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The sodium, thickened, seas, tongued viciously at his wounds. Hannibal squeezed his eyes shut, his powerful arms cutting at the taciturn waters. His survival instincts went into full affect as he tore through the vast ocean. He could just see the pale moonlight casting its ivory beams down onto the water’s surface, the moon rippled and swayed with the dancing body of liquid, flirtatiously lending its light to Hannibal and guiding him to the surface. The second his lungs caught the air he coughed, vomited, breathed in a haggard breath, vomited again. Weakly, Hannibal treaded the waters, desperate to keep himself afloat. The color red bloomed around him, bloody tendrils marrying into the water and then thinning out into tiny, smoke-like, wisps. Hannibal was bleeding, that much was for certain, his wounds burned insidiously with each jostle of the waters setting his injured body ablaze. Squinting, he’d discovered that shore wasn’t too far off, he could see land, bobbing up and down as it were, well, the land wasn’t bobbing, Hannibal was, with the ebb and flow of the rough sea. Cautiously, he glanced about himself, wondering if he’d spot Will? 

His fractured mind harkened back to that one, particular, stint in time when Will had pressed his lean body into Hannibal’s, his scent juxtaposed with the scent of blood accosting his keen nose, sending him into a frenzy of dizzying passion. He hadn’t been paying attention when Will had jettisoned them both off of that bluff. 

Will, the curly-headed, addled-brained, opportunist. 

Will, the manipulative, knife-tongued, traitor. 

Will, the liar.

Hannibal hadn’t spotted him, hadn’t made out the shape of his body jouncing about amongst the wicked seas. Was he under? Now this whole situation was entirely rude. Hannibal had never intended for nature’s whiles to break down Will’s body, the breaking of Will was entirely Hannibal’s luxurious enterprise. Hannibal had, had, his fill of life’s impositions and after all, he’d survived, surely he deserved a souvenir? Drawing in a sharp breath, Hannibal dove back down into the wrathful depths. He’d find Will and even if he didn’t, his eyes and his bones would.

The imp. 

Something grabbed at Hannibal’s arm and he grabbed right back, impulse took him, it could have been a predator, however at this point Hannibal was feeling so militant that nothing seemed to deter him. Whatever had grabbed Hannibal suddenly let go, almost as if it had realized that it was Hannibal it was grabbing. Hannibal wrapped his hand around what felt like a wrist and pulled. He sensed the regret radiating off of Will as he squeezed him. It was Will, Hannibal already knew before he even knew, he didn’t need to see. Forcing his way up to the surface for a second time was certainly odious. Not only did his own body hurt, but he was also sufficiently weakened by Will’s dead weight, dragging behind him. This was insipid. Hooking his arms under Will’s armpits, Hannibal exerted his entire being into breaking the sea’s warbling crest. The two men breached the surface, Hannibal roughly grabbing at Will’s chin to keep his head tilted upwards and above the buoyant waters. He’d heard a cough that wasn’t his own and instinct told him to praise the tiny success, perhaps by pressing a kiss to Will’s hellish forehead? Hannibal quickly shirked that impulse.

He’d thought he’d felt himself die a handful of times. His heart tossing itself against his chest like a wet sponge. Shore seemed like nothing more than a Satanic barrage and yet, his body lurched forward, as the sea slammed Will and himself onto rocky land. Their bodies screamed in unison, Will passing out from the pain. Hannibal pushed himself off of Will, falling onto his aching back with a thud, rocks cutting, prodding, into his abused flesh. Hannibal closed his eyes, ribs splintering with each labored breath. The bawdy sea forgave them it seemed. The two had air to choke on and gravel at their backs. Without looking, Hannibal slapped his broad palm against the pulse point on Will’s neck, thick fingers prodding for that frantic thud, thud, thudding, quick, like that of a frightened rabbit. The dormant physician in Hannibal simply needed the confirmation of life from Will and Will had shamelessly given it to him. Hannibal then arrested himself with sleep, swallowing back his very spirit, as it attempted to escape passed his lips.

The alabaster sunlight torched their bodies as their spines bent uncomfortably over the rocks beneath them. Hannibal awoke to a sight that he hadn’t at all anticipated. The red sea cleaved Will’s stomach in twain, hot blood oozing in gobs onto the sun-dried rocks. Hannibal sat upright, his head nearly compressing in on itself at the sudden movement. Mechanically, Hannibal removed the shirt he’d been wearing from his body, he took the bottom hem of the clothing item between his teeth and with his hand he tore a strip off of it, he repeated this process several times over. 

Time lost the two and then found them again as Chiyoh took both broken men into her breast, securing them somewhere aloof, before leaving Hannibal to lick both his wounds and Will’s. But before she’d left, she’d implanted the notion into Hannibal’s head that he should slit Will’s throat. Hannibal had nursed the idea even prior to Chiyoh and he was still nursing it, however, he felt that it’d be far too convenient for Will to simply kill him when he was already nearly dead.

Will’s vision went gauzy as he attempted to rationalize the pair of hands that came down upon him. An indistinct face peaked between his knees, before his legs were then forced flat against a cool, metallic, surface. Will felt his brain dying inside of his head, his body leaving him entirely as it was carried away in a cloud of fog. The haze was deliriously pleasant and nothing felt connected to anything. His eyes must have escaped their twin hollows, floating away, tethered only by the optic nerves as they knotted and tangled about one another. Will blinked rapidly, only to find that his eyes were right where they should be. His hips were lifted off of the metal beneath as hands pulled at the waistband of his boxers. The fabric slid down the expanse of his legs and despite all of Will’s uncertainty, he understood that the procedure was strictly clinical. Will’s modesty had been obscuring the drooling maw located just beneath his naval. 

His curly head lolled to one side, cheek kissing metal.

Chapter Text

His spirit left him in wisps with each of his dying sighs; he could see it, dancing like smoke amongst the rafters, swirling around playfully in the stale air. His blue eyes glittered with a kind of childlike amusement, as he witnessed the essence of himself so thoroughly fill up a space, that his naked body was almost completely consumed with the sense of belonging. He knew that Hannibal could smell it; track his scent down like a ‘schweisshund’, although the man never tried to suffuse it, merely follow it. His—Will Graham’s—spirit had been cultivated over time into a reduction, the elements that made him all boiled down into a hot, simmering, liquid, rich and fluid. It smelled like the Rose’ wine that Will and Hannibal had communed over, it smelled like the authentic, leather, chairs, the two men sat across from each other in, it smelled like the intimate meals that they’d shared, it smelled like gun metal, it smelled like a sweet sickness—sticky, heady—it smelled like rot—decay, it smelled like black-blood, dried down, crackling off of a lean, pale, naked, body, alabaster skin kissed by a fully waxed moon, engulfing the feral form in a barbaric kind of light.

Perhaps Will was a tad smug about it all? Perhaps he felt contented in knowing that his authority was pervasive? He never fought Hannibal for dominance, not really, he fought Hannibal for equilibrium, reciprocity, he fought Hannibal for his right to be fickle. He never wanted to usurp Hannibal, he simply wanted to groom and cultivate himself, free of the idle plaques that Jack Crawford had so meticulous embossed onto plated led and attempted to weld to Will’s very brow. Hannibal had his own plaque of sorts for Will, though it wasn’t fashioned out of cheap metal, Hannibal’s plaque was a smile—now pried open into a grin—which stretched across Will’s flat belly, curving up at the corners. This particular plaque betrayed a sense of carnal ownership, not too dissimilar to Jack’s corporate ownership over Will, just different—both equally abusive. Hannibal mounted all of his plaques on Will, as if to say: mine. Had that been his sole objective, to mark, to proverbially piss on Will’s leg as though he were a fire hydrant?

“Childish...” Will muttered to himself, his hands folded across his chest. He looked like a Renaissance painting. Black, silken, sheets, flowed about his body with the consistency of a tempered stream, his pale neck curving over the goose-feather pillow beneath him, black, velvet in texture. Brown curls laid wildly across his brow, lacquered in some kind of unassuming oil that smelt of honey, nutmeg, lavender. His form was entirely bare aside from the silken, inky, black, sheet, that collected into a puddle between his legs, almost as if it had been placed there, just so, to serve as a kind of lewd censorship for the sake of the painting. His left leg had been suspended, stagnant and held secure by a kind of ribbon, thick, ox-blood-red, the ribbon wrapped itself about his ankle and calf. His leg looked grotesque as it idled there, supported by a hanging bracket which had been newly vested to a support beam on the ceiling. The flesh was unwrapped, save for the red ribbon and if Will strained, he could just spot where the bone jutted out from the skin like a knife tearing through the fatty parts of an uncooked stake. The bone from his leg caught the light of day, a light that it was never meant to know, it looked like a shank, sharp and jagged. Blood weaved down the expanse of his suspended leg, dripping lazily along his flesh, stopping at the juncture of where his inner thigh met his pelvis, before continuing its pursuit down the curvature of his ass and dripping onto the inky, current, of sheets, which swallowed it whole.

A purplish, hunk, of injured and unattended flesh, strung up to slowly rot. Will wagered that it would most likely need to be amputated, however, his system had been heavily plied with illicit narcotics, thus, he couldn’t exactly stir himself up enough to care. Although, he did startle upon the sudden realization of an abrupt presence at his side. The presence didn’t linger, instead it shifted to the bottom of Will’s bed. Knees mounted the submissive surface of the mattress and a body slotted itself between Will’s legs, forcing him to spread them. Discomfort swelled in his throat and he swallowed it back down, blinking rapidly, clearly somewhat offended by the intrusive act. Hannibal’s head was level with Will’s stomach and he winced slightly as Hannibal pressed a kiss to the bandaged mouth across his belly. Hannibal then rested his chin on Will’s stomach, his gaze burning a path between Will’s ribs and pectorals.

“ '...An infinite and endless liar...an hourly promise breaker...' ” Hannibal mumbled smoothly from his position between Will’s legs. Will angled his head to the side in response, his brows furrowed.

“ 'All’s Well That Ends Well'. ” Will offered dryly.

“ 'Act 3, Scene 6'. ” Hannibal said, smiling his boyish smile, which reached his eyes and made them almost twinkle. Will was unamused, this side of Hannibal seldom amused him. Raising his hand, he tapped his fingers against Will’s outer thigh to one of the many songs he’d composed on his harpsichord. “I delight, you tolerate.” Will attempted to shift underneath the other male, feeling quite discomfited with the knowledge that his private area was becoming all too familiar with the texture of Hannibal’s cable-knit sweater.

“At the moment, I am not feeling particularly tolerant, Hannibal.” Will stated tightly. Hannibal stopped playing Will’s leg with his fingers, instead, he simply smirked, before resting the side of his face against Will’s stomach.

“You’ve had a sperm-vessel and a wife between your brackets.” Hannibal mused.

“More like I’ve been between theirs.” Will corrected.

“You’ve been penetrated unconventionally.”

“If one could use the human brain as a flesh-light.”

“That’s crass, Will.” Hannibal chided. Annoyance weighed heavy against Will’s tongue as he summoned up his next retort.

“And…what exactly do you call this?”

“This? I call this being intimate.”

“I always thought that your particular iteration of intimacy, often manifested itself in the shape of a knife or a compact, circular, saw?” Will drawled, his irritation punctuating each of his words.

“It certainly can and it has.” Hannibal conceded, not shifting an inch from between Will’s thighs.

“This level of domesticity does not amuse me, in fact, I rather prefer the circular saw.” Hannibal did move away in response to Will’s most recent jab, although his facial features remained full of mirth and mischief. He got off of the bed entirely, opting to prop his forearm on the headboard as he leaned his body against it.

“You wound me.” Hannibal said, although his tone was playful.

“I am not your Bedelia.” Will warned darkly, his lip curling as he spoke.

“Even my Bedelia is no longer my Bedelia, Will. She’s yours as well.” A snort left Will in response to the perverse implication.

“I’m afraid you’ll be sat alone at the dinner table for that particular meal.”

“Oh?”

“I’d prefer for my meat to be less bitter and shrill.”

“That isn’t very nice.”

“Neither is the image of you flossing your teeth with her blonde hair.”

“Now, now.” Hannibal said passively, tapping Will’s injured leg, which would have sent nausea-inducing, shock-waves, straight into the pit of his stomach, had he not been so heavily medicated. Instead, Will grunted, sharply inhaling air through his nose. “Was your own wife this taciturn?”

“No. She was always very reasonable.”

“Was she reasonable enough to lose her husband to Hannibal Lector?”

“She was reasonable enough to lose her husband to a workplace hazard.”

“Am I a workplace hazard?”

“You were, now you’re nothing more than a ghost that breathes, eats and sleeps.”

“And what does that make you?”

“That makes me your haunt.”

“Judging by the looks of you, it appears that I might be one, irascible, tenant.”

“Are you boasting?”

“Of course not.” A sigh left Hannibal and Will’s cut jawline ticked. “Chiyoh advised that I slit your throat.” He offered suddenly, curious as to know what Will’s response might be.

“She is a very shrewd woman; why didn’t you?” Will questioned, his muscles slowly unclenching in reaction to the change of subject. Will always felt much more comfortable around Hannibal when they remained between the chink in the wall of their mutual, unresolved, trauma; Will defending his very right to breathe and Hannibal waterboarding him with a corrupt sort of philosophy, that tasted like the dead fetus of a rare bird.

“You asked me to save you.”

“No. You sought me out because your specific, brand, of pathology, fosters inbuilt codependence. You are patently incapable of being alone in a spacial sense, you always need to have someone adjacent to you, an ass to fill the seat across from you at the fucking dinner table.”

“And are you the ass?”

“I’m…an ass…amongst all the other asses…”

“You’re selling yourself quite short and frankly, I’m offended.”

“Please, Hannibal, at the moment I’m the shiniest toy you’ve got, that’s why I’m still here.” Will spat, as he attempted to keep his head from lolling off to one side out of sheer exhaustion. The arm that had flanked the headboard above Will’s curls, retracted. Hannibal turned away from Will and followed the beam of dust particles that guided him to the bay window. He held his hands behind his back, his scarred, wrists, just barely visible beneath the sleeves of his sweater.

“I thought about taking your advice, I truly did.” Hannibal said distantly. “…About…dying…I thought about allowing myself to die on your terms. I thought about that watery tomb at the bottom of the seabed and I thought about laying next to you there…”

“Your ego would never allow for you to die on my terms.” Will uttered in an almost bored tone, clearly unfazed by Hannibal’s supposed vulnerability.

“Nor would yours allow for you to die on mine.”

“You could have just left me none-the-wiser, you could have allowed me to believe that I killed you, you could have terminated my obligation to you, right then and there.”

“You know just as well as I, that your stubborn body would have kept you floating and your equally stubborn and equally fierce, eyes—your hunter’s eyes—would have kept you searching until you found me.”

“There wasn’t and isn’t any concession between us. I just…I just wanted it to end…not even because I hated you, but because I was just so tired.” Will tried to suffuse the hitch in his voice, but to no avail. Hannibal turned to face Will once again, allowing his arms to fall at his sides. Pushing up his sleeves over the swells of his forearms, Hannibal joined Will at his bedside, his palm smoothing over Will’s forehead in a doting fashion.

“Then sleep. The World already thinks that you are dead, so allow yourself to be dead to it, even if it is only temporary. I’ve felt your tiredness, like a wet, wool, blanket, I know how much your body must ache. There is no leverage to be gained from keeping you tired, I never wanted that for you from the start, but your fatigue was a necessary fixture of our relationship so that in time, you would come to understand that my arms and ears aren’t simply painted on.” Hannibal soothed, watching Will’s eyes slide closed, as though his very lids were weighted down with led. He didn’t miss the faint tears that streaked Will’s cheeks, a sign of temporary surrender and eternal defeat.

Chapter Text

Time was a dainty, little, thing, ever fleeting and ever elusive for those who needed more of it. Bedelia knocked back her fifth shot of whiskey. At the moment, she was so intoxicated that her eyes were practically swimming in the robust, amber, colored, liquid. She’d found him at her doorstep, thoroughly pleasant as always, though he did sport a mighty gash across his brow, coupled with a split lip. In that moment, she crushed her heart’s desire to run, like she would crush a small, enfeebled, animal. He stepped through her threshold and he loomed over her, like a dead, gnarled and knotted tree, his branches scraping against her windowpane whilst she slept, shivering beneath her covers. They’d cavorted and then he proceeded to escort her into his care. Bedelia’s body, slight as it was, leaned heavily against his mass, due to her drunken stupor. She’d expected death, although she hadn’t expected to meet Death himself upon her arrival and yet there he was, sleeping, like a baby.

Bedelia stumbled into a maroon, wingback, chair, the tips of her fingers kneading the velvet fabric of it. Tiredly, she pinched the bridge of her nose, her eyes blinking rapidly, before squeezing them shut.

“My successor lives.” Bedelia uttered with a sigh of sarcasm.

“That he does.” Hannibal replied pleasantly.

“Am I to be a marital gift?”

Hannibal tilted his head in response, his brows raised, as he seemed to mull over Bedelia’s suggestion.

“He claimed that you wouldn’t suit his pallet.” Hannibal explained in an amused tone.

“He is either insulting my taste, or your cooking.”

“Perhaps both? He hasn’t been all that enthused with me lately.”

“I wasn’t very enthused with you on my wedding night, either.” Bedelia summoned darkly, her saucy eyes, peering at Hannibal through her fingers.

“Goodness, I’m beginning to feel as though I am in the doghouse.”

“Are you watching him through his window as he carries on without you, caught in the rain with a pitiable expression on your face? You hear his gentle laughs as he kisses his wife’s cheek, the both of them, celebrating the general absence of you.”

“And yet, when I call, he comes.”

“Then you are both dogs, that are more than deserving of each other.”

“And you are the game.”

“You’d do well to file down his teeth whilst he is in this state. It isn’t my flesh that he wants, Hannibal, it’s yours.”

“Dogs are pack animals.”

“Yes, but the pup might turn on his Alpha, once he outgrows his haunches.”

“When you sober up, Bedelia, I have a task for you.”

“It’s simple really, Will is often want to turn on his side when he sleeps, however, if he does so, he could risk splitting open his stitches. Your task is to keep him inert whenever he feels the compunction to move.” Hannibal explained around his mug of hand-pressed coffee. Bedelia clasped her own mug that had been given to her, between her quivering hands, as she listened to Hannibal’s instructions.

“I was never the mothering sort…” Bedelia muttered lowly, reaching out a hand to snap her fingers in front of Will’s sleeping face. He didn’t stir. Bedelia took his lack of response as an invitation to gently pry one of his eyelids open. “Ketamine?”

“How very observant of you.” Hannibal praised.

“He’s…in a K-Hole right now?” Bedelia questioned, her brows raised.

“Presumably.”

“I imagine that he is going to be quite militant when he wakes up.”

“He won’t wake.”

“Won’t he?” Bedelia asked confusedly, snapping to attention when she spotted Will trying to shift onto his side. She quickly pressed her hand to his sternum, gently forcing him onto his back.

“His leg.” Hannibal pointed to Will’s injured limb, which had recently been taken down from its sling and propped up onto a black, silk, pillow. “There’s no saving it, you see.” Bedelia’s eyes followed Hannibal’s finger, before launching off of it and landing onto the sight that was Will Graham’s leg. His limb had been wrapped tightly in a fat, silk, ribbon, which was red in color. Despite the ribbon, Bedelia could see the purpling tendrils of infection, snaking their way up the expanse of Will’s leg, as they attempted to choke out the still healthy flesh that remained. She kept her palm pressed flat against Will’s sternum, the ghost of her mothering sensibilities, either attempting to comfort Will, or herself.

“His teeth, Hannibal.” Bedelia warned, her tone severe.

“Let us focus our attention on one body part at a time, shall we?”

“You are forcing me to participate, but to his face I will maintain that I did nothing but observe.”

“I am saving his life and you are participating in the saving of his life.”

“You aren’t saving his life, you’re collecting your penance.”

“The meat is useless to me, Bedelia.”

“But the sentiment isn’t.”

Chapter Text

Hannibal was quite skilled in the practice of “unconventional penetration”. Throughout the course of their professionally unprofessional relationship, Hannibal had managed to bore several hollows into Will. He’d first began with Will’s brain, his distinct cadence, rolling off of his sharp tongue, his words, lasciviously licking around the outer shells of Will’s ears, before entering into his mind. The penetration of Will’s mind, had been his ultimate undoing and the rest was just a kind of foreplay.

The first incident of Hannibal’s patented, brand of physiological, penetration, took place on the evening prior to Will’s conviction of being the “Chesapeake Ripper” and the ultimate partition of his sanity. He recalled tenderly palming at his throat on the morning after, he recalled how sore it had been, the irritation becoming overtly evident with each time he swallowed. The procedure was of the esophageal variety. He’d distantly recalled an elongated tube of some kind, the apparatus had been violently shoved down his throat, the tight ring of tissue that lined his esophageal sphincter, spasming as it attempted to acclimate to the sudden intrusion. The memory was incredibly faint and it seemed more plausible in a demented fantasy, however, Will knew that it had been real. Abigail Hobbs’ ear had been forced from its acidic nest at the pit of Will’s stomach, the cartilage folding in half, squeezing back up his pipes, before unfurling and filling the inside of Will’s throat and becoming stuck there. Blearily, he’d hurled himself over his kitchen sink and vomited, in effort to dislodge the appendage. That particular incident sat ugly in Will’s gut, the sheer, violable, nature of the act, causing him to feel like a victim of sexual assault.

The second incident had been a lot more poignant for both Will and Hannibal. In 15th Century Japan, the “Sengoku” period, the concept of “Seppuku” had been a popular form of capital punishment for the Samurai. The act of Seppuku allowed for the Samurai to die with esteem and honor. Traditionally, the Samurai would perform Seppuku upon themselves with the use of a dwarf sword. They would then stab themselves in the stomach and proceed to drag the sword along the expanse of their bellies. Death via Seppuku was prolonged and agonizing, as such, the appointed executioner, would often cleave off the head of the Samurai with his own blade, as an act of mercy. In Will’s case, it could be argued that his injuries were not as a result of Seppuku, because they weren’t self-inflicted. Alternatively though, it could also be argued that Will crossing Hannibal Lecter in the way that he had, was in fact a form of suicide by proxy. It was Chilton that had posited the notion of Hannibal sparing Will’s life that night and it was Will that had rebuffed the theory, claiming that Hannibal had left him there to die. However, despite Will’s dogmatic assertion regarding his own mortality, there wasn’t a singular doubt in his mind that Hannibal intended for him to die with honor.

Will Graham had entered into the vortex of “Christmas Past”, his gate, deliberate, as he watched the events unfold before him on repeat. He witnessed every slight against him upon Hannibal’s behest. Beneath his feet, he could see the ongoings of “Christmas Present”, taking place just below. A blonde woman, her bones rattling beneath her thin skin, was holding him down, as a man proceeded to hack away at his necrotic leg with a compact, circular, saw. Will began to gently drift downwards, closer and closer to the scene, leaving the past above him. “The kiss of the saw is the truest form of intimacy.” Will heard those words as they vested themselves against the walls of his tacky, puss-filled, mind. He drifted lower and lower, until he eventually rejoined himself inside of his room, lulling himself to sleep with the sounds of a serrated blade, ripping through flesh and bone.

His eyes shot open, his body glossy with a sheen of sweat. Sweat gathered into the wells of his clavicle, his chest heaving, as his entire body convulsed uncontrollably. A pair of cool hands, held him at either side of his jaw, securing his head still. The front of his body had been wiped down with a towel. One of the hands at his jaw had deviated, opting to press itself gingerly against his forehead.

“He’s awake.” A female voice rasped.

“He must have grown bored of his K-Hole.”

“Put. Him. Out.” She hissed.

“Very well, the bone hasn’t been entirely halved and the viscera keeps retarding my blade.”

Will attempted to choke back a mouthful of vomit, not too dissimilar to Abigail’s ear, he’d felt the putrid sludge catch in his throat, expanding it uncomfortably, before forcibly escaping passed his lips and spilling out of the corners of his mouth. Bedelia urged Will into an upright position, so that he could properly vomit without asphyxiating himself. He aimed for Hannibal’s loafers, a punitive victory, that both he and Bedelia telepathically reveled in. She’d patted his naked, sweaty, back, with care, as he continued to unleash Hell’s furry onto Hannibal’s shoes, causing a backsplash of sick to coat the bottom hems of his pants. Hannibal stepped away from Will’s line of attack, his footfalls making noxious, squelching, noises, as he walked. Loading up a syringe full of some kind of damning liquid, Hannibal lifted up Will’s arm and injected him near his armpit. A long-suffering kiss was pressed to his slick forehead, before he was then lowered down onto his back.

The next morning, Hannibal had found Will in a docile state, upright on his bed. Will sat cross-legged, or at least he attempted to, one leg performing the action seamlessly, whilst the other was simply static due to how drastically it had been shortened. Will smoothed his fingers over the fresh bandaging, his toes twitching, as his teeth idly worried at the fingernails on his other hand. Hannibal felt the swell of compunction in his breast to tell Will that he looked pretty like that. His hair, sticky with stale sweat, his delicate nervous system, inflamed with stress, his eyes wild with hunger. Will quickly noted Hannibal’s presence and shot the other man a look of stoic disdain. The sentiment reminded Hannibal of the dismissive and yet thoroughly wild look, that a cadged wolf might give him. His hands itched to touch Will, to pry his legs apart again.

“How are your shoes?” Will questioned hoarsely.

“Thoroughly destroyed.” Hannibal replied pleasantly.

“You couldn’t honor that part of me, I suppose.” Will surmised, his eyes trained on what remained of his left leg.

“Not in the culinary sense, no.”

“Then you’ve done me a disservice, haven’t you, Hannibal?”

“I’d prefer to think that I honored the rest of your beautiful, body, by not allowing for the infection to spread.”

“Bedelia is here?”

“She is.”

“I can smell her pity, stinking up this room.”

“That isn’t her pity you smell.”

“Her vitriol then…”

“Or your vomit.”

“That too.” Will conceded unapologetically. Hannibal joined Will on his bed, politely taking a seat next to him. He didn’t miss the wincing expression on Will’s face, in response to the slight jostling of the mattress, nor did he miss the stuttering intake of breath.

“Your medication is wearing off.” Hannibal observed, to which Will nodded rapidly in acquiescence. Will’s eyes were trained on the small notepad that Hannibal held in his lap, in addition to the rather expensive and tasteful writing pen, that was perched atop the notepad. He watched, keenly, as Hannibal set the notebook and pen aside, placing the items next to him on the bed. He then procured a syringe that he’d always been holding— had he always been holding it? He held out his hand, motioning for Will to lend him his arm. Will obeyed, his eyes watching the pen as it rolled back and forth over the surface of the notepad. Will felt the needle prick his arm as liquid relief flowed into his ravaged system. A warm and pleasant, dizziness, set in and his body felt lax and fluid. The pen multiplied into three pens and then four, Will leaned his body forwards, heavily, before he was then bracketed by Hannibal’s arms.

“Will.”

He reached for the pen.

“Will.”

His fingers shakily toyed with the cool surface of the writing implement. He then suddenly felt two hands, firmly grab at his face.

“Thank you.” Hannibal uttered, holding Will’s face securely, so that he could meet his eyes.

“What?” Will questioned lazily.

“You have given me a rare gift.”

“The gift of cleaning up my vomit?” Will slurred.

“No.” Hannibal shifted on the bed, so that he was laying next to Will. He pulled Will towards himself, guiding Will’s cheek against his chest. “I am thanking you for giving me the rare gift of allowing me to hold you in my arms.”

“Allowing?” Will challenged in a sarcastic growl. That detracting bastard, he’d already guessed that Will had been gazing luridly at his slutty, glamorous, pen.

“Or perhaps I misunderstood your intentions?”

“If…I’m allowing this, than what exactly are you allowing?”

“I am not allowing anything, Will. I am merely encouraging.”

“Encouraging, what?”

“I am encouraging you to go along with your allowance of my holding you.”

“I like your pen.”

“I like it too.”

Chapter Text

Will Graham awoke to the gentle rise and fall of some living thing beneath him. The gash across his middle, his honor, burned. Will tenderly pressed his palm against his stomach, the slight movement, causing what was left of his leg, to throb in tandem with his injured belly, like a sadistic metronome. The golden rays of infant sunlight, typically stirred a sense of deep and solemn introspection within Will, however, on this particular morning, he just simply couldn’t be bothered to agonize over his post-prophetic mind; “Post-Prophetic”, due to his odd ability to decipher a killer’s hidden prophecy, shortly after it was carried out. Kind of a useless talent for any prophet to possess, but Jack Crawford had managed to gut a niche for Will, where his spiritual capabilities had been put to use.

Over the years, Will had cultivated feelings of tender bitterness, towards Jack Crawford. He respected the man, so much so, that he allowed himself to rely on Jack’s intuition regarding his mental health, above his own.

‘Jack speaks with such conviction and authority, surely he must possess a keenness about me that I am not privy to?’

‘Jack directs with such conviction and authority, surely he knows what my limitations are?’

‘Jack boasts with such conviction and authority about our friendship, surely he cares for my well-being?’

Oh, how Will wished he could—quite literally—kick himself for his hyper-idealism. In fact, if Hannibal hadn’t yet thrown out his severed leg, then perhaps he still could? Had Will vaguely attempted to posit Jack as a kind of “father-figure”, could that possibly be the reason why he was so babyishly trusting of him? What a humiliating notion, a desperate notion, a perverse notion, to presuppose that Jack ever thought of Will as anything more than a mutant-forensic-lab, on two legs?

An ancient hurt bubbled up inside of the festering hole where Will’s heart should have been….The only person in existence, that ever seemed to truly care about him in a reckless, self-sacrificing, sort of way, was Alana Bloom and even she couldn’t stop repeatedly bumping into her favorited corner of the box that she’d put Will into, like a tottering windup-toy.

Will was the perpetual victim of absolutely everything in Alana’s eyes. The woman would just assume blame the wind for Will’s spectacles skewing down the bridge of his nose, than blame his clumsy footing. Initially, Will found that facet of her pathology to be charming, over time though, he came to feel that her doting sentiments, only served to strip him of his masculinity.

Molly Graham of course cared for him, he supposed. He couldn’t make like he didn’t distantly enjoy the feeling of being a “figure-head” to his little family. Molly wasn’t at all clinical, instead, she was warm and messy. She was a mother and she loved like a mother, tempered with her inherent understanding of upholding the concept of mutual-respect. Her ruddy, smiling, face, betrayed a sense of healthful simplicity. She was the lingering effects of daily exercise and a balanced meal, personified. She was good for Will.

What the fuck happened?

Why was he here?

Did he seriously just trade in his delusions of “The American Dream” for Hannibal Lecter?

He was naked. His system, ravaged with illicit narcotics. His hair, tacky against his brow, as a result of sweating himself dehydrated. He was naked. The smile on his stomach was drooling blood and he could almost feel where his missing leg was, wrapped up neatly in parchment paper, entombed within an outdoor-freezer. He was naked. At his side and presumably asleep, lay the man responsible for it all.

Clearly Will had sufficiently back-burnered his whiplash and he was long overdue.

He’d left her, Molly, he’d left her behind and he didn’t feel a goddamn thing about it. Perhaps he pitied her? Did he really, or should she be thanking him for letting her live? There in lies the crux, she absolutely should be thanking him. He’d saved her from himself. Weaponized with this knowledge, Will supposed that he should retire any and all thoughts of Molly, after all, he’d spared her. He’d spared her due to the distant love that he’d maintained for her, in the way that he’d maintained love for a family pet. Will had been gracious enough to turn Molly loose, Hannibal hadn’t extended Will the same courtesy.

Something cool idled next to Will’s outer thigh. The item was oblong in shape. Reaching a hand down to feel for the object, Will was able to identify it as a pen of sorts, Hannibal’s pen, to be specific. It must have rolled into the slope of the mattress, created by Will’s body.

A dog would turn itself  loose if driven to do so; taking the pen into his hand, Will was certain of one thing: Hannibal, was a terrible pet owner.

Will hadn’t realized what he’d done until he’d vested his attention to the floor, next to his bedside. Hannibal was writhing on the swan-oak, his hand clasped around the pen that had been lodged into his neck. He watched as Hannibal struggled to stem the blood flow, without jostling the pen. He’d bleed out in no time. The entire affair had happened so quickly, the moment the pen met Will’s fingers, it sooner found itself jabbed into the sleeping neck of a man, who was far too cocky.

“The kiss of a Carbon-Fiber, Tombow, pen, is the truest form of intimacy.” Will drawled mockingly. He hadn’t expected Hannibal to retort, largely because he couldn’t. Someone did retort, however, their objection, taking the form of a sniper rifle, that had been positioned no more than three inches away from Will’s temple. “Hello, Chiyoh.” Will greeted her, his eyes firmly affixed to the wall in front of him.

“I told him to slit your throat.” Chiyoh offered harshly.

“Did you also tell him to saw off my leg?”

Chiyoh shifted her eyes down to Will’s missing leg, what was left of it had been bandaged, neatly.

“Where is the blonde psychiatrist?” She demanded.

“You and Dr. Du Maurier have met before?” Will questioned with a curious and perversely innocent, expression on his face.

“I met her once before, though, she most likely mistook me for a phantom of sorts.”

“Ah, then even amidst her drug-addled-haze, she maintains her divination?”

“Where. Is. She?” Chiyoh’s words pressed into Will, almost as harshly as the muzzle of her gun.

“Off somewhere, lying in wait to be eaten.”

As if aware of her summons, Bedelia entered into Will’s room and Chiyoh whipped her gun around to face her.

“See to him, you have medical knowledge.” Chiyoh’s lip curled as she trained her rifle at Bedelia.

“Long since retired, medical knowledge.” Bedelia stated, blandly. Her eyes held murder in them, as she glanced down the length of her snobbish nose at Hannibal.

“Try.” Chiyoh ordered sharply.

“Hunting Season, is over.”

“And yet my scope hasn’t shifted.”

“If I allow Hannibal to live, then my death will be prolonged and agonizing.”

“Or, it’ll be quick and uneventful. Choose.”

“Save him.” Will intercepted, though the strict look on his face conveyed the exact opposite of his words.

“You are asking me to commit suicide via proxy.” Bedelia stated through clenched teeth.

“I wont let him eat you.” Will sighed out, with a roll of his eyes.

“And how does a frustrated, twisted, little, man, like you, intend to keep such a promise?”

“The sum and total of my promise to you, is bleeding out all over the floor.”

“And if there aren’t any pens readily available the next time around?”

“It’s my word Bedelia, or a bullet between your eyes.” Will negotiated, his brows raised, as he shot Bedelia a look that told her that she’d already lost this little parley. Slowly and elegantly, Bedelia dropped to her knees, next to Hannibal. Taking his hand away from the pen, she examined the point of entry.

“I’ll need a towel, a suture kit, Saline and a pen, ironically enough.” Bedelia stated cooly.

Chapter Text

Will suffused the amusement that bubbled within him, at the sight of both Chiyoh and Bedelia, hauling an injured Hannibal out of the room. Bedelia had managed to stabilize him with the use of the supplies she’d requested. In Will’s opinion, Hannibal should be thanking his God, for cursing him with the kind of diseased mind, that is naturally inclined to cultivate medical supplies. According to Bedelia, Will had just missed Hannibal’s laryngopharynx, when he’d stabbed him. This was fortunate news for Hannibal, as Will had only managed to lodge the pen into muscle, still though, the impact of the pen had been severe enough for Bedelia to perform an emergency, tracheotomy, thus the necessitation for the requested, second, pen.

Will felt a bit insulted by his own failure, however, his body was sluggish with the residual dregs of the medication, still present in his system; had he not been so high, then perhaps his aim would have been more accurate? Will closed his eyes and behind them he saw exactly what he wanted to see: Hannibal, dead, his blood tainting the grey, swan-oak, flooring, beneath him.

Why did he then insist that Bedelia save Hannibal? Did he feel a stab of pity for Chiyoh?

Or…

…Perhaps he was just being fickle? Perhaps he’d never truly intended to end Hannibal and instead, impulse and ravenous emotion, stirred his hand into action? When he’d opened his eyes, he was met with Bedelia’s image and she had a thoroughly put-out, look, on her face. The woman mended the gap between herself and Will, until she was close enough, that she could prod at Will’s bandaged leg with the pads of her acrylic fingers.

“What are you doing?” Will demanded, his tone rough with hostility.

“I am simply offering to change your bandages.” Bedelia supplied innocuously, although Will knew better.

“What for?”

“To stave off infection of course.”

“And why exactly are you appointing yourself for the task? I rather thought you were fed up with the lot of us, myself, in particular?”

“It isn’t as though you could care for your injuries on your own and you’ve sufficiently incapacitated, the only other person qualified for the job.” She reasoned. Will simply nodded, his lips drawn tight as he watched Bedelia set to work on his leg. Rhythmically, deliberately, she unbound his limb. Gauze, peeled away to reveal more gauze and more gauze and more gauze, until she’d discovered flesh. Will forced himself to look, his teeth clenching, as his brain was finally imbibed with the realization that his leg was gone. It wasn’t the gore that bothered him, in fact the gore was sparse, all that he could really make note of was purpling, blossoms, along the end of his blunted leg and a harsh, yet neat, series of stitches. What actually bothered him was the simplicity of it; one moment his leg was fully in tact and the next moment, it had been reduced from a total and made into a sum.

Bedelia treated his injury, wrapping it up with the appropriate snugness. Will was going to issue her a plaintive “thank you”, with the hopes that she would soon be on her way, though her lingering glances towards his abdominal region, proved otherwise. He’d felt a hand at his face, holding his chin securely.

“Your eyes are feral.” Bedelia observed with a ghost of sympathy to her voice.

“My eyes have witnessed enough crazy-making, images, to become appropriately feral.”

“Some imagined images…”

“Those aren’t the images I’m talking about.”

Bedelia continued to unwrap him, like a gift. She wanted to establish a silent camaraderie between them. Will felt his lip curl in disgust at her efforts; two, battered, housewives, seeking refuge in one another. Bedelia examined the grin across Will’s abdomen.

“A sign of Hannibal’s truest affections for you.” She mused. “You’ve burst your stitches.”

“Or perhaps I’m just laughing?”

“About?”

“The sheer, mocking, idiocy, of this entire situation.”

“You…elected for him to live.”

“But not before I elected for him to die. We were meant to remain beneath the waves…” Will’s voice took on an almost wistful quality to it as he spoke. Turning his cheek into his pillow, he looked away from Bedelia.

“He’d mentioned to me that you’d asked for him to save you.”

“No. My body asked for him to save it.”

“Starve the body, engorge the mind, that is your philosophy, not Hannibal’s.”

“I was never really aware of myself in a physiological context unless I was…bleeding.”

“He made you aware of your physiology, by continuously compromising it.”

“He made me aware of my mind, by continuously compromising it.”

“You live inside of your mind, he didn’t make you aware of it, he made you aware that he was inside of it.”

“Moving around the furniture.”

“Or setting it ablaze?” Bedelia redressed Will’s abdominal wound, pulling out broken stitches and replacing them with new ones, before she once again, bandaged him up. Will could feel the ugly ache of his body being jostled, though he’d rather feel everything, than have his mind reduced to slop, as a result of yet another Ketamine trip. Vacating from his bedside, Bedelia helped herself to the spread of medications, all laid out, neatly and deliberately, on top of a rolling-cart. She’d spotted one, particular, bottle, that made her eyes glitter. Hannibal had intended to administer this drug to Will? Bedelia raised her brows amusedly, holding the bottle between her delicate fingers.

When Bedelia returned to Will’s bedside, she’d been armed with a syringe. Will sneered, his eyes violent as he glared at the dewy tip of the needle.

“Your cowardice knows no bounds, Bedelia. Are you doing this to evade Hannibal’s jaws or mine?” Will questioned defensively, his body rigid.

“Consider this a parting gift.” Bedelia stated ominously, her smirk, cunning.

“You can also consider this a termination of our agreement.”

“Shh. You’ll thank me.” She stated, knowingly. “I have treated myself with this very drug. It is, potent, it is, liberating, it engulfs you in its velvet hands and holds you steady, as it whispers perverse affections into your ears. On broad shoulders, it mounts all of your fears and hates, it absorbs your toxins and laves your body with the purest kind of love that is entirely corporal and incorporeal. Common love could never sustain you, you need something that only minds and bodies like ours could possibly comprehend.”

“Ours? So now you are equating us?” Will questioned dubiously, largely in an effort to stall for time.

“We are equivocal, both, to some degree, victims of our own pathologies and the heathen that haunts them.”

“Bedelia, you are incapable of loving, because such an enterprise would require no small amount of self-sacrifice.
I’m incapable of loving, because the kind of love that I’m searching for doesn’t exist.”

“Yes it does. The sum and total of your love, is located in the room adjacent to you and this, little, bottle, will help you cognize that reality.” She took Will’s arm, her thumb stroking over an unmolested vein, before positioning the needle of the syringe to it. Will could have fought her, however, curiosity outweighed common sense in this particular scenario. He wanted to see what would happen. Bedelia’s efforts didn’t seem nefarious and perhaps they were even verging on therapeutic? Whatever kind of liquid healing was in that bottle, Will only hoped that it was warm.

A licking sensation; not wet, not slobbery, however, his skin felt stroked all the same. His mind had been plied full of a pleasant kind of fuzz, like soft, puppy, fur. Antler velvet was at his fingertips, with each surface that he touched. Every, aching, muscle, submitted under the effects of the drug. Every nerve, personally rubbed and gingerly prodded at. Hot water drooled over his head and nape, fingers kneading soap through his hair. A wash cloth had been delicately scrubbed down his shoulders, his arms, his legs, his skin felt lighter as the tacky impurities of sweat and dirt, were polished away. Through the curtains of his eyelashes, he’d spotted the matured, blonde, vixen, whom had put him in such a purple state. This was her parting gift to him. He’d kept swallowing down the moans that ached pleasantly in the back of his throat, his heart beating rawly, as antler velvet kissed up the curvature of his spine. What the hell did she do to him? She’d pried open his chest with her apex claws, tickled the ivory of his ribs, grabbed his heart in her soft hands and squeezed.

Or…that’s what it felt like anyhow…

The backs of her fingers stroked a path between his pectorals and he nearly screamed.

His thighs suddenly remembered the texture of Hannibal’s sweater between them.

“Far too sensitive.”

Words felt like sex, as they fucked into his head.

He’d let one, little, moan, escape, he couldn’t take the way that it was rubbing at the back of his throat. He understood, he felt thoroughly loved on.

“You’ve made your point. How long is this shit going to last?” Will cursed, his hands gripping the sheets. A palm was pressed flat on his belly, it ghosted over his injury, before smoothing firmly against his needful flesh.

“Who really knows? She gave you a liberal amount.”

Bedelia had long since gone. Time ebbed away with each orgasmic twitch of Will’s love-hampered, body. The fingers that toyed with the divot between his breast and the palm that smoothed tenderness against his stomach, weren’t Bedelia’s.

Chapter Text

Hannibal laid stiffly in his bed, his observant eyes, quietly assessing the ceiling above him. He had much to mull over it seemed. He’d recalled the events that had transpired last night, allowing them to pan out redundantly, his clinical mind dissecting each nuanced frame of his mental film-reel. He’d introduced his pen to Will deliberately, after already noting the wildness of his eyes and the general unease of his twitchy fingers. He’d wanted to record the time that he’d spent with Will on his notepad:

‘Broaching Summer / The 15th of June:

Frayed, sweaty, his eyes dewy with captive tears.

Tired.

I desired for him to rest more than anything.

He needed to be fed.

I fully intended to fill his stomach with something that would cause minimal, digestive, turbulence.

Something simple, such as a Prawn, Watermelon and Feta Salad? Perhaps I could substitute the feta cheese with Tenuta Vannulo Mozzarella instead? The mint leaves included in the salad, possess numbing properties that would dull the inflammation. Watermelons are in season, the added water would provide him with some much needed hydration.

I intended to observe his leg, see to it that the stitches were sound, that the swelling wasn’t worsening. Check his temperature.

I was amused by the feral glint in his eyes when the sheen of my pen refracted in the catch lights of those, pretty, blue, irises. Those twin, blue, bands, have wrapped around my mind, ever squeezing, ever tightening, restricting my movements like the blue bands wrapped around a lobster’s claws. Most times, I feel that I am viewing him from outside of the tank, however, during moments like these, I find myself staring back at his warbling visage from within it. He wraps his blue bands around me to keep me idle or to suffocate me, like the true fisherman that he is.

I desired deeply to trust him, despite the hook pending for me. I wanted to believe that I could bond with him unscathed. I was wrong.

He knows what he wants and yet he his far too hubristic to reconcile with his desires. When he casted our bodies out into the sea, he casted his wife and step-child—his drastic attempt at normalcy, at healing—out into the sea, with us. We escaped, though he did leave his wife and her son to drown.

He doesn’t want solitude, though he contradicts himself with flippant, militance…’

Hannibal filed away his judicious mental notes on Will. At present, he couldn’t jot down any of his musings due to the neck injury he’d sustained. He felt wistful, romantic, as he laid still in his bed. He wasn’t angry, he was existential.

“She left.” Chiyoh stated from her seated position in the chair adjacent to Hannibal’s bedside.

“Did she now?” Hannibal’s tone seemed dry, though faintly amused.

“Will Graham made a deal with her.”

“Oh? A collusion?”

“He promised to protect her from you.”

“Just as you protect me from him.” Hannibal offered, his timber roughened, as he attempted to speak around the soreness of his neck.

“Will he keep his promise?”

“If it suits him, yes.”

“He is like a baby in that way. Always, always, if it suits him.”

“He has a changeable mind, though make no mistake, he certainly understands the meaning of self-sacrifice.”

“You are being strangely diplomatic. What do you have to gain from weathering his temper tantrums?”

“He still maintains that he didn’t ask to be here with me, he is angry at me for undoing my own death and by extension, his. He is delicate, I must extend patience towards him during this time.”

“He wedged his supposed delicacy, securely and deliberately, into the side of your neck, Hannibal.”

“Had he been successful, it would no longer have been necessary for me to mortgage my patience with him.” Hannibal mused, smiling slightly.

“Dr. Du Maurier, seems to think that she can shrug off all of her wifely responsibilities onto him.”

“Will’s odd hostility towards my wife, betrays the notion that he never felt that she was qualified for the position in the first place.”

“He knew instinctively that he was qualified, though, he wouldn’t acknowledge it.”

“He despises boxes and the labels that are often affixed to them.”

“You took that future away from him and dispensed it onto Bedelia.”

“He had to learn.”

“And has he?”

“He’s learned that he is covetous.”

“And yet he won’t yield to what it is that you are trying to offer?”

“Because he has to think that he is the one to conceptualize it all.”

“Can you bend to that sort of dictatorship?” Chiyoh crossed one of her legs over the other, the casual gesture, conveying her dubiousness.

“Whenever I am abreast him in the brief interim of our mutual, quietude, whenever the both of us simply exist, I find myself thinking that perhaps I could delight in his dictatorship.”

It was a long and writhing night for Will. Phantom hands pawed at him, conjoined with phantom voices, all lulling him into flighty conversations that never ended.

“Will…are you finally coming to realize how beautiful you are?”

Will’s eyes nearly rolled to the back of his head. He was melting, becoming fluid, like the stream that he’d cultivated within his Mind-Palace. He felt cradled, carried down by the liquid hands of the flowing waters. The faux touches were maddening, his subconscious manifesting them, because there weren’t any tangible hands present. This wasn’t the static, temporary, sex that Will had experienced many times before, this wasn’t the procedural, marital sex, that he’d customarily engaged in; this was perhaps the kind of sex that he’d thought about having with Alana, when he’d had her perched atop his mantle of polite admiration. However, the fantasies that he’d long-since retired about Doctor Bloom, mostly consisted of him imagining what it would feel like to be adored by her.

The needful, need, to be needed.

Alana adored his tenderness, maybe? Molly adored his sweetness. Facets of him, carefully, practiced, facets. The empathy came naturally, the tenderness and sweetness, did not. Hannibal didn’t value those traits in Will because he too, understood that they were learned traits. What Hannibal valued, were Will’s instincts, everything of the baser variety. But Will wasn’t just baser. He toggled between savagery and simplicity. The simplicity of fishing, the simplicity of fixing a broken boat motor, the simplicity of walking his dogs. Will valued those things and he didn’t feel that he needed to levy his savagery above those things. Perhaps he could find a balance? Could he give himself permission to exist on a spectrum? Could he give himself permission to exist on Hannibal’s spectrum?

Hannibal had offered him adoration, practically laved him in it, though Will often turned his cheek in response to Hannibal’s words. It wasn’t that his words weren’t weighty, they were, Will was just frightened of becoming dependent upon them. He was frightened of becoming dependent upon Hannibal for other things as well, the Viking inside of him, warring perpetually, with Hannibal’s ubiquitous influence. Will had chosen death over submission. However, did he truly have the stuff to choose death once again, in his second life?

Strange visuals accosted him. A teacup shattered onto the wood flooring, shards of glass, sputtering everywhere, a piece flying towards Will’s eye, lodging itself inside of his cornea. A black hoof, scattered the glass, a midnight stag, leveled its gaze at Will, before it suddenly morphed into Hannibal’s shape. The physician looked like an exact replica of the original; he was wearing his red sweater. Will watched in quiet anticipation, as the man pushed his sleeves up over the swells of his arms. The shape of Hannibal, mended the gap between himself and Will, he tore at Will’s bandaged abdomen. Sweat-slicked and wide-eyed, Will watched as Hannibal pried open his sutured belly with both hands, before shoving one of them inside of him. Will screamed, as Hannibal delved further and further, until his forearm was completely engulfed. Hannibal’s expression had been cool and clinical, mildly fascinated by the feel of Will’s viscera. He pulled out the small intestine, pulling and pulling, like a clown tugging a never, ending, rope of tied-together, handkerchiefs, from the hole of his sleeve. The clinician curled his lip in concentration, taking out varying organs as he went and setting them aside, neatly and deliberately. Will’s stomach joined his pancreas on the nightstand, before Hannibal was shoulder deep inside of him. He appeared to be searching for something, his hand coming up under Will’s ribcage, his gentle fingers curling around Will’s beating heart. Hannibal pulled Will’s heart out of the cavity in his abdomen, his arm jerking back roughly in an effort to free the heart of the arteries and veins connected to it. Will left his body, his back pressed up against the ceiling, as he looked down at Hannibal. He watched in silent horror as Hannibal tore into his heart with his teeth, savagely consuming the muscle.

Will blinked rapidly, panting, his knuckles white from gripping his sheets. He looked down and expected to see his stomach, torn open and thoroughly ravaged, although that didn’t seem to be the case. Everything was in tact. His stitches were still firmly affixed, his bandages, unmolested. Suddenly, Hannibal was on top of him. Will felt warm, practiced, hands, rubbing over his ribs. The physician smoothed the flat of his palms down Will’s heaving chest and stomach, before stroking along the tops of his thighs, a singular palm, halting at the peak of Will’s knee. Will understood where those hands were want to go and he tensed, reluctant to feel fingers brushing against his inner thighs. As if acting of their own accord, Hannibal’s fingers slid between Will’s legs, effectively divorcing them. He leaned down, pressing a kiss to Will’s one knee, his hand cupping the back of Will’s calf, tenderly. Will rested his foot atop Hannibal’s leg and in response, Hannibal massaged his palms down the entire length of his appendage, steady, reverent, though the sentiment seemed more scientific, than anything, as though Hannibal were marveling at a rare specimen. The grooves of Hannibal’s matured and absurdly warm, hands, on the tired muscles of his calf, felt like a hot bath, after a romp with his dogs in the snow. The irony was that they were calming, despite the residual bits of scalp, grey matter and blood, caked under his nails. No matter how meticulous Hannibal was in washing his hands, the ghost of what he’d done, will always be visible when held under a black-light.

Hannibal kissed Will’s sternum, his throat. He tilted his head back, swallowing nervously, he felt Hannibal's mouth there, at the noble column of his neck. He liked the kisses, though his sensory disorder caused his vulnerable nerve endings to crave something a bit harsher. Just as the thought crossed Will’s mind, Hannibal satisfied his unspoken urges, by baring his teeth and biting down, firmly, at Will’s flesh. A moan threatened to leave his mouth, though Hannibal quickly swallowed it, by slotting his own mouth with Will’s. The kiss they’d shared was voracious, as Hannibal forced Will’s mouth to open wider. Arching his back, Will pressed his chest flush with Hannibal’s, their hearts, thudding against each other. Hannibal stroked along the beautiful bow of Will’s spine and with his other hand, he gripped his outer thigh, squeezing the flesh there. Will retorted with frustration, by shoving his hand down Hannibal’s pants. Hannibal grabbed his hips, fingers digging into his skin. It wasn’t long before Will felt himself rutting against Hannibal’s clothed stomach, the hand that he’d stuffed into his pants, working in tandem with the movement of his hips. Just as abruptly as the whole raunchy affair had begun, Hannibal then pulled away from the distressed beauty beneath him. He removed his mouth from Will’s and Will attempted to follow him, not wanting to break the kiss. Hannibal pressed his thumb against Will’s windpipe in silent warning, urging him to stay put, Will obeyed, although hesitantly. The icy air bit at Will’s skin, causing his body to shiver unpleasantly. No more than a few seconds ago, he’d felt warmth above him, like a roaring fire to huddle next to during a loathsome winter storm. His leg still buzzed from the gentle pawing it had received, his throat still damp from the flat tongue that had laved over it.

Chapter Text

About two weeks post his recovery, Hannibal had been quite pleased to be back in his kitchen. Well, this particular kitchen was still rather foreign to him, as he hadn’t been using it for very long. The home that Chiyoh had relocated himself and Will to, was an impromptu one. His inbuilt curiosity hadn’t stirred him to venture outside yet, he was far too cautious, as he knew that they were still in country. Somewhere in the rugged South, Hannibal surmised. The air smelt damp and it had a thickness to it. They would not be able to tenant this place for much longer, though, at present, Will wasn’t sufficiently recovered enough to travel, nor was he agreeable enough to travel. Chiyoh had taken to delivering Will his meals, to which he’d often summon a snort of indifference and opt not to eat. Will had been deliberately taxing Hannibal’s patience and at the expense of causing himself to suffer. Hannibal rubbed at his neck, his fingers brushing over the site of his injury, he’d been estranged from Will during the stopgap of his recovery.

Hannibal could hear the door to Will’s bedroom open and then click shut. Deliberate and gentle footfalls, sounded down the hall. Chiyoh stood in the doorway to the kitchen, her hands full of the dinner tray that Hannibal had sent her off with. The Duck Confit with crispy potatoes and bitter leaf salad, garnished with Paddlefish Caviar, had gone thoroughly untouched. Hannibal raised his brows in response to the rude display, he’d never had a dish that he’d prepared go cold, unless it was a cold-plated recipe, of course.

Chiyoh set the lonesome dish on the countertop, her brows raised as she folded her arms across her chest. Hannibal blinked down at the tray before summoning a sigh.

“He’s uncultivated, that one.” Hannibal’s self-appointed, body-guard, stated.

“I disagree. I would say that he is very cultivated. Our loathsome experiences shape us, just as poignantly as our joyous ones.”

“He doesn’t trust the food?”

“I haven’t had the opportunity to procure my preferred viande and I am reasonably certain that Will recognizes that.”

“He considers your cooking to be a loathsome experience then?”

Hannibal’s brows raised, politely affronted by Chiyoh’s assertion.

“I believe he just simply doesn’t want to stroke my ego by allowing me to feed him.” Hannibal’s tone indicated that he was not theorizing at all on the subject, he knew that Will enjoyed his cooking and he was deliberately trying to insult Hannibal’s efforts to care for him, by refusing his meals.

“Starvation is a slow and humiliating death.” Chiyoh mused, her fingers brushing along the edge of the woebegone dinner tray.

“You would know a thing or two about that, now wouldn’t you?”

“He died at the behest of my rifle, because your lover wanted to see what would happen.”

“Will saw that you were far too beautiful to linger amongst the general detritus of my past, Chiyoh. You were just as much a prisoner, as the prisoner that you kept.” Hannibal offered knowingly. Rigidly, he took the plate off of the tray, positioning it over the garbage can. The thought had crossed his mind to tupperware the food, though he understood that Will had no intention of ever eating it and Hannibal wouldn’t be vitriolic enough to once again, attempt to serve Will a dish that he’d already, pointedly, rejected.

“He took away my structure and now I feel…listless.”

“He challenged you to pull your eyes upward and to cultivate your own firmament.”

“And is this your firmament; a storm-tossed, Southern, boy, with a grudge?”

“He has a cherished, love-worn, room, in my firmament, yes.”

“The room that you banished me to, is dank and cobwebbed, as a prisoner echos his dins off of the walls.” Chiyoh asserted, bitterly. “You left her there with me. You could have lavished her dwellings, she loved you like a father, after all.” She accused, her dark eyes virile, as she pinned Hannibal into position with her hardened gaze.

“Perhaps I left remnants of my sister with you, however I still haven’t quite placed her…she’d have liked Will…”

“House her with him.”

“He’d care for her…he is helpless for the helpless…”

“You would have to let him care for her. You keep her sequestered in shadows, neglected.”

“He nurtures Abigail Hobbs, frequently. I can see her, living, behind his eyes.”

“Will Graham possesses a simple kind of warmth.”

“Or a damp, heat, that melts flesh off of bone.”

“When it suits him.”

Hannibal tilted his head to the side, a curious gesture. The scene he’d been greeted with was rather odd, if not vaguely alarming. Will was seated on the swan-oak, his knee, bleeding profusely. From the looks of it, he must have fallen out of bed and struck his knee on the unforgiving, surface, of the wooden floor.

“That looks painful.” Hannibal supposed.

“No more painful, than anything else that has been done to me.” Will rasped, his tone bland.

“Shall I treat your injury for you?”

“What’s the matter, Doctor Lecter? You seem…hesitant?” Will summoned a predatory gaze from his lidded eyes, still heavy with exhaustion.

“Forgive me for my hesitancy, Will, but the last time I drew too near, I was kissed with the tip of my own pen.”

“Hasn’t that always been the protocol?” Will asked, smoothing his hair away from his eyes. As the spiritless days bled on, Will began to look all the more like a caged animal, seated upon that floor. ‘Listless’, was the word that Chiyoh had previously used to describe her current state of unrest. Will looked listless, bored.

“Protocol?” Hannibal attempted to clarify.

“ ‘Eye for an eye’ ?”

“Is that our protocol?”

“You seek me out, I rebuff your overtures, you give chase, I run, I seek you out, you destroy me, I give chase, you run…and so the brainless cycle continues…” Will uttered sharply, his tone, stabbing into Hannibal’s eardrums.

“Brainless? I would say that there was great intention put forth from the both of us, as we carried out our protocol.”

“At the crux of it, it was all entirely brainless, Hannibal. Petty even.”

“I’m sorry that you view the whole of our relationship that way. I operated under the impression that the events that had transpired, were as a result of our unspoken ‘love language’?”

Will shook his head, his brows furrowed.

“A love language is often conveyed through flowers or…” He sighed, not really having the energy, nor the attention span, to bother explaining the fundamentals of love languages, to Hannibal.

“Did I not give you flowers?”

“You called me poisonous.”

“Though I never negated your beauty.”

Will said nothing, though it wasn’t because he’d been struck dumb, due to Hannibal’s appeals at his vanity, there was simply nothing to be said. Hannibal took Will’s silence as an invitation to disappear from the room in pursuit of medical supplies. The elegant man then returned, a box of bandages in hand, a bag of cotton balls, a ceramic bowl with a damp cloth inside of it, a bottle of antiseptic. He seemed to balance the small arsenal in both if his arms with effortless ease. Gracefully, he dropped to a crouch and Will simply offered him his injured knee. Upon closer inspection, Hannibal reckoned that Will looked like a cadged something; perhaps not an animal after all? Perhaps he looked more like a child, idling patiently for his father to tend to his injuries? Did Will’s father ever care for him in that way?

“May I ask what happened?” Hannibal questioned, setting the bowl on the floor and procuring the cloth from it. Will watched Hannibal ring out the cloth, the scene playing in slow motion, as the physician’s, expert, hands, worked the rag. Wet, heat, mouthed at the broken skin of Will’s knee, as Hannibal pressed the cloth against him.

“My nightmares have been worsening ever since your wife drugged me.” Will supplied.

“And what did my wife give you, exactly?”

“MDMA…at least…the sensations that I experienced matched the profile for MDMA.”

The amused expression on Hannibal’s nuanced face, was subtle enough to go unrecognized by most, but Will’s keen eyes didn’t miss the diminutive display of pleasure that he wore.

“What did you see?” After sufficiently wiping Will’s knee clean of blood, his cloth, buffered, fingers, lingering on the other’s flesh for much longer than necessary, Hannibal then doused a cotton ball in antiseptic.

“Just a less-than-linear stream of incongruous visuals, hellish, in nature.” Will drawled out, wincing as the cotton ball, bloated with antiseptic, touched the cut on his knee.

“That is truly a shame.” Hannibal uttered gently, his tone, forlorn.

“Oh?”

“I was hoping that the drug would grant you levity, not weigh you down with more misery.” Will’s knee would scar, though it didn’t require any stitches. There was silence between the two men. The amalgam of gentle breaths and a bandage being peeled free of its paper backing, were the only sounds that filled the room.

“A brain like mine doesn’t perform well when hampered. Hallucinogens un-dam my psyche, unleashing raw horror, to gnaw away at the backs of my eyes.”

“Forgive me, I mistakenly thought that an entactogen would yield a different result in you.”

“In me, not for me?”

“Both.”

“I was never very fond of touch.” Will had wanted to ask Hannibal what he’d hoped to accomplish by getting him high on E, but he thought better of it. He didn’t want to know the answer.

“Who fostered that in you?”

“I fostered that in me.” Will snapped irritably, the only thing stalling him from scooting away, was Hannibal’s palm that was still cupping the back of his knee. “I won’t allow you to question my upbringing, as you are want to do. Some people are just particular, you should know that better than most.”

“Am I particular because I choose to be, or am I particular because of what was done and not done to me?”

“Both?”

“Then neither of us are just particular.” The tacky backing of a large bandage, was smoothed against Will’s knee. “I was seldom enthused by affection as a boy; but a crying child, clenching her tiny fingers into my sleeve, urged those more parental sentiments out of me.”

Will felt somewhat galled at Hannibal’s confession. He’d never heard the polished man speak with such bluntness about his past before.

“How old were you when—”

“I was twelve when my parents were murdered in front of me.” He offered the information in a matter-of-fact kind of way, void of emotion, but not void of reverence. Will had already surmised that Hannibal had been orphaned, Chiyoh had conveyed as such, though he hadn’t really entertained the notion of Hannibal’s parents being murdered, unless it was as a result of parenticide. Hannibal rose up from his crouch, Will’s eyes followed his motions, his head tilting upwards, childishly. “I don’t recall feeling particularly bothered by the affair. I revered my parents, however, their simultaneous deaths, yielded little emotional response from me. I couldn’t say the same for Mischa though.” He disappeared into the closet. Leaning as far forward as the limitations of his abdominal injury would permit, Will craned his neck to see what Hannibal was up to.

Coming out of the closet, Hannibal returned to Will’s side, a black, velvet, robe, draped over his forearm. He extended the clothing item to Will and eagerly, he accepted it. The make of the robe was not at all indicative to Will’s personal style, however, he was grateful to have something to cover himself with.

“Your abdominal injuries are far too tender for any unnecessary compression, however, the robe will still offer you some coverage.” Hannibal watched Will wrap himself in the robe, he opted not to tie it closed in an effort to avoid further disrupting his stitches, he’d already torn them open once before. He imagined that his midsection was most likely covered in greenish, yellowish, bruises, all unnecessary and all entirely due to his own negligence. Hannibal gave Will a knowing look, clearly he would not be able to haul himself back onto his bed. Wordlessly, Will nodded, choking on his own pride, as Hannibal lent down and gingerly took him by his armpits. Attempting to handle Will without disturbing his stomach, nor his blunted leg, was a fussbudget of an ordeal, but Hannibal managed to lift Will and set him down atop his bed, with minimal awkwardness. Against his better judgement, Hannibal perched himself next to Will on the bed.

“Not a pen in sight.” Will teased, or perhaps mocked?

“Before we died, you acknowledged that our love language was a thing of beauty. You understood and yet now you are pretending not to. I do believe that you understood my romantic efforts, even prior to that moment. There is no 'Tower of Babble' partitioning us, there never was.”

“Perhaps I went deaf?”

“Perhaps you did…”

“Your belief in my deafness, is proportional to my belief in your ills being born from anything other than your own conception. Nothing happened to you.”

“I just happened.”

Chapter Text

He watched her almost glide about the room, her cropped hair, tucked behind her ears, her red, silk, robe, flowing along with her agile movements. She was such a powerful thing, so stoic and artful in everything that she did. Why Will temporarily pined for her, was of no quandary to Hannibal. After all, Will and Hannibal were entirely alike, in the sense that they both perceived beauty through the exact same lens. Hannibal was intrigued as he watched his ‘Iron Maiden’ ambulate with great intention. For the duration of Hannibal’s recovery, Chiyoh had remained at his side, tending to him. Her gracious, compassion, supplicating the ease of their cherished, childhood, friendship.

“Leaving so soon?” Hannibal questioned, his arms elegantly folded across his chest.

“You are well enough.” Chiyoh offered flippantly, as she shrugged out of her robe, draping the item atop the lot of her personal affects, all housed within a vintage suitcase.

“Largely due to the concerted efforts of your care.” Hannibal commended. Chiyoh pulled on a dapper, black, button-up, shirt, her nimble fingers working the pearlescent, buttons, with ease.

“Tell the last of your wives that he is severely lacking in the nurturing department.”

Hannibal smiled broadly, as he took Chiyoh’s coat from the hook it had been hanging on and held it out for her to slip her lithe arms into.
“Violence is our love language, or a facet of it anyhow.” He conceded, reaching from behind Chiyoh, to adjust the lapels of her coat.

“Yes and when he lovingly slits your throat, I may not be able to react in time.”

“I’m confident that you won’t.”

“Then it is as I said before, you should do the slitting before he is given the chance.”

“God has brought us together, perhaps in an effort to cause us suffering beneath his fish-eyed, scrutiny?”

“Hannibal, you and Will brushing cheeks and shoulders, is not an act of God.”

“Then I must thank whatever duplicitous force it was that brought us together.”

“Jack Crawford’s hands were so heavy in all of this, it’s a wonder that they don’t drag behind him when he walks.” It was Will that spoke. The curly-headed, male, had a broad shoulder propped against the doorsill. He was standing on two legs, one fleshy and organic, the other prosthetic. The faux leg mimicked the girth of an average leg, though it was hollow, fortified with a network of branch-like, sinuous, plastic; it looked sleek, elegant even.

“Asymmetry suits you.” Chiyoh said, nodding her head at Will’s replacement leg.

“It’s certainly inhibited my stride. I’d like to bid you a proper ‘goodbye’, though the doorsill is all that is keeping me upright at the moment.”

“This isn’t ‘goodbye’. I am confident that I will return to you, under less than friendly circumstances; until then, Will Graham.” Chiyoh collected her suitcase, shared a look with Hannibal, as they exchanged some private, telepathic, language, that Will couldn’t possibly attempt to understand; she then left, toting her rifle behind her as she went.

“How much of that conversation were you privy to?” Hannibal questioned Will, shortly after the front door to their temporary home had been closed.

“You know exactly how much of that conversation I was privy to.”

“I scented you around the ‘terrible wife’, piece of Chiyoh’s chastisement towards me.”

“She said I wasn’t nurturing, she never said I was terrible, that’s just your projection.”

“Still though, it is rather remarkable that you had the physical strength to eavesdrop at all.”

“Clawing at the hallway walls, certainly requires a lot more physical exertion than I had initially thought.”

“Are you hungry?”

Will was silent as he gracelessly pushed himself off of the doorsill and slapped his palm flat against the kitchen wall, navigating himself further into the room. The stitches on his leg were taciturn, apt to disrupt if jostled too frequently. Hannibal had advised that Will not wear his prosthetic until his injury was fully healed in six months time. Will insisted that Hannibal simply wrap up his leg with more gauze, padding it thickly. Opting to be conciliatory, Hannibal complied with Will’s demand. Will had become itchy all over with general unrest and Hannibal knew that he would not be pacified, unless he was permitted to prolong his suffering, he was kiddish in that way. Hannibal introduced the prosthetic limb to Will in an effort to secure the illusion of freedom for him; but of course Will, given his nature, would take such sentiments literally.

Will slumped into a chair at the kitchen table, his breathing haggard. He really didn’t have any business leaving the security of his bed when he was in such a poor state, but Hannibal wasn’t going to contest him. Will had to learn and unfortunately the only way he would learn, was through pain. The kitchen was aglow with the morning light that seeped in through the humble oeil-de-boeuf window, located above the sink. Chiyoh had selected the quaint, Southern, home, for the sake of its rather innocuous appearance. There was nothing remarkable about the place, save for how lofty the ceilings were, aside from that, it was simple, not too large and not too small. The kitchen sink was mid-sized, with a copper basin, it had served its purpose as far as Hannibal was concerned, despite the fact that it was less-than-stylish.

“I’ve prepared some Potato Galette, should you decide that you are hungry.”

“I doubt I’d be able to keep it down.” Will grunted out. He leaned back in his chair, his eyes squeezed shut, as he pinched the bridge of his nose.

“As you sit in that chair, aching all over and attempting to knead away the general unease upon your brow, with your fingers, does the name: ‘Jack Crawford’, flash viciously amongst the static behind your eyelids?” Hannibal questioned, grasping the handle of the cast-iron skillet, his hand gloved in a royal, blue, oven mitt. Will slumped down in his chair, until his neck met the back of it. He rolled his head to the right, fixing his gaze at Hannibal.

“Geometric, shapes, quivering and throbbing amongst the oblique…I can just make out his lumbering mold, scoring through the fuzz…”

“Your efforts to evade your in-born gift, to evade me, were not in earnest, Jack understood that.”

“He was never truly my friend, was he?”

“No one was.”

“Except for you?”

“No.”

Will raised his brows in response, a look of lazy surprise on his face.

“It was never my desire to be your friend.” Hannibal confessed, shifting the skillet over the open flame on the traditional, gas, stovetop.

“You certainly advertised yourself as my friend, or perhaps your twisted, iteration, of the term…”

“I used a term that I assumed you would likely understand and perhaps even appreciate.”

“Then…what are you to me?”

“Your mate.” Hannibal answered simply, his tone rather pleasant as he spoke the word: "mate". A sharp intake of breath, as Will eased himself upright in his chair.

“What does that word mean to you, Hannibal?” Will’s brows were furrowed, simulating the notion of earnest worry, his lips parted, his blue eyes glassy and seemingly hopeful, as if to silently prompt Hannibal to tell him exactly what he wanted to hear.

“ ‘Twin Flames’ cauterize ‘agape’ into bone. The fires are foddered with contempt, lust.”

“A private conflagration occurs…”

“Our conflagration is not so private.”

“There have been many casualties, scorched bodies…to think that Abigail had to die at the hands of your petulant courtship…”

“That wasn’t an effect of intimacy, it was a reaction.”

“Because I hurt your feelings?” Will all but mocked.

“Yes.” Hannibal agreed, curt. He removed the skillet from the stovetop and set it aside to rest.

“Alana witnessed you at your best behavior—more or less—Bedelia witnessed you at your worst and I appear to be suspended between those two forces.”

“I’d like for you to experience me at my best and most transparent.”

“And what is your most ‘transparent’ ?”

Negating the skillet, Hannibal stepped around the island counter, making his way over to Will. He stood behind him, his palms resting heavily atop Will’s shoulders, his fingers splayed. Will’s body went rigid, his jaw set, as the butterknife on the table, cooled his fingertips. Will felt hands cupping either side of his neck in a tender hold, he swallowed, his Adam’s Apple brushing against Hannibal’s fingers. The vice never tightened, much to Will’s surprise. Instead, Hannibal smoothed his hands down the sides of Will’s neck, his thumbs kneading against his lymph nodes. Will lent his head forward a bit, baring his nape. Heat’s Ghost, lavished his neck and his muscles ached in a sexual kind of way in response to the faint touch. Will felt a palm rub him between his shoulder-blades, dipping itself beneath his robe. Fingers brushed along his spine in one, unceasing, motion, before suddenly halting at the dimples above his backside. Before Will could bat an eyelash, both hands suddenly perched atop his collarbones, pushing the fabric of his robe away from his flesh and baring his shoulders. The insipid ache returned and Will found himself longing for expert fingers to ease the toughness of his flesh. As a physician, Hannibal must have known how tense he was. A few, deliberate, kneads, from his fingers and Will would have melted; reduced to something thoroughly workable and thoroughly pliant.

The command sat on the flat of his tongue: ‘Work me over like dough.’

Fingers gingerly tangled into Will curls, tugging gently. Will followed those fingers, tilting his head back.

“I can’t feed you and I can’t reason with you.”

“My neck hurts.”

The entire affair began with a few, simple, touches. Hannibal appeased the tightness in Will’s over-stressed muscles, causing the man to swoon inside of his head. This was dangerous, Will understood as such. Hannibal wasn’t the sort of man to play step-and-fetch-it. He was not one to be pushed. The visceral sensation of a hook-blade, slicing through his vulnerable flesh, like soft, rich, butter, in tandem with a passionate embrace, a hand buried in his stomach and a hand gingerly petting the back of his head; the conflation of savagery and tenderness. Will could hardly rationalize whether he longed for Hannibal’s blade or his touch?

Will had become something bestial, yielding to hunger and rage. Whenever he exchanged superficial niceties, he’d felt as though he were a puppet; a hand shoved through a hollowed-out, hole, in the back of his skull, fingers working his jaw, so that he could utter the banal, rhetoric, that his spirit fought so hard against. Hannibal was currently working his trapezius muscle. Will inhaled slowly at the touch, those hands boasted of such technique and gentleness, they were snares, luring in idealistic, dreamers, with promises of love.

A growl of irritation, threatened the back of Will’s throat, he let it fall from his lips in the form of a slight grunt.

“Are you tender here?” Hannibal questioned, thumb hovering over the sore spot.

“It burns somewhat.” Will concedes.

“Best to bully it then.” Hannibal stated dismissively, once again, pressing and prodding into the screaming muscle.

“Ow—why?”

“Your muscles have fisted themselves beneath your skin, the most effective method to get them to unclench, is through prying them lax again.”

Will clamped his teeth, brows furrowed.

“Perhaps I misunderstood you, were you instead wishing for me to nurture your flesh, negating the throbbing, inflamed, network, of stress beneath? To do that, would simply pacify your condition, rather than treat it.” Hannibal supplied, pausing in his ministrations.

“Maybe I was just giving you an opportunity to be ‘loving’ ? Isn’t that the obligation of a mate?”

“Addressing the cause instead of the symptom, is loving, Will. What you were actually requesting, was for me to dulcify you.” Hannibal stated, soft and low. He perched his chin atop Will’s toned shoulder, his fingers very, lightly, licking a stripe down his spine. Will arched his back reflexively, shivering, nipples hardening in response to the stimulating chill. “When have I ever been known to coddle you?”

“When have I ever asked?”

“You’ve asked me several times over, whimpering on the floor of my kitchen, desperate for me to bless your impulses, to concede to your petulance, your flippant, compulsory and fickle, narratives. I teach and sometimes you learn and then you soften at my blade, woebegone at the notion of my absence, rather than the ache of being gored alive.”

“I asked for her.” Will seethed shakily.

“And through tears, seated in your wrought-iron-box?”

“Theatre.”

“And you expected me to believe it?”

“I was appealing to your vanity. You wanted to believe it.”

“Baring your neck for a blood-starved, predator, there’s an unsavory term for those who bribe with their bodies, Will.”

“Make a moat of your tongue to redirect the flow of your drool.”

Will recalled how effortlessly Hannibal had wrapped a life-preserving-hand, around Abigail Hobbs’ tiny neck. The sheer elegance of the act, how perfectly his one hand engulfed her hemorrhaging column. Will’s neck was not so itty, bitty, in fact it was much thicker and yet the helplessness accrued from having those fingers molded to the expanse of his throat, felt just as damming. Will’s neck wasn’t a hacked up spectacle, bleeding out on the floor, it was in-tact, warm, the palm that was currently pressed against it, threatening to crush. Hannibal squeezed the flesh of Will’s left pectoral with his alternative hand, fingers digging into the fat there. Will inhaled sharply, arrested with belligerent curiosity.

“Pity that I cannot house my works in a conventional space, to celebrate their intuitive beauty, whenever my bones are stirred to do so. The ‘artery’ that I had left for you between the arches of Heaven’s Vessel, I wonder if I couldn’t produce a microcosmic model of it with the use of the thing, throbbing, beneath your breast?”

“It’d yield to rot, just like all the rest…” Will shuddered beneath Hannibal’s hold.

“Once again, you devalue yourself, an unattractive habit, Will.”

“Squash it between tempered glass and mount it above your head, hear it beating in the walls each night as you sleep.”

Tenderly, Hannibal smoothed his thumb against Will’s chest.

“Formaldehyde certainly betrays the notion of permanence.”

“Plop it into a specimen jar, let it serve as a mantle piece and an excellent conversation starter, tacky.”

Though Will couldn’t see it, Hannibal was smiling. He stood upright, both hands releasing their grip on the other male. He cupped under Will’s chin, tender, smoothing his curls back with his other hand, he kissed the top of Will’s head.

“ ‘Tacky’, he says. ” Hannibal muses to himself, audibly.

Chapter Text

The alarm clock sounded its blaring cacophony. Will propped himself up by his elbows, tired, blue, eyes, regarding the neon numbers that flared hideously in his face. He silenced the device, struggled to sit upright. A black, leg-shaped, silhouette, rested against his nightstand, Will grabbed for it. Recently, Will had insisted that he bandage himself. He’d become familiarized with the procedural habits of proper wound care from Hannibal, so he no longer needed the older man’s assistance.

The night prior, Will had bound his leg several times over, cushioning it with a thick layer of foam dressings. Turning on the lamp, adjacent to the alarm clock, Will pulled the sheets back to reveal his halved leg. The dressings were still secure, no signs of spotting and his leg didn’t feel any more sore than usual. He rifled through the nightstand drawer, his wondering fingers identifying the object of their pursuit. Will pulled out a black-sleeve-spacer and slipped it over his leg. He then took up the plastic leg, that he’d placed next to himself on his bed and fitted it to the smooth end of his amputated limb.

Gently pushing his leg into the socket of the prothesis, Will pulled the exterior sleeve up, fortifying the bond of flesh and plastic. He attempted to stand, brows furrowed, wincing, as he tried to distribute his weight evenly. The pain was nearly unbearable. Will had been practicing like this for about three weeks, rising to the squawk of his alarm at 4:00 a.m. every morning. He would practice standing, or even sometimes walking, until his leg began to throb with heat, stitches threatening to tear, although thankfully, they never did. The agony kept him from his thoughts, forcing those invasive, little, things, to fade into the backdrop, their contempt, gentled into quiet whispers.

On a good day, constituted by any significant amount of progress, Will would internally gloat amongst his cocky haze of sweat, his pants of exhaustion, applauding him for his efforts. On a good day, Will would mull over certain events, after all, he’d earned it. One particular event that he liked to revisit, occurred several weeks ago. The kitchen smelled like spuds, it was the first time in days, years, that Will and Hannibal had been truly alone together. A demure scar, located on the right side of Hannibal’s neck, was the only indicator of Will’s transgression towards him. Will mocked him with complaints about a sore neck, he didn’t miss the slight rigidity in Hannibal’s muscles at the mention of it.

He was gladdened by those isolated moments, they reminded him that Hannibal was human. His flesh was authentic, not a cloak of personhood that he dawned each day. Hannibal was made up of all of the hideous details that betrayed his own mortality. There was muscle, there was bone, general viscera, he could be cut. A sharp blade could sink into pliant, tanned, skin, divorce it, rend it open, splinter bone, then withdraw entirely, leaving a fresh wound, pissing out his aristocratic blood all over the floor beneath. He was human. Over the years, Will had found that he needed constant reminders of such a fundamental fact. His perception of reality had degenerated so severely under Dr. Lecter’s care, that the only confirmation that felt real to Will, was when he could tangibly snuff out the gaslights in Hannibal’s eyes, with his bare hands.

Will held his stomach, sweat, nearly steaming off of his body, his nostrils flaring, as he attempted to take a step forward. He lifted his organic leg, all but dragged the artificial one, taxing his brain to tell both of his fucking appendages to work in tandem with each other. Unfortunately, the neurotransmitters weren’t reaching plastic. Chiyoh had been right, all Will understood was violence. Bored, arbitrary, violence, levied against anyone really—emotive, prophetic, violence, cultivated by intercessors of filth—intentional violence, angled towards just one man and finally, internalized violence, self-flagellation. Presently, Will felt intimately familiar with the last two items. He was angry at Hannibal, not the man, so much as the circumstance, although the present nature of his left leg did serve to foster some deep-seeded resentment. Even still, despite the insufferable pain of ambulation, Will already felt himself sloughing off the entire affair, shedding expired scales, he anticipated such a response from Hannibal, it was Hannibal after all. He was a polite beast, though his superficial niceties and old-line sentimentality, had the potential to degenerate into that of a lowbred, vulgarian, at the faintest whiff of heaving meat. Quite frankly, Will just didn’t have the energy to keep all of his grudges towards Hannibal abreast.

He was angry at himself, both at the man and the circumstance. He was angry at himself for surviving and he spited his own vanity for imploring Hannibal to save him. Perhaps these taxing, ineffective, morning, exercises, that he tortured himself with, served as a means of self-flagellation? He felt settled when some part of his body was blighted with pain; as though he only deserved to breath with the caveat that each inhale was akin to swallowing glass.

He managed to navigate himself across the room, Hannibal had facilitated him with a cane, though he refused to use it, out of pride and out of a hesitancy to favor yet another crutch. Will leaned against the wall, shoulder kissing plaster. He needed clean air, the outside, disappear himself into the unfamiliar in order to familiarize himself again. He’d felt the pulse of his roughneck urges in his fingertips, his desire to dismember. Name’s flashed in his mind, potential outlets for devil-claimed-hands. What kind of violence was he craving: arbitrary, prophetic, intentional, or self-inflicted?

As he stood, slumped against his bedroom wall, he pondered at the probable chaos taking place in Baltimore, Maryland. Dieners, combing the ravenous seas, the Cliff House, perched prettily above them, smug and secretive. How many hours, days, had those coroners wasted searching for Will and Hannibal’s gray and bloated bodies? How long before worry encroaches upon Jack Crawford, burdening him with the scant possibility that he wouldn’t be slinging two gnarled, hunks of flesh, with twisted spines, over his thick shoulders? Knowing Jack, suspicion was likely already at the forefront of his mind. Doctor Chilton would be lisping curses through his horror-show off a mouth and Freddie Lounds would be nipping at Jack’s heels like a chihuahua, pawing for intel. Will was grateful to be detached from all that he’d left behind. He would have preferred to take a page from “The Red Dragon’s” book and do unto the whole lot of them as he had done to Dr. Chilton. Set them all ablaze, bring them to ash and observe coquettishly, as the soil beneath, consumed them and the dogs lifted their legs to piss away whatever was left.

Will’s legs trembled, pressing his back against the wall, he allowed himself to slide down onto the floor, releasing pained, little, gasps, as he went. Head flush with the wall, he looked upwards; visions of himself, mouthing the word ‘help’, the sound of the lonely request filling the room, Will reflected on those hallucinations in silence.

Will had kept himself scarce for the better part of the last three weeks. His reprieve outfitted Hannibal with ample time to muse. However, he did feel the stir of urgency within him to relocate. He’d more than surmised that Baltimore was simmering into a rolling boil by now. A quick consultation of his iPad, confirmed any presuppositions that he may have had, regarding the FBI and their pursuit of both Will and himself. INTERPOL was also involved with the search, as such, fleeing the country didn’t seem like a viable option, at least not for now. He’d hazarded how the media was going to portray his and Will’s disappearance: Will was going to be lobbied as the “Innocent Hostage” and Hannibal, the “Psychotic, Flesh-Eating, Captor”. He also foresaw that despite Jack Crawford’s better judgment, the stubborn man was going to insist that such a narrative be continuously propagated throughout all major news outlets. Hannibal’s brass eyes went dark with annoyance at the thought.

Will’s involvement with Hannibal was voluntary. It always irked him, the concept of Alana and Jack alike, undermining Will, nurturing some affected innocence, within the man, that just simply wasn’t there. Will was gentler than Hannibal perhaps, more timid, withdrawn, prone to nervousness, but he wasn’t helpless. In earnest, the way that Will wore the skin of victimhood, stretched like canvas over the frame of his body, tightly upholstered, annoyed Hannibal. What served to irk him further was the notion that Will, on occasion, believed in his own victimhood. His body was a sturdy one, Hannibal had tested its limits on several occasions and each time, it managed to weather those trials. That lithesome, muscular, form, had come away with gouges, scars, but it was resilient, healthy, strong. His mind, that pillar of a thing, prodded, manipulated, bent, blow-torched, enlightened, it too was strong. To undermine such durability was an insult, not only to Will, but also to Hannibal’s shrewd and meticulous taste. Hannibal feasted on the weak and mated the strong, just as nature had intended.

It was Will's sensitivity that masked his predation, or perhaps his superior acting skills? At one point in time, Hannibal had, had, his doubts, lamenting over the possibility that Will was simply absorbing his characteristics due to constant exposure, but over time, Hannibal was gladdened to find that wasn’t the case. Will was his own brand of killer, with his own gate, broad shoulders rolled back, positioning himself to attack. He was knife-tongued, perhaps a bit impish, rude, impulsive, a haughty mess of deliberate and sporadic, a conglomeration of sensual and barbaric, wild as the curls on his head, yet sharp, not entirely graceful, but proud, mighty. Will lived his life, limboed between two extremes: skittish, passive, over-stimulated, or, unmitigated, feral, starving. It would take some doing to marry the divide and Will wouldn’t be able to do so without a bridge. An anchor stays the ship abreast the sea’s many abuses, a bridge permits safe passage across an expansive maw of jagged teeth.

Hannibal wanted to be that anchor and bridge, to love that ridiculous boy into one, fully, realized, entity.

He regarded the dismembered head before him and it stared back, albeit, vacantly. The kitchen buzzed with flies, some of them landing on a pair of black, marble, eyes, now milky due to the onset of decay. Bowels sagged off of the countertop, like some kind of morbid, decorative, tinsel. Long, twig-like, legs, protruded from the sink, hooves bowing at the ankle joints, like a bouquet of wilted flowers. The buck’s head that he’d been having a para-social staring contest with, had been sloppily positioned on the countertop, its reaching antlers, still in full-velvet. A tongue lolled heavily from its broken jaw. Hannibal had been taken aback by the scene, to say the least. He stepped further into the kitchen, the morning light of Summer, setting the circular window above the sink, aglow. It was a gorgeous morning, from what Hannibal could see, the sky, dusted with Marigold pollen, the clouds, spun out into wisps. His sharp eyes slowly fell back onto the buck’s head, the stink of ill-preserved meat, left to warm in the Summer heat, accosting his tender nose. Will was seated at the kitchen table, he was filthy, covered in mud up to his calves, bits of it caked to his knees and naked thighs. He wasn’t dressed appropriately for the outdoors, which is clearly where he had been. He was wearing a pair of boxer briefs and a gray hoodie with nothing underneath, Hannibal could tell as such, based off of the way that the material fell lazily off of one muddy shoulder. Clutched possessively between his bloody fingers was a hunk of meat, which he tore into with his teeth. The meat had been cooked, although not with any sort of artisanal intent, it didn’t even look seasoned.

“Hungry boy.” Hannibal stated with a slight tilt of his head. He supposed he wasn’t surprised at Will’s voracious appetite, he hadn’t eaten anything for several days, a product of his own stubbornness of course. Will didn’t look up from his food, instead opting to stuff it into his face, before reaching out to rip off another hunk of meat. The meat had been cooked properly at least. The spectacle was an odd one indeed and Hannibal couldn’t look away from the other male, as his perfect teeth sunk into dead flesh. Will gulped down his kill and Hannibal watched the movement of his throat as he swallowed. Procuring a carving knife from the knife-block and a fork from the silverware drawer, Hannibal returned to Will’s side. “May I?” He asked. Will merely nodded his concession, struck wordless, due to his mouth being stuffed full. Hannibal cut several thin slices, stabbed through them with the use of his fork, sandwiching the meat with the knife, before delicately holding the pieces out for Will. Will accepted them with his bare hands, as he didn’t have a plate, his fingers tearing into the meat, ripping off reasonable chunks. This was too amusing. Hannibal then, cut himself a small sliver, forking it and placing it into his mouth. The meat had been cooked properly, it was tender, not at all burnt, Will clearly knew what he was doing, although it was absolutely flavorless, not offering any challenge to Hannibal’s superior palate.
“It has been well-prepared, though a simple basil rub would have given it some more flavor.” Hannibal said, working his jaw slowly in an effort to thoroughly taste the venison. “This meat was savaged.” He looked at Will, his eyes sparkling with delight and inquisition. Will said nothing, he’d already polished off the serving that Hannibal had cut for him and he once again, reached out to tear off another piece. “Would you like me to cut more for you instead? Shall I get you a plate and some proper cutlery?” Will shook his head, the trivialities of appropriate dinning equipment, were far from his mind, he just wanted to eat. He did stall however, evidently willing to allow Hannibal to cut him another severing, as apposed to ripping off pieces with his fingers, which were slicked with blood and deer-fat. Hannibal cut the ravenous hunter several more pieces and passed them over.

He sat down opposite Will and continued to observe the spectacle. After a gestation period of quiet eating, Will finally pushed his chair away from the table, indicating that he was finished with his meal.

“And as for the buck’s head?” Hannibal questioned the man, watching him as he wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his sweater.

“I used to own several books on the conventions of taxidermy.” Will said, not really answering Hannibal’s question.

“Are you taking up a new hobby?”

“I’m toying with the idea.”

“You do seem to have a talent for it.” Hannibal mused in reference to the late, Randall Tier. “Would you like a bath?” He then added.

“Hunger prompted me to enter into the woods. The second I sensed pray, my body reacted. I can’t…remember what I did exactly, how I even managed to hack it up and drag it back here, I left some of it behind, for practical reasons and as an act of solidarity for the other predators.”

“You are beginning to acknowledge your place amongst the fold.”

“The Fold, or your Fold?”

“Mine. Only mine.”

Will stood from his chair in response, aggressively unzipping his sweater and shrugging out of it. Hannibal watched the muscles in his arms flex slightly as he moved. Rumpling the clothing item into a wad, Will tossed it to the floor.

“I do want a bath, but I’d like to draw it myself.” He said sharply. He then turned his naked back to Hannibal and walked away, his dirty boots trudging mud all over the kitchen floor as he went.

Will wasn’t upset with Hannibal, though his cadence and body language spoke otherwise. He was upset that Hannibal had witnessed him in such a feral state. Entering into the master bathroom (the farmhouse was fitted with two), Will combed a hand through his hair, his fingers coming away with bits of deer carcass. The man living inside the mirror accused him of looking like a fucking animal and much as he wanted to contest him, he couldn’t.

His appetite didn’t perturb him, he’d long since reconciled with his teeth. He didn’t despise Hannibal’s choices in meat; flesh, whether it be that of a fish, a deer, a pig, a human, it was all relative to Will at this point, so long as he was fed. He supposed he wasn’t entirely bothered with his “Becoming”, either.

What he was didn’t matter so much as the nature of how he was becoming the what.

Hannibal seemed to navigate his respective ‘how’ with effortless ease. He could make that fluid transition, like a river feeding into the sea. Everything was so smooth when it came to that man; how he spoke, how he moved, how he killed. There was no duality, only one, linear, entity. When those fearsomely gentle hands broke bone, they did so with great intention. Will wanted to break with intention too. He was sick and tired of always leading with his nose, seldom ever did he feel like his body was his. He couldn’t make a lucid decision to kill, he was always relying on instinct, urges.

Unlike Hannibal. Almost every life sacrificed was a clinical affair. There was no heaving blackness that took up his hands and forced him to slaughter, he butchered his pray entirely of his own accord, there was no inner beast, because he was the beast.

He continued to pick out pieces of animal flesh from the silky coils of his hair. Hannibal would clean the kitchen, he was far too fastidious to idle until Will eventually got around to tidying up. Distantly, Will wondered how Hannibal would feel about him keeping a tank of maggots out in the backyard for bone cleaning? That was how taxidermy was accomplished. The bust of a deer or buck, would be submerged into a tank, swarming with maggots. The maggots would feed from the decaying meat, until all that was left behind was bone, stained an ugly, yellow, hue, due to sun exposure and bleached blood.

Maggots were predators too, albeit, cowardly ones.

Stepping out of his boxers, Will kicked them to the side to join just one of his dejected boots, he then placed a foot into the tub, before drawing his lips tight, summoning a growl of irritation. He forgot to remove his prosthetic. Sitting on the toilet, lid down, Will commenced the insipid ritual of removing his faux leg. The spacers were annoying to peel off and he hated having to change his bandaging so frequently, due to trapped sweat. Propping the prosthetic against the sink, he unbound his leg. The stitching was healing rather well, greenish-purple, bruises, still haloed his leg, though they were growing fainter and fainter each day. Now he could step into the tub. With a roll of his eyes, Will tossed the spent bandages into the tiny trash can next to the toilet. He struggled into the tub, awkwardly maneuvering himself into a seated position, before stopping up the drain and turning on the faucet.

“The divide can be married, you know.”

Will’s eyes shot open, he hadn’t even realized that he’d fallen asleep. The voice that spoke was not his own, which meant that Hannibal had decided to intrude upon him whilst he was bathing.

“So we’re espoused now?” Will questioned tiredly, brows furrowed in faint irritation.

“Not us. I want to espouse all facets of yourself, together.”

“Ah. This isn’t a proposal then?”

“I wouldn’t say that.” Hannibal gave a wry half smile. “It is the kind of proposal that wouldn’t require you to wear a little band around your finger.”

“Too bad.” Will mocked, lightly.

“Unless you are pining for a little band?”

“I pined, I got one, I grew bored with it.”

“Fickle.”

“A married man, has the nerve to tell another married man that he’s ‘fickle’ ?”

“I am sure that you are well aware of what set that hip-shot into motion.”

“How did Bedelia manage not to snap her wrist, balancing that rock on her finger for all those months?”

“I imagine that her body is made up of the same stuff as her instinct to survive, steel.”

“Intimately conversing with you, whilst darting around the dinner table. She tried.”

“That she did.”

“You knew she couldn’t see, so you didn’t even bother to hide. She posited to me that she saw you ‘behind the veil’, but only because you were being literal. In hindsight, that really isn’t anything to brag about. You weren’t being vulnerable, so much as you were being a terror.”

“I did yield to some compulsions during that time.”

“You were ‘all at sea’ .”

“And you?”

“I was dreaming about my stream.”

“Then perhaps I was ‘all at stream’ ?”

“I didn’t see you there.”

“You weren’t looking.”

“Maybe you were drowning then?”

“That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?”

“I wanted it for us.”

“You granted me the privilege of dying next to you.”

“Because I couldn’t grant myself the privilege of living next to you.”

“You consider it a privilege?”

“I wouldn’t be so maddened by it if it wasn’t.”

“Do you consider my love a privilege?”

“I don’t have to.”

“And why is that?”

“Because you cannot control whom you love. There’s no victory in it, though that doesn’t make it any less valuable.”

“You consider my love valuable?”

“That, I do.” Will acquiesced. Certainly, he considered Hannibal’s love to be of great value, though it was weighty. “You all but deposited it into my waiting hands and admittedly, my fingers snapped backwards in response to its girth.”

“Perhaps I should have been more gentle then?”

“No. You were gentle enough, as gentle as you could have been.”

“Does hate weigh more than love?”

“ ‘Ma’at’ would deem it so. ” Will mused.

“Then your scales are tipped in spite of Anubis’ feather?”

“They were.” Will sighed, he was growing discomfited by this conversation. Hannibal was influencing him to mull over his feelings and he just simply wasn’t in the mood. “C’mere.” He then announced, flippantly. Obliging Will’s request, Hannibal stepped further into the master bathroom, tips of his shoes halting at the edge of the bathmat in front of the sink. “You’re useless to me at that distance.” Will stated snobbishly. With a smirk of amusement, Hannibal crossed the expanse of the carpet, until he was only a few feet away from the tub.

“Is this satisfactory?” Hannibal questioned, a singular brow raised as he looked down at Will. Will inclined his head, lips pulled into a closed smile, sarcastic in nature.

“That’ll do.” Will braced a wet palm on the edge of the tub, splaying his other hand against the tiled wall, he hauled himself upwards. Without a moment’s hesitation, Hannibal reached down to grab Will beneath his armpits, so that he could leverage himself into a standing position with the use of his good leg. The thick arm that Hannibal had wrapped snuggly around his chest, wasn’t at all necessary, though Will didn’t exactly care enough to comment on it. He was never particularly bothered by Hannibal’s touch, it had always felt so reassuring, now wasn’t any different. Hannibal all but hauled Will out of the tub, releasing him once his wet foot connected with the bathmat. Will clutched onto Hannibal’s shoulder, breathing heavily. He swallowed at the feel of a hand pressed against the small of his soaked back.

“There’s still some soap in your hair.” Hannibal observed.

“I’m not getting back in there.” Will laughed sharply. Seemingly unsatisfied with Will’s response, Hannibal gingerly placed one hand on the sodden bandages covering Will’s belly and the other hand on his hip. He guided Will over to the sink and Will grabbed the rim of it with both hands, leaning against it. “Guess I forgot to remove the bandages around my stomach.” Will said, annoyed with his oversight.

“Bathing is no small affair for you.” Hannibal offered sympathetically. “Wait here.” He instructed, before disappearing from Will’s side entirely. He then returned, balancing a Demijohn bottle in both of his hands. Standing at Will’s side, he positioned the glass bottle beneath the faucet and filled it with warm water. “Lean forward, please.” He ordered politely and Will obeyed. Warm water cascaded down his head and nape. Hannibal worked his fingers through Will’s hair with his free hand, combing the soap out of his brown locks.

“My own wife never touched me like this.” Will blurted out suddenly.

“How did she touch you?”

“She…touched me in the conventional sense.”

“Sex is an activity that has the distinct capacity to mean everything and nothing.”

“I loved the feeling.”

“Not the woman?”

“No.”

“You were unkind to her Will.”

“That was never my intention.”

“Perhaps if you understood how it felt to give up your body, you’d realize the depths of your cruelty?”

“Are you telling me that you loved both Alana and Bedelia?”

“I don’t have your gift. My conscience isn’t clear, although it is ignorant.”

“It feels…humiliatingly passionate.”

“And did it feel good to you to leverage yourself above her passionate humiliation? Did her subservience stroke your more masculine sensibilities?”

“Yes.” Will admitted tightly, shifting his hold on the sink’s rim as blood began to rush to an inopportune place, thickening it.

“You cruel thing.” Hannibal teased darkly, his hand rubbing suggestive circles into Will’s sodden back. “Sex is the great equalizer amongst us animals, we all become 'humiliatingly passionate' and I can assure you Will, that fiery, wet, grip, feels the same be it woman or man.”

“Which ‘grip’ do you prefer?” Will asked shakily.

“Yours.”

Will breathed harshly, before turning his head to the side, rapidly blinking away his incredulity.

“You’ve mulled over that particular scenario frequently inside of your head?” Will finally asked. Cupping his jaw, Hannibal calmly redirected Will’s face back over the sink basin, so that he could finish rinsing his hair.

“There is an entire room for it.” Hannibal confessed simply.

“I suppose sex has been a fluid enterprise since the 'Greco Romans', illicit or no…”

“The original hedonists. Our sex wouldn’t be illicit though.”

“Morally contentious, then.”

“For whom?”

“Polite Society.”

Hannibal laughed at that, hands working out the remaining dregs of soap from Will’s hair, before releasing him.

“I never claimed to be a member of ‘Polite Society’.”

“You’ve set up your courts amongst it.”

“So have you. Do you fear judgment from your peers, from Jack Crawford?”

“ I fear allowing for you to delight in my ‘passionate humiliation’. ”

Chapter Text

He’d kept the buck’s head, opting to set the rotting carcass out on the porch for Will to clean on his own. The immortalization of one’s kill was an intimate pursuit after all.

Will was quickly morphing into something unknown to Hannibal. Presently, he couldn’t decipher between feelings of elation and perhaps no small amount of trepidation? Will was still a fledgling, only just beginning to sprawl out his ‘waxen wings’.

Though it pained him, Hannibal was beginning to reconcile with the reality that he was no longer in control of Will’s metamorphosis. This is what he’d always wanted for Will, wasn’t it? This is what he’d always wanted for himself, wasn’t it; to cultivate an ideal mate?

Not a placid extension of himself, stony-faced, a "mime" of culture and all things associated with the “Upper Echelon”. Not a prisoner, bug-eyed and agreeable, cowering at his side out of fear rather than loyalty. Will Graham was neither of those things, he was a Prince—still too young and savage to bare the heaviest of crowns, still in need of proper guidance, though he was royal nonetheless.

This was a conundrum…

For once in his life, Hannibal feared that he’d caught the same quality of illness that beguiled both Chiyoh and Will, listlessness. He could just see Will’s own beginning playing out in the catchlights of his soulful, blue, eyes, however, he couldn’t quite ascertain where he was meant to fit into said beginning, middle and end. Until recently, he’d never felt unsteady regarding the respective role that he was meant to play in Will’s life. Hannibal had always been the “Cultivator”. He never failed to maintain his own pursuits as well, molesting the malleable minds of his clients, his colleagues, ever urbane in his pursuit of the arts. He’d had a well crafted identity, Will was simply a project at that time.

In lieu of the current axial tilt in Hannibal and Will’s relationship, how were the two meant to take up their respective roles, without fear of one of them being jettisoned out into orbit? Was he meant to follow Will, or at the very least, quietly observe? How would he busy himself in the interim, whilst leaving Will to his own devices? He hadn’t given it much thought, a rare oversight for a man such as he. Perhaps he was just so transfixed with pinning the newly hatched butterfly to his cork-board, that he hadn’t considered the reality of living shoulder to shoulder with the very product of his love?

Domesticity, an awkward notion.

Will didn’t need Hannibal to tend to his injuries.

Will didn’t need Hannibal to feed him.

Will didn’t need Hannibal to council him.

Will didn’t need anything from him.

And yet, Will needed him.

Perhaps Hannibal should be contented with that, or perhaps he should violently hack out a need in Will that made him feel more in control?

An arm…

Both arms…

The other of his legs…

Immobilize him completely…

Capture those oceanic eyes in his hands…

‘Little Prince…

Please do not forget that the gore on your blade is still very new to you…

Little Prince…

You’ll never know the woods better than the woods do. The trees often whisper, spreading rumors to carnivorous monsters that writhe in the underbrush…’

One, fine, morning, Will was sat on the porch, an antler in hand. He’d been scraping off the un-shed velvet from the branch-like-bone, collecting it into a Mason Jar. Perhaps he was adopting Garrett Jacob Hobbs’ sentimentality, absorbing his reverent mode of killing?

“Feeling paternal?” Hannibal had asked, now standing behind Will on the porch, screen door squawking closed in his wake. Will spared him a glance over his gun-scarred-shoulder, the very bullet injury that he’d sustained the night that he’d first begun to see Hannibal.

“A little.” Will mused dryly. Hannibal smoothed his hand over Will’s naked shoulder, thumb idling at the risen indention of the scar there.

“Nightmares?” Hannibal pressed, knowingly, he could smell the stale sweat lacquered to Will’s skin like film, from a night wrought with violent tossing and turning. Will squinted down at the carving knife in his hand as he continued to scrape off the velvet. His old pair of spectacles had been lost to him and it was clear that he was in need of new ones. Even in metaphorical death, there are still some things that one cannot take with them. “Does the wet air yield a sense of melancholy? The punishing sunburns at your pale back, the jaunty vernacular, the general ease of simplicity and violent necessitation for conformance?” He kneaded Will’s shoulder before giving it an affectionate squeeze.

“I left my fingerprints all over your past, of course you’d be so inclined to do the same to mine.” Will said, his tone bored, his countenance unaffected.

“You had scabbed-over-knees and unbrushed hair, your mother never taught you how to tame it.”

“I tried to play like the other kids in my grade.” Will conceded.

“A dirty arm scrubbing at tear-sodden-eyes when the dodge ball boxed your nose.”

“More like a fist.”

“So it was that kind of play?”

“You know where I’m from.” Will snapped, his hand, tiredly scrubbing at his forehead.

“We aren’t there of course, I just wanted to know if you could scent it around the corner?”

“ Is there a Lithuanian term for ‘let it be’ ? ”

“ ‘Tebūnie’, roughly. ” Hannibal supplied pleasantly.

“ ‘C’est tout’. ” Will offered in response, rising into a standing position.

“ ‘Cajun French’. That was rude, Will.”

A snort of indignation from Will, followed by a haughty chuckle. He brushed passed Hannibal, pulling open the screen door, entering through it.

Will’s gate was a lot less clumsy now, his body finally acclimating to the prosthetic limb. Hannibal rubbed at his scarred neck reflexively. Casting a glance down at the stripped antler and the jar stuffed with velvet, Hannibal picked up the jar and entered into the farmhouse.

Turning over the glass jar in his palm, Hannibal watched as tiny, flecks, of velvet, danced within the vessel. He parted his lips, before closing them again, his jaw ticking slightly as he mulled over his thoughts. Entering into the kitchen, he’d spotted Will, back pressed against the refrigerator, nursing a chilled can of beer.

“I have been…privately agonizing over what to do with you.” Hannibal confessed, setting the jar of velvet down on the countertop.

“Me?” Will questioned incredulously.

“Yes. I’ve danced around my resentment towards you, however, now I feel to do so is entirely moot.” He sussed Will searching his face for signs of levity, there were none.

“You aren’t one to hold grudges, you just get even. Aren’t we even at this point, about square?” Will drew out the shape of a square in the air with his pointer finger as he spoke.

“You are choosing to navigate your future on your own, which leaves us decidedly incongruent.”

“On and on with your fetish for plying my mind.” Will offered dryly, taking a sip of his beer.

“This isn’t just an idée fixe. I am at a loss.”

Will regarded Hannibal through the fallen throng of twists and curls that obscured his eyes. He was unused to this kind of bald sincerity from Hannibal. His stubbly jaw ticked, summoning a gentle groan of indignation.

“ Feeling a bit ‘out of the loop’? ” Will questioned, brows raised in that knowing, impish, fashion, that both charmed and annoyed Hannibal equally.

“There is no loop; just a linear stream of awakening. Continuous and entirely surreptitious.” Hannibal supplied, he wore a bit of a forlorn and thoroughly unimpressed expression on his face as he spoke.

“What did you think would happen?” Will summoned in that calm, yet accusing, almost patronizing tone, communicating to Hannibal that an argument was about to transpire. He privately loathed when Will postured such pompous behavior. This side of Will distantly reminding him of a strict, practical, vintage, mother, chastising her son. His tone, both biting and belittling. “Did you think that we’d just theatrically subvert our mutual vexations with each other, all in one go? Did you think that there wouldn’t be residual tension? Anger?”

“Forgive me Will, I thought we’d already subverted our hurts via our mutual concession of the beauty that we’d cultivated through our suffering?”

“I can’t unsee and I have no desire to, but for once in our relationship, we are now on equal footing.”

“Equality betrays an open line of communication, familiarity.”

“You’ve been starved of me and now you are asking for me to put my thoughts into words that don’t exist.”

“For once, I am not so interested in your thoughts, rather,  I am much more interested in your feelings.”

“You want to know how I feel about you?”

“I want to know how you feel about you.”

Setting his unfinished beer down on the countertop, Will slowly approached Hannibal.

“I feel…annoyed, angry, restless, compulsory, liberated.” He fixed Hannibal into position with his intense gaze as he moved closer to him, not stopping until he was less than a foot away from the other man.

“Whom is the velvet for, Will?” Hannibal asked him evenly, his fingers itching with the urge to touch the blue-eyed, anomaly, before him. Will didn’t answer him immediately, instead, mending the gap between them, he pressed both palms on Hannibal’s expansive shoulders and leaned in. Their cheeks brushed as Will whispered into Hannibal’s keen ear.

“Their eyes need healing, all of them. And their mouths must be stuffed.”

Chapter Text

Molly Foster (formerly known as Molly Graham), set her hands on her wide hips. She squinted her almond-shaped eyes, staring at nothing really. She was assuming an authoritative stance over the wreckage that was her life. At present, as far as she knew, there was no immediate danger to Wally (her son) or herself. The jagged-toothed, predator, that had broken into the family cabin, was dead, she’d managed to accrue that knowledge months ago via her correspondence with FBI agent, Jack Crawford.

Molly made a habit of not speaking that man’s name, made a habit of not soliciting his company any more than was absolutely necessary. Certainly, certainly, she blamed him for what had happened to her late husband.

Worrying at the plump protrusion of her bottom lip, Molly exhaled loudly. She scratched the back of her head, boney, delicate, fingers, working through the knots in her messy bun. She blamed herself. The thought accosted her with a brute force that made her battered, heart, burn, with the inflammation of loss and the general human-shaped, ache, that had been carved into it. The hole in her chest was molded to Will Graham’s silhouette.

She’d prompted him to follow Jack, her sweet-natured Will. Nobility was a genetic trait in the Foster bloodline. It kept their shoulders pinned back, their heads held high, it fortified purpose in each one of them and Molly was no different. She supposed it was her in-born nobility that had charmed Will into arresting one of her dainty fingers with a diamond, spangled, band.

She hadn’t anticipated that she would ever marry again, her first marriage had been a total farce. She’d been too young, too idealistic back then, too trusting of sycophants that she’d always managed to overlook men like Will; men that pinned themselves to the wall and looked on distantly, men that bolstered an honest kind of love, but were far to exhausted from the world’s many evils to actually let themselves love and be loved. She wished she’d found Will a life-time ago, before, when she was still innocent, before the rinderpest had claimed Will, ravaging his tenderness and warping it into something akin to chronic nervousness and general unease.

He’d been far too broken by the time Molly had gotten to him, though he’d shouldered his brokenness beautifully. They were partners, she’d felt his strength at her back and he’d felt her strength at his. They were friends. Molly was the doughy-eyed, sprite, with an iron constitution, elated when satisfied, gentle, but firm, when disappointed, the mothering sort. Will was the bitter nihilist, permanently exhausted, guarding what was left of his tenderness behind his apex jaws that boasted of more bark than bite, soft spoken, but cutting.

He’d said it without ever saying it: he was starving for connection.

He was so smart it was stupid. So fiercely independent in his lifestyle, that it bordered on libertarian. He was awkward, but in a disarming, wonderful, kind of way, he was a gorgeous mess, really. Molly had never encountered a creature so contradictory and complex and she doubted that she ever would, or would want to. She had no desire to meet another Will, the Will that had been hers (on loan mostly), was all she’d ever needed.

She’d pried herself from her son’s nervous hold, pressing several, protective, kisses, to his little forehead. She then quietly left his bedroom, being sure to leave the door ajar slightly, so that the light from the hallway could shine into the darkness like a narrow, beam, of gold.

Molly crawled into bed, her nose catching a familiar scent, instantly recognizing whom it belonged to despite her eyes being blinded by darkness. She moved to lay flat on her back, her body stiff as she swallowed nervously. Tears streamed calmly from the corners of her eyes as she tempered her breathing as much as possible.

"Will?” Molly uttered softly.

A solemn and deep exhale in response.

“Not dead, huh?” She didn’t mean to sound so casual, rather it was a defense mechanism that she deferred to whenever she was anxious, Will already knew this about her.

“Nope.” Will drawled, his tone just as casual, mostly in an effort to comfort Molly.

“How’d you uh—shit—h-how’d you find us?” Molly smoothed the flat of her hand down her face, fighting back tears, her eyes trained on the canopy of black above her that made up the ceiling.

“I would have chosen this place for you if Jack hadn’t. He was attempting to honor my wishes—”

“For once in his fucking life, Will.” Molly blurted out hysterically, nearly choking on her own words due to the sudden force for which they escaped passed her chewed lips. She immediately cupped a hand over her mouth in an attempt to regain her composure. Molly couldn’t see it, but Will’s eyes softened in response to her admission. Sitting upright in Molly’s bed, Will turned on the lamp perched on top of the nightstand. The room was suddenly aglow, the ceiling that Molly had been staring at, no longer a ceaseless ocean of mucky black. Slowly, she glanced over at Will’s form from the corners of her puffy eyes. Blindly, she reached out and pressed her hand flat against her “husband’s” naked back, just to feel the realness of him. His skin was damp. She then exhaled shakily, her fingers pressing gently into the newly formed scars there. “You took a shower?” She asked simply, her warbling voice, cutting through the dead, spring, air.

“Yeah, sorry, hope that’s alright with you? Long drive.”

“Yeah—oh my god—of course, whatever…um…whatever you need.”

“I felt I owed you an explanation, sort of, there’s certain details that I can’t give you, for your own safety.”

“You fell?” Molly asked suddenly, her tone likened to that of a concerned mother, asking her child about a scraped knee.

“I did.”

“How?”

“I—um—I made a choice.” Will leaned forward between his spread legs, propping his elbows on top of his knees, his hands at his temples.

“Honey, what happened? What did you do?” Molly scrambled to sit upright on her bed, legs folded into the “criss-cross-applesauce” position.

“Can’t tell you.” Will stated, swallowing back his emotions.

“Have you come back to tell me that this was my fault, because if so, I’d whole-heartedly agree with you. I can take it, say what you need to say, I can take it, you knew better than I did about all of this, it’s my fault.”

“I only knew better because there was so much of my past life that I kept away from you. There goes that nobility again, Miss Molly, this wasn’t your fault.”

“I almost killed our dogs. I fed them some crap food that was mass-produced in China, Jesus Christ Will, I almost killed our dogs!”

Will felt a smile tug at his lips, a soft chuckle leaving him as he looked over his shoulder at the hysterical, little, woman, sat like a child in the middle of her bed.

“You didn’t almost kill the dogs, Molly. They were poisoned. But I’ll bet it must have felt good to finally get that off your chest, huh?”

“Poisoned?” Molly asked, bug-eyed and shocked as she wiped away her tears with the sleeve of her flannel shirt—Will’s flannel shirt.

“ ‘The Red Dragon’ cased our old home, sussed it out for dogs, poisoned them all the night before he’d staged his attack. You did nothing wrong. How are they anyways?”

Molly desperately wanted to ask Will for further clarification regarding “The Red Dragon”, but figured it’d only stress him further, so she abstained, deciding instead to humor him with the current status of his pack.

“They all sleep with Wally every night.”

“All of them?” Will clarified with an amused expression on his face.

“Yeah. Each dog, crammed onto Wally’s bed, he loves it. You know Roads has gotten real fat.” Molly supplied fondly. Will simply laughed in response. “Like, so, so, fat. He’s a total piggy, always stealing the other dog’s food, I have to feed him separately now. Little jerk.”

“I’m glad everyone is healthy.”

“Yeah, well, healthy, but heartbroken.”

“The dogs or…?”

“Not just the dogs.”

“Wally didn’t always know how to feel about me. Can’t blame him. I think he knew that no one else would be able protect his mother better than he could.”

“He was forced to grow up too fast, I think it made him a bit cynical.”

“Rightfully so.”

Molly’s next question remained unsaid, burning the tip of her tongue like an ulcer. 'You didn’t feel deserving of us?’ She’d wanted to ask. ‘Or perhaps it was that you didn’t feel qualified?’

Will rose up from the bed, Molly followed. Her eyes roved the expanse of his chewed up back, before he finally turned around to face her. She’d already spotted the bandaging around his middle and her heart nearly imploded on itself once she’d glimpsed the blood-soaked front of his gauzy midsection.

“Same…god…s-same spot?” She smoothed her hand over her brow, jaw shifting slightly as she forced herself to look. He was so different now. He looked bigger, meaner, maybe? His eyes forcibly softening as they regarded her frazzled form. He looked restrained, like he’d been wearing an ill-fitting, rubber, mask, its synthetic visage contorted into a mocking display of empathy. Molly’s gaze traveled lower and she wanted to kick herself (pun not intended) for not immediately realizing that one of his legs was a prosthetic.

“This”, Will began, bending at the waist slightly to knock against the hard plastic of his faux limb with his knuckles, “falls under the category of things I can’t explain to you. You’d be implicated.” He approached her, his eyes narrowing with thinly, veiled, amusement, when she took one step, then two steps, backwards. A loud exhale through his nose, his hand disappearing into his pocket. Molly froze, fingers digging into the fabric of the shirt she wore. Will procured a phone from his pocket, a sleek, brand-new, phone. He held the item out to her. “Trade?” He asked.

“What?”

“Give me your phone, Molly.”

“What for?”

“I’m not asking, I’m telling. Your phone, now, please.”

Molly nodded out her compliance, awkwardly walking backwards, never taking her eyes off of Will. Reaching behind herself, her hand fumbled around under her pillow, where she usually kept her phone. Most nights, she felt a bit safer knowing that her phone was in immediate reach. The temptation to call 911 urged her fingers into action, but she did no such thing. Will could easily subdue her with his own mass before help would arrive. There wasn’t any sense in angering him—this new Will—this Will that wasn’t anything like the one she’d known before.

Molly handed Will her phone and in exchange, he gave her the one he’d brought with him, along with a white envelope, stuffed full with something thick and rectangular in shape. She took the new phone and envelope into both of her hands. A crunching sound was suddenly heard and Molly jumped slightly, wincing. Will had tossed her phone to the wood flooring beneath, the heel of his boot crashing down heavily onto the spider-webbed screen.

“Sorry about that. You’ve got a week to pack by the way.” Will stated simply. “He’ll kill you just to spite me, or he’ll lord your safety over my head for the rest of my life. He doesn’t have an off-button when it comes to things like this.”

“Who?” Molly asked, mentally brutalizing herself for her compulsion.

“The man I chose to die with. And Molly, honey, sweetheart, baby, darling, love of my life, I will kill you and your son without the slightest hesitation if you disobey me, or breathe a single word about any of this to Jack Crawford. Are we clear?”

Will had been gone for three days now. The young man’s absence was an eventuality as far as Hannibal was concerned. He took no preemptive measures to stop him. Hannibal had little interest in sequestering Will like some sort of prisoner. The prospect of Will going to the police, returning to Jack Crawford’s side, like a studious, little, pup, was irksome, though Hannibal doubted in the occurrence of such an outcome. It was too obvious and also, not at all indicative of the philosophy that Will had newly cultivated for himself.

Hannibal could, indeed, reconcile with the notion that Will wanted to operate on his own, reach self-actualization on his own, void of seductive whispers through his gummy encasings. Hannibal had hoped that Will would choose to remain at his side. It had been so clear to him, now more than ever, that Will was not at all a solitary creature, much as he advertised himself to be. The trauma that had bonded their bodies together, like glue, wasn’t tacky enough.

If time allotted for Will to further perpetuate his pettiness, would Hannibal seek the boy out?

That morning in Will’s little “buoy”, that jounced about amongst the snowy seas of WolfTrap, he'd told Hannibal with a finality that stung both hot and cold, like a block of dry ice placed into naked hands, that he wouldn’t pursue him.

Hannibal recalled the weight of him in his arms as he ambled their injured bodies out of the degenerative, cesspit, that was Verger Manor. He recalled lowering his trauma-wracked body into a tub of warm water, dressing him in clean clothes, laying him down to rest in his bed. Hannibal had permeated that little home with his oblique aura and he’d always looked far to large in stature to fit into such a small space. Perhaps that was the final straw for Will? He was sick of the “Versace” smog that clung to his skin. Sick of clinical and yet nurturing hands, prodding at him, sick of the velvet intonation that politely whispered his worst fears into his head.

Had Hannibal really been so obnoxious?

Obnoxious. That word bared a heavy weight to it that cracked bones if carried. Hannibal didn’t like that word, not at all indeed. An old patient of his, suddenly surfaced to the forefront of his mind: Franklyn Froideveaux. Annoying man with a taxing voice, wobbly, with a caustic disposition that wore those around him perfectly thin. A knuckle-dragging-wannabe-debutant, a cheese-mongering-tissue-ejecting-knee-patting-closeted-plague of a man.

Or perhaps Hannibal was simply projecting? He’d witnessed his own eagerness reflected back at him through soft, brown, eyes and a jovial, pudgy, face, likely fattened with variants of designer cheeses.

He could still feel the orgasmic reverberations in his fingers from the brutal neck-twisting, that he’d deployed unto his inverted “self”.

Hannibal never found Franklyn to be all that interesting.

Will’s lovely voice had certainly echoed that very sentiment as well, though the sentiment had been levied at Hannibal.

And yet, he was oddly loyal, relenting and answering Hannibal’s call. Even if he’d stabbed his eardrums bloody, he’d still hear Hannibal’s voice, rebounding off of the walls of his beautifully, puked, mind.

He decided to go into town.

After a month and then some of solitude, the food supply (initially provided by Chiyoh) had begun to dwindle. Hannibal was not a nervous man, it simply wasn’t in his nature to fret over potentialities, however, he was practical. He was well aware of the risk he’d be taking by allowing himself to be seen, ambulating amongst the throngs of polite society, ghosting shoulders with the locals. Unfortunately, Will had already put them at risk due to his impulsivity. Hannibal had suspected that he’d returned to the source, to pick at some scabs.

The Southern air cloaked him in its heady, damp, heat. He couldn’t afford to wear a suit in this oppressive weather, in conjunction with the fact that his usual, peacocking, attire, would be far too conspicuous. Instead, he’d settled for a white, V-neck, T-shirt, tucked into khaki slacks, belted with hammered-calf-leather, “Gancini”. On his feet, he wore a pair of “Kiton” loafers, which tied the casual, summer, outfit, together. He looked effortless, yet purposeful.

The local Farmer’s Market—whilst not at all comparable with Hannibal’s usual culinary sensibilities—would have to suffice for the time being.

Entering into the garage, Hannibal was greeted with the site of a loan motorcycle. The unregistered, unmarked, vehicle, had clearly been taken. Fortunately, the motorcycle had been outfitted with a rear consul that could accommodate a sizable amount of groceries, in addition to it being saddled on either side with two, large, "V-Strom", bags.

The Alabama air rushed Hannibal’s skin, as he cut through it at high velocity. Through the tinted window of his helmet, he’d spotted a sign that read: “Welcome To Sweet Home Alabama”, the letters curving in a slight flourish against forest-green, metal.

The farmhouse, for which he and Will had been staying in, just skirted the bottom hemlines of Mississippi and Alabama.

Birmingham Farmer’s Market, was a quaint, little, thing, though the spread of produce options were liberal enough. After parking his motorcycle and locking his helmet to it, Hannibal entered the market, his keen eyes roving over the array of fresh produce.

He’d managed to garner a few inquisitive looks whilst he was examining a display of Southern-peas. He supposed that no matter how much he attempted to “reduce” himself, his very stature and build, his elegance, still managed to upstage his efforts. Hannibal nearly twitched slightly upon catching a glimpse of long, curly, brown, hair. The sun’s glow refracted off of the locks like a halo of gold, the gentle breeze taking up strands between its fingers, toying with them.

Such pretty hair.

The mahogany mop of loose waves belonged to a little girl, blue eyed and smiling. She was missing her two, front, teeth, as she grinned up at Hannibal. She was tiny, looked to be about seven years of age.

“Hi!” She chirped. “You’re big!” She added. Hannibal smiled gently, the corners of his ruddy-brown-eyes, crinkling. He dropped to a crouch before the child.

“Is this better?” He asked, his pitch soft, dusty and full of cobwebs, as he hadn’t used this particular tone on anyone in a long time.

“I’ll bet your shoes are made out of actual, real, alligators, because my uncle makes shoes out of alligators, he-um-hunts them. I can tell what’s real alligator skin and what’s the fake kind. Those are real.” The little girl offered, pointing an itty, bitty, finger, at Hannibal’s Kiton’s.

“You’re very observant, aren’t you?” Hannibal praised her.

“What does that word mean?”

“It means that you notice lots of little details.”

“Like how your hair is two different colors?”

“Is it?”

“Gray-blondish-y-gray.”

“Your hair is very pretty. It reminds me of someone close to me.”

“Who?”

“A very dear friend.”

“What’s your friend’s name?”

“Will.”

“My name’s Will too, but it also has an ‘ow’ at the end of it. ‘Willow’. ”

“Such a pretty name.”

“What’s your name?”

“Where are your parents?” Hannibal asked, gingerly changing the subject.

“Mommy’s at the asparagus. I like asparagus, but I hate zucchini.”

“Zucchini is a bit of an acquired taste, isn’t it?” Hannibal mused, offering the child his hand for her to take. “You said your mother was by the asparagus? She should be right across from us, shouldn’t she? Can you point her out to me?”

“She’s in the white dress and straw sunhat. She’s still on her phone.”

“Oh? Is your mother on her phone often?”

“Yeah. Always, always, always.” Willow sighed out dramatically.

“Let’s go say ‘hello’ to her, shall we?” Hannibal led the little girl across the busy isle-way, slowing his gate so that her small legs could keep up with him. He didn’t release her tiny hand until she was within a few feet of her mother, however, the child didn’t move from his side, once her hand had been freed. The child’s mother hadn’t spotted them and even went so far as to turn her back away from the duo, phone pressed snugly to her ear. The tiny child merely observed her mother, a distant expression on her cherubic face, her blue eyes darkening with resentment. She seemed to sober into stone, void of all the childish whimsy that she'd previously exhibited. Her mother's presence brought out this more mechanical disposition in her. 

“Willow?” Hannibal leaned down slightly so that he was closer to her level. “Do you know what the term: ‘for-granted’ means?”

“Ignored. It means when you ignore someone, it means when you treat them like they aren’t there, but they are there.” She offered stoically. 

“Correct.” Hannibal placed his wide palm atop Willow’s head. “Your mother is very fortunate that you found someone like myself.”

“How come?”

“Because the world is not at all a safe place for children.” Hannibal stated ominously as he walked the small distance over to the girl’s mother. “She’s yours, isn’t she?” He stated, his voice taking on a slightly somber tone, though the usually pleasant quality of it still laved over his newly darkened timber. The child’s mother jumped slightly and whirled around, phone still smashed to the side of her caked-face.

“What?” The woman sputtered obtusely, finally lowering her phone from her cheek and pressing the hang-up button on the screen.

“Your daughter decided to introduce herself to me. She’s very smart, you know. I thought I might return her to you.”

“Oh my god—Willow! You left?!” The woman exclaimed, panicked. “Willow, you never speak to people you don’t know!”

“Perhaps she wouldn’t feel the need to speak to others if her mother wasn’t also doing the same?” Hannibal mused, watching as the frantic woman pawed all over her daughter to check for anything amiss.

“I’m so sorry that she bothered you, thank you for bringing her to—” The woman cut herself off, looking over at the now, empty, space, where a tall, robust-looking, man, with uniquely handsome features, once stood.

After loading up the motorcycle with his many purchases, Hannibal slung his leg over the vehicle and dawned his helmet. He’d already prognosticated that child’s future. Their hair, the color of it, their eyes, the color of them, one and the same. She’d grow into something truly lovely and very, very, sick. When Hannibal spoke to her it was as though he were reaching into Will’s past.

Itty, bitty, tiny, trusting, Will, bright-eyed and so very smart.

That little boy had been taken for-granted.

He opened his eyes and Will stood over him, shaking. Tears streamed down his cheeks, his teeth clamped tightly shut. He was breathing harshly through his nose as he glared at Hannibal, his blue eyes wide and panicked. Hannibal sat upright in his bed.

“What did you do, Will?” He asked calmly. Will’s body was rigid, shivering and cloaked in darkness. He was enraged. Slowly, Hannibal stood, making his way over to Will. Will didn’t move, though he did look away from Hannibal, his eyes trained on something that Hannibal had yet to identify. “What do you see, Will?” Hannibal tried again. Will panted, eyes squeezing shut, the action forcing more tears to fall. “What do those eyes of yours see?” Hannibal pressed.

“See them, elevated, spitting from their pulpits…” Will stuttered incoherently.

“What are they saying?” Hannibal questioned the frantic male. Will didn’t answer immediately, as he kept his head and eyes fixed in the direction of his apparent distress.

“Breaking my neck to look up at them…breaking their necks to look down at me from their nooses…” He babbled and Hannibal gingerly cupped his chin to turn his face towards his own.

“Will, look at me.” Hannibal instructed, his tone soft, similar to the one he’d used on Willow earlier that day. Will’s frightened eyes slowly shifted over to Hannibal in response to the command. “What did you do, beautiful?”

Chapter Text

Without preamble, Will turned away from Hannibal and walked. He’d led Hannibal out of the house. He followed the curly-headed male’s back as it receded deeper and deeper into the woods, his silhouette aglow from the yellow-beam of the flashlight he was carrying. Will’s boot-clad, feet, thoughtlessly trudged over the forest floor. Hannibal attempted to step lightly as he was barefoot. Evidently, Will hadn’t thought to give him a moment to dawn proper footwear. Hannibal followed Will’s twitching shoulders dutifully, his lip curling in slight annoyance as branches and other organic debris, dug into the arches of his feet. Will then stalled suddenly and pointed. Hannibal’s eyes followed his finger, halting at the tip of it, before finally looking.

He was met with the tortured expression of a humanoid face, its mouth agape, sagging, stuffed to the brim with antler velvet. The eyes had been hollowed out and in their place was more antler velvet, filling up the inflamed and gutted sockets; the hollows weeped tears of dried, cracked, blood, which streaked down sallow cheeks. The stomach had been torn open, the man-made, aperture, stretched obscenely wide in an effort to accommodate a rather sizable insertion. From within the carved out stomach, an aborted deer fetus was nestled snugly. The fetus, still coated in fresh slick, which oozed in mucus-like gobs out of the gaping-maw. The dead animal looked almost rubbery, its bug-eyes milky. Atop the victim's head was a crown of thorns, bejeweled with the victim’s eyes, teeth, fingers, all elegantly and meticulously arranged there.

A sickening, squelching, sound, violated Hannibal’s ears, causing him to look down at his bare feet. Beneath his toes was a mass of unidentifiable bio-matter, in fact, Hannibal could detect the substance scattered all about the wooded underbrush. Hannibal stood behind Will, looking down on him as his hands cupped the shorter male’s shoulders. Will squeezed his eyes shut, leaned into Hannibal’s hold.

“This is your design.” Hannibal said, whispering against the side of Will’s sweaty neck. He rubbed his hands up and down the length of Will’s toned arms, Will swallowed against the touch. He pressed a kiss to Will’s nape, laving the patch of skin with affection. Smoothing a hand under Will’s shirt, Hannibal rubbed gentle circles over his bandaged belly. “Rebirth him; but first you must silence him, blind him, disarm him and humiliate him, halo his head with a crown of his own ignorance.” Hannibal offered, his voice, deep and sensual in nature. “How did your body react?”

Will wordlessly took one of Hannibal’s hands and pressed it between his legs, filling Hannibal’s open palm with the fullness of himself. He’d heard the other man emit a predatory growl against his neck, the hand that he’d placed between his legs, felt broad and warm against him. Hannibal tugged the neck-hole of Will’s shirt downwards, so that he could access more of his skin with his mouth. Will’s eyes glazed over, tears streaming down his cheeks and chin and neck. His brows furrowed. Admittedly, he’d been carrying this aching heat with him off and on for hours.

“It felt so good.” Will admitted angrily, breaking free of Hannibal’s hold and turning into him. Hannibal’s eyes glinted hungrily, his features severe. With two of his fingers, he pulled at the waistband of Will’s pants. Will stood motionless, his eyes reddened and swollen from crying, yet lidded with the same kind of hunger that was gnawing behind Hannibal’s beastly gaze.

“You couldn’t bring yourself to conflate your creation with your pleasure?”

“To do that seemed…vulgar.”

“It is.”

“So, am I to deny myself?”

“Yes.”

Will shuddered harshly, his breathing labored as he pressed his forehead against one of Hannibal’s large shoulders.

“Unless it is your aim to become a degenerate who splatters his works with his own ejaculate? I believe there’s a term for that: ‘defecating where you eat’. ”

“How do I resolve this?”

“You let it build inside of your body and you temper that blistering fever, until you accomplish what you’ve set out to accomplish and then you bring yourself home to me and I’ll pry you apart and soothe your ache myself.”

“This is all feeling very Marquis de Sade, to me.” Will sighed out shakily.

“He certainly explored the topic of ‘sexual philosophy’ to great exhaust.” Hannibal concurred.

“ ‘120 Days Of Sodom’ isn’t sexual philosophy, it’s disgustful, disgorging, barbaric, depravity. ” Will retorted, his words, lathed in venom.

“And do you see ‘barbaric depravity’ in your creation?”

“Yes.”

“And the notion arouses you?”

“Yes.”

“Marquis de Sade, would certainly posit you a sadist.”

“Would you?”

“Yes, though, not a barbarian, not a disgustful savage and certainly not an arbitrator of filth.”

“I want to blind and silence them all; their voices, like, cotton swabs, jabbing into my eardrums, their eyes, unseeing, yet seeing, seeing me trussed up in their little allusions, binding lies to me.”

Hannibal grabbed Will’s face, his fingers digging slightly into his jaw.

“When he turns his righteous head to thee, pity thyself a borrowed breath, for he idles in his plots, stills his fingers over devices of torment. Do not mistake his deliberation for haw, long-pigs, thy sepulchers await; where gutless flesh erodes within digestive, noble, wombs.” Hannibal recited, his ruddy-brown, eyes, violent with passion.

Will cried. His body shuddering as he met Hannibal’s rolling boil of a gaze. Hannibal pulled him into his chest, his cheek caressed by the fine silk of his black, night-shirt. Will squeezed his eyes shut, only faintly soothed by the hand that lightly brushed through his hair.

“Mourn him. You aren’t any less of a man for doing so, in fact, your pity deifies you. Holy tears weep for the fallen, you precious, precious, boy.” Hannibal all but cooed. Wrapping his powerful arms around Will, he engulfed the frantic other in velvet, smokey, blackness. Will allowed himself to be lulled, his body sagging against the mighty wall of flesh before him.

The two men stood adjacent to the mangled corpse, which belonged to the late Jack Crawford.