Work Text:
Dr. Lecter does genuinely enjoy Will’s company. Though Will finds that fact utterly baffling, it’s certainly true. No longer does it feel like he’s breaking some unspoken social contract when he accepts the dinner invitations instead of politely declining. It’s written all over the doctor’s body language that he genuinely wants to spend time with Will, and he’s not just being friendly and attentive for politeness’ sake.
The benefit of this shift towards friendship is that Will isn’t always the one under the microscope. At least, not when he has the faculties to push back against Dr. Lecter’s probing, when he feels like his feet are firmly grounded in the present and he can afford to rebuff his unofficial psychiatrist. On days like this, good days when Will feels healthy, he navigates their conversation in the other direction, and typically Dr. Lecter indulges his curiosity.
(Hannibal. Will calls him Hannibal, now. Or at least he’s supposed to. They are friends, after all. The distancing of the honorific is just… a lifejacket Will still wears, occasionally, in the privacy of his own mind.)
He lingers in the kitchen while Hannibal cooks. When Hannibal can spare the attention to do so, he makes pointed inquiries into Will’s work. But when Hannibal must focus on the more delicate steps of his culinary experiments, Will gets his own questions in. He knows not to ask Hannibal about his past; Hannibal only answers questions like that with forced smiles and half-truths. But Will can ask other things, little things. He wants to build himself a fuller picture of Hannibal, and figure out why Hannibal never behaves quite the way Will would expect a man with his resumé to behave.
“Do you consider yourself an American?” Will asks while Hannibal sears the lamb thigh.
Hannibal pauses, and looks over his shoulder at Will with such an amused, perplexed expression that Will flushes with pride at having put that look on his face. It’s satisfying to catch him off guard.
Hannibal turns back to the pan. “Whatever prompted such a question?”
“I’ve been trying to pin down what it is about you I find so out of place. It... occurs to me that I find it hard to picture you as anything other than a European expat, a fish-out-of-water. Do you have American citizenship?”
(Will would never ask such a rude question of someone who could be vulnerable to deportation, but this is Hannibal Lecter, who has more money than God, and for that reason Will is pretty sure the topic is safe territory.)
“I have lived here for many years,” Hannibal says. He pulls the dish towel from his shoulder to protect his fingers from the heat as he removes the baking dish from the oven. “Yes, I have an American passport. Is that so difficult to believe?”
“Honestly, sometimes I look at this life you have, and I find it hard to believe that you and I live in the same country.”
“You never struck me as the sort of man who would have such a narrow definition of what an American citizen ought to look or sound like,” Hannibal says, with a teasing lilt.
“What? No. I meant more like… well. For one thing, you don’t own a T.V.”
Hannibal hums. “I do, in fact. There’s one in the guest bedroom, in the armoire. But you are correct that I rarely make use of it.”
“Do you read the news?”
“Of course. Do we not discuss the news regularly?”
“We discuss the news when there’s a murder investigation. But… Dr. Lecter, you’re a well-read man. You’re worldly. You brush elbows with high society. So I find it odd that you’ve never once mentioned politics.”
Hannibal purses his lips at the honorific, but he doesn’t mention it this time. Instead, he muses, “I am not so self-centered as to believe the outcome of any world conflict would change based solely on my awareness of it or lack thereof. But… I do generally keep myself informed.” He turns to smile fondly at Will. “You and I may have engrossing personal conversations, but that does not mean I am spared the necessity of small talk in other areas of my life.”
“But doesn’t it interest you? I would think that it would interest you.”
“Why?”
“You always try to have perfect control of everything that’s happening around you. National and international politics are also happening around you.”
The baking dish has been set on a warmer, and now Hannibal lowers the heat on the lamb to a simmer. He folds the towel over his shoulder again. “Will,” he says, turning around, “upon our first breakfast together, you told me you did not find me interesting. Now you seem to think I am something more than the bland outline you originally perceived. I admit, I am in no hurry to disabuse you of that notion.”
“So, you’re presenting me with a particular version of yourself, and not showing me the whole picture."
His mouth quirks. “I like watching you think. Though I’m unsure what it is about me that has sparked your interest, I’m glad it has lured you into reciprocating my curiosity about you. If I withhold the answers from you, I only stand to win more of your charming company.”
Will huffs and averts his eyes. “Fair, I guess.”
Dr. Lecter has always been rather forward, where Will is concerned.
Dinner preparation continues. It smells as good as anything else Hannibal has served. After a few months of knowing the man, all the haute cuisine starts to blend together. Will has stopped paying attention to what exactly he’s putting in his mouth. He’s just lucky he doesn’t have any food allergies, because Hannibal uses such foreign-sounding ingredients that Will probably wouldn’t even recognize one of them as an allergen until he had already eaten the meal.
“I can’t picture you ever caring about professional sports,” Will says.
“Is that so unusual? Not everyone enjoys such things.”
“But you enjoy the opera, and the philharmonic. You play the harpsichord. You sketch with those fancy charcoal pencils. These… these are the hobbies of an eighteenth-century heiress.”
“I am surprisingly healthy, for a multi-centenarian.”
“Very funny,” Will deadpans, and sips at the wine Hannibal had poured for him. “You know you can tell me about it, right?”
Hannibal pauses. He lays the lamb thigh on the carving tray and pulls a sharp blade from the knife block. “What would I tell you?”
He begins carving very thin slices.
“I’ll accept the fact that you happen to be an anomaly living in twenty-first century America,” Will says, “but I also know what it’s like to be anomalous. I know there must have been… friction.”
Hannibal glances at him. His posture is stiffer than before. “What sort of friction?”
“The sort of friction that makes a man visit the opera and host enormous dinner parties, but never venture outside his tightly controlled social circles to make contact with the general public. The sort of friction that would make you miss living within a culture where you could blend in better. The sort of friction that makes a man with old-fashioned sensibilities call himself an ‘avowed bachelor.’”
Hannibal blinks. “You think I’m gay.”
“I think you’re a stuffy, well dressed, hyperarticulate man who thinks he’s better than everyone else.” Will waves a hand dismissively. “I think it’s hard for you to go out in public without being harassed. Sexual orientation or socioeconomic status, you’d make a good target either way.”
Hannibal turns back to the carving. “Would it bother you?”
“If you were harassed? Yeah, that would bother me.”
“If I were gay.”
Will snorts. “Hannibal,” he says, “that would be the least odd thing about you.”
Hannibal smiles, scraping some of the sliced meat onto the plates. The meat curls and rests over the orderly lines of the asparagus.
“And,” Will adds after a long sip of his wine, “it would explain a lot about why you keep inviting me over to dinner.”
A flash of teeth from Hannibal, the sort of open-mouthed grin that the man would normally stifle. “I invite you to dinner because I enjoy your company,” he says while delicately rearranging the lamb strips with tongs, “And also because you are a well-respected, well-liked, intelligent, handsome individual who would nevertheless spend all of his free time cloistered away in the woods if no one intervened.”
Will’s first instinct is to raise his hackles about being a charity case, but he holds himself back. Instead, he takes a page from the doctor’s playbook: “Would you not consider yourself cloistered?”
“I have quite a full social calendar, Will.”
“Sure, but not with friends.”
“I have many friends. I’ve introduced you to a number of them.”
Will frowns. "You don’t see them as people. You don’t see most people as people.”
With a tiny pair of scissors, Hannibal snips two sprigs from the little potted parsley plant, and lays them on the meat as garnish, just-so. "Have I given you reason to think I am cold or indifferent towards others?”
“It’s in your eyes,” Will says. “You’re actually sort of transparent in your disdain for some of them.”
“Sometimes I underestimate your gift,” Hannibal admits. “I must have made you uncomfortable, introducing you to strangers as if they are my friends, while simultaneously making obvious to you my true disposition towards them. For that, I apologize.”
“I notice you’re not getting defensive about this.”
“Why should I?” Hannibal carries their plates to the table, where Will had set out the place settings earlier. “The criminals you study do not have a monopoly on the act of masking indifference with politeness. It is a part of the human experience, to occasionally endure the presence of those we dislike, and suppress the need for confrontation.”
Will takes his seat. “I didn’t say you dislike them. I said you don’t see them as people.”
“Spice-seared leg of lamb served on a bed of asparagus, with a side of scalloped potatoes au gratin,” says Hannibal, announcing the dish even though Will has been observing every step of the process. The introduction of the dish is a ritual for him. Lately, Will has been starting to tease out which parts of Hannibal’s personality are deliberate, and which are compulsory. “Please, enjoy.”
Without picking up his utensils, Will says, “Your full social calendar doesn’t mean anything if you aren’t actually engaging with any of those people as your peers. I think you’re just as cloistered as I am. Me with my cabin, you with your collection of high society acquaintances. They’re your buffer. A set of people who will never reject you.”
“You are suggesting that my dinner parties are for me the emotional equivalent of what you receive from your dogs?”
“More or less.” Will frowns, reviewing in his mind the sparks of empathic intuition he has gathered about Hannibal like breadcrumbs. “Within your ivory tower, you’re master of your domain. But if you leave, even briefly, you encounter strangers. People who might raise an eyebrow at you, at the way you speak, at the way you dress. They don’t know anything about you. Your reputation holds no weight over them. So they look down their noses at you, and… it’s not that their opinions matter to you; they are nothing, they’re sheep. But they’re also human, and their complete lack of recognition pierces the bubble of your self-importance. You’re reminded that you’re just one creature among billions. You aren’t a god. You aren’t in control of everything. You’re so small, so insignificant in the vastness of the universe, and you can’t… you can’t always protect the things that matter to you. That’s just a lie you tell yourself.”
Hannibal tilts his head. “How much of that was projection?”
“Less than I expected it would be, when I started talking.” Self-consciously, Will sets his napkin in his lap. “I’m... sorry if that hit a little close to home. I try not to do that to my friends.”
“You aren’t sorry, Will,” Hannibal says percipiently. He’s right; Will felt a rush as he spoke, as pieces of the puzzle of Hannibal finally began shifting into place. The apology was an afterthought. But Hannibal continues, “It has been a long time since anyone has been able to read me so clearly. I must thank you for this opportunity for self-reflection. Please, have at least some of your dinner before it cools.”
Hannibal hasn’t tasted the food yet, waiting for Will to begin. With the steak knife, Will cuts a small piece of the meat. It tastes divine, in the usual way. He makes his typical appreciative noises and tries not to let on how distracted he is by their conversation, but the tightening around Hannibal’s eyes tells him he wasn’t successful at masking. This, Will feels sorry for. He knows that the food is a ritual, too. He knows that Hannibal is especially invested in feeding Will, more than anyone else he invites to dinner.
“Are you frightened of me?” Hannibal asks, as he cuts the lamb into smaller pieces. “For having psychopathic tendencies?”
“No. Not much frightens me. But you knew that. You just wanted me to say it out loud.”
“Perhaps,” says Hannibal, pleased. He finally begins his own dinner, and his eyes flutter shut at the first bite.
“You’re not actually a psychopath, though.”
“No?”
“You see me as a person.” Will watches Hannibal chew, the flicker of his eyes, the way he gives Will his full attention even when he pretends to be otherwise occupied. Maybe Hannibal isn’t really tasting the food, either. “Why is that? What is it about me?”
Hannibal delicately wipes his mouth with the cloth napkin. “Why would an avowed bachelor invite a handsome young man to dinner?” he asks.
Will shakes his head. “If it were just sexual attraction, my personhood would be irrelevant,” he says. “And besides, as much as you stare at me, you’re always staring at my face.”
“You have a nice face, Will.”
“I’m serious. You have such a high opinion of yourself, you look down on everyone around you. But you elevate me. You see me as a person. What did I do to earn your regard, when you hold yourself apart from everyone else?” Will sets down his fork. “I’m nothing like you. I don’t wear three-piece suits, I don’t socialize, I don’t share any of your hobbies. And I know you don’t treat your other patients the way you treat me, because I’ve seen you with them. The way you speak to them is only a deft imitation of what a concerned person would say.”
“And when I show concern for you, is that authentic?”
“No. Not often.”
“But my inauthenticity does not bother you.”
“You…” Will trails off, looking away at the greenery to try to put his thoughts in order. “There are other times, when you speak to me and the mask falls away. It feels like you’re hanging on my reaction, like you want something, need something from me. Like I matter to you.”
“You do matter to me, Will.”
“But why? Why me? What can I give you that no one else can give you?”
Hannibal finally looks back down at his food. He holds the fork and knife loosely in his hands, but he doesn’t continue eating.
“You want me to see you,” Will whispers. “But what is there left to see?”
(It’s not like Will hadn’t realized. As soon as Will started filling in the details of his impromptu profile, it occurred to him that the raw elements of Dr. Lecter’s personality would make dangerously dry kindling for some sort of childhood trauma. But the only conclusion Will had drawn at the time was, boy, the world is lucky that Hannibal Lecter went into medicine instead of becoming a serial killer.)
“You kill people. Oh, Jesus Christ,” Will says, scooting his chair back from the table in disgust. “Don’t you think this is a little cliché?”
“Will,” says Hannibal, with the softness of a man prepared to commit homicide.
“This is just some kind of fucked up get close to the investigator thing? That sort of masturbatory gloating about how you got away with it and no one could see what was right in front of them—you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
Dr. Lecter, who is probably a serial killer, pins Will with an intense look. “I believe you are mistaken,” he says quietly.
“So it wasn’t about me,” Will says, and he’s surprised he feels so upset by this, because he really ought to be pulling out his service gun by now but he’s just so annoyed, and Hannibal isn’t the type to just rush for the kill anyway, is he? He’ll enjoy talking about it; apparently that’s all he wanted from Will in the first place. “It wasn’t about me at all. It was about my job.”
Hannibal’s head quirks to the side, and he gives Will the same amused, perplexed look he’d given earlier in response to the question about America. “You feel betrayed.”
“You’re you,” Will gripes, crossing his arms. “You’re a pillar of the community, you’re wealthy and sociable and intellectual and when you paid attention to me, I thought that meant there was something worthy about me. God, I didn’t realize my self-esteem was that low. I guess I should talk to my therapist about it, when he isn’t busy killing people.”
Hannibal breaks into a fond smile, though there’s enough tension in his posture to jump to action if needed.
Will covers his face and sighs. His eyes sting. He'd been planning on living in his cabin with the dogs for the rest of his life and then dying alone, and he'd made his peace with that. He hates that he fell for all the usual traps of a psychopath, that he let himself be lured into believing… whatever this was. Believing that there was a different path for his future. "Tell me I'm wrong," he pleads, bitterly.
"What, precisely, do you wish to be wrong about?"
"The killing, for one thing," Will cuts back with a hysterical note in his voice. "I want you to be the same man I’ve been getting to know — granted, he didn’t make any fucking sense, and the serial killer thing answers a lot of questions. But he… he was trying. He was trying to be my friend, and he was trying to be genuine, even though he wasn’t like that with anyone else, and it was… it was sweet. He was stuffy and odd and pretentious, but he was sweet, and he was the only person in my life I actually enjoyed spending time with. But apparently you only hung out with me because you think you’re some brilliant monster, and you just wanted an audience.”
Hannibal leans back in his seat, his penetrating gaze locked on Will. “I am still him.”
“You’re not.”
“I am.”
“You’re not. I get what you’re trying to say, that you were trying to befriend me, you were trying to make a connection, fine. But the murder thing throws everything into a different light.”
“Because you have your principles?”
“No! I mean, yes, generally I frown upon killing people, but this is about—it’s about ego. Dr. Lecter’s ego manifested in nice clothes and rigid manners; it was sort of charming. But you, though. You’re so desperate to prove your superiority that you directly involved yourself with the FBI, with me, just to gloat to yourself about how you’ve pulled the wool over our eyes. That’s not charming. That’s just… pathetic.”
Hannibal clenches his jaw. “You would put me in the same category as the others.”
“The others?”
“Your other killers. You would see me the same as them.”
“They’re all sad men who kill people as a grasp for the power and control that they cannot find any other way to possess. The granular differences in motivation and method don’t change the fact that I wouldn’t want to spend dinner with any of them.”
But Hannibal’s eyes flash, indignantly.
“Oh. Oh, you’re the Ripper,” says Will, as all those pieces finally click into place. Maybe this is the complete picture. “Oh, you make art. That’s great, that’s completely different. You’re clearly a special serial killer. Shame on me for lumping you in with the rest.”
Through gritted teeth, Hannibal mutters rapidly, “If you truly believe I am the Chesapeake Ripper, would it not be unwise to taunt me?”
“If?” Will repeats dumbly. “If? There’s no if, Hannibal. You wanted me to know, it’s written all over your face—”
Hannibal grips the knife, but his whole body is completely still, like he’s not even breathing, and he keeps his eyes lowered, staring at his plate.
“You’re trying to give me an out,” Will breathes. “You haven’t confessed to anything because you’re trying to give me an out.”
It makes sense, after everything Hannibal had done to drive their friendship forward. Maybe he’d had plans for Will, maybe there had been an end goal, but with this conversation, Will has pulled the emergency break, forcing everything to lurch to a premature halt. Now, one of them will be forced to kill the other, unless…
“God, how could you think I would take it?" Will asks miserably, "How could you think I would just pretend I hadn’t seen? I… it’s not just the killers I empathize with, Hannibal. It’s everyone, all the time, I can’t… I can’t turn it off like you. I can’t just let you go out there and hurt more people.”
“Perhaps,” Hannibal says tightly, “if it would set your mind at ease, and prove to you that I am not who you think I am… you could become a more permanent fixture in my daily life, observing me, so that I could not possibly have time to do any of the horrible things you believe I have done.”
“What?” Will blinks at him. The tears finally drip down from his lashes. “You… what?”
“If only to ease your mind on this matter, I would open my home to you.” He still won’t look at Will. “I would cancel my patients, attend your lectures, and share your bedroom. I have nothing to hide from you.”
“What… what are you saying?”
Hannibal finally meets Will’s gaze, and the expression on his face is a punch in the gut. He looks so… real, in this moment, so raw with anguish. “I would hate,” he whispers gravely, “to see our friendship die, over such a regrettable misunderstanding.”
I don’t wish to kill you. I will pretend to be the tame version of myself that you have known, if only it means I am not forced to kill you.
"Oh, Hannibal," Will chokes out in fond disbelief, "We both know you can't stop."
"Please, give me the opportunity to prove that I am not the man you think I am."
"No, you just—" He swallows down a sob, "you think you can outlast me, that you can inure me to the idea of your savagery given enough time, but you can't, Hannibal. You'll never turn me into the sort of person who can abide watching innocent people suffer."
"Innocent people?" Hannibal repeats, with a flash of hope.
"Hannibal."
Slowly, Hannibal rises from the table. As he moves, he watches Will, waiting for any signal to stop. Will doesn’t give him one. Will just sits there. Not because he’s suicidal, but because he can see Hannibal’s face, the penetrating loneliness and the longing, and he knows Hannibal isn’t getting ready to kill him. Not yet.
The frustrating part, for Will, is that Hannibal is still wearing the patterned suit, the paisley tie, the stupid pocket square. Will’s hit suddenly with this ridiculous notion that Dr. Lecter must actually choose his outfits every morning. He must have favorites; he must have a fondness for certain colors over others. It isn’t a camouflage, constructed only to maintain his identity in service of his extracurricular activities. Those activities are part of his identity. Hannibal Lecter is his own authentic self, gore and all.
And now he kneels on the floor, just beside Will’s chair, just far enough away that he doesn’t crowd Will’s personal space, like Will is a wild, feral animal who could startle and run at the slightest provocation. "Will," he murmurs, "if I were the Ripper, only aiming to ingratiate myself with my FBI pursuers for my own amusement, wouldn’t I have chosen to befriend Jack Crawford instead?”
“You have befriended Jack,” Will counters weakly.
“Jack is a man I occasionally host for dinner. But you, Will… I have made a space in my life for you. If I were somehow cursed to spend the rest of my life in the company of only one other person, I would be glad if it were you, because I could never tire of our conversations. You are endlessly fascinating to me. Your mind is beautiful.”
All this time Will had been strung along with those tiny, stolen glimpses of Dr. Lecter’s soft underbelly, flashes of this need to be understood peeking through the seams of a man otherwise perfectly composed in all circumstances. Now, on the floor, Hannibal is baring that part of himself entirely, overwhelming Will with this concentrated dose of the thing that had lured him in the first place. And it’s like Will can feel the hook ripping a tear in his cheek, but he can’t muster the resolve to disentangle himself, because he knows Hannibal’s vulnerability isn’t bait. It’s authentic. It’s just surrounded by such awful ugliness.
“You can’t go back, can you?” Will breathes. “You... want me to be the one who sees you. You’re not satisfied anymore with parasocial gloating. You want a connection.”
Hannibal whispers, “Don’t you?”
Will laughs, sort of. He scrubs his wrist across his face. “I told you, you’re not a psychopath. You’re… whatever this is. God, you’re such a fucking mess, how did you ever manage to make it this far? How did no one see this in you?”
Hannibal’s eyes are watering, too. His entire emotional landscape is like a narrow walkway, and with this conversation Will can feel they are brushing the boundary. If Will just reaches out, perhaps he can push through the fence and bring them somewhere new, or somewhere old and long abandoned. Will feels suffused with the power of a god, the sharp intimacy he’d always fled from before.
Maybe he can do this. Maybe he can try to do this, for both of them.
“Okay,” he whispers. He reaches out for Hannibal’s hand, hot and human and alive. “One chance to show me who you are.”
“That is all I ask,” says Hannibal, reverently.
“You won’t leave my sight. You won’t try to trick me or hide from me. You won’t, God, drug me or something just to get a few hours by yourself. You won’t gaslight me. You can’t have it both ways. You have to want this.”
“Will, I…” but Hannibal trails off, unable to find the words (for once). “Please,” he settles on.
There is fear, too. Like Hannibal is swerving out of his own control, saying things without any conscious deliberation. Hannibal seems afraid of this part of himself, this desperation not to lose the one living person who has given his life any meaning.
Will leans forward and presses his mouth to the monster’s hairline. Hannibal makes an unintentional noise, a huff of a sigh, too staccato to release any tension. “Okay,” Will whispers, feeling the warmth of him. “Okay. You should go pack a bag. I think you should come home with me.”
Hannibal swallows audibly. “And the food?”
“I know where the Tupperware is. I’ll pack it. We’ll bring it. Go.”
On wobbling legs, Dr. Lecter stands from the floor, and looks at Will with glazed eyes. Then he nods in recognition, and straightens his posture and his rumpled clothes. Finally, without even a glance over his shoulder, he turns and leaves the room.
Listening to the creak of the stairwell, Will studies the food, and draws some additional conclusions. Grimly, he imagines how easy it would have been to cock his gun the moment Hannibal turned his back on him. To shoot him through the head and splatter his brains on the wall.
Not one atom of Will would have wanted to do that. But if he had, it would have been easy. If he had wanted to hurt Hannibal, to exact revenge on behalf of his victims, that would have been easy, too, now that Will can see all of him laid bare for Will’s knife.
But Will doesn’t want to hurt him. He doesn’t want anyone to be hurt. Not even Hannibal.
So, he brings the dishes back into the kitchen to be packed up to go.