Title: Forbidden Rewards
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: Hannibal Lecter/Will Graham
Fandom: Hannibal
Rating: PG-13
Table: Quotables, Part 2, tv_universe
Prompt: "You make change sound so easy."
Author's Note: One-shot.
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.
***
"You make change sound so easy," Will said with a sigh, shaking his head."Change is never easy, Will," Hannibal told him, raising his brows. "But in the end, I think that you'll find the changes you are going through are worthwhile."
Were they? Will asked himself, not looking at the other man. He was afraid to look Hannibal in the eye, afraid that all of his deception would be written in his gaze.
It was hard to look at Hannibal with guarded eyes. He had trusted this man for far too long, and now that his trust had crumbled to ashes, he couldn't risk having Hannibal find out that everything he was doing and saying was nothing more than a pretense to trap him.
How long could he keep this up? He had never been good at dissembling; it was one of the things that Hannibal had pointed out to him during their therapy sessions.
Fortunately, Hannibal didn't expect him to make eye contact often; it had never been easy for him, and he could fall back on that excuse now. It would serve him well.
He only hoped that he could keep up this charade for as long as he had to.
He had to convince Hannibal that he was changing, that he was willing to become what Hannibal wanted him to be. He had to make this man believe that he would be his protégé.
That wasn't going to be easy for him to do, not when he wanted to recoil every time that Hannibal was near him, not when he despised everything that Hannibal was.
But he had to make himself be around this man, had to make Hannibal believe that he was embracing the darkness that Hannibal wanted him to lose himself in. He had to ignore the beckoning siren call of that darkness, and not let himself give in to it. He had to resist that lure.
Most of all, he had to keep himself alert for any kind of confession that Hannibal might make to him. He had to find that chink in Hannibal's armor, and exploit it to the fullest.
He had to make this man believe that he was changing, but he had to do is slowly. He couldn't move too quickly, or the act wouldn't be at all convincing.
So far, he'd done a pretty good job of it, but he didn't know how long he could keep it up. Especially if Hannibal were to demand some kind of proof of the changes he was going through. It wasn't as though he could kill someone in cold blood to prove to Hannibal that he was becoming a serial killer.
Of course, he could look as though he was killing someone, and as long as Hannibal wasn't there to actually witness what had happened, he could pull it off ....
Hannibal was speaking again, but Will hadn't heard a word that the other man had said. He pulled himself back to the present, to reality, with difficulty.
"You will become what you've always been meant to be," Hannibal finished with a smile.
Oh, he knew what Hannibal meant for him to be -- a carbon copy of himself, a conscienceless killer who took human lives without a second thought.
He would never be like that, Will vowed to himself. Never. He would never become what Hannibal wanted him to be, yet he had to appear that he was doing so.
More than that, he had to seem as though he was willing to be what Hannibal intended for him to become, even that he was eager for that transformation. That was the hardest thing about this; putting on that act and sustaining it over time wasn't going to be easy for him.
Which was why he hoped that Hannibal would slip up sooner rather than later, he thought grimly. Because he didn't know how long he could keep up this illusion of change.
"This is going to be hard for me," he murmured, knowing that Hannibal wouldn't grasp the double meaning behind his innocuous words. "Change doesn't come easily."
Hannibal looked grave, nodding in acknowledgement of Will's words.
"Change is never easy, Will," he said for the second time. "But I think that you'll find, in the end, these changes you'll be going through will be well worth what effort you put into them."
Oh, those changes weren't going to be real. But Will could only imagine what Hannibal thought that they might be. He didn't want to think about that. The very idea of what Hannibal expected of him made him shudder; it was hard to hide that sudden wave of revulsion behind a mask of calm.
Though somehow, he managed it. And he nodded at Hannibal's words, still not letting his gaze meet the other man's. He had to be careful, had to calculate his every move from here on out.
"I'm sure that you could make it seem easy," he said, the words almost a challenge.
Hannibal's smile widened; to Will, he looked frightening in that moment, almost like a predator, a wolf who was simply waiting to close those killing jaws around an unsuspecting victim.
"I've spent a lifetime changing and adapting to my surroundings, Will," Hannibal told him, that dark gaze seeming to drill into his own. "And even though it's hard, change can be .... ultimately rewarding."
Will held back another shudder at those words, and how they made him feel.
The forbidden rewards of those changes were exactly what he was so afraid of.
***
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