Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“Listen Will, it’s not a question of if you find a Dom, it’s a question of when.”

Professor Jack Crawford sighed heavily and closed the file that rested on the desk in front of him.

“They’re not asking for a marriage certificate here,” he continued, “just evidence that you are in contact with at least a part-time partner. The usual recommendation is for sessions once a month at minimum, but if you can stand something more frequent I’d highly advise it. There’s just time, if you start now, to get a decent paper trail in place before your alignment health assessment for the job.”

Will closed his eyes for a moment, taking a deep, steadying breath before answering. Yelling now would not help his case.

When he spoke, he tried to keep his voice level. He was aware that one of his eyelids kept twitching, but he didn’t think it would be too obvious to anyone else. That said, Jack hadn’t become the University of Langley’s Head of Psychiatry and Psychology without having some ability to analyze people.

“I’ve been doing just fine without sessions for almost eight years,” Will said. “The latest W.H.O. guidance, which the Chief Medical Officer endorses, recognized that some individuals, even with high index test scores, don’t require partnered activities to maintain healthy functioning.”

Jack frowned. “And so you’d describe you’d current state as ‘healthy functioning’ would you?”

“It’s just a little insomnia, it’s not a problem.”

“You’ve been late to teaching your morning classes twice this week alone, more than ten times in the last month. You look like shit. No health assessment panel, even one enlightened enough to say a 0.7 aligned Sub could theoretically be OK solo, is going to pass you as ‘functioning’, and you know it.”

“Well thanks, Jack, that is just what I need to hear before applying for Associate Professor!”

Will threw up his hands. His back had been sore for a while and now his muscles caught as he moved – he was spending too much time hunched over his desk, he knew that, it wasn’t like it was an uncommon problem. “Why are you even encouraging me to apply for the promotion if that’s what you think of me?”

“Will, as your colleague, as your boss, as far as I’m concerned if you’re doing your job then your private life is none of my business. When Proposition 34 was being debated in ‘95 I voted in favor of repealing the alignment health assessment laws, just so you know.” Jack sat back in his chair and sighed, rubbing his forehead. “But they’re still with us, and the reality is that if you want to stand a hope in hell of getting that promotion from Assistant to Associate Professor, you’re going to need to pass a health board as well as impress in all the other ways that I know you can. And if you can’t even get through a basic physical, a board is never going to sign you off as a single Submissive. Would it be so hard to get spanked once every four weeks so you can get a pay rise and tenure?”

Will leant his head back, sliding down into the chair with his chin against his chest as he did so, in order that it wouldn’t look like he was baring his throat. Not that appearing to do so to another Sub like Jack would really matter, but Jack probably believed him capable of just about anything right now and adding what might seem like bizarre, kinky, semi-illegal flirting wouldn’t help.

“Now, for example” Jack continued, apparently feeling he’d carried his point, “have you and Alana ever…?”

“No!” Will looked up at once. “No. She is not… That’s not… No, it’d have to be from outside the university - no staff, no one I work with.”

If he was going to be looked at in that way, if his attempts at submission were to be seen, let it be by someone never crossed paths with otherwise.

“Yeah, that’s pretty much what I thought.” Jack reached across his desk and picked up a slim black plastic folder, stamped with the official logo of Federal Alignment Matching. “This guy did supervise Alana at one point during her training – she was the one who suggested I look in the matching database for him and see if he was available - but otherwise he’s unconnected to the university, and Alana assures me he’s a very… detached individual who is quite comfortable taking on Subs for temporary or intermittent sessions such as you need. And that’s hard to find, as I’m sure you know.”

“You’ve already planned who you want me to bend over for?” Will curled his lip. “Nice.”

“Just look at the damn profile,” Jack said wearily, thrusting the folder in Will’s direction. “If you can find me one legitimate reason to reject this person we can go looking for another, but otherwise we’re going to sit here and book you in with him on my computer right now.”

Will waited, putting a hand to his head and smoothing over the pressure points at his temples, which as usual were tightening down like rusty screws. “You can’t just make me…”

“No, I can’t.” Jack’s voice dropped a little, softer now. “I can’t make you look after yourself in any way at all. But will you give this a shot? Quite aside from your career, don’t you think you owe yourself a chance to try and see if this makes you feel better?”

“I don’t need a Dom.”

“You don’t want a collar and a house in the suburbs and a picket fence and kids, sure, I get that - I respect it. You don’t want to feel you belong to someone or need to have someone belong to you – that’s fine. But all this would be is letting your instincts get a little breathing space every now and again, no strings attached. And we all need that. That’s why the matching program even exists.”

Will stared at him a moment longer. Jack was a good boss in many ways, but he tended to have several agendas running at any one time. If Jack wanted Will to pass the evaluations so badly as to stir up the hornet’s nest of Will’s personal life, it must mean there was another candidate for Associate Professor on hand, one who would upset Jack’s power balance in the faculty - probably some protégé of Chilton’s.

Someone like that getting promoted wouldn’t bode well for Will either. In fact it would probably make things even harder for him than it would for Jack, besides the fact that if he lost this shot at tenure, total unemployment could follow hard on its heels.

And it made sense for Jack to want another Sub in a high position in the Institute’s faculty. The man would never be idiot enough to say it aloud, even if no one else was listening, but he would know that it would help them both, and those who might come after them.

Without enthusiasm, Will reached out to take the folder. He kept his eyes off Jack now, and whatever his smug expression might be, and looked instead at the profile that had been printed off for him.

‘Hannibal Lecter’, this no-strings Dom was called. Well that was fairly bizarre to begin with. Originally from Lithuania, in the US since the 1990s, now resident in Baltimore, a surgeon by profession, specializing in oncology, and listing under ‘hobbies’ Singspiele, European travel and ‘the culinary arts’, whatever the heck that meant.

Will had been braced for Jack offering him the most clichéd ‘desirable Dom’ imaginable – some sort of milk-fed jock ideal with an investment fund and nothing to say. This was a step above that, at the very least.

But he was still uneasy. Being matched up had never gone well for him.

He’d been assigned-Sub after his alignment testing at high school, and like most of the other kids – following encouragement from the teachers – had registered for the Federal Alignment Matching database at once. He’d been fixed up with Sally Keene, a girl from another school close by, which was the pretty standard outcome. He’d wanted it to work – to be the great, supportive partner his parents had so singularly failed at being for each other – but she’d got more and more frustrated at her inability to get him to drop. Sure, at first they’d just been kids, just experimenting – no one really expected or wanted eighteen year olds to be hitting subspace – but as time passed he’d grown more and more conscious that she needed something from him that he couldn’t give.

He’d tried faking dropping down, and that had worked until he’d been startled one day by the phone ringing and she’d figured him out, and got even more upset. They’d broken up soon after.

There’d been a lot of ink spilt in the decades since he’d graduated high school about the advisability of matching up teenagers that way – certainly of pushing them into it – and questions raised about whether a service that seemed to offer overwhelmingly monoracial and heterosexual matches was really just acting on strict alignment compatibility metrics alone. The matching service had been reorganized more than once in that time, and several new matching czars found. Will still had his doubts about it.

But it remained difficult to get anything like decent health insurance unless you were married or could prove you were registered with Federal Matching, and so he, like most people, didn’t have much choice. Will hadn’t done more to his own profile than fill in and return the mandatory annual update since he and Sally had split, but he’d still got another match sent to him a couple of years later. At the time he’d been doing his PhD at Langley, working as a TA and so busy that he’d carried on as he had during his undergrad days and simply gone to the communal student sessions campus welfare organized, gatherings where unattached Doms and Subs could meet on a one-off basis to get what they needed around their various schedules. That had worked well enough – he still hadn’t ever really gone below the edges of subspace, but it kept him calm and eased his sexual frustration, and he’d never felt a lack of companionship the rest of the time.

And then Melissa’s profile had arrived in his mail, and they’d met, and he’d ended up being with her for nearly two years. They’d been talking about getting a place together, even very tentatively about a collaring, maybe, one day. She’d tested out as a Dom but only with -0.2 intensity, and that had turned out to suit him pretty well. She didn’t mind keeping Will marked up for form’s sake and she was as keen as the next Dom on cuffing him to the bed and getting on top, but she didn’t always need to play and she certainly didn’t seem to want to spend vast amounts of time or effort chasing something that Will was starting to believe probably didn’t even really exist. They made each other orgasm efficiently and often, and that had seemed like it was good, like it was sufficient for a happily ever after.

Then Melissa had met Georgia at a party, and Georgia had apparently just gone on her knees right there on someone else’s living room carpet like she couldn’t stop herself, apologizing the whole time, and – as Melissa had explained when, crying a little, she picked up a box of her stuff from Will’s house – neither of them had planned it to go further, they’d just clicked, like every time they were together they were in sync, and it was amazing, Will, amazing, I really hope you get that someday, I really do, I’m sorry.

Will had gone some months without a Dom, after that. And then some months became some more months, and then some years, and soon he was wondering why it was even worth the effort to go to communal meet-ups. Why should he waste his time and effort just to find some person he’d probably have nothing to say to and get a spanking? He had work to occupy him, his dogs for companionship and the peace he’d found since being single again was precious. No Dom had ever done anything so wonderful for him, and he wasn’t in his twenties any more, sex with another person didn’t seem like a necessary condition for survival.

And OK, maybe he hadn’t been feeling his best lately, but that was the workload – the Associate Professorship application – and Chilton breathing down his neck about the Nurizon paper review, and trying to deal with students who were too exhausted from working three jobs to turn in decent papers and…

“Not everyone can be like you and Bella, you know?” Will heard himself saying. “You found the perfect Dom and you love her, and I’m happy for you, but not everyone gets that. Not everyone can get that and I can’t… you can’t just…”

He stopped. A pained look had passed over Jack’s face.

Will tilted his head to one side, waiting. He’d not noticed anything different about Jack’s behavior lately that he could think of, but then it would probably be fair to say that he hadn’t been as attentive or as focused as he could have been, recently. The insomnia was really not such a big deal, it would get better by itself after a while probably, but he would admit it had left him not at his sharpest.  

“Jack?” he prompted.

Jack drew a sharp breath in. “Bella’s been diagnosed with lung cancer. ‘Small cell’, apparently, which they tell me is the kind of lung cancer to have if you’re having it, but…” he trailed off, his attempt at a smile fading, his hands dropping into his lap. “She’s not really feeling it yet, but she’s… Well, you know Bella. She’s not the kind of Dom to relish the idea of her Sub looking after her that way, even if it’s just for a while, even if she needs it to get better.” Jack sighed again and looked up, meeting Will’s gaze head on. “So for fuck’s sake, Will, let me try and look after you a little, OK?”

Will bit his lip. “Yeah. Yeah, OK. Um.” He pushed his glasses up his nose and lifted up the folder with the Dom’s profile. “Let’s book an appointment, then, like you said.”

- - -

Will woke up from his dream panting and startled, sitting up in his bed, staring into the dark.

Frantically he scrabbled at his neck but the marks had come in the dream, only in the dream – the skin was intact, and didn’t ache any more than usual when he pressed at it.

He was sweating, his t-shirt and sleep-shorts clinging to him, to his straining erection, his indisputable need for something, for a something that seconds earlier in his dream had seemed so clear, and so close, so desperately close…

Lying back down, Will closed his eyes again, seeking vainly into the dark for inspiration. His hand went to his groin; he cupped his dick, hissed through his teeth. It had been quite a while since he’d thought to touch himself and his skin was sensation-starved and too easily stimulated.

So many nights of poor sleep, and now when he had succeeded he’d woken in a panic with an urge he’d thought he’d all but forgotten. That illustrated the state of his existence fairly well all round.

Will tried thinking about Melissa, or one of his other past Doms. Threading one hand into his own hair, he tugged at it, hard, and bared his throat to the empty air, trying to picture someone standing over his bed ready to accept his submission, ready to…

It didn’t work. It never really had, he’d never quite been able to figure out what he wanted to imagine, and wasn’t that pathetic? Who on Earth couldn’t even figure out what to fantasize about in private? He fairly shook with frustration as his hips rose up off the bed, seeking something that wasn’t to be found.

Would that something be found in the form of Hannibal Lecter? Will wondered what the man looked like – rules to do with discrimination and equal opportunities, and avoidance of obscenity prohibited profiles on Federal Alignment Matching from carrying photographs, and of course Jack had printed out the official and approved profile rather than anything in private circulation.

Still groggy with interrupted sleep, Will reached out to the floor by his bed and located his laptop. Dragging it up onto the mattress and booting it up, he opened his internet browser and searched for ‘Hannibal Lecter Dom Profile’, expecting to instantly get hits on the usual round of social media sites. Official guidelines were one thing, but nowadays everyone had an online bio to find matches their own way.

For Dr Lecter, however, there was nothing of the kind. Old fashioned or just dull? Will wondered, and scrolled down past a few sites that seemed to be something to do with some kind of castle in Lithuania – Lecter was probably a common name there – and then saw a hit for a page relating to chamber music recitals in Baltimore.

For a moment, Will let the cursor hover over the link. It seemed a bit unfair, in some ways, to look the guy up ahead of meeting him.

It wasn’t, after all, like Will shared himself in any way on line for reciprocal research.  

As he was wrestling with his social mores, a gentle ‘ping’ informed him that he had a new email waiting, and he clicked on the relevant icon.

It had been forwarded from the Federal Matching website messaging system:

Request for Contact with: Hannibal Lecter.

Thank you for your request via Federal Alignment Matching. You have requested further contact information from Hannibal Lecter. Their greeting to you is:

If you wish to pursue this interaction you will present yourself to my office at 134 Hulton Street, Baltimore at 19.15 precisely on September 29^th. You will be wearing smart casual clothing. This interview does not guarantee that your request for partnering will be accepted or that further contact will occur. This interview will last approximately an hour.

So much for friendly greeting - it wasn’t exactly exciting or provocative, such a clinical list of demands. The guy could try to sound even a little enthusiastic. And meeting at his office? What was that about? You just didn’t have first meetings for matches at workplaces, not unless you had some supermassive ego about the job you did. But then the man was a surgeon, and they could probably be pretty self-obsessed.

Lecter’s alignment test score hadn’t been on his profile, and if he wasn’t offering it now either then maybe he didn’t intend to share it at all. Possibly, coming from outside of the USA, he didn’t even have a score on the one-to-one index, which ranked from highest intensity Sub at 1 to highest intensity Dom at -1, reflecting the system’s history as a means of measuring levels of submissiveness prior to marriage, just some good old fashioned 1920s eugenics.

But then if he worked and got insured in America, Lecter must have had to be scored. So maybe keeping it quiet said something, like that it was embarrassingly close to balanced, to null alignment – one day people were going to stop caring about that, but not yet, and certainly not for people who wanted to get ahead in a prestige job like oncological surgery – or that it was so close to a round -1.0 that it might actually scare prospective partners off.

Will sighed.

And Dr Lecter wanted him on the 29^th? That was the day after… was in fact tomorrow, now, since they were past midnight.

It would be easy enough to come up with an excuse under the circumstances – one even Jack would have to swallow. Pressure of workload, unexpected student seminar to cover, dentist appointment too late in the day to cancel… Will could even email Professor Chilton and say he was suddenly available to talk about the Nurizon peer review, and then cite that.

Problem was, of course, getting on with the Nurizon review was about the last thing he wanted to face doing. Even less appealing than this stupid match meet-up.

Irritated, Will checked the box that would send the Dom an automated response to acknowledge that Will had received and read his message. That option existed for the kind of Subs that didn’t feel comfortable addressing a Dom directly until they knew their exact preferred title(s). Traditional, missivine Subs, and fuck if Will was that, but at least it saved him having string together full sentences. If doing so confused Dr. Lecter about who and what he was, then so much the better.

And if forewarned was forearmed, then Will was going to go in with every advantage he could get.

Closing his email, Will brought his search page back up and clicked the link to ‘Baltimore Chamber Music Society’.

And there Hannibal was.

A bad photo, generally speaking – too much flash, a poor angle, the subjects not yet ready as they clustered together with their wineglasses like alarmed nocturnals at a watering hole.

But Dr H. Lecter, Baltimore Methodist Hospital – as the caption read – looked more composed than most.

‘Angular’ was the first word that came to Will’s mind to describe him. High, sharp cheekbones and deep-set eyes, salt-and-pepper hair and a very slight curl to his full lips, though you couldn’t tell if he was annoyed at being photographed or about to smile into the camera.

Will blinked at the screen, at the little glow in the darkness of his room, which illuminated the mess of his bed like a raft in a black sea. The stress of the last few minutes had effectively diminished his arousal, and if he’d wondered if the sight of his new prospective Dom might suddenly or wonderfully engage him, that certainly wasn’t the case.

And that was a good thing. It would help make their mandatory sessions – if they ever got to them, if Will was deemed to pass muster – simple and straightforward, without the complication of attraction.

Some fucking small comfort; Will was shaping up to feeling pretty badly disposed towards Dr H. Lecter, and his demands, and his chamber music, altogether. And he bet Dr H. Lecter wouldn’t be that much keener on him, and his background and his awkwardness and his lack of readiness to take any dominine shit.

If Will felt no sexual attraction, for example, then he wasn’t about to consent to sex. It wasn’t a Dom’s intrinsic right in a power exchange session, and even if some people still believed otherwise the law hadn’t supported them for fifty years.

Since the mid-Eighties the Federal Matching service had specifically disclaimed any implication that being matched by them had anything to do with sex. Nowadays, sleeping with the same person who you had sessions with, whilst the common arrangement, was no longer seen as necessarily progressing from it. That said, most people who wanted to play wanted sex to be an option open to them, and if this Dom was like that, and Will’s lack of interest made him keen to jettison Will as soon as possible, that would be fine by Will.

Will closed the laptop and lay back onto his pillow once more. He closed his eyes, and waited to see if sleep would come.

It seemed like he’d be waiting a while.

After twenty minutes had passed on his digital clock, he gave up, got out of bed and made an instant coffee, and sat down to stare at his stack of marking instead.

- - - 

134 Hulton Street, Baltimore, when Will arrived there the next evening, turned out to be an imposing Second Empire style building, now occupied by Dr H. Lecter, oncology, on the ground floor and – according to the cards by the doorbells – some blank entity in a separate residence above.

Will put his finger to the lower of the bells, and paused, rubbing one foot up the back of his other calf like he was a second grader called to the principal’s office. Of all the bullshit that went with being a Sub, this was one part he resented a lot – that meetings between Doms and Subs still generally went along the lines of Doms as some sort of buyers – discerning, picky, always to be considered right in their opinions – and Subs as merchandise – to be assessed, to be chosen, to be passive. To regard not being chosen as a personal failure and make attempts to change in light of it.

Maybe society was better for Subs than it had been a hundred years ago, but it still stank. So they’d done away with mandatory testing in most countries, so what? That was a technicality – almost everywhere it still happened under one excuse or another, or life became very difficult.

Will repeated these familiar lines of argument to himself, trying to find distraction from the consciousness of how little his clothes fit the specification given in the Dom’s contact email. These were his best jeans, after all, which made them the best trousers he owned, and he had ironed his shirt after pulling it out of the laundry basket when he’d not been able to find another in his rush between leaving work, dashing back to his house to change and then driving here. Wearing his one – cheap, ill-fitting – suit that he rolled out for obligatory work dinners and family weddings, picked out by his stepmother and with cuffs he’d carefully frayed when trying not to scream at his relatives, had been out of the question. He’d not be in the mood for anything but confrontation in that.

Whilst dressing at home, straying from the brief had seemed like no big deal. Here, and about to step over a Dom’s threshold, he couldn’t help thinking what the consequences of his choices might be.  

He’d woken again the night before, sweating and shaking, from a vision of being put over the lap of someone with a face he couldn’t see. The image – the feeling - kept coming back round in his mind, and making him shiver.

Will looked at his watch, and when the display ticked over to 19h:14m:30s, he made himself ring the doorbell.

If he could be nothing else, he’d at least on this occasion scraped into achieving ‘punctual’.

He pressed the bell, and heard a genuine chime inside, like there was actually, literally,a bell in the house rather than some electronic set-up.

During the waiting that followed, he thought about running away. But that would be pathetic, really. And it wouldn’t stop Jack hounding him, or the application process for the Associate Professorship asking for the results of his alignment health assessment.  

Will closed his eyes and groaned.

“Is it really so bad?” a voice asked.

Accented.

Angular.

Will’s head shot up. He grimaced and felt his face heat.

There was the Dom, in the doorway. Dr H. Lecter, staring down at him with a cool gaze.

- - -

“We will proceed to my office. Please take a seat when you get there.” Dr Lecter indicated an open door down the hall.

Chairs lined the corridor nearer the door – a waiting area, Will realized. The main office, when he came to it, was a large room with the feel of a library in a private home – and a private stately home at that. A fine antique desk stood to one side, facing a fireplace the other end of the room in which a small blaze crackled cheerfully. In the middle of the room were two chairs - low slung, all black leather and smooth chrome - facing each other.

“Is this where you see your patients?” Will asked, looking round.

“Outpatients,” Dr Lecter said, and gestured again at one of the chairs. “Yes. I find those who have spent - or are going to spend - a long time in hospital, don’t much relish returning to such a building unless they have to. I have clinics at the hospital too, of course, but when I can, I see patients here.”

“And prospective Subs,” Will pointed out.

Dr Lecter did not flinch at the accusation. He kept a steady stare in Will’s direction.

“I asked to meet you here,” he said calmly, “because I thought you might find it easier than coming to such a proprietorial space as my house. You may say that somewhere public would have been more neutral still, but I’m afraid I cannot countenance my personal life being conducted in public. Indeed I do not generally go out in public with those Subs I am connected to. You should know that.”

Will inclined his head, accepting the explanation. He had not expected any degree of thoughtfulness, and now he felt wrong-footed, no longer certain what to expect.

“I can see from the profile you sent me, Will – may I call you Will?”

Will nodded, surprised again by the courtesy – it was not for Subs to choose titles. This encounter was veering rapidly away from the script he’d envisioned in his head.

“I can see from your profile that you have not had a session with a Dom in a very long time. May I ask why?”

“Why does anyone do anything?”

Will knew he was being rude, but his heart was racing now, beating solid in the pulse points under his jaw; his mouth was dry, he didn’t know what to do with his hands. It had been so, so long since he’d been stared at by a Dom with intentions. He’d forgotten that it could feel like this – could hardly believe it ever had.

“That is a good question,” Dr Lecter said mildly. “Though I’m not sure it is an answer.” His voice was calm and certain and steady – Will could it feel it rolling round him like a softly incoming tide.

Will shook himself, and gripped onto the arms of his chair. He felt himself scratching and picking at the stitching on the arms, working blunt, bitten nails rough against the soft, buttery leather.

Maybe that would make this man Dr Lecter forgo the pleasantries and rush at him, push him down on to the floor, twist his arm behind his back and try to make him…

“Listen, Dr Lecter,” Will said, and did not ask if that was the title he was intended to use or not. “Let’s get one thing clear. I’m here because I need someone to partner me for sessions at the minimum possible frequency to pass an Alignment Health Assessment for my job. I don’t want you in my head or in my pants. I don’t want helping or fixing, or to be changed. I just need something we can call a session maybe one hour a month, and a stamp on my record to say I got it.”

“And you are hoping an outburst such as this will provoke such a thing, perhaps?”

Will looked him dead in the eye, too cross to care how it made his skin itch to do so. Dr Lecter was smooth and sleek and untroubled as a cat, and Will’s head was coming unscrewed with how that was making him feel.

“No, I’m just telling you the truth. I don’t play games. I don’t really go in for the social niceties.” Will smiled through his teeth for a second, full and fake. “And that, by the way, is one reason I haven’t tended to get on with the Doms I’ve been set up with in the past – they don’t like Subs like me, with opinions, with minds. I say what I think and if you try to punish me simply for speaking aloud, for anything I do outside the sessions we negotiate, I’ll leave now. Nobody owns me.”

Dr Lecter sat back in his chair. He was, to Will’s complete surprise, reining back his body language, making nothing aggressive except that fixed stare, and without that he’d scarcely be a Dom.  

“If other Doms have these faults, have treated you so badly,” Dr Lecter said. “Do I deserve your vitriol against them?”

No anger. No outrage. No offended pride. It was like throwing a lighted match at gasoline, only to find it was cold water.

Will slumped, chin going automatically to his chest. “No. I suppose not.”

There were a few minutes of silence. Will wondered if his breathing sounded as heavy to another person.

“You are very tense about this meeting,” Dr Lecter observed.

“Wow. I can tell you have a medical degree.” Will ducked his head again as soon as he’d spoken. “I’m sorry. You’re not trying to be a dick and I am, but… yeah. More than tense. I’ve got… a lot going on and I don’t need this right now.”

“Your boss Professor Crawford seems to think this is exactly what you need right now. Yes, he telephoned me - yesterday in fact.”

“He what?” Will’s anger flared now. “He had no right! He should have…”

“He should have told you, yes. He should, in fact, have asked you, but it is done, and I am telling you about it now, as I told him I would. And I’ll tell you what he told me.

“He told me that you are brilliant. A gifted thinker, a great asset to his institute, likely to contribute in no small way to the sum benefit of mankind in your career. And he told me that you are unraveling, Will. That he worries about you, that your Alignment Assessment will never be passed under current circumstances, and that you rejected out of hand all three Doms he tried to set you up on dates with – I assume for the reasons you have been outlining - so now here you and I are, somewhat of a last resort. Does that sound accurate to you?”

Will thought back through his day. The orange-flavored, cereal-enriched milk drink he’d chugged down in his car instead of the breakfast he’d yet again not had time for. The piles of dog food never cleared up, but insurance against him getting stuck somewhere and missing a feed altogether. The lack of shirts, t-shirts or any kind of acceptable clothing clean in his house, and the fact that he kept the Febreze in his bedroom now. The awful cafeteria lunches with sandwiches of shredded cheese mulched with what was hopefully mayonnaise, because he never, ever got round to preparing any meals in advance.

The insomnia. And when that wasn’t around, the dreams.

“I’m prepared to try and see if having sessions with a Dom will give me some sort of benefit,” Will said slowly. “And if does help, great, fine. But that’s all I want – the minimum. Like physiotherapy, or piano lessons.”

“Excellent. We are agreed, then.” Dr Lecter sat back once more in his chair, smiling serenely, and picked an invisible piece of lint from his trouser leg.

Will blinked at him.

“I also do not wish for an involved relationship,” Dr Lecter said smoothly. “Or for intrusion into my more personal space. I must admit some relief, actually, in finally finding a prospective session-partner with similar goals – I too need to pass certain assessments for my work. We will do enough to tick our boxes, so to speak, and hopefully not inconvenience each other too much along the way.”

“Oh. Great.”

Of basically all the things that had been said in all the imaginary ways this had played out in Will’s head, that wasn’t one of them.

A Dom who barely wanted him. That should be ideal.

He sighed, gave himself a little shake, and felt a part of him relax down a little. “Great,” he repeated, and started to let himself believe it. “That’s good.”

“I own the upper floor of this building, as well as this office space,” Dr Lecter continued. “It is a self-contained flat and generally I let it out, but it is empty at present, and may suit our purpose admirably – a neutral space, but private and well enough appointed. I am not fond of hotels.”

Will realized a response was awaited, and nodded, still somewhat bemused.

“I do have…” Dr Lecter paused, and his tongue darted out to lick his lips. Maybe they got a little fuller, a little redder - Will was determined to keep his head up but unequal to actually holding the other man’s gaze, and he had to look at something.

“You should know, Will, that I like to have my life in a certain amount of order.”

“Yes, I, uh, guessed that,” Will said, looking around the pristinely perfect office they were sitting in.

“I do have preferences for how you would behave in session. Addressing me as ‘Hannibal’, to start with.”

Will felt himself blush a bit. It had been rude not to ask in the first place. Dr Lecter really wasn’t trying to make this hard.

“And I would like to dress you in clothes I will supply. I have an acute sense of smell and the laundry detergents of others irritate me, and often have certain Proustian associations…” he waved a hand.

If Dr Lecter’s sense of smell was that good, he was well aware that detergent hadn’t been near Will’s shirt in a while. Will was all too glad to nod his head.

“Do you have any such parameters for me, Will? In general, I mean. I have your approved and non-approved activities list from your web application, of course and we can discuss technicalities later.”

Will shrugged. “You know I don’t want more than minimum discipline. I don’t care how you dress. You can call me Will, or whatever other term floats your boat if it isn’t outright derogatory. I… I don’t know.” He shrugged again. “I’ve not…”

He’d not had enough experience to come up with much of a list, only to know a great deal of things that had failed to work for him – that was what he meant.

He didn’t finish the sentence, but he had a feeling Dr Lecter – Hannibal, such a strange name - would figure out his secrets anyway, if not now then when they had actually gotten started, and Will’s inadequacies became more evident.

“Shall I show you the apartment now, then? It will help you know what to expect, if you would prefer that to be the case before our first proper session. If we are agreed?”

“You don’t mind?” Will swallowed. He’d not imagine it would be an option. “Um. Sure. Great. And yes, agreed. This seems… as much as one could hope for.”

Hannibal raised his eyebrow a moment, as if – accurately enough – not feeling certain he’d heard a compliment.

But he got up and – holding doors open for Will as he went - lead the way back through to the hallway, outside and then round to a second front door, concealed around the side of the building. That opened onto a miniscule hall space from which rose a flight of stairs, simply carpeted in something thin and grey, the walls white and without decoration. Up the stairs was another door, and then the flat, equally impersonal, all of it white gloss and matte magnolia, generic framed black and white photographs and unobtrusive light fixtures.

“The rental market is easier without too much… personality,” Hannibal explained, having clearly read Will’s expression too well. “Tenants change things, but it has to be returned to this state at the end of the contract. I let it unfurnished, so there is not much here, but I will see that we have all we need here for our next meeting. There is hot water and so forth – you will be able to shower here, I will provide a towel.”

Shower, because he might need to shower after the activities of their session, Will thought, and tried to suppress a little quiver that ran through him with the thought. He’d almost forgotten that that was what this was all about, with Hannibal being so brisk and businesslike, more like he was selling the place to Will than suggesting they undertake primal acts of power exchange within it.

“As you can see, there’s a functioning kitchen,” Hannibal was continuing, opening doors off the central corridor. “Living room,” he indicated an entirely empty space, “bedroom with en-suite and then another bathroom. There’s a second bedroom also, but as you can see the space in that is sadly restricted, I think some tenants use it simply to dry their laundry.”

Will, slightly overwhelmed, folded his arms and tried to come up with a response. “And, um, which room were you imagining us using for, um…?”

Hannibal looked as if he was surprised it was even a question. “In the living room, was my thought.”

Will flushed. He hadn’t at all meant to imply that they would use a bedroom together – even if such a suggestion was less loaded when the room in question was empty and had only the name. It had been conversation for conversation’s sake. That said, why shouldn’t he ask that question? For all he knew Hannibal liked administering his spankings over the toilet or even whilst…

“About that hard limits list,” Will said.

“Indeed.” Hannibal gave a small nod. “It must be attended to. But first, if I may, there is something I would like to ask to do with you on this occasion.”

“Yeah?” Will licked his dry lips, finding the metallic, bloody taste of the split in the bottom one from where he’d chewed too often and too hard. Hannibal had been pretty reasonable so far, Will would admit, and if he really wanted to put Will over his knee tonight, then Will figured he could put up with it.

Hannibal cleared his throat. “Let me give you a meal?”

And although Will was still suspecting some sort of double entendre right up until the point where Hannibal took his cleared bowl of chocolate mousse away and handed him a coffee, that was what happened. Hannibal went out down the road to the nearest bodega, came back twenty minutes later with two bulging bags and proceeded to prepare a Spanish omelette that made Will want to moan with delight, some fried mushrooms on toast dripping with olive oil and splendid with garlic, and then the aforementioned mousse, conjured somehow from block chocolate and two eggs, all in the unprepossessing surrounds of the rental flat’s kitchen.

‘There,” Hannibal said, with something that sounded almost like pride, as Will sat back and drank the coffee (made in a French press Hannibal fetched up from his office, and Will had always supposed that there wouldn’t be a difference but he could taste it, easily). “You needed feeding, I think.”

Will only shrugged, but couldn’t help appreciating the benign indolence of feeling really full, and on food that tasted good and had been a genuine pleasure to eat.

“Thanks,” he said, and took another sip of coffee, then put the cup down and tried to rally himself to something a bit better. “That was… very good.”

Hannibal’s grin widened. “Excellent. I think many of our sessions should follow this mold, perhaps?”

Will frowned. “But this isn’t… Would this begin to qualify? Would you call this being a Dom and Sub? Surrendering to our instincts or whatever the hell it’s supposed to do for us?”

“I want to give you what you need, and you needed this. I confess I had no plans to cook for my prospective submissive partner – I would have brought in better ingredients if so – but it is a thing I often do for acquaintances. And I enjoyed it.” Hannibal shrugged, and got up from the table, taking both their cups over to the sink. His face was perfectly composed, but Will wondered if that hadn’t been almost a flash of hurt.

“No, I didn’t mean…” Will got up; found himself going over to Hannibal’s side. “It was really nice. I liked it. I just… I thought I was supposed to be the one doing things for you?”

“It would appear that this was something for me,” Hannibal said firmly, and starting to run the hot water.  

“Well, I’m glad.” Will went and rummaged in the grocery bags for the dishcloth he’d seen whilst helping unpack earlier, and went to stand by the sink, ready to take the cleaned dishes for drying.

He really was glad, he found. Standing there, food in his belly, so much less worried about entering a session partnership than he had even hours before, he felt about as good as he had in a while.

“If you want to cook for me again, I’d love that,” he said, slowly. “But we can do… more. I know you’ll have seen from when we went over the list just now that I don’t have the longest approved kinks list, but you know, within that… It’s OK.”

Hannibal didn’t say anything at first, but his movements over the sink had paused. “OK,” he said, finally, and gave Will a slight smile.

“Not that…” Will bit his lip, suddenly afraid again. “Not that I would tell you what to do, or, I just thought that you might think that I didn’t, that I wouldn’t… you’ve been trying your best with me and…”

“Will,” Hannibal said, and put out his hand, slowly and deliberately, so that the wet, sudsy fingers encircled Will’s wrist, very lightly.

Will drew in a sharp breath. It was like the first hit of caffeine to the bloodstream, of chocolate to the tongue.

“Will. We shall work this out, between us. It is only such simple courtesies that we wish from each other.”

And Hannibal took his hand away again.

“Now,” he said, “shall I put some leftovers in a box for you to take home?”

- - -