avegetariancannibal:

Previously

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(attempting to tag everyone who asked to be tagged)

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Will couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing.

“You prayed to Apollo,” he repeated carefully, “to make us teenagers again?”

“Not per se,” Hannibal said. “After we discussed how we each lost our virginity in less than ideal circumstances, I made a wish as I tossed the coin into the fountain that we could have had our first times with one another. It was more of a stray thought. It seemed scientifically unlikely that anything would come of it. The cup doesn’t gather itself up again and the hymen doesn’t tend to return.”

“We don’t have hymens,” Will pointed out. 

“Metaphorical hymens,” Hannibal clarified.

Will looked at himself in the mirror again. There was no point arguing the impossibility of what had happened when it had, in fact, already happened. He supposed there was a chance they were both hallucinating, but he knew what hallucinating felt like, and this was different. He reached up to touch his face and hold back his long hair. The scar on his forehead was gone. The bridge of his nose was as straight as it had been before it got broken at the police academy.

“I’d forgotten how damned pink I was all the time,” he muttered. “Why was I always blushing? I look like I just ran five miles.”

“You look like an angel,” Hannibal said.

Will rolled his eyes. “If this is really happening, and a Greek god that I didn’t think existed actually granted your prayers, then I’m 19 again.”

“And I must be 16,” Hannibal chimed in. “Look, we’re the same height for once.”

Hannibal cozied up to him, shoulder to shoulder, studying both their reflections. He had the beginnings of a mustache on his upper lip, a wispy little thing barely more than dark peach fuzz, but it was more than Will could say for himself.

“I guess the good news is nobody will recognize us,” Will said. “Jack Crawford wouldn’t think to took for schoolboy versions of us. Holy shit, I can see your eyebrows!”

Hannibal took hold of his arms and turned him until they were facing one another. “Will. The good news is so much more than simply hiding from the FBI! Think bigger—much bigger.”

Will looked at Hannibal’s eager, earnest face, with its forehead speckled by small points of acne, and he laughed at the sudden realization. “We get to relive our whole lives without the mistakes!”

Now it was Hannibal’s turn to roll his eyes. “Yes, yes, but I mean even bigger than that.” He clasped Will’s hands. “We get to make my wish come true! We get to have sex for the first time—with one another.”

“Wow, you really are 16,” Will said.

Hannibal blinked. He blushed even pinker than Will. “I-I mean, only if you want to.” He started to pull away. "Do you? Want to?“

To answer him, Will look Hannibal’s greasy face in his hands and planted a kiss on his disproportionately wide mouth. Hannibal responded by sticking out his tongue until it touched Will’s palate, then flopped it about with all the convulsive vigor of a freshly landed trout.

Will, still holding onto his face, pushed him away a bit.

“Is something wrong?” Hannibal asked, his lips glossy with way too much spit.

Will tried to think of a tactful way to put it. “Have you ever kissed anyone before?”

“Of course I have,” Hannibal said. “What kind of silly question is that? I’m 50!”

Will rephrased it. “Had you ever kissed anyone by the time you were this age?”

The blush returned to Hannibal’s cheeks. “No, I suppose not.”

Will cast around in his memory, trying to find whatever recollection he had of intimate encounters he’d had over the years. He’d never exactly been a player, but he knew he’d slept with people. He’d been married, for Christ’s sake! Hadn’t he? When he tried to delve into any of those memories, they retreated from him. The only incidents he could recall were kissing two girls in high school, which was the extent of his “experience” before the time he finally… he finally did what? Something sexual happened in college, didn’t it?

“I can’t remember anything sexy past this age,” he sighed. “Can you?”

Hannibal let his eyes flutter closed for a few moments. “In a way, yes, but it feels like something I read about and mostly forgot.”

“I guess that explains why you’re such a terrible kisser,” Will said.

Hannibal gasped so hard, his mullet swayed with indignation.

(to be continued)