Will had not grown up in a home where regular meals with everyone gathered around the table were a habit, or a tradition. That was the positive word for habit, wasn't it? Tradition was steeped in connotations of love, pride, joy…habit meant what? Habit meant it was something you trained yourself to do. Before Hannibal, eating was a habit for Will Graham. When he met Hannibal it turned into a luxury and then after (after what he was not sure, not even he could peg down when exactly things started to change—when everything changed) food became a tradition. Finding cheap gas station meals made up of stale hot dog buns and plastic cakes in his shitty, freezing car was a habit he would have been happy to forget, like much of his childhood. Though it had drastically changed since Hannibal's entrance into his life, eating was still no hobby for Will like it was for his companion, but waking early to the smell of steaming coffee and trudging down to sit in their airily lit kitchen was not a tradition Will could complain about. Though the morning after Hannibal had ushered Will away from his room in a thick robe with a faux-oblivious gaze and a fatherly pat on the back, Will wished very much to skimp on the morning tradition they had established.

He woke with the acidic taste of rejection in his mouth that gave his gut that horribly wobbly feeling that brought him back to his first year of lecturing, sitting in his office with liquid panic slicking his hair to his forehead and standing in front of his podium with crumpled tissues dampened by palm sweat obscuring his notecards. If he avoided breakfast there would be no misconstruing why he had entered Hannibal's room late in the night wearing only underwear, not that there was any denying that it was a sexual advance in the first place but Hannibal was leading him in a world of pretend. They pretended they were innocent, pretended they were married, pretended they didn't want more from each other. Will had attempted to stop pretending, he'd stripped himself of his costume and asked Hannibal to ground him in reality, but he had been denied. Chapped bottom lip growing steadily drier between his teeth, Will rolled to his side to read the clock on the bedside table. 6:57. In three minutes it would be expected for him to be in his pajamas at the island in the kitchen eagerly awaiting coffee, so he would be.

The wood was cool beneath his feet as he gingerly slipped on his worn sweatpants, a grey shirt, and wool scarf. He hesitated momentarily with his fingers pressed against the plush of the navy robe hanging over the desk chair. His closet had greatly expanded since they'd "married." Any argument he made was mute with Hannibal's simplified justification of the copious amount of clothes that seemed to appear in Will's closet, "We are married, William, I won't have my husband leaving the house looking as if he's wandered out of a soup kitchen. No sensible husband would." That explanation, of course, had sparked an argument that lasted a grand forty-five minutes and ended with Hannibal dramatically placing his hands on the table in concession, "William, they are gifts. I don't recall myself ordering you to wear anything. By all means, do as you please." Since then, Will had made a point of dressing as he pleased and then adding an accessory to accommodate Hannibal's taste; not that he necessarily had an issue with Hannibal's taste, he would even admit to liking the clothes if the conversation arose again, but it was a matter of grounding himself that he couldn't explain. If he was deprived of a touch that would help him stay centered in himself, if he was to be coldly shut out from the one man who had made him feel like him, then by all means he was going to continue dressing as if he had no one to keep him grounded. "Don't make a home in another person's heart, you never know when they'll lose the capacity to have one," Molly had told Walter once in front of Will, he'd felt his world stutter to a stop as she nonchalantly went back to the plain spaghetti she'd prepared.

"Good morning, Will. How are you feeling?" Hannibal's back was to him as Will dragged himself from his thoughts and sat at the stool with blue ceramic mug in front of it. Will had picked out the mugs as a sort of house warming gift for Hannibal and brought them home with the nervousness he used to only reserve for conversations with Alana. Hannibal had pulled one mug out with a studious gaze before giving a tight lipped smile and murmuring which cabinet they belonged in.

"Fine, thanks. What're you making?" Hannibal turned and his eyes kept the barrier in place, directly behind the familiar examining gaze of his doctor. Perhaps, Will thought with the iron-taste of chipped lip in his mouth, if they kept the conversation normal then things could continue on their regular path and he could find a new way of asking Hannibal for confirmation that their lives were more than the superficial exterior they had created as a way of remaining incognito.

"Apricot crepes and eggs, I imagine you're hungry after your bout of exercise last night." The world snapped into a vivid new version of reality and Will nearly dropped the mug.

"My…exercise?"

"You were sleep walking, again William, I thought you would remember... I found you standing in my bedroom shivering at about one in the morning—do you not remember?" Hannibal leaned against the counter, the jar of jam he had pulled from the fridge forgotten as he stared intently at Will. His teeth grit and he wondered if the twitch in Hannibal's jaw was from the grating sound or the sudden change of energy in the room.

"I wasn't sleepwalking, you know that."

"What were you doing then, Will?" The steadiness of his voice infuriated Will, sent him jumping to his feet and slapping his palms on the marble counter with a resonating thwack.

"You know what I was doing!" A split in his consciousness brought him quickly back to Jack Crawford yelling in the men's bathroom, crimson water under a cold sink, the twist and screech of rubber soles on linoleum flooring. Then he focused on Hannibal, on the small tug at the side of his mouth that barely hinted at a smile.

"Tell me what you think you were doing, Will." The fucker was amused by his outburst, Will seethed.

"Your crepes are burning." Hardly glancing away, Hannibal flicked his wrist and the crepes slid onto their respective plates before returning to his pensive, leaning stance across from Will.

"Tell me what you think you were doing." It was a challenge then, hardly disguised as one of their faux-therapy sessions that Hannibal enjoyed randomly dusting into their conversations. Their silences could never be defined as "lulls in conversation." Their silences were filled, intensely, constantly, with the silent energy of their perspective thoughts.

"Stop shutting me out, Hannibal. Don't play games with me, you know I wasn't sleepwalking!" His breath was taut, carefully measured as his throat constricted and he heard himself yell out, "We're supposed to be married!" His voice echoed in the white kitchen and he found himself burning his tongue as he attempted to guzzle down more coffee, in a grounding exercise to occupy his hands. It's the first time he's said the sentence out loud. It sounds weird in his voice; like rain splashing the mud out of puddles, the reality of the sentence is there but washed away easily by the façade Hannibal has crafted for them.

"Not legally."

"I didn't realize the law suddenly held much precedence over you." Anger bubbled again in Will's skin as the conversation sliced open a cathartic vein in him and he suddenly found himself able to categorize his feelings. That open door roped forward the realization that he felt like he did all those years ago, sometime before he was released from his holding cell when he could feel the itchy, uncomfortable presence of Hannibal in his mind and the vague, dull thudding that was the lack of his own voice.

"Don't be petty, William, not when intelligence fits you so neatly." There was no doubt in Will's mind that he was being antagonized but the sensation of his tongue being cut out and presented to him on a silver platter brought his hand swiping sideways and the coffee mug cascading to shatter against the white of the kitchen tile. Blue ceramic bled brown blood and Hannibal's concentrated gaze remained there for a long, withheld beat before turning back to a breathless Will.

"Do you feel better?" Hannibal's question had Will running his coarse hands over his face and pushing down all memories that this argument brought to the surface, of how many times he wanted to scream that question in Hannibal's face when he couldn't, the feel of Abigail's hot blood spraying over him and fogging his glasses. Viciously, he reached out across the counter and grabbed Hannibal's fingers. It was a desperate, painful clutch and he was momentarily shocked by how willingly the elegant digits moved away from the marble counter and into his frantic, trembling grasp. He felt shaken, barely stable with the unreliable life float bobbing in front of him, hardly in his grasp.

"The cup isn't putting itself back together, Hannibal. We are free from whatever you're worried about; I'm sick of your sulking. We're married. Now, you can start acting like it or live in denial—that's your prerogative, but you will not convince me that I'm crazy because you can't handle the reality you've crafted for yourself." Any other day he would have stomped away, but the veil being lifted from his companion's eyes froze Will to the spot. The veil swirled away like milk in tea and left a much more human Hannibal staring at a quivering Will, forehead slick with a sheen of sweat and the veins in his arms protruding with the failed effort of restraint.

"I didn't realize you wanted this marriage, Will. I would hate for you to feel obligated to anything." It was a half-truth, Will knew, but one that he would accept over the whole-lie he had been receiving previously. But then there was an admittance from his side, of wanting their marriage, if he did not refute his husband's words.

"You should know me well enough by now to know that I'm not accustomed to acting under obligation." There, he had admitted it, a part of him had been accepting for the cliché weight to be lifted off his chest. If that had occurred, it only left him feeling as if he would float away in uncertainty, his knees had turned to jelly.

"Have you ever married out of a sense of obligation before?" Their hands were still entwined, Will's cool fingers clutching Hannibal's white ones savagely.

"I loved Molly."

"I see." It was then that he removed himself from Will's grip and took a moment to straighten the apron at his waist. "Well, William, as you can imagine I have no qualms with treating this like a real marriage if that is your wish."

"Good." He felt himself nodding curtly, struggling to breathe again, his lungs shrunken and fileted in his aching ribs.

"Good, then we're agreed: a real marriage, no secrets, no ambiguity—complete openness and honesty." There was a crack as an egg was opened on the frying pan followed by the pop of the jam jar opening in preparation for the crepes.

"You make wedding vows sound like a threat." Will's chuckle was strained, throat dry as Hannibal glanced up from his preparation with the toothy smile and admiring stare that Will had missed, longed for, agonized over for the past few ugly months. The kitchen felt too small suddenly, as if Hannibal had chosen to expand his presence and allow his charisma to fill the white room, barely leaving room for Will's quieting breaths. He was lightheaded at the picturesque sight that Hannibal, his husband, made standing over their crackling breakfast.

"You're not sure that they aren't." If Will had blinked he would have missed the wink, he wished he hadn't broken the mug out of a sudden need to occupy his hands.

"I'll go get the broom." It was meant to be a confirmation of their peace but it came out as a frigid attempt at evading any intimacy in their conversation.

"Excellent." Will turned his back on the painfully poignant image of Hannibal spreading the jam knife over the blonde crepes. "After breakfast I'll help you move your things into our bedroom."

Shaky fingers fumbled with the door knob leading to the storage closet and Will could have sworn he heard Hannibal's light chuckle from the kitchen. A real marriage it would be.