Pairing: Hannibal/Will
Rating: T for poorly described gore
Word count: 2K+ (fic total: 7K+)
Summary: Will is a human with unheard of empathic abilities. Hannibal is a Betazoid whose telepathy is stunted due to childhood trauma. It works, somehow. Or Hannigram--in SPACE!!

[Read on AO3]


Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3



--Tattlecrime, Star Date 48512.1--

The Tooth Fairy, the killer who for months has been devastating the Federation by targeting and destroying entire crews of Starfleet vessels, has finally been stopped in his rampage--but at what cost? Director Jack Crawford of the Federation Bureau of Interplanetary Investigations gave a statement to the press just hours ago, defending not only Special Agent Will Graham’s use of deadly force in apprehending the killer, but also the unstable behavior displayed by Graham over the course of this investigation. Despite Crawford’s defense, Graham has been suspended from duty pending investigation. Personally, this reporter feels much safer now that the killer--both killers--are out of our lives.

--

As Will made his way back down the echoing halls of Dr. Lecter’s extravagant house, Will wondered what he was even doing back here, two months after he had met the doctor and five weeks after Will had destroyed his own career.

Dr. Bloom had pushed him to come, it was true.

“You need help, Will,” she had told him gently. “Surely the diagnosis proves that.”

“Encephalitis is a physiological condition, not a psychological one, Dr. Bloom,” he had snapped back, tired of his illness being constantly thrown in his face. “I fail to see how weekly conversations about my feelings would have made any difference.”

Dr. Bloom’s expression had been severe, but the tendrils of emotion leaking from her had been gentle, kind. “We might have recognized the problem for what it was a little earlier on, if you had been honest with me. If you had told me about the… pharmaceuticals you were dosing yourself with, whenever the world around you started to go hazy.”

Will had clenched his jaw, refusing to allow her to make him feel guilty for being sick.

Dr. Bloom had continued, “As it as, we’re lucky we caught it when we did. I haven’t heard of a case of something like encephalitis requiring a full three days of post-treatment recovery for, oh, a century or more.”

She had looked to him, waiting for a response of any kind, any acknowledgement of the severity of his past condition, but Will had remained rebelliously silent.

Dr. Bloom’s lips had tightened briefly, and the gentleness emanating from her had become tinged with frustration. “I’m sorry that it happened like this, but this suspension may be a good thing. Jack can’t force you to come in to the field, now, so you can spend this time on yourself, learning what you need. And you’re so out of practice listening to your own needs and wants; a guide could be very helpful.”

“A guide?” Will had sneered.

“A counselor, yes. We both know what sort of person I mean, Will, but we also have very different ideas about their purpose. We’re not here to pick at your brain, call you crazy, and then send you off to an asylum, which is what you seem to think. We want to help you.”

“And why Dr. Lecter? I thought it’s your... ‘help’ I’m legally mandated to accept, not his.”

Dr. Bloom had sighed. “You know why, Will. We’re not a good fit, are we?”

Will had kept his mouth stubbornly closed, but he had felt the guilt rolling in, and it had been just as much his as it was hers.

“No, no, none of that,” she had said, smiling ruefully. “I’m considering referral to Hannibal--pending your agreement, of course--because I think the two of you can understand one another in a way that I can’t. I’m a telepath born to a species of telepaths. You’re an empath born to a species whose members typically have extremely low psionic levels; Hannibal is a psi-null member of a species of telepaths. Surely you can see how you might have experiences that overlap, experiences that I don’t have.”

Now, as Will reached the carved wooden door of the study, he wondered what he wanted out of this meeting. Dr. Lecter was… different. Different from anyone he’d ever met before. He made Will feel anxious and excited and wild. He made Will feel as though feeling that was okay.

But all of that might change if he took on Dr. Lecter as his “guide.”

Will raised his hand and knocked sharply on the door.

Rather than calling for him to enter, this time Dr. Lecter opened the door himself and ushered Will inside. He offered wine again--a different wine--and sat down on the other side of the desk with his own glass cradled in his hands, eyeing Will with interest.

“Tell me, Agent Graham, what brings you back to my humble abode?”

Will couldn’t help but snort at that, almost spilling his drink. The opulence around him was suffocating. How had he managed to say “humble” with a straight face? The doctor’s mental silence was throwing him off again. It felt good.

“Oh, you know,” he said, once he’d steadied himself a little. “Just making the rounds. Dr. Bloom handed me a list of potential counselors that was longer than my dissertation, so I thought I’d start with the names I at least recognized.”

“I am honored to be among those considered,” Dr. Lecter answered mildly. “May I ask why the search? Have you experienced any problems with Alana?”

“No, I--she’s fine. It’s fine. We’re fine. It’s not her, it’s the whole therapy nonsense. It doesn’t work on me.”

“I see,” said Dr. Lecter, his face a blank mask to match his mind. “In that case, surely I am no better able to assist you than is my colleague.”

“That’s certainly my opinion.” Perhaps that was too harsh. “She said that we--that she and I--that we’re not a good fit.”

“Do you disagree?”

“No, not exactly. I just feel as though we have different… goals. I feel as though I always have different goals from my counselors.”

“And what do you perceive their goals to be?”

“I don’t know. To publish papers on my curious ailment. To diagnose me as something that needs in-patient care, so that they can have me in a glass box and observe my movements.”

“And your goals?”

“My--” Will chuckled humorlessly, “my goals are just to get through every day without my brain melting out of my ears.”

“Has that been a problem in the past?”

Will stared at Dr. Lecter. He was looking back at Will expectantly, as though that had been a serious question.

“...No,” Will said finally. “Uh, not literally.” He squinted at the Betazoid seated primly across from him, but the doctor seemed to be accepting his words at face value.

He shrugged his shoulders uncomfortably. For the first time, Will started to wonder if maybe this could actually work. If Dr. Lecter could actually help him. If Will could actually stomach the thought of Dr. Lecter psychoanalyzing him.

“I, uh. I had encephalitis recently. Very,” he cleared his throat. “Very recently. I actually had a giant meltdown during the confrontation with Dolarhyde--the so-called ‘Tooth Fairy’--and now I’ve been suspended. Although,” he shot a quick grin at Dr. Lecter, “you probably read all about that on Tattlecrime, eh, Doctor?”

Dr. Lecter returned his grin with a small one of his own. “I did indeed. One always must wonder as to the veracity of such sources, of course.”

Will huffed out a laugh. “Of course.” He stared into the delicate wine glass in his hands, now half empty. He hadn’t even noticed that he had been drinking. “So, Dr. Bloom had me taken to--if you can believe it--the headquarters of Starfleet medical. She bullied them into running a whole battery of tests, and what do you know, they found that my brain was on fire. Still not literally.” He flashed another grin at Dr. Lecter and took a sip of wine.

“She sounds to have been a very dedicated counselor. And I have not yet heard any rumors going around through the academic circles about any new publications from her.”

“No, that’s true. I don’t think she’d be unethical about it, though that’s not a judgment I’m willing to extend to every psychiatrist I’ve run into. It’s just a feeling that I get when I talk to her, sometimes. Her interest suddenly shifts from patient to lab-rat.”

“You believe it is impossible to feel both clinical and academic interest in a patient?”

“I believe that if the interest includes the academic, their focus stops being what they can do for me and becomes what I can do for them.”

“Can the relationship not be reciprocal? They help you, you help them?”

“Then what happens when their academic interests would be better served by seeing what happens when I get worse, rather than what happens when I get better?”

They sat in silence for a moment, both staring at one another. Will felt--he didn’t know how he felt. Nauseated, maybe. Exhilarated, definitely.

Finally, Dr. Lecter said, “An interesting dilemma, to be sure, and one which as been answered both ways in the past, despite one decision being the clear ethical winner.”

“So you see the reasons for my lack of trust, then.” Will set his empty glass back down on the table. Dr. Lecter immediately stood to refill it.

“Perhaps,” said Dr. Lecter as he returned to his seat, pausing to top off his own glass. “But I think we have become a little side-tracked from the original question. What are your goals in therapy, Agent Graham?”

“What?”

“Surely they are no longer that your brain will melt out of your ears,” the doctor replied, a gleam of laughter in his dark eyes. “After all, that problem has been dealt with, has it not?”

Will flushed. Picked up his now-full wine glass. Set it back down. Fiddled with his sleeve. “I don’t know. I guess I just don’t like the invasive nature of it. I can’t even be as honest with myself as they’re asking me to be with them.”

Dr. Lecter smiled at him. “Is it not said that it is a good practice, being wholly honest with oneself?”

Will scoffed. “I think you mean, ‘being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise,’” he said, not hiding his sneer. “Five hundred years later, and you damn psychiatrists are still quoting Freud?”

Dr. Lecter’s eyebrows rose. “In fact, I was referencing a popular Betazoid philosopher--admittedly, one who lived nearly a thousand years ago.”

Will stopped his nervous movements, turning red. “I--I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “That was very rude of me, assuming that you meant--I mean, I promise I know that my own culture isn’t the end-all.”

“Not at all,” Dr. Lecter replied easily. “How fortunate it is, Agent Graham, that our cultures should be in such close accord on this topic.”

Will couldn’t help it, then. He broke his own rule of strict avoidance and stared into Dr. Lecter’s dark eyes. The expression on his face was amused, certainly, but his eyes were as silent as the rest of him, not a glimmer of feeling escaping from their depths.

Will knew of species that were psi-null, with minds no telepaths could invade--he had bartered with Ferengi before, had even encountered a Breen privateer. But in those cases, though he couldn’t touch their thoughts, he could still feel the hum of their emotions. For Will, who had spent his life struggling desperately to stay afloat in a flood of emotions that were not his own, this silence was new. It was terrifying. It was thrilling.

He wanted to bury himself in the quiet of Dr. Lecter’s mind, to lap at the calm until it was absorbed into his being, a piece of Hannibal Lecter that was inextricable from Will Graham.

He wanted to tease secrets out of Dr. Lecter, secrets of his body and his mind, truths of his past and hopes for his future.

He wanted to spend the rest of his life peeling off Dr. Lecter’s masks layer by layer, using his Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas and not his paracortex.

He wanted.

“I--need to go,” Will said, voice harsh. He stood up hurriedly and made his way to the exit, trying not to run.

“Of course,” Dr. Lecter said, mild disappointment apparent in the tilt of his eyebrows, the thinning of his lips. He moved to stand beside Will, letting his hand rest on the elaborately cast handle that was used to open his antique door. “I hope that I will have the opportunity to see you again soon?”

“You can’t,” Will blurted. He saw the surprise and hurt on Dr. Lecter’s face, muted but present, and he continued, “I mean, you can’t, you can’t be my psychiatrist. My counselor, whatever you are. You can’t. It’s not--okay.”

Dr. Lecter didn’t speak for a long moment. Will squeezed his eyes shut in frustration--mortification--that he didn’t know how to say this, how to feel this.

“I understand, Agent Graham,” said Dr. Lecter, voice level. “But if I am not permitted to know you in a professional capacity, am I also to be denied access to you privately?”

Will cleared his throat, clenching and unclenching his fists. He forced his eyes back up to meet Dr. Lecter’s. “You should call me Will,” he whispered.

Will guessed at the emotions he saw flicker over Dr. Lecter’s face, lightning-fast. Surprise, probably, and delight. And there, in the curve of his mouth and the slant of his jaw, that was definitely smugness.

“Will,” Dr. Lecter repeated slowly, letting the drawl of the name carry the sensation of a victory won. “I do hope you will join me for dinner this evening?”

A shiver of anticipation crawled down Will’s spine. He felt a little heady with victory himself. “I would be delighted, Dr. Lecter.”

Dr. Lecter opened the door, then, and bowed Will out. “Please, Will,” he said, a smirk playing on his lips, “call me Hannibal.”

-END-

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