Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Will moves back to his communications hub for the fifth time in the first half hour of his shift. Just as before, the green signal is blinking, radiating an eerie, monotonous light across the darkness of his workstation. There it is again. The signal. The reason his ship has launched itself towards an uncharted sector of space more than 160 light years away, and the reason that he himself, Will Graham, Xenolinguist, Communications Officer, and Subject of Much Speculation, is manning the communications array.

Because that green light is most definitely a signal, quite definitely of intelligent origin, and most definitely emanating from that vast unknown area of dark, starry sea on the other side of one light speed jump.

Will swivels to consult his calculations. His portion of the ship is small and dimly lit, but that’s how he likes it. He feels a hairs-breadth away from the great vacuum of inky black that cradles the china-frail human bodies onboard the military science vessel, and the thought comforts him instead of repelling him. Out here, in the dark, connected to a vast web of possible life, he feels more himself than he usually does. Less alone.

The calm green light cast across his features is suddenly joined by an orange glow and a squawk from the intercom on his wall.

“Officer Graham,” barks a familiar irritation. Jack Crawford, (Captain Crawford, commander of the Raven, and don’t you forget it). He personally recruited Graham for this mission by means of blatant bullying and emotional manipulation. But it’s all ok - Will was going to go along anyways. He was sold the first moment he heard the complex notes of the alien message. He was always going to go. They would have had to physically detach him from the hull. The idea of being the first person to communicate with an alien life form…his heart monitor informs him of a slight murmur. “Any change to the signal we should be aware of?” Jack demands. “Any progress on interpretation?”

Because that’s why Will is really on this mission. It’s not that he’s a top Xenolinguist, or has a spotless career as a top military scientist. It’s because of the other thing. The ridiculous thing that has marred and twisted his career since the beginning. His ‘special gift’.” Will Graham is the most potent empath on the planet (yet measured) and as such, after extensive testing and prepping from a young age, he is considered the most promising man on the planet to make first contact.

Never mind how utterly ridiculous the whole concept is, scientifically. First contact with another race has zero precedents - the race could, and probably would, be so significantly different from human beings in terms of biology and brain function that his empathy would flounder uselessly and be of absolutely no help whatsoever. Might as well try and empathize with a protozoa or sea slug. But the higher ups in the military were attached to the idea of Will Graham, human connection across the void, and Graham used that to secure a position where he would absolutely be able to witness first contact up close and personal. He would just have to do it with hard work, and expertise, that was all. Not some fluke of neurodiversity.

Halfheartedly he pounded the comm panel. “No change, and nothing concrete on translating the signal yet, sir,” he sighed out. “It’s using some kind of advanced geometric algorithm that seems to involve upwards of eight dimensional shifts. We need an expert mathematician to help me sort out the message behind the universal language, sir.”

The intercom crackled. “I’ll send Miriam Lass down to take a look at it,” Jack responded. “She was top of her class in astrophysics with a dual degree in quantum mechanics from MIT, so she might have some worthwhile insights.” The comm rang off. One thing to be said about Jack, for all his martinet act, he did respect expertise, especially when he himself didn’t understand it. Miriam would probably be a help. Will sighed and brightened the lights of his office a tad. Not everyone was as much of a fan of the endless dark as he was, and didn’t he know it.

Miriam Lass is around Will’s age, but tired about the eyes and with the perpetual squint of someone who stares at motionless figures on a wall screen all day, willing them into some form of order. She’s wears her blonde hair in a non regulation ponytail, signaling her nonmilitary status, and doesn’t talk down to Will one jot, though he begins to wish she would. He’s a language person, not a mathematics person, and no matter the parallels one can draw between the two (hence the first message from an alien race being encoded entirely mathematically), they are not interchangeable skill sets. Will settles back and watches Miriam pull up screen after screen, the numbers glowing golden and three dimensional in his hollow viewport. She flips some completely foreign terms at him, rotates the numbers 180 degrees, and frowns.

“This isn’t geometry,” she announces in a reassuringly coherent way. “Not linear geometry, not non-Euclidian geometry, not Projective geometry, not morphology.” She slams a hand down. “Do you have any snacks?” She asks, not bothering to look back. “I’m going to be sitting in this chair for at least 12 hours at this stretch, and I could use something crunchy.

Will Graham silently goes and fetches her a bag of sunflower seeds, which she eats one by one, like a total weirdo.

As Lass is working on her non-geometry geometry, Will tries to let his lateral thinking take over. This is a technique that he has found generally useful for seemingly insurmountable blockages throughout his career, and he likes to think he’s fairly good at it. He makes jumps, yes, but the evidence always backs him up when he walks himself back to his original problem. So he sits and thinks about both language as an abstract concept, and space as an abstract concept.

At times like these, he goes inside. The lights and the screens dim and finally die out, and he is left alone in the stream alongside his home on Earth, rod and creel by his side, and blessed silence.

He thinks about modality, and semiotics. Would a race, perhaps staggeringly different from human beings, but perhaps not so different, convey signs through mathematics with the object of encoding it for representation? For cognitive semiosis? For salience? Surely such a race would not encode a message without being fairly sure that the recipient had the necessary means to decode the message in the first place. And since the message has obviously been meant to be discovered and decoded, the means of decoding must be either inherent in the message, or near enough at hand to be discoverable without unending effort.

Will straightens a little in his fishing gear. What he needs to do is devise some sort of Commutation test with Lass, once she gets her head around the exceedingly advanced and alien mathematics (he’s being optimistic here). Once Will can more accurately identify signifiers, their signifieds, values, and significance, he will be a long way towards decoding the message. The key has to be in the math, however, and that isn’t something he can help with. So he sinks back into his stream and allows his head to be filled with potentialities. Words. Coordinates. Concepts. Value . Space . Dimension . Extent. Scope. Proximity. So close.

Language buoys him up until he is floating in the water, fish nibbling unnoticed at his forgotten bait.

The klaxon on his wall wails again some time later, and Miriam Lass lets out a string of profanity through a mouthful of salt and shell. “I swear to god I will break that thing,” she grits out. “I nearly….well, almost nearly….I was close. I could feel it in my brain, like wings fluttering.” She gets up and paces. “It’s something….” She closes her eyes. “Non commutative. Phase-based.” Her eyes slam open and she glares at Will, who raises his eyebrows at her passively. “I need a nap,” she says before sweeping out of his chamber.

Jack’s voice echoes through his cramped world. “Can you get no readings on these life forms at all?” He asks for about the twentieth time since the ship launched. He seems convinced that Will is some kind of ham radio putting out beacons of welcome for all the aliens of the cosmos. Will sighs.

“Not a thing, Jack,” he says, “they’re still too far away to be touched by our light for over a century. I doubt my ‘light’ has that kind of staying power.” He hears Jack’s irritated grunt. “Just keep trying, will you?” Jack demands, before muting the intercom without waiting for a response.

Will thinks about the word phase for a few moments. Then he begins to pull up data on his monitor. He feels certain that Lass is on the right track.

The klaxon sounds again. This time it’s not Jack, it’s Beverly Katz, ships pilot, and she’s not making her usual announcement.

It seems that their ship has received a distress call. One lone astronaut aboard a science space station, and they’re the closest ship to it.

In situations like these, a military vessel has no choice but to alter course and prepare to render aid.

Will barely acknowledges when the ship flips into a high G burn. He’s thinking about phases. He’s thinking about proximity. 

Chapter Text

“….Message repeats. This is an all-channels call for assistance. I am Science Officer Hannibal Lecter, of the Space Station Minos. I was in hyper-sleep for 2 years after reaching our current coordinates so that I could be woken in time to study and record the collapsing of a red giant star. I have just now woken up on automatic protocol to find that there is nobody left onboard the station. The escape pods are all intact and accounted for, the log shows nothing unusual, there are no signs of violence or a struggle, my colleagues. They’re just…gone. Message repeats. This is an - “

Jack shuts off the distress signal, and sweeps his eyes over his crew. Small military compliment, as usual, should first contact not be as sweet and rosy as the science types were hoping, competent flight crew, twitchy and hunched science contingent, and in the very outer orbit, the most twitchy and hunched of them all, Will goddamned Graham. His golden ticket. Or, rather, the man he had convinced his superiors was his golden ticket. He was looking especially troubled and scowling at this moment, probably because he and Lass had decided they were on a hot trail to deciphering the meaning of the green code, and now he was being dragged out of his coffin in order to deal with something that had, Jack was sure, absolutely nothing to do with linguistics or aliens. Granted, the stranded astronaut did have an accent, however Jack was fairly sure it was eastern european and therefore nothing of interest to an interstellar sort of cowboy like Will Graham.

But come on, Graham, Jack tried to project at him - you’re supposed to be the pinnacle of empathy. You have to at least feel somewhere some pang for this man, abandoned in space, confused, alone, and in limbo. At that, Will had looked up at the last part of the message, where the astronaut’s voice began to falter, just a bit. Will tried to imagine the terror of waking to such an unexpected. lonely expanse. He couldn’t. Loneliness wasn’t a terrifying concept to him, not anymore. In fact, it was the mystery that intrigued him more than the man’s suffering or confusion. What could have happened? Goodness - two mysteries for the price of one. First the green code, then an entire space station crew sucked into the ether, leaving behind, as usual, one man to tell the story. 

Will decides he should talk to this man, and hear exactly what the story is. Lass is still in his lab muttering to herself, and he has the comms array pointed at the space where the Minos is slowly rotating on automatic. He pushes a button.

“This is Communications Officer William Graham,” he begins his usual call signal, “of the military science vessel Raven. We have received your distress signal and are moving coordinates to render assistance. Please - “ he is cut off by a voice on the other end, and it is a voice worth listening to. Crisp and alpine, though heavy and snared through by consonants. Totally calm.

“Officer Graham,” the voice unfurls out of his tinny speakers like blue smoke. “You received my message, then?”

Will frowned. “Yes, as I was saying, we are on our way to render aid and investigate the circumstances of your…situation. Given our current position and maximum safe speed, we should be with you in two to three weeks. Do you have the necessary supplies to sustain yourself for that time period?”

There is a brief silence. “As I am currently the only occupant aboard this fully stocked and functional space station,” the voice strokes at him, “yes, I believe nothing to worry about on that front.”

Will is growing annoyed at the man’s composure. “Well, do you have anything you do believe you have to worry about?” He snaps, and then closes his eyes and apologizes to each of his communications instructors in turn. Rendering aid is not where he shines. Emotional aid least of all. Call it bounce-back from all the empath nonsense hammered into him as a child. He’s not good with socializing, in any form.

There’s a polite cough on the other end of the radio. “I believe my chief concern at this moment should be the fate and whereabouts of my friends and colleagues,” the voice tells him, still calm. This man isn’t as panic-stricken as he first appeared in his message. Though astronauts are screened to be able to handle maximal amounts of stress. There’s something almost appealing in the measured vowels of his current radio companion.

“I’m sorry, of course,” Will sighs out. “And you - your name is Hannibal Lecter, correct?”

“Just Hannibal, please,” Hannibal lets out a slight sigh, a puff of breath into the radio. “I am going to need some help to figure this out, Officer Graham.”

“Just Will, please,” Will mimics. “We’ll have a full investigation when we arrive, of course.”

“All the same,” Hannibal doesn’t so much interrupt as he swells into conversation, burying all other lesser noises beneath him. “I would like to begin my own investigation as quickly as possible. This could be a kidnapping, it could be time sensitive, and either way, I lack the temperament to wait for two weeks for someone else to come along and figure this out in my stead. I’m far too conceited.”

Will grins, hides his grin, and then drops his hand, realizing that nobody can see him. “Well, we have several investigative officers onboard, H-Hannibal,” he tries, but he’s already guessed what’s coming next.

“And I’m sure they’re extremely competent and pleasant individuals,” Hannibal sounds like he’s smiling. “Military police, yes?”

Will sighs, but he’s still smiling. “Rodger that,” he says absently, using a code 200 years out of date. Hannibal manages to catch the meaning, and Will is unsurprised.

“I’m sure you have your own pressing duties to see to,” Hannibal says, “but as you are my one point of human contact in this area of the universe, and seem like a bright, inquisitive individual, might I impose upon you to devote a small amount of time to talking through this situation with me? What is it they say about two heads?”

Will shakes his own. This, on top of the mystery of the green code. There’s no way in hell he was ever going to say no. “I’m free to talk at 0900 hours,” he says, smiling up at a dark ceiling. “Do some preliminary investigation during that time and we’ll talk over the results at that time.

“Rodger that,” comes the reply from the other man, spinning in space.

//

The green code still slips through Graham’s fingers like a lapse in etiquette. He knows - he just knows, that somehow, somewhere, the word phase is crucial, just as Lass knows that somehow, in some way, they have left behind geometry for quantum physics, but the pieces just don’t seem to fit together in a way that would even make a Commutation Test possible. There have to be more definitions, fewer blank edges of ignorance, and though he knows the answer is there, Will can’t help feeling a little miffed that the aliens didn’t give them more to work with. Perhaps it’s a test of some kind - fail this multidimensional geometry/semiotics quiz and you can’t join the cool kids at their stellar table. Will doubts that if aliens exist, they would be any less petty than humans, but he guesses it might play out a different way. And he’s distracted. His thoughts keep jumping to his other puzzle, and his other puzzling puzzle solver. At lunch, he punches up a biographical overview of Hannibal Lecter, Lithuanian expert in laser refraction and medical doctor, and all he managed to learn was that the man was oddly handsome in the way of rocks worn down by millennia of water, and that he was, as Will, at the top of his field. There was some extremely dense scientific paper of his on exactly how he was going to use laser refraction to measure the decay of a star, but Will threw it to the back of his bunk after three sentences which contained less than four words total he could understand.

God save us from specialists, he thought, smiling at Miriam’s ponytail, bobbing in the low light, and at himself, continuously trying to get at ‘phase’ and ‘space’ from new angles, like jumping out and shouting ‘boo’ to cure hiccups. All in all, he was actually looking forward to speaking with Hannibal that night, and possibly learning more about the fate of his crew.

Chapter Text

Sitting back comfortably at his work station with his radio emitting a low hiss while he waited for Hannibal to log on, Will can almost pretend that he’s waiting for a loved one to call after a long day of work. A ridiculous thought, but there it is. His shoes are off, his feet kicked out, and he has a ration of very weak whisky in a plastic cup to drink before his shift is over. He feels relaxed but buzzing with energy, and can’t figure out whether it’s due to the mysteries before him, or the man who found himself tangled in amongst them. Will doesn’t “do” other people well, as a rule, but as a communications officer, it’s easy to lapse into bureaucratic nonsense-speak when talking to them. Or else focus on an assignment to the point where the person on the other end of the radio becomes just another variable instead of a hassle. But Hannibal hadn’t felt like a hassle; he had felt like… a challenge. No, more like an anticipatory shiver. Not that Will’s ship lacked intelligent officers, but everyone he came into contact with was either hyper -focused on their own goals or they were sorely aware of his status as an intergalactic welcome mat. Unfortunately in those circumstances easy camaraderie does not flourish. Hannibal may or may not be aware of Will’s ‘gift’, but if he is, he hasn’t treated Will with the same caution that his shipmates do. He’s been calm, logical, and fairly funny, all things considered.

Maybe Will is a little more anxious to speak more with him than he is to solve one of his puzzles. That would be new. Puzzles have clearly set parameters and solutions. Humans, rarely so. And Will is fond of closed circuits. But there is that echo that signals that someone else is coming online to interface, and Will shoves these thoughts away. It seems that once again he and Hannibal are communicating by voice alone. For some reason, neither of them has turned on the internal monitors, so they speak voice to voice rather than face to face. It’s comforting to Will - god knows why Hannibal is doing it.

“I looked you up this afternoon,” Will begins, and refuses to feel like a stalker. “Just a routine background check. Lithuanian, American citizen, expert in light refraction and lasers, medical doctor, very blonde.” He hears a chuff of breath amongst the static of the radio. “I didn’t know you could use a laser to measure star decay,” he paused, leaving an opening for what was sure to be a long-winded, esoteric lecture.

“I looked you up as well,” Hannibal surprised him by skipping the chance to tout his no doubt exceptional work. “American - very American, born in Louisiana, ex-professor, expert in Xenolinguistics and Semiotics, no blonde in sight, curly hair, and saddled with being the poster boy for empathy by a psychiatric community which hasn’t even come to grips with that form of neurodivergence yet.”

Will’s mouth hung open. “You mean,” he paused, “You mean you disagree with the DSM’s standard diagnostics for empathy?” He could almost hear Hannibal shaking his head over the radio.

“Not the diagnostics, those are fairly sound. It’s the surrounding psychiatric phenomena, social and cognitive effects and the truly ludicrous truth-stretching that I object to. Psychiatry is an ever-evolving area of study. The human brain is such a complex system that anyone who claims to understand it is self-aggrandizing at best. You have been shoved into a box with a label that the psychiatric community doesn’t know how to define, handle, or utilize yet. It’s almost laughable that they would bring you along on a first contact mission as an empath first, and an expert in communication second. It just shows you what they really think it all is - magic. Parlor tricks.”

Hannibal fell silent as Will took all this in. His radio hissed at him, his mind replaying the exact words he had thought to himself time on end, for years on end. And this man, alone in space, had just opened up his brain and brought it all out. It was both extraordinary and deeply discomfiting.

“Are you trying to psychoanalyze me, Dr. Lecter?” He kept his voice light, fighting against the urge to flee from this disembodied voice which saw so much.

“Not at all,” Hannibal’s voice was warm. “Merely giving my opinion before we move on to more important topics. I’d much rather have an intelligent puzzle solver at my side than a powerful empath, at least in this case.”

Will perked up. “What have you found?”

“Nothing.” Hannibal’s voice even sounds like nothing. Flat and echoless. “Will - there’s nothing. No DNA left behind by any of the crew, no logs past the ones entered the first few days of my sleep rotation, and there's nothing in there at all worth mentioning. No malfunctions, no logged computer errors, not even a stray piece of clothing or notebook left behind. All trace of my friends and crew are completely gone.”

Hannibal took a breath, and Will was surprised to hear it shaking. He was surprised to realise he was holding his own breath in response.

“It’s as if they never existed at all,” Hannibal said, bleakly.

Puzzles on top of puzzles. For some reason, Will was once again drawing strongly on the word ‘phase’ for this puzzle as well, which seemed to have nothing to do with his green signal. And yet.

And yet.

No, it was too complicated already. Treat them like two different puzzles because the chances are greatest that is what they are. A missing science team and a communication from an alien race don’t have enough variables in common to start trying to enmesh them. Will was so lost in his own thoughts that he didn’t hear Hannibal speak until the man cleared his throat.

“Will, there’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about,” Hannibal began slowly, and Will tensed in anticipation. “Why was I left behind?” Hannibal uttered it almost mournfully, and Will slowly began to realize how truly lonely this man must be wandering the darkened halls of a station once filled with life and relationships and all those messy human emotions spilling into one another. “Was it the hyper sleep? If only I had some clue as to what actually happened.” He sounded frustrated now, his previous calm being swallowed up by weight of his fear.

“Hey, hey, Hannibal,” Will broke in, feeling a sudden need to reach out to his new companion. “We’ll figure this out. We’ll find them. If we work together on this, we’ll get them back, ok?”

There is a moment of silence on the other end. Perhaps Hannibal is just pulling himself together. When he finally does speak, the calm is back and laced with that warmth that almost has a face. “Thank you Will,” his voice resonates low on the frequency. “I won’t allow myself to doubt again.”

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Will hesitates, and then activates the video on his end of the communications array. Suddenly, he feels shockingly self-conscious. He’s been working for almost 30 hours straight, his hair is in total disarray, and he stares at the face of his new acquaintance - a face that manages to be impassive yet oddly expressive. In this moment, he knows he’s being assessed. Hannibal’s eyes rove over his face in silence, and then the corners of his eyes lift slightly. He smiles.

“You look tired too, Will,” he says in that odd accent, the one that seems to catch around his teeth and make his voice sound slightly dangerous.

“Well,” Will scratches at the back of his head. “I’ve been working long hours trying to figure out the Green Signal. It’s like an itch I can’t scratch. I know, I know somewhere in the back of my head is an answer, but none of my usual problem-solving exercises are bringing it to the forefront.” He lets out a sigh.

“Well, the problem itself is hardly routine, is it?” Hannibal’s voice becomes soothing while posing the question, almost lulling. Suddenly Will feels every hour of wakefulness between himself and his bed. “Perhaps your thoughts need to turn to the less routine in order to break through?”

Will shakes his head. “I’m trying that. Lateral thinking, non-directive writing, all of those techniques. What I’m stuck on is whether or not we’re going to solve this using mathematics or language. Until I can answer that question, I’m entirely stuck.” He snorts, frustrated with himself, frustrated with his lack of understanding, his lack of progress.

“It seems to me what you are, is tired,” Lecter says softly. “Why not allow your brain some time to reset? Rest a little. Sleep does wonders for the central nervous system.” He sounds cheerful for some reason. Will eyes him through the video monitor. Hannibal is, indeed, dressed for sleep. His blue robes look soft and warm. Will blinks slowly.

“Sleep” he says, and almost manages to make it a question.

“Sleep, Will,” Hannibal answers with a smile. “Until tomorrow then, my friend.” And with that, he shuts off his monitor.

//

Will changes into his own sleep gear without thinking about anything. His mind has never seemed so blank. The moment he lays down, his entire body relaxes. It feels wonderful, so gentle and serene. He doesn’t have to worry about anything. His eyes close, and he floats.

Will opens his eyes to a bright, white corridor. He blinks. There are doors, it seems, on either side. They go on forever, stretching into infinity, into that bright, incandescent light. Hannibal is there with him, and they are both dressed for sleep.

“See, Will?” Hannibal asks, and moves slightly closer. “Sleep is a good answer to any question. You can see things in your dreaming that your waking mind could never allow.”

So close, Will can feel the body heat that Hannibal is radiating. Odd, to feel heat in a dream. Odder still, when Hannibal moves closer and places his hand on Will’s shoulder. Will can feel it, that hand. Large and warm and steadying, like everything else about Hannibal. He relaxes, still squinting into the light.

 “Where are we?” He asks, turning to look at the way the light illuminates the severe bones of Hannibal’s face. Hannibal shrugs.

“That is not a question that can be answered in a dream.” He states, as if this makes perfect sense. Will supposes it does. Dream logic.

“Why are we here?” He tries again. This time, Hannibal smiles, looking down at him, squeezing his shoulder gently. Will can feel that, too.

“Your mind is trying to tell you something, Will,” Hannibal answers. “Will you listen to it? Will you understand it in time?” Will shakes his head, bewildered.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me,” he hisses. “What you, what my brain, what anything is trying to tell me! And I should know. I should. It’s my job to understand. It’s why I’m here.”

Hannibal releases his shoulder and steps away, still smiling. “That’s not why you’re here, Will.” He says softly. “But that is part of what you need to understand.” And suddenly, Hannibal has become something insubstantial. Will can see the light through him. He is fading. And he knows, damn it. He knows something. Will needs to get to him. He needs to ask the right questions.

But Hannibal is gone, and Will stands alone in that corridor of doors, and puts his head in his hands.

//

He wakes from a half remembered dream, frustrated in mind and body, recalling only the ghost sensation of warm skin against his, and shifts to look at the luminous dial next to his pod. He still has some time before the start of his shift and something is buzzing beneath his skin, pooling between his legs and making him restless. His mind, having nothing to grasp hold of other than the memory of warm skin in the long stretch of darkness since his last conversation with Hannibal, connects the two events. The connection is tenuous, but as he tests it, it holds. Hannibal’s face was warm and open, his features are unusual but undeniably handsome, and Will has been alone in his own mind in this manufactured pocket of humanity in open space for too long. It doesn’t take him very long before his hand is reaching down between his legs, slipping inside the drawstring of his bottoms and gripping himself. He’s not surprised to find that he’s already more than half hard. Is it Hannibal himself that affects him so? Or someone from his dream? Or, perhaps, he was dreaming of Hannibal and the two questions answer one another. There certainly is no one on board his ship that stirs his interest like this.

He thinks of Hannibal’s lips, of the way they look forming the sound of his name, and inhales sharply through his nose as his cock twitches in his hand. He teases himself, sliding slick fingers around the head, and imagines what it might feel like to have those lips forming other sounds against his skin. Hannibal is such a mystery to him still, a shape like the outline of a man. But what he has seen is appealing. Intelligent, keen, inquisitive - playful, even. Solemn and worried about his crew, but excited by Will and the problem he’s unraveling. It’s good. He’s good. Will is almost sure of it.

In his mind, those lips trail a line of moisture down the center of his chest, and a mobile tongue dips into his belly button. He arches, gasps. He wants Hannibal. It’s still budding, this want, but he realizes it could turn into more, into a mounting attraction when they meet in person. He lets one hand draw down his chest to roll a nipple between his fingers, and bucks his hips up into his fist, breathing harder. There’s no way of knowing at this point whether or not Hannibal would reciprocate his interest, but in his fantasy, Hannibal’s mouth has reached the wet tip of his cock, and Will tosses his head to the side, straining against the writhing arousal growing in the pit of his belly. What if? What if, while the others are performing their search of the space station, he pulls Hannibal off into some darkened corner and slaps both palms to the wall beside the taller man’s head, cutting off his retreat? What if, instead of retreating, Hannibal’s dark eyes darken further, and he reaches out a hand to tangle into Will’s curls? Hannibal’s mouth laps at the head of Will’s cock, as Will’s fist speeds up, hips lifting off the platform on which he sleeps. He runs his fingernails down Hannibal’s biceps, and the man hisses against him, a susurrus of pleasure that has a swell of precome leaking down Will’s shaft. Will brings a heel up and lets his legs fall open, as entranced in this fantasy as if it were real. Hannibal pins his hips this way, his strength almost overwhelming, and takes him in his mouth again, this time swallowing him down, Will’s cock hitting the back of his throat and sliding, sliding. Hannibal moans.

And Will comes hard, doubling over himself, hot streak striping his body up to the notch of his collar bone. He is shaking, trembling and breathing through his nose in fast jets of air. He feels gut-punched by the strength of his own orgasm, the strength of his fantasy. All of this from a few conversations? He lets himself lie back down, simmering in the cocktail of chemicals that burn through his body. And he knows, in that moment, that something is awaiting him when he finally arrives at his destination. Though, at this point, he can’t be entirely sure what it will be.