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Title: Close the Book
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: Hannibal Lecter/Will Graham
Fandom: Hannibal
Rating: PG-13
Table: 1drabble
Prompt: 16, Book
Author's Note: Sequel to "The Path of Justice."
Disclaimer: This is entirely a product of my own imagination, and I make no profit from it. I do not own the lovely Hannibal Lecter or Will Graham, unfortunately, just borrowing them for a while. Please do not sue.

***

Will was keeping something from him. He knew it.

Hannibal didn't think that Will still blamed him for his incarceration -- certainly they were past those ideas, now that Will was a free man again.

After all, he reasoned, Will had come back to their therapy sessions of his own free Will. the proved that Will had no malice towards him; the young man acted as though he had completely changed his mind about his former belief that Hannibal was plotting against him.

Or was Will merely hiding behind his own mask, a mask that Hannibal now had the utmost difficulty in being able to penetrate and see behind?

it bothered him to think that Will was hiding something.

He didn't like the idea that Will could possibly do such a thing. He wanted to believe that he still had the young man firmly under his control.

That was where he wanted Will Graham to be -- under his thumb, so that no matter how he might writhe and struggle, desperately looking this way and that for a means of escape, none would be found. Will was exactly where he belonged, where he was meant to be.

Will was his, to do with as he chose. He could manipulate this lovely young malleable mind in any way that he chose, make Will do whatever he wished.

But there was a niggling little doubt in the back of his mind that insisted such complacency on his part could be dangerous, and that his assumptions were no longer true.

Was Will still under his control? Or had the young man come to his senses, as though he'd been able to throw off the blinders of friendship that had once covered his eyes and distorted how he saw the person he thought was his friend?

Hannibal frowned at that thought, but he knew that it could be the truth. He had once been able to read Will like a book, but now, that was growing harder to do.

If he couldn't read Will, then that spelled danger.

He needed to be able to read Will, to turn the pages of his thoughts like a book, seeing into them and knowing what was on Will's mind.

Now that he couldn't do that, he would have to be far more careful with this young man. Will was starting to exercise his own mind and his own will, resisting Hannibal's control as he'd never done before. That could prove to be very dangerous -- as much so for Will as for himself.

He would have to find a way to regain that control he'd always had, or he would have to begin writing the last chapter of Will's life -- and then close the book.

That was something he found himself very reluctant to do.

***