. "Alright, darling. Daddy can take care of you," he whispers that part to the plastic front, to the flowers waiting to turn blue after release. He looks up with eyes that are still very tired, a heart that will always want more. "Tell daddy you're sure honey."

The imaginary rocket explodes against the stars with Will's answer. "S'dragon if I'm scared."

His nose is a little pink from rubbing against his fist, his smile peeking behind the back-half of his question. "Right?"

He never could have imagined.

There's nothing that comes with Hannibal's answer outside of his mouth to the empath's cock, which is honestly as good enough as yes as he's gonna get in the middle of a zoo restroom on a Monday afternoon. "Sweet thing," he says against the velvet side of mushroom head, tongue pressed to slit where he'll reach in and dig out all that piss if he needs to.

It smells poetic.

Will doesn't get to respond because the doctor's too busy distracting him, too busy pulling the rest of his pretty pink pull-up down, too busy making it where it looks like his cock keeps disappearing like it must be made out of magic or something.

"Daddy," Will whispers it with his eyes closed and his back to the same counter trying to cut through his hand earlier. Selfishly, just like a child, he asks for more. "More, more."

He's got his hips pivoted down at an angle so harsh that the doctor looks like he's praying. His mouth is wide, a circle like the one where ageplay was written down, one that wants to pull whatever's left out of it. "More."

The floor might not be low enough to pray on when Will's ages went below it.

When there's some things that God can't even help you out with.

Sometimes they will be abandoned at earlier stages in life. "Daddy."

Hannibal works his little boy as best as he can given the state of his knees, the state of the zoo's tiny little restroom. He's got fingers to the ground to hold steady and his mouth as tight as he can possibly make it, sucking the entire length down until he's greeted over and over with that familiar bump to the back of his throat.

It tastes like sweetness, like ages you'd find in a candy shop. "Messy boy." His lips are red, brighter than the blush that Will so often shades when they do things like this. He kisses against groin stubble, where pelvis curves in and manhood blossoms out. "You've made daddy so tired today."

His palms are against hairless thighs, shaven bare. "And you still want a toy." His fingers grip, release, but not for stars.

Will's got his eyes open then, one hand careless in short blonde hair and the other still half-inside his mouth, nursing heavily between words and ages. "Sorry," and neither are sure for what exactly, because the former agent has his hips hiked up again, nudging the head of his cock to the doctor's cheek.

"Wanted bugs," he says, which makes Hannibal think what before taking the whole damn thing down again, because well, what else.

The thoughts of bugs and toys diminish just like the rest of the room around them as motions and need become the focus, something never found in candy stores or dirty restrooms, something just beyond prayer and beyond answers. "Hannibal, please," gets pulled out because the doctor reaches in and takes the words for himself, takes Will up to the hilt and up until his nose is just inches from the scar he's always thankful he got to leave.

It's sloppy without words, just slickness and lights buzzing with hands all over, ages going left and right in the confines of four walls and animals braced at the door, ready to come in. They move like they don't want to come out either, like they know what they can find inside and what they can not. "Daddy—" Will says at the same time he can see the head of his cock push out the right side of his daddy's cheek. He says it a second time— "daddy—" and then it pops out again. Just like magic.

"Hannibal, I'm not—" he's sweaty all over, face flush and not a single thought in his entire brain about not having to pee. He's too near bliss, too close to the things that his daddy never let him have, the ones that his favorite daddy does. "More," he says because he can ask for it, can get anything he wants from the toy shop, the candy stores; from his place in the middle of a disgusting restroom while his daddy is knees down on the piss-smelling floor.

Maybe he's still praying or something. "Daddy."

Maybe it's something more than prayer though. "Baby."

He's almost bottom-flat as he gazes up, watching that beam of light circle around Will's head, wondering how his daddy could have said no. His mouth hooks around the mushroom shaped top again, speaks with it against the backside of his tongue. "Come for daddy and he'll buy you a toy."

The answer comes breathless, lips parted. "Any toy?"

Hannibal has his mouth tight around the head, has to let go to formulate a semi-coherent thought. "Reckless boy."

And maybe it's just because Hannibal's never believed in God to begin with. "Let daddy have you."

He puts more effort in everything for the second half, knows Will well know to signal when things are coming all too suddenly to an end. There's a certain series of movements his little boy makes, the sounds and gestures that show he's finally allowed himself to give in, to relax into the perpetual stream that he so rarely gets to dip his hands into. It's more than wading in the waters, more than allowing oneself to declare trust or bend the knee and ask.

It's something that stories about shame and boxes holding secrets will never know if there's not someone who wants to know about them first.

"God, fuck—" Will's got his hands framing the older's face, palm to cheek on either side, saliva dried to both their chins. "Bugs, daddy."

The taste of cum stains wet and inhales like pineapple from breakfast. Hannibal's not sure if his little boy sees stars or if there are any real rockets taking off, but he thinks they might be a little closer to God (or at least the planet, Pluto) by the time that Will resurfaces, hands carved red and stained without blood.

His mouth doesn't let go though, words left unspoken as he stares up, wondering if any circle out there will ever rival the one that holds the word he's come to savor so much, if any box can contain what his heart holds so dear.

"Daddy," he murmurs it soft, hand to Hannibal's jawline. His cock looks like a thread between them, heavy and musky, wet and softening. Five fingers don't let go and a mother's mother's mother's ring doesn't either.

He pants out, "daddy," again but it's to the ceiling as he looks up and it shatters every circle from existence.

*

"Don't like this," he whispers.

His hand is tight in Hannibal's, eyes focused on the floor and sneakers still so sticky that they can't even squeak anymore. "Hannibal." He walks one step at a time, free hand smoothing down the right side of his denim as if his diaper— pull-up— could reach through and be seen by the world. "Daddy— wait."

Or at least to the four people around them— no, wait— six people around them. "It'll be alright. Look, it's dark inside."

It's more gray than anything, all the afternoon sunshine flowing in like the crowd that seems thirteen times larger than it actually is. The building itself is not dissimilar to the reptile one before: barely lit, informational sign overload and with air that makes Hannibal think of the word hope.

His hand's not let go. Not four steps into the taller-than-wider theater, not with tired eyes, not without cum-coated-breath. "The back is the best."

Will follows suit, argument ready or not. His view doesn't leave the floor, doesn't change from the idle thought that the zoo really needed to get it's maintenance team in check because the tiling was awful. "Hurting me—" it's mumbled out more than anything, more a lie than anything else too, but the empath keeps going at it, all the way until they're square in front of two dingy little seats at the back of the theater.

"Hannibal— you'd don't— you suck." Well, technically not a lie given—

"Will, stop." He's turned inwards, eyes closed.

"Please." His fingers still circle the entirety of the former agent's wrist and something about the way the doctor pleads makes Will feel like the floor was going to swallow him whole. Shitty tile, no-toys-yet, too many people, all of it.

He yanks his hand hard, bites even harder on lower lip.

"Sit."

Truth be told, Hannibal really thought the blowjob would settle him. At least a little bit.

When they're actually seated, hands conjoined once more, the room itself provides to be darker with doors closed and Will's thoughts curled into a worn out blue-and-khaki seat. It's still lit all around, gray like rainy clouds they'd not seen for days, and in-between the lack of color and humid air, Hannibal reaches over to push a rebellious curl back into place.

"Darling, is this not okay?" The curl threatens Hannibal with murder, falls without looking.

"I just—" He's making a face, frown-not-upside-down. The right-side-up way instead. His fingers tighten against five others that are not his, sweaty at the palm on both sides of the aisle. "I wanted a toy."

The answer makes him think that murder might not be enough. "I know baby." His face softens, tucks the strand away one more time. "I promise after. We barely made it."

"You say that—" He's looking over, words cut in half by audio overhead, darkness consuming all else around. The night sky.. both beautiful and mysterious. Artis, the Amsterdam Zoo and it's Partnering Teams are pleased to welcome you to—

"—Hannibal." His voice comes hot like the air, carried by a tone that sounds gentle, wild.

"Quiet." It's slips between static. Since prior civilization, mankind has always and forever endeavored to find ways to connect with the stars, the galaxies up above. The sky's the limit society said, but Neil Armstrong looked upwards and saw something else.

And at first, between fingers and remnants of blowjobs, the doctor thinks his empath might just do that, might just stay quiet and look up at the stars starting to illuminate like they have no limit either, like he wants to connect with them too.

He traces his thumb over the fatty side of palm, settles himself in his chair, in his patience-worn-thin and his wishes to-be-made on stars up above. More of them start to illuminate, flicker in a hazy glow that share two truths at once: the need for upgraded equipment and the need for those stars to be caught.

She might not be the brightest star out there either, but she is known for it. For being in love.

The doctor has fingerprint to pulse when Will's voice comes through. "Will we see Columba?" There's a galaxy bursting behind.

A star at the very center of the map would be directly your head overhead in the sky. The north point is called it's zenith. "I'm not sure," he answers back, whispering like in grade school waiting to be caught. "I hope so."

The answer feels foreign. Must something in the air. "Will." Must be something like his heart knowing a thing or two about being caught. "Quiet, though."

"Milky way," he says it so fragile-like, looking towards the dome up top and all the galaxies she tries to hold in her reach. The stars are fading left and right, flying across like they can't keep up. Some of them kiss in between, some of them dance. Some of them look like the lightning strikes that met above the cottage's pool when they kissed last month. They reflect against circles of blue when he says softly, "look."

If the star or constellation you are looking for is closest to the northern horizon, you must hold your map in a way so that Northern Horizon is at the bottom. Galaxies exploding, stars burning. Hannibal turns to look up, catches the tail end of a transition as the dome above displays a change in scenery and night becomes outer space.

"Missed her," he murmurs, looking back at Will because he never wants to know what missing feels like ever again. Wishes on stars, words in circles.

They settle between audio buzzing over, between soft conversation far and away, between fingers touching on wood dividers and squeaky sounds against ugly tile. The observable universe contains up to two trillion galaxies echoes across; sneakers, dress shoes— meeting like the stars: here, above pools, outside tents, in daisies exploding pink.

Hannibal rarely sees beauty this way, never sees age fall like the stars fading from the screen high above. It never comes easy, not without dark circles and tired eyes at the mast. Not without push and pull, corners and timeouts. The residuals of vanilla bean ice cream and too many sprinkles always promised, always kept, but so very rarely ever like this.

And he doesn't know how his little boy fell back so many years between the front door closing and Milky Way shattering, but he does know that if the stars keep exploding up above, keep making his little boy look younger and younger, his knees aren't going to like this floor very much either.

"Pretty." It is a barred spiral galaxy, characterized by a glowing central bar of stars surrounded by sweeping spiral arms. The dated technology makes blue eyes turn purple against stars burning north to south, makes more wishes get sent out to orbit. How is he doing this, Hannibal thinks at the same time another galaxy fractures, light spilling away, his little boy whispering, "look," between seats dividing.

"It is," Hannibal's low and close, whispering back. Their hair is touching, brown on blonde as they duck in between, beautiful and cosmic found.

"Daddy's never seen—" And while not directly part of the main Milky Way band, Columba sits on the edge of the galactic plane, "Will," — making its deep-sky objects highly visible because there is less dense Milky Way dust blocking our view.

She's forever famously known for her star, Mu Columbae, a runaway, flying star, thought to be ejected from the Orion Nebula following a supernova explosion. "Daddy."

Will's looking over at the doctor, face turned in and away from the sights, the sounds.

"Baby," between knowledge known, unknown. "Quiet, please," between them, behind.

The empath turns pink across, sinks down further like the floor actually has a fucking mouth. "Sorry!" And it's louder than he intends, ages flying across like his limbs all over the place as he settles and unsettles at the same time. Stars shooting sideways. Squeak, squeak. "I—" Galaxies exploding.

"Apologies." Hannibal's looking up, left hand motionless in midair, halfway between the empath's face and nothing at all. "Thank you."

With Columba— the Milky Way?— some constellation expanding four times it's size, the white edges make the doctor look like he doesn't know anything about being caught, about missing things too much and years in grade school long forgotten for a reason. Makes Will wonder if he'll ever have to worry about anything in his life again when his daddy looks down at him with a calm smile, with warm eyes, says, "quiet baby," so softly, like it would do anything but make Will want to get on his knees right now and do what his daddy just showed him.

The faceless employee is gone between fuzzy words about stars and a passage from Genesis 7 in Times New Roman text above. It wasn't raining when Noah built the ark, the speaker rings out clear, Will's age unknown, daddy holding his hand. But the storm still came.

"Sorry," the empath whispers, fingers removed but nearing his mouth as if he's never heard of the word caught in his entire life either. He checks left and right, only stops when he's met with a familiar face sat on the wood between them.

It comes out the same way he thought about Noah: like he was insane for letting that dove go. "Olive."

Whatever age lost slips right back into place, shoes touching beneath like galaxies above and soft smiles between. All of it feeling very much like catching falling stars, ones that seem to be crashing into sticky tile right here, in the middle of a zoo in Amsterdam, in the middle of a Monday afternoon, last one in August.

"See if she helps settle you." The doctor's mouth is to upper earlobe, making it feel sticky all over. Between them, the empath's fingers loosen around flesh and pick fluff instead, circle around the plush dog's front paw as if she's something he'd never let go of either.

"Don't want—" it comes out quiet, has Will looking left and right between their close-knit bodies, Olive patiently waiting as captain. There's no one near them, maybe a couple or two far right, cast off in the shadows and with no stars of their own.

It makes him let go in his pull-up. The pretty pink one hidden below, damp between his legs as he presses both thighs together tight. Columba was originally designated in the late sixteenth century by Dutch cartographer and astronomer, Petrus Plancius.

"Olive," it's out in one breath and she's in with the next, muzzle to the open of his lips and flat of his tongue. It makes her marbled eye wet and her fur all hot and damp where his teeth meets them with his next words. "Can she see?"

"Will," he says it almost urgent, like he doesn't want his little boy to be captured by the stars they've yet to pick up. He laughs solid after his makeshift prayer, plucked deep from his chest, between the ribs where it's too hard to count them and against a heart that made them that way, one year, two weeks, two days ago. "She may, yes. It's alright." His elbow moves a little, eyes glowing shades of brown that the empath doesn't think he has in his crayon box. Not any of 'em.

They stay quiet between the remaining stars, the remaining narrative that takes them from fact to fable. As our story of the cosmos continues— Their heads are brushing together, one young, one old; ages: perfect.

We invite you to turn your attention to— "Daddy," Will whispers loudly, plush toy hidden between darkness and a space on his neck that his daddy likes to kiss most. "Olive sees shooting stars." The way he says the latter half makes it sound like the words are flying alongside with them, holding onto their own tattered blue-and-beige worn-out chairs, their own needs to make wishes come true, their hopes, their dreams .

"Will." Hannibal says, face turned in and the left half of his body promising to be more than a little sore later. He watches rising planets reflect on irises, can't even start to tell them apart because he even begin to can't recall their names. "Quiet, baby. Olive too."

Will makes a noise from the back of his throat but he's all fingers now, whatever age he was fighting against— fighting for— left behind in a fiery supernova, bursting with the all the years he adores, all the colors in his ninety-six count Crayola box.

And it's like he's mixing the colors together to find the ones he doesn't have when he does anything but be quiet, when he says, "she likes 'em," in a voice so sweet that Hannibal does explode, takes his boy by the hand with three fingers to the jaw and the other two right behind.

We are living in the golden age of astronomy. We are mapping the grand structure of the universe; finding our place in its great story. "Daddy too."

The fear and shame that usually spiral deep hasn't entered the building, leaves the empath looking up at Hannibal with foreheads touching, fingers soft.

They're moving slow enough that it feels like the galaxy isn't light years ahead.

Instead: they are. "She's trying to catch 'em," Will explains, voice quiet, fluff and snout to the corner of his mouth. "Hasn't yet." The plush toy makes little jolted movements, barely to be seen. "You get any daddy?" His lashes are long, nearly flat with his eyes in slits as he looks down and pees himself a little more, just enough to bring the warmth and the solar systems back to reality.

The doctor's fingers remain, only the pinky loosening as he murmurs his response under the stars and the planets, under the speaker bellowing something about bright knots, superclusters and a thousand galaxies that he could care less about. "Not yet baby."

Our supercluster of galaxies is only a tiny part of the Observable Universe, leaving our society with one remaining question that Neil Amstrong never answered: is love the larger part?

"Shhh," is added much after the fact, forgotten like ages and closed doors. His fingers let go, fall like actual stars, collide with ones that will never do the same.

"Look!" It's as breathless as earlier, stuffed dog pushed higher out into the air above, dipped half in darkness and half in constellations.

But Hannibal can't look because he's never seen anything like what he sees right now. All those cosmic fragments, the litany of wishes-come-true and prayers-on-alters, colliding and exploding as everything deems itself free of the cardboard box, on full display with God nowhere in sight.

Where Will leaves judgment at the doctor's doorstep, where he's left to think: here, this is all I have to offer, take what you want with it, I've got nothing else.

Where he answers yes, love is the larger part, with "Did you catch one too?" With his eyes forward, watching planets align, galaxies fall. "Olive missed."

And just like the night lightning took over, cut out the power and everything else, Hannibal answers back the very same way. "Uh oh." His hand's turned over, palm up now, presenting nothing but a blank canvas and a space to draw a circle. "Want mine?"

It's like the universe is saying yes when Will looks over. Olive can hear it too. "Stars."

There are about a hundred billion galaxies in the universe we can see. But there are parts we can’t. "I always thought some of ours were the same."

The Lithuanian looks up after his admission, feels like an astronaut going to outer space, blinded by refracted light and garbled sound, still wishing on burning rocks as if they could hand over a few more. They'll always be the same, he thinks, eyes full of stars, heart full of love.

The younger has eyes almost cross with how he's trying to watch Hannibal and collect fallen galaxies at the same time. He's got the stuffed toy by the scruff, nosing her forward to the open hand spread between. "Daddy." Fingers touch fingers, a mother's mother's mother's ring cradling a pearl that he picked up. "Two?" He's never wanted anything more. "Please."

Darkness envelopes vision for a second time when Hannibal looks down, but he's half-interrupted in mind and matter by a familiar voice.

"Hey— guys, can you please!—" A constellation descends to fifty million pieces on the screen and the doctor briefly wonders if the universe truly understands it's place between life and love, and if it's scared of things called monsters too.

"Apologies." He's sharp toned, like the glassy edges of broken rocks.

"— it really isn't much longer—"

In between the shatter on the ground, the reigning voice above— who knows?— it may be that all this, the entire observable universe, is one tiny bubble in an infinite universe hidden beyond our cosmic horizon— and the one underneath, "if you both could just,—" Hannibal does what he does best with little boys like Will Graham: he's careful with them.

"We apologize." He sweeps back up, smiling politely and towering over to keep shadows cast every which way. Stars hit the ground like a war zone all around. "You won't hear us again."

We are living in the golden age of astronomy. "Thank you." The solar system mapping their story.

When the voice is gone and all that remains is a single wish from the good doctor, the show's almost over. Let him be there, he thinks, eyes closed in prayer all the way until he's met with a fragile little boy who has tears in his eyes. Maybe he dropped his stars, he thinks.

We are finding our place. "Hannibal."

The only answer that comes is a single index finger to a pair of lips going shhhh.

He still looks so tired. "Here, sweetheart."

Tears are touching lashes when Will catches sight of a hand moving, a familiar white case met with darkness and mere minutes to go. He's about to say a name— daddy, he thinks— but the tiny little earbuds are brighter than the stars themselves. Even Olive is interested, pleading with two front paws at the helm, asking if she can have a listen, if maybe she has a place on Noah's ark too.

"Dad—" his voice is cut off though, a single bud placed into the right of his ear. It's noiseless, only the echo of raw audio on VHS and the memory of, can you guys please! left to answer life's biggest question: does Hannibal's wish come true?

Please let him be there, he thinks again, knees brushing below.

When the music comes, it paints the stars with pinks not yet made.

The ones still waiting for the roses to bloom.

It paints them with her answer. I look exhausted.

The screens above ask for attention in their final segment, pitch black across in every direction as narration goes on, but neither listen. They can't be bothered to. My first time losing, and it won't be my last.

Tears fall but they dry long before they can meet the stars still waiting to be picked up. "Dad—"

He's not shushed again but Hannibal does him one better, looks at him like he's already picked everything up and there was nothing at all to worry about. Not anymore. Not with daddy.

Not with: I'll take care of you.

Not without: I'll take care of you too.

His eyes are just as soft as his thoughts, fingers free from lips but instead taking hold of the stuffed toy, gentle and kind around fur that will never age like they do. "Baby," comes from under his breath, opposite palm open once more, presenting all the things he's ever collected, all the things in his own cardboard boxes, the start of his own humble beginnings.

Olive has her shiny black nose pressed to the center of his right hand, picking out whatever she wants to bring for the trip too. He's not going to tell her no, wouldn't be able to even if he could wish it. (He'll never want to.)

This is the softest thing I've ever done, Hannibal's mind repeats from months prior, the act of falling come to life as planets fall into place around him. But Noah in his ear says otherwise. Says this is hard, but I feel less far—

They don't speak another word as narration turns instrumental above and the lifeless toy takes as it pleases. Olive's muzzle moves back and forth in jolty little patterns that remind Will of what he was doing earlier, what he's always trying to do: make daddy see what he sees too.

And I clutch my cloth, and I bite my tongue, breaks through eardrums, one on each side.

"Look." The former surgeon says quietly and Will, for once, does as asked.

Olive's pressed to Hannibal's chest, sniffing and chasing after six shiny buttons like she's gonna ask for those too. She's moved up, down, East— West— body engulfed with activity as their mouths say otherwise, sealed like the boxes their hands have ripped apart, calm like the Atlantic after only one night. I'm an astronaut, you're the Moon.

It makes Will smile, makes him have to cover his mouth with the entirety of his left hand so laughter doesn't escape and they don't risk getting in trouble (again). And something about that makes the empath wonder if his daddy's ever been in trouble before, if he gets that funny feeling when he does something he's not supposed to, too.

They're not bothered anymore, all the way until the show's over and what little crowd was left has dispersed through open doors, sunshine engulfing darkness once more. They sit with the plush toy out in the open, ages on the ground, every star now collected.

The pair of Airpods press on, song repeated for a third time. You're the Moon. I stare at you.

"Here darling." He's standing first, music effortlessly going still. Olive's in his palm with the free one extended out.

I stare at you— I circle you— "Hannibal," is said without effort either, fingers circling wrist.

"Sorry." It's the guy from earlier, Eric, per the name tag. He's got a hat on this time, both hands in both pockets. "Management has gotten a lot of complaints—" The lights above the auditorium make the young employee look like he knows a thing or two about the word exhaustion too. "— has really pushed us to meet standards."

I circle you.

"We apologize again." Hannibal's not shielding his counterpart like earlier but he stands close, plush dog held in one hand, Moon in the other. "Doesn't happen oft—"

"—is the bug exhibit still closed?"

Employee and daddy look sideways, Olive nearly upside-down. "Yes?" There's hesitation behind the answer, a solar system unbalanced.

"Oh." Will's shoulders drop, frown right-side up. Fingers tap together with nerves on all ten tips. "Okay." I circle you— I circle you—

"—and mostly excited. Again, apologies." He tastes pulse as his thumb tightens and then he imagines Neil landing on the Moon, wonders if he found what the limit was, if it wasn't just the sky. "Thank you for a wonderful presentation."

Wonders if he went to the Moon to try and discover love instead, thinks he couldn't have found it. "Hannibal." Not when it's here— I'm an astronaut, you're the Moon. "Hannibal."

Not when he has it right here. "Alright, alright."

He's smiling, bright like the sun blasting through open doors, shiny teeth from cheek to cheek. Thumb and index finger around wrist, I stare at you— I sing to you— "Penguins next, right darling?" I circle you.

There are no galaxies to be seen, no constellations above to give credit to for nuances like this. The beauty of the dome sits quiet and gray like before, her tall ceilings refusing to share secrets they've known for a lifetime, maybe more. It leaves the trio standing in a half-formed circle, six feet apart, three different types of shoes pointing to the North Star.

The empath's looking up, age unknown. "Toy?" His eyes dilate, contract and expand.

I circle you— "Of course." His smile softens, dismantled to the ground by promises meant to keep, meant to fall. "Thank you again." When he turns to exit, he leaves no hand to be exchanged and no truth be told, he can't even recall the employee's name to begin with. Eden? Edward?

And Will thinks he should be a little sad about leaving Columba behind, her story and the lack of it heard, but then he sees Olive tucked by Hannibal's side, looks at her like he's connecting stars between smiles and promises to things that he is sure Noah will never have.

The young employee is gone, sun touching sneakers and dress shoes at the heels.

And this Noah's going on about being beautiful and laughing and things that not even wishes can grant. "Two?"

When they leave, Hannibal hasn't said yes or no, but they both already know the answer.

Free hand outside first, music in their ears. "Did you like it, honey?"

Will's a step behind. One squeaky sneaker, the other returning to Earth. "Yeah, but," and while he's not looking directly at the doctor, he's not hiding either. He's not running away, not putting things in boxes, wanting things he thinks he can't have. "Want Olive."

Like catching falling stars on both sides of an ocean, Hannibal realizes just who put them there.

"Here darling." Fingers, lyrics, words like ageplay in a circle. "She said she wants to go to space one day."

Fluff, constellations, maybe something else the story might be about. "Me too."

Love.

*

It's loud across, a slather of persistent rain and nineties music, a song that neither know.

Seriously.

Will's looking up at an aquarium that's too tall for him to reach. His hands are out of his pockets, cheeks warm and red in a way that can't be hidden. "You like that one?"

It's been raining outside for the last fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. Neither are sure but both are shaded two times darker with rain dampening them from head to toe. Will's even got it down to the soles of his socks, making them squish inside in a funny little manner that makes him want to giggle out loud.

"Yeah," he answers, voice quiet like the store itself, fingertips touching in the same way they'd grip around the box if he could reach it.

"Aquarium," he whispers. "That one."

Hannibal hadn't expected it to be honest, the rain nor the ages left behind, littered beneath the stars left uncaught.

"That one."

The music's erratic all over, another sign of the aging technology needing replacement throughout. "It's not entirely—" the doctor starts, but he's already reaching up, arms overhead and high, words not fully formed with so many new experiences being discovered all at once.

"It's perfect." Will's voice sounds breathy, like he's still trying to catch it from running inside, trying to get away from the rain and the ages. But he doesn't look like he's about to run away right now. Not at all.

They're stood there, the former agent backed against Hannibal's chest, both looking up at a box like it had to be from God or something. Sinterklass. Whoever.

Like.. maybe not all boxes are meant to be bad. "We could get a better one."

The light from above is pressing against the both of them and the lettering on the box itself becomes clear as day when the empath takes hold, fingers gripping on just as tight as they did to bone and flesh when the ocean said not today and spat them back out.

"Hannibal," Will answers softly. He knows he won't be denied but, "daddy."

It's not lightning but it feels like it. A volt going through a vein, a word being said.

The buzzing florescent overhead makes it feel like the storm wants to come inside. "Sweetheart."

Will looks like nothing short of a drowned cat when he turns around, square box pulled tight to his chest, childish lettering and all. "This one," he says hotly, with wet bangs draped across his forehead that resemble little prison bars.

There's very little space between the two of them and the aisle itself makes everything feel even more cramped. Please, the empath thinks, bottom lip between teeth that can't seem to utter the word. "Want it."

He swallows so hard that the doctor can see his chest inhale and part of him thinks he's been swallowed too. His fingers gravitate and touch the younger at the tips of bony elbows. "Will." It's cautious, unlike anything either have ever experienced.

"Let daddy get you a better one." Hannibal doesn't let go as he looks down, eyeing the neon-orange font with an affronted facial expression. "This one—"

And then he's cutoff a second time. "Want it." Will hugs it tighter, where the cardboard cover is sure to get wet from his damp sleeves. When he looks over, checks left and right for aisles to still be clear (they are), the droplets of rain make their way down his cheek and chin, cling to the end like they're waiting for permission to let go.

"For a frog." He looks both ways again, sound quiet and still, rain clattering against frosted windows and closed doors.

He swallows and Hannibal feels like it's not the floor that takes him this time, but Hell itself. "It's cool," Will starts to explain, stepped back completely where he has just enough of a gap to show the toy completely. "Says it has a warming light." He flips it once, twice, but the former surgeon's not paying attention whatsoever. Not when his little boy goes on to add, "promise to take care of it," in the middle of the cramped aisle.

In the middle of the fucking toy shop. "Please."

"Will." Again, never enough. "Alright."

It dawns on Hannibal then, third aisle closest to the exit, that he's never truly thought of a scenario like the one he finds himself in right now, never planned for anything beyond coming to the zoo and (hopefully) getting through the front door (together).

He's never really hoped before. Not like this. "Alright, but if at all—"

"I promise." Third time's a charm they say. "I promise."

Will's on his toes, a new song piping over, something they both probably know, maybe they don't. But even if they didn't, they're both know it's going on a fucking playlist.

He's moving back and forth from heel to toe in a way that makes the older feel like Hell is a place that would spit him back up too. Like the only person who'd ever want him is—

"Come here, you," Hannibal murmurs, lips wet against left eyebrow as the box get smashed in between all the thoughts (hope) and ages (five) and stars (caught). "Let's get you home."

The younger's wiggling back though, resisting and pulling away, the box along with him. "No!" And he actually yelps so loudly that Hannibal looks left-to-right too, double checks that he doesn't have to kill somebody off-menu today.

"Two." Will's got his tongue between his lips, everything damp and his feet flat to the ground. "You said two."

He looks so ridiculously young that the doctor wonders if Chris Hansen is waiting for him outside. "Oh." He just never imagined. He must have lost count. Forgotten. Something. "Silly daddy. You're absolutely right." The rain outside is pounding harder, unknown music becoming less known as it's drowned out between thunder and imagination run wild.

"What did you have in mind?"

An answer threatens to come out when a register rings over, one-less aisle from the exit and north of where they are huddled. Then, louder, mild chatter.

"Does candy count?" Will asks anyways, like it could have come from the same row and he still would have asked the same thing.

"Will." Thunder again, and Hannibal doesn't even know what number he's on. "Yes, but nothing else. You know I don't like—"

Four? "But it's my present." His counterpart plays the actual part and sighs dramatically, shakes his head and lets the raindrops pour. The voices aside are scattered and discombobulated against the storms and the thoughts-never-imagined, but Will still hears them and says, "my birthday present," like a part of him wants them to listen-in anyways.

Like a part of him isn't really afraid anymore. "Wanted the snake, but want candy too."

"Snake?" Hannibal asks. His hands rest at his side, pant leg soaked underneath.

Will closes his eyes, cardboard bundled at the chest. "Up front," he answers and lets go into his pull-up at the same time, relentless and unafraid. "Big ones."

"Will—" Urgent: five? "We're not getting—"

"Daddy." And it looks like he's doing everything he can to keep his face from breaking, from letting laughter shatter out and letting everyone see. "Not real," and he does giggle when he says it, half-hidden by the toy box and half-delivered to a man already on his knees.

The archaic register goes off again, voices louder. "Not real," Will repeats himself, muscles relaxing, feet shuffling. "Stuffed animal," he clarifies.

Hannibal watches as his little boy inches a closed fist towards waiting lips. "I'd get you anything."

It doesn't compute at first, slow-to-load like most outdated technology. "Anything you wanted."

Will looks up at the opposite, curve of his wrist promising to be sucked right there in public if things kept going— "Hannibal." The former agent narrows his brows, forehead slick with rain. "God." And he knows neither of them are one-step closer to God, so, "you're annoying," doesn't really matter when it's said anyways.

"Want candy," he says it like his daddy would make him ask for it. "Not— not—" and he can't finish because he knows he'll never have to. Knows anything is all he's ever wanted because it's the only thing his daddy never gave.

"Just saying, darling boy." Hannibal takes the toy, smiles friendly and touches him at the elbow. "Show daddy the snake?"

The music's still piping, known, unknown, and even the doctor is a little more than self-aware of how open they are engaging with one another. Middle of the zoo, middle of the day.

Less about all the time and more about anytime. "Wait." Will's looking at the older with one eye open and the other halfway closed, investigative and more than just curious. "You said anything—" More than anything— "a dog?"

"Will." He says it at the same time that the unknown becomes the known and Jessica Simpson starts to belt the line I get kinda crazy in my head for you, which has to be a coincidence because Hannibal knows he does the same thing all the time, too. "I promise you, soon."

And I don't know what to do.

The doctor's touching him at his wrist, where it's bony and he wants to carve his name forwards and backwards, in every language there is, with ageplay being first.

(It's already there.) And oh, baby.

"Six months." His index finger and thumb circle round, find their way home. "I promise you, then."

And for Will, he's reminded of their cliff when he's caught between childish frustration and the peace that comes with trusting someone. There's a peace he recognizes here in the moment too, where he's ultimately left with no argument and even further, no reason to make one, child or not. It feels like acceptance, a natural progression, a place for them to have this.

"We have to leave," the younger half-whispers, six months dawning realization. "Amsterdam."

She echoes her thoughts through thunder and lightning. "We do."

His answer is quiet but it's not because he's altering his voice, it's just so much louder now. Got me doin' silly things when it comes to you. The rain's brought guests, the singer belting about love and telling all your friends makes them feel welcome.

"Do we have to?" He's not asked before, never once shown hesitation.

Hannibal swallows, unsure of how to answer, knowing all too well that the idea of anything can reach her hands to this level if she needs to. "Will," he tries, "lets discuss it at home. Not here."

The door that's three aisles over clatters as it opens and closes. "But do we have to?" A bell signals it again.

The empath is looking at the ground, left arm brought up and hugging across the chest, fingers holding onto flesh and bones like the edges of his very first cardboard box.

"Yes." It feels fragile, split and said between the lines something strange has come over me and got me going out my mind. Fragile, strange, mental— all of it's the truth, all of it. "Maybe not always, but yes."

For a moment, Hannibal feels left at the precipice of an actual cliff when Will doesn't look up, doesn't answer. It's the patrons and the noise that stretches them apart and pulls them away, makes the trust unheard and the stars left scattered. "We can always come back."

"And you should."

Three, Hannibal thinks, fingers tightening around cardboard. "Sorry about the bugs and the rain." Two pair of eyes look over, familiar face in the same store, same aisle. Edgar? "Did you at least get to see the penguins?"

I think I'm in love. "Not yet."

Boy, I think that I'm in love with you. "After this."

Will's still clinging onto actual skin but he's actually answering, can't look at more than the floor and the tips of his sopping wet sneakers, but he's never wanted anything more than this.

"Think it will clear soon?" Hannibal's voice looms in. His fingers slip loose around wrist and intwine with fingers that are always waiting. "Cell service is a bit spotty here."

"Yeah," the young employee sighs his answer out. He's holding the top half of a mop, circles under his eyes a shade darker than five hours past. "To be honest, most people ask for a refund after they find out that one. Gets worse the north end of the zoo, have to use radios most of the time. Anyways," he's stopped then, fingers tapping along the wooden length in time with rhythm. "Worst of it's over. Got ponchos up front of you need 'em."

And Will still can't look up, is still soaked to the bone, but he can't help but imagine— "Poncho?"

Which is something Hannibal's never imagined. So of course he says, "wouldn't hurt."

The empath does glance up at that, averts the stranger's gaze absolutely yes, but makes a face of surprise at his opposite half. "Really?"

The answer comes with a shrug. "I've worn worse." His eyes have moved to watch the young employee they've met three times now. "Thank you." Which is three times too many, one has to think. "Come on."

When they do make way to leave, it's with the song over and three toys in two different bags plus four types of lollipop in a third. They leave with hands still together and thunder overhead but lightning at a distance, wavering with lines of rainless clouds in between.

Hannibal has his hand at the ready to open the door, receipt half-out his right pant pocket.

He has his palm flat to wood when he thinks, I could do this forever with you, between getting in trouble and playing hide-and-seek with plush toys. I could do this forever with you, even when you're own daddy could not. I'd give you the thirteen dogs and all of Amsterdam and the people in it, if it meant that I could have this.

Anything, Will, he thinks, sunlight coming in, music going out. There is this and nothing else.

"You look funny in that, daddy," he says, squeaky sneakers and dress shoes huddled together, plastic touching from chest down.

Anything. "So do you," Hannibal answers, rays of light to the strong side of his face, green poncho hiding the opposite half from view. Probably unnecessary. Anything.

"Nuh-uh," Will pushes underneath and past, his own pink poncho covering him down to the shins.

He can hear the cash register running from this close, all the way until the door's closed behind them and only animals remain. "You look like a tree."

Which happens to be something else Hannibal had never imagined. "I fit right in then, don't I?"

"Yeah," he's walking backwards, puddles under his feet, rain just a drizzle.

He's not even looking, not watching where he's going or if anyone's around. "Daddy belongs at the zoo."

*

To be honest, both knew they were bound to fall apart by the time they got home, if not before.

Will's got both his hands wound by overpowering fingers above his head, thighs spread as wide as his damp pull-up will let them go without it breaking like a fucking dam. "Daddy." His breath is hot, heated, like the warmest part of Amsterdam's late afternoon has forced it's way into their baby blue pickup truck because it wants in on the action too.

"Daddy." Like it's not fair or something. "Daddy."

They're parked further out, toys left forgotten in bags thrown under seats, Olive smashed between seatbelt and right foot where the door's shut tight. "Please."

And he is begging so, so prettily, the empath's lavender shirt ridden all the way up so that chest north to nipple is exposed and his cock flies high like a flag underneath.

"I should have fucked you in the bathroom." Which is something the doctor has actually imagined, but— "Darling, you're soaked."

He's got two fingers pressed deep inside of Will, scissoring him with pointer and thumb stretched wide like the letter L on an alphabet chart. They barely had enough lube to make this work, it didn't make any sense. "Did you have more than one accident?"

It wasn't an accident. "It wasn't an accident." He didn't wet himself. "I didn't wet—"

The rest of his words go for slaughter when Hannibal eats them with his tongue sticking out, flat and wide against the top half of his little boy's cock. And it doesn't taste at all like it did earlier, when the doctor was on his knees against tile, instead of against the metal of a truck door.

He swipes long ways, letting the tip of it dance along the slit to taste further inside. His fingers relax, ease out and lay in wait along the edge of stretchy rim. Words plummet fast, break like the dam wasn't asked permission. "Tell daddy you didn't wet yourself."

The doctor's face is sideways, rested against Will's thigh and more than a third pressed into the plastic side of pull-up as he's smashed into his position, face down between tan legs and the whole of his chest against brown warm leather. He kisses the underside of the mushroom head, inclines again to be able to do all his little movements, all his little licks, the little nips.

The smell of piss comes on like pollution each time that Hannibal gets a wave of it, like enjoying something that might be just a little bit bad for you but talking about it like you've never wanted anything more.

"Tell daddy," he repeats himself, wave after wave of heat bands striking him on the back, "tell daddy."

And the humidity doesn't help, makes the windows foggy and their armpits smell like a single shower might not be enough. "I didn't—" Will starts, stops, not knowing how to fumble his way through a lie when he wants his cock sucked at the same time. It felt like juggling, especially when all he could think about was daddy, daddy, daddy. "I didn't—" and the pull-up between his legs, —accident, accident, accident— his thighs stretching it wide, acting as a kind reminder with his piss balancing between.

He can smell it too. "I didn't mean to," he says with his eyes shut tight, his entire face pressed into the rear of the seat. "I didn't know."

Wetness spreads as Hannibal kisses the inside of Will's thigh, leaves a mark with two pointy canines that probably aren't sharp enough for either of their likings. "That's called an accident, sweetheart." He kisses fatty tissue again, doesn't wonder what it would taste like because his mind's on something else entirely. "How did you not know?"

The whine that Will unleashes fogs the windows up further, makes the clarity go down.

"Does daddy need to check more often?" His entire right leg is shaking, the left knee begging to be talked about too, because sooner or later, one Will Graham is not going to like finding out last minute that— "We only have diapers for the drive home."

One Will Graham is propped on his elbows then, or at least the best he can be, the left side slipping off the edge a little as he urges out, "Hannibal," and then even more urgently, "suck me, or I swear to fucking God."

"No, Will." It comes so quick, slashed against panting breaths and a silent car. "That wasn't my question." The front of the doctor's shirt feels sticky, his mouth even stickier as he kisses towards the v where Will's balls hang low. "Does daddy need to be in charge?"

They don't feel the tongue that comes out after the question, but the flat side of empath's cock does. "Hannibal," the name feels foreign so he changes it, eyes to the ceiling of the truck as he looks up, pleading to a god he's only just met. "Daddy, please." He can hear his daddy's dress shoes squeak against metal and leather, wonders if this is part of the anything and what more could he get without asking. "Need— need. Please, please."

Sounds are bouncing off the glass and in between the two doors. "Tell daddy."

They can see each other from the angle, light splashed where it breaks through the humidity and grayed-out windows. "Sweet boy," his mouth is to skin he's cut before, a deer knife to the groin, "tell daddy."

Will watches as his daddy kisses south to north along the base of his cock, watches as the lower half of lips makes two more words come out sounding really, really funny. "Please, pretty."

Which had to have meant— "Did you mean?"

Hannibal looks at him slightly disappointed, moves to anchor himself by both forearms as he has lips talk to the crown of his cock instead. "No." He inhales. "No, pretty baby. Now tell daddy if you need him to keep tabs on your diapers from now on."

Well, first thing's first— he never once mentioned anything about equating himself to being pretty, and well, second, he doesn't need— "I don't need—" but no matter the place, first, second— he was never good at lying, not even to his real daddy, "I— it was—" Tears streak where rain tracked their marks already, a sob escaping with his honesty. "It was— an accident."

For a moment, his mind's on the golden poison frog and how its parents are the best species-wide. Or supposedly anyways, that's what the audio had said. Mother's, at least! "I didn't mean to."

He wonders if Hannibal would ever abandon him, if there could ever be a better phrase than I like reptiles too. Or, anything. "I know." I'd get you anything. "Let daddy clean you up."

Anything you wanted. Anytime.

Not all the time. "Daddy."

Even if it was.

The cramps are already calling in both of the doctor's calves by the time he's got half of Will's length down his throat, and by the way he's gagging he knows he's probably not going to be able to take more than another quarter unless there's a promise of a massage and some Bengay at the end.

His throat muscles constrict around the intrusion, his nostrils inhaling the skin-soaked urine as a reward for hard work. "Oh Jesus Christ," and age is forgotten, lost between vocal cords and enamel as the empath pushes up hard to watch a shadow along stretched cervical column, where his cock nudges down and then back up. He watches a second time, pushes with his pelvic muscles to ensure fucking reality because he doesn't have his cellphone to record right now.

Whenever the head pushes in deeper, tears tease to fall by sheer force alone.

"Oh fuck," he repeats himself, nudging it so that skin expands again, the angle making it almost a near perfect outline.

Hannibal looks like he's doing gymnastics and Will's pretty much bent in half between body and mind, the latter curious if father frogs are always mean bullies or if some things are just born out of spite.

The pull-up is ripped apart beneath him, fingernails curved into ass. "Daddy."

His daddy leans forwards again and Will's cock goes half-an-inch deeper, makes it where he can't breathe at all.

Neither can the empath honestly. "This isn't— I don't—" and he knows he means to say things like this isn't cleaning and I don't need diapers but he finds that both could be deemed lies if one looked hard enough, so instead he says, "I don't think I can last."

His head keeps nudging and knocking against the glass as they bounce is fragmented movements back-and-forth, sort of like ping pong, where Will keeps jamming the head of his cock down Hannibal's throat and Hannibal keeps trying to bend both knees as much as he can so that Will can do just that.

It seems important. Kinda like checking diapers and catching stars, like baby frogs who are left abandoned and little boys who have only ever wanted to be loved by their daddies.

Important like the breathing thing too. "You don't need to ask." There's pink in both the older's cheeks, red almost. He looks like he's still on the hunt, like there's a toy he still needs to go back and buy.

A lollipop that needs to be purchased and sucked. "I said anything." His knees bend more, one on the floorboard and the other frog-bowed against the leather.

Will's hair is wet and slick against the glass as positions change and he sits up. It makes little marks that look like grass because of how the strands curl into circles at the end. "Please daddy. Feels good."

"I know it does," Hannibal answers, sharp of his chin pressing into the seat as he looks up. It feels like rug burn along his chest, down his stomach. He whispers further, "it's supposed to."

The ages go flying across, Will's eyes going back and his left foot pressing into the floor like he's pressing the gas pedal for more. It's so, so fucking hot. "Was an accident." So hot. "I'm sorry."

"It's alright," the older answers. He looks like a board from above, a snake even. Mouth open, stomach flat, "you're almost clean."

A response doesn't come, wouldn't have been heard.

When the length of his cock is taken by half this time, Will can't see it expand the skin out because all he can do is look to the roof and ask God for something that only his daddy can give. "Olive."

There's a fury of movement, Hannibal near gagging at the request. He pulls out a wrench, a straw wrapper he'll bitch about later. And when Olive comes from underneath the seat, it looks like Will's nearly about to, too.

She's in his arms, his eyes muddled and unfocused on her specifics, simply that she's finally here.

Additionally, that Hannibal still has a quarter of a cock down his throat. "Don't look," he whispers into her fur, "got you."

When she's tucked around his neck and with his eyes floated back to the ceiling, he nearly comes for a second time— with hands pushed into Lithuanian hair that's sweaty and sticky too, a third time. A throat flexing just because it can, a fourth.

"Daddy, gonna," and his words are what make him actually cum, make him release his seed without seeing it come out at all, because it's all down his daddy's throat instead.

"Olive," he says her name around his orgasm, around her wet and thatched fur. "Oh."

It's such an awkward angle, two old men smashed inside the four walls of a rusty pickup truck, but one bent man and another on his knees put together somehow make everything work. Will watches as the suction Hannibal has around the girth of his cock flutters with a breath that manages to escape.

He inhales then exhales again, lips tight.

"Daddy." Will's not close to recovered. His hand is wrapped solid around his plush friend and the thumb already home inside his mouth.

Hannibal hasn't finished swallowing either, remains chin down with eyes too heavy to look up.

"Daddy," he repeats himself. He looks drunk, cheek tilted towards its reflection and hair so wet that the ends run straight.

The former surgeon remains low when he pulls off. Release swallowed, ear to left thigh. "Anything, Will." The fog in the vehicle is still rampant but there's a glow from the incoming sunset refracting rays that make it look like a rainbow all around them. He kisses the same leg and repeats, "anything," before letting his eyes fall to a close.

The plush dog hangs between fingers, thumb pushed to the side. He's still panting. "Want to stay here." Below, his cock softens.

Hannibal answers without looking. "At the zoo?" He sounds sleepy, like staying here might not be such a bad idea.

"No." And Will's got a little bit of a laugh tied in. "Can't— can't stay at the zoo." He's looking up at the ceiling, his own eyes closed, thumb gone from his mouth, but Olive right where she belongs. "Wanna stay here, daddy."

For a moment, the older wonders if he's not saying Amsterdam because it's too hard for little kids to say. Too many consonants or something. "Live in the truck?"

Will's head goes side-to-side and he laughs louder this time, can't try and hold it back. That's silly, he thinks. You can't live in a truck, daddy. "That's silly." Olive's hiding his smile but she's not doing a great job at keeping all the giggles in. "You can't live in a truck, daddy."

The older's eyes open enough where he can see the fuzzy end of short lashes. "Ask Olive."

It's all sweaty and prickly on Will's legs, one still bent at the knee with its foot to the floor. "She said no."

He hadn't even bothered to ask her, he didn't need to. She may be as close as the constellations against his tongue, his cheek— but there was no way on earth— no way in any galaxy—

"I want to stay here, Hannibal."

He knows, but what he doesn't know is how to live without his little boy. "I know."

That's something he can't help but have imagined.

History past, teacups and all.

"Why can't we?" Hannibal isn't quite sure if there's an age that his little one has settled to, but he watches the transformation from one number to the next as he leans up, sits back. He's got his right foot tucked under his bottom, fringe sweaty from root to tip where it sticks weird and make him look uneven.

This is something else they don't discuss, don't delve into the same way they do each other's pants. You do this, you know, Will had said two nights before Olive learned her history and they started writing their own. I never really know what you could be plotting.

The answer is the same as it was nearly a year ago, with the best intentions in mind. "I promise you, I'll get us back."

He's touching Will along the sharp of jawline, where stubble lies about a number every fourth day. "We have to for now. But if you want to return, I'll bring us back."

The purples and reds have started to lighten to pink and yellows as the haze begins to clear. There's specks of sun breaking through where the younger's hair make them look like floating stars have escaped the planetarium.

"Do you want to come back, Hannibal?" The empath counters his opposite, Olive left to the side as both their hands fall to the seat below.

There's more than a foot of space in separation and the smell of piss hasn't left, has only gotten more intense as the hour has carried on. "Yes," Hannibal answers honestly.

All the yellow hues inside the truck make the shadows under his eyes look like he's at least a decade older. Maybe more. "It's home to me, Will."

He repeats himself when he looks over, looks beyond the front windshield where smog continues to fade. "It became home to me, too."

Please don't fight me on this, he thinks.

"Can I have my candy on the way back?"

Please. "Baby."

*

The lesser of the ages show no plan for reappearance despite candy, ice cream and the best promise in the doctor's back pocket: cartoons.

There's music, of course. Some random track, vocalist abandoned for brass.

"It's not salty." The night has come on fast, showers and faded pajamas too. "Here— let me—"

They're both tucked into one of the corners of the kitchen, nearest the sink and refrigerator where the light glows brightest and where an empath all the age of forty-nine has half his tongue lathered against the wide end of a spatula.

"Seriously?" He asks, face pinched up. "Seriously?"

"You added the fish sauce too late. It needs to cook gradual." Hannibal's the reason they're actually in the corner. He's got both palms acting like a barrier, one on either side and firm into the sharp line of counter. "It's fine, darling. Let me plate tonight."

Will's face hasn't relaxed though, still has eyebrows furrowed and lips pursed like maybe something else is a little too salty, too.

"You've piss everyone off, don't you?" Metal is brought down with strings from the orchestra and hits the older dead in the chest, taps three times at the center.

Hannibal can feel wetness from sauce and spit seep through his shirt. "If necessary."

Words sit on the tip of the former agent's tongue, but it's like all of those things he still doesn't like to talk about: too fucking hard to even acknowledge. "Everyone."

When the table is set, two placements on a kitchen island and a bottle of wine at the center, he still looks salty.

They've kept the lights low, their words gentle around fingertips laying out food and maneuvering through a day now over but not yet tucked-in. And the music's carried on throughout, holding both at the elbows with words silent and brass rising.

The doctor sits in his chair— bar-height— and eyes the end of a plush six-foot snake more than the food on either plate.

"We could set it up tonight," he starts. He's got his fork pressed into salmon and his (reclaimed) elbow on white marble (uncharacteristically, but technically: his too). "If you wanted."

Will, on the other hand, has both elbows planted firm like punctuation to the same counter and all ten fingers woven through strands that promise they can turn gray, wanted or not.

The fish on his own plate remains untouched. "I don't want to."

A moment of hesitation, a fork paused midair. "Want it, or want to?"

When the question is asked, the older takes his bite and watches his counterpart at the same time. The track playing now has layers and layers of strings covering the seconds where Will does not answer, where Hannibal's heart waits between beats.

"It's too much," he answers softly.

Their knees aren't touching, dress shoes and sneakers left at the front door.

"Not at all," Hannibal responds. He can barely outline the empath's face with how good he's gotten at hide-and-seek. "We don't have to talk about it now," he says it because he always does, "but you could have been hurt."

Will's reaction comes with a show, every single one of those digits sliding from brow to chin as he looks over at the older, eyes ready to roll. "Not really." His words are against nails that his daddy that man hadn't trimmed in over a week.

"Don't want to talk." They take the brunt of his tongue's lashing.

"Of course you don't."

The doctor sighs and spears the rest of his entree, turns fully with fork left just as forgotten as the stars and the frogs were. "And like I said, we don't have to tonight." They're perpendicular sat like this, at an angle without the fighting. "I just don't like how you treated your gifts, darling. Little or not—" He has to rush the latter half out, no knife in his pocket tonight, "talking about it or not."

Will's hands have slipped to the counter, palms down, head hung between deflated shoulders. "I'm sorry." Steam is still rising from his plate. "I said I was sorry— about that, about the fucking salt." Pink in both cheeks, two blowjobs not mentioned.

"It's just— just—" Showered, his curls have come alive.

"Yeah?" Informality, in the face of audacity.

A few of his fingertips flex against the sharp edge of marble. It's never felt scary like this before. It's just— "It's scary."

The response comes as an afterthought. "I know."

The first being: how did Il Monstro survive the Atlantic?

Then, a third: did he make the waves turn tides and her colors bleed out red?

The fourth: is Will scared of me too?

When Will's back into the corner, it's with hands deep in dish water and plates that don't necessarily need to be washed a third time. It's with the bottom-half of his shirt getting damp from the suds splashing free and his eyes on the outside, staring far and away at the moon and her pretty nighttime glow.

The back of his throat feels dry even though the conversation is what actually ran that way.

"I'll be fine by tomorrow." His shoulders remain slumped, thoughts following the stars brought home.

Hannibal's watching him from the side, back to the counter and arms crossed. "And you're not now?"

"You know what I mean," and with the answer comes water. Over the edge, over it all. He glances right, butter knife wrapped firm and soap down the wrist. "Hannibal. It's been a day."

"A good one?"

Silver clatters against porcelain. "I swear to god—"

He's met with a look of compassion that's anything but inconvenient. Then his name, said with the same affection. "Will." The doctor unlocks his arms and steps closer, two feet becoming four on the tiny blue kitchen mat, lights dull and orange overhead. "It's been a good day for me too."

This is the first home I've wanted to keep, Will thinks with his eyes closed. You told me anything, Hannibal. "I'm sure the two blowjobs didn't hurt."

There's two plates left to be washed, a single glass reflecting under soapy water turned yellow. "Crude, as always," the older answer gently, pajama bottoms beneath his fingertips where hipbones rise sharp.

"I told you I would take care of you, darling."

Water has stilled, suds to the forearm. "Like I said, we don't have to talk right now." They're starting to pop and dissipate, right in front of the doctor's eyes. He just can't stop watching them. "But daddy thinks you might need him to take care of you tonight, baby."

The truth shatters into the quiet of the kitchen, against the window where moonlight presses in and through the resistance that keeps avoiding conversation.

Let me keep this, Hannibal. Will swallows his thoughts, eyes returning open, watching the bubbles do all those silly things that bubbles do. I still don't know what to do with it, but please let me keep it.

Pretty, pretty please, he thinks. "Don't—" Don't say I can't have it. More bubbles pop under his fingers as all ten trail through lukewarm water. "I'm not little right now." Let me have that too.

"I know," Hannibal answers. "But daddy wants you to be."

The dishes have settled at the bottom, an ocean's waves turning with the tide. Bruce Springsteen on the calendar is still watching them too, waiting in devout patience for the page to be flipped over and more boxes to be filled with pink hearts and silly faces.

"I don't know how."

It's the first lie he's heard all day. "Let me help."

That night, Hannibal forgoes the theatricals and resolves to simply exchange pajamas for a pretty pink pull-up and keep everything else the same. Even thirty-two pearly white teeth are left unbrushed for the second night in a row. It makes the doctor think that there's something fragile being taken apart and put together right now, pieces undiscovered finally found.

And it's not that Will gives in willingly, not at all, but it seems like he finds the task of following to be a lot less scary than resisting. His head's against fluffy white pillows that look like clouds, pacifier resisted least of all, settled against lips who will refuse all night to let go.

The doctor has him close, toys left scattered on the floor and a door kept wide open, ready for the day to be over and a new one to start.

Will remains tearful, despite the day being good.

Despite Olive liking it a whole lot too. "You're alright."

Hannibal has him wrapped tight, legs woven with legs as he tries to unwind through his countless questions and thoughts. "Daddy's here."

The resulting answering is a whine, a fight without the bark.

It's never been easy, even more than a year passed— it's jarring, even for me— even now. And it's not like they want it to be that way either, it's just that Will had tucked things away for a reason and Hannibal pulled them out even though he didn't know why they'd been put there to begin with.

The doctor talks low, lets Olive sit between on the mattress where their chests don't touch.

"No need to cry," he murmurs, his eyes closed. "It's been a long day, hasn't it?"

There's only the glow of a beloved iPad in the dark of the bedroom, abandoned by four feet intertwined under sheets and ages. Will cries into his plush toy's fur as Hannibal keeps talking, telling him about things he would say if he were only allowed.

He tells him about Violet and Mischa, and about how much of this side of Will always seems to save him. Tells him how he thinks there's a little boy who has so much more to show, has an ark of his own and is still looking for maybe a few others to add to the family.

"It's only a fairytale, darling," he says against an eyebrow. Their toes are touching beneath the folds and all the ages have come down like dominos. "She's here, no need to fret."

The zoo feels like days ago. The cottage, months.

Columba feels like another lifetime, one they haven't swam.

"Bark, bark," Hannibal imitates, his hand pressing the toy to Will's cheek where stubble is lying a day early. "You told me Olive likes stories, little one."

(And if you're wondering: he never once imagined saying bark, bark either.)

The colorful six-foot snake hangs from their bedpost, it's tongue hangs further.

Hannibal tells him another story, a column of disjointed words as he promises to take them bug catching over the weekend and that ladybugs can be found anytime of the year, not just what the television shows claims otherwise. "They like to hide in the fields in the morning," he narrates, hand to low, low back. "They hide their babies there."

And as the next hour nears and the tale has nearly run dry, the former surgeon still can't find the right way to describe what his story is about, the one that needed someone there in the first place to be heard and the one that has his little boy's undevout attention.

"Zoo," Will mumbles behind plastic. His eyes are half-lidded, bedtimes far too ingrained to be something an entire story could possibly be about. "Buhh-ughs."

"Yes, baby," is the answer. "Bugs."

"Buh-hugs," he repeats but then makes a face. Oh. "C'lose."

The tears have carried over from chapter to chapter, coming down as the minutes wind in and the duvets get drawn up. Hannibal hasn't opened his eyes in so long it feels like they might be glued shut. "Settle, it's late."

He tells him something else he'd say, something he does all the time already. "I wish you'd let us talk about these things."

Will's eyes aren't closed for sleep yet and they widen even further, curls shaking left to right in alarm. "Daddy," he mouths into Olive's backside, a warning for a book he doesn't want to read tonight. "Candy," gets offered instead, then half his face into neck that smells like vanilla, and "cartoons," too.

The pretty pink pull-up between his legs goes wet with excitement.

Hannibal can feel it happen against his thigh. "Not tonight, darling. Too late."

Which probably applies to the warmth on his right leg too, but he says, "talking's alright," instead with his eyes closed.

Frustration makes Will let go a little more, the flower petals turning yellow to purple as a result. "No." His eyes aren't open either. "Yucky."

"Of course," the doctor answers into the late hour, sleeping calling at the very edges with the door left ajar. He never even took asprin. He'd forgotten at least six times today.

"Daddy cooks good though." Their foreheads are touching, moonlight through the window touching too. "Doesn't he?"

Noses meet like stars in a constellation, like Noah singing about an astronaut circling the moon and Neil Armstrong proving that the cosmos will never have a limit.

"Yeah," Will whispers back, sleep dust promising to keep him a year or two younger in the morning. "Real good. Buh—" Five fingers paw at silk. "Don't wanna. Yucky."

"Could help," so casual, so soft, said into pitch black.

"Nuh," behind soother, rubber bobbing in and out. In and out. "Cartoons."

"They talk too." Well, he thinks, they do.

Hannibal doesn't know what age Will succumbs to when the day turns new and August is on it's last legs but he does know that he's been left with a few pages in this chapter that happen to be blank.

It leaves him feeling like he's meant to write something himself.

Maybe that's what the story—

Yawns are heavy when Will talks next, pacifier out and thumb replaced. "Tired, daddy." The long, long snake's fallen to the ground and breath has begun to turn stinky. "Olive's 'sleepin." His pull-up more wet.

The day at the zoo is long over and stars lay scattered at the bedside. "Time for you too."

They don't talk anymore that night, not in ways that Hannibal would like nor in ways that don't require words. Their bodies are tired, in need of rest and recoup where sentences are needed even more.

It's only when the doctor is about to fall asleep himself and the stars have aligned does his presence become known, soft words touching like lightning above pools and kneeling down in Dublin. They make him say, "sweet dreams," like he's eating blueberry pancakes on a Sunday morning and like he'd let his little boy put as much money as he wanted into a TouchTunes machine.

Like he doesn't know why Noah let go of the dove either.

"Such a good boy today," he says, "rest, little one."

And while he still may not know what the story's supposed to be about yet, he does know one thing for sure: it's not just in the middle of a circle.

Not right here. Anywhere.

Not right now.

 

Anytime.

 

-

"Books are rectangles, daddy."

There's laughter. "Says who?"

Fingers everywhere and morning dawning. "Me!"

 

 

Notes:

¹ note: hey, that's me!

 

--

september in september, halloween adventures after!

warning: next two are on the shorter end, but for a reason!! 😆😆😆

 

_{(I appreciate everyone who continues to show up. your kindness isn't necessary, but you guys still give it like you want me to keep writing about these sorts of things, so thank you.)}

🌷

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 2 of months of the year