Archive of Our Own ^beta

Your thoughts will soon be wandering the way they always do
When you're riding sixteen hours and there's nothing much to do
And you don't feel much like riding, you just wish the trip was through

Here I am, on the road again
There I am, up on the stage
Here I go, playing the star again
There I go: turn the page

●○●○●○

Four days after Hannibal’s sentencing, Will put his house and car up for sale. The house sold within a week of being listed, and his realtor took the Volvo for his daughter instead of commission.

With five hundred and fifty grand in his bank account, he went into town to a leather shop and got all custom road leathers made for him- black and without embellishment. He bought boots, chaps, gloves, saddlebags, and then went to the nearest dealership and bought a gorgeous limited edition 1975 Indian motorcycle.

He gave his dogs to an old friend in town who rehomed strays, except Winston, whom he tied outside Alana’s house and attached a note to his collar that said ‘For Applesauce’.  He cancelled his cell phone then hucked it in the creek, left his fishing gear to his neighbor, and his furniture to the new occupants of the house.

Two weeks after Hannibal’s sentencing, on the day he was transferred to a more permanent facility (the security of which was widely covered and speculated by the media), Will packed up everything he felt he needed, checked out of the inn he’d been staying at, and rode South.

Will roamed. On the open road, he was no one and nothing to anyone. He slept in cheap motels, and when he got farther south, on a roll out mat beneath the stars. He got used to camping in the desert, got used to the heat, to the rattlesnakes in the underbrush. The shivering rattle of tumbleweed in the breeze, the roar of the chopper, the rush of the wind flowing by, all helped to drown out the hissing whispers in his brain. The white noise soothed like a balm; tempered him and sedated his imagination. He found himself blissfully free of other minds, of other people rooting around inside his head like pigs in mud.

In the beginning, when he came into bars and roadhouses along the way, other bikers chortled at him. He’d had his hair short for court, stayed clean shaven. He was too pretty, even with the enormous scar across his forehead.

So Will let his hair grow out, and his beard. After four months he was less pretty, and he just got curt nods instead of leers. He used a filthy red paisley bandanna tied around his forehead to keep his hair from whipping in his face when he rode, and after a while it stopped feeling like he was wearing it ironically.

Months rolled away. He went from Phoenix to Houston to Mexico City then back north again through Albuquerque to Miami. He took his time. He didn’t make friends, exactly, but he got invited along in convoys through Colorado, on road trips to Tucson and Tallahassee, Little Rock and El Paso. People got to know him as well as he let them; they knew his name was Will, he was from New Orleans, and that was that. No one asked more, no one cared. When he spoke, he talked about horsepower and cylinders and places he’s ridden his bike to, and other than that, he didn’t speak. No one asked him to.

In May the following year, after spending the winter in the desert, he rode north along the west coast to Victoria in British Columbia, and then took the No. 1 Highway across Canada, through Calgary, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Quebec City, St. Johns, Halifax. He finished the trip on the east coast, and spent a week alone in Nova Scotia, inhaling sea air. He didn’t fish though, because he didn’t do that anymore.

Then, once he’d had enough, he crossed the bridge from Windsor to Detroit, and rode back South, stopping in New York for a day just to hear the rumble of his motorcycle echo like thunder off the towering skyscrapers.

As time passed, Will found himself more and more drawn to the deserts of southern California and Arizona. There was something about the dryness and closeness of the air that drew him like a fly to honey. His range narrowed considerably throughout the summer, driving from Phoenix to the Grand Canyon several times, and staying in the canyon lands for months without leaving. It was quiet in the mountains, and it was welcome.

Until it wasn’t.

There was no telling what set it off, but when it hit him, it was like a bucket of ice water over his almost two years of solace. He started to feel things again- things he hadn’t since he’d lived in Virginia, owned a house, kept dogs, had a complicated relationship with the most famous serial killer of known human history.

These things he felt were mild at first. The way he opened his mouth to say something to someone who wasn’t there. The way he woke up on his bedroll in his sleeping bag, and found himself reaching for the warmth of another body. It took days for him to realize he was lonely.

Will rode west then, ignoring the flutter of panic in his chest. He hadn’t needed company for years now, only himself and the open road to swallow him up. He decided that he’d find a troop of bikers, maybe follow them for a while, get some human interaction.

Palm Springs was a cultural wasteland of retirees and golf courses, but the outskirts of the town, along the shores of the Salton Sea, or in the hills of San Bernardino, Will found places more to his liking. Little restaurants that sold homemade tacos and burritos, cold horchata, only served Corona and the radios were always just barely in tune and playing Spanish trumpet. These places, Will absorbed like a sponge, devouring the calm they gave off. He inhaled the smell of corn tortillas, cilantro, salsa, cigar smoke, and tried to centre himself. It used to work as easy as blinking to clear unshed tears. Now, it only wound him tighter. He felt like a cuckoo clock, just waiting to explode.

Will found a group of seven bikers at a roadhouse just outside Indio. They complimented his bike, asked about his travels. He answered like he always did, expecting the easy grace of nothingness and disregard to wash away any fears or anxieties. Instead, when he glanced at the nearest man, in his forties with a big beard and a huge sugar skull tattoo on his bicep, he got a tidal wave of information. He saw everything ; every dirty little secret, every prostitute he’d slept with, every poker game he’d won, every bar fight he’d lost.

Will jerked his head away, staggering backwards. He grabbed the handlebar of his bike for support, mouth hanging open. Nausea washed over him like the violent dissociation had, filling his mouth with saliva and causing a prickling sweat to creep up his back.

“You okay there, buddy?” someone said.

Will shook his head rapidly, not trusting himself to speak- who knew whose voice he’d speak in.

Will threw a leg over his bike and tore off down the road before anyone could stop him or say anything else. He drove for miles before his heart slowed enough and he was truly aware of his surroundings. A dirty motel yawned in the distance, and he skidded into the parking lot just after dark. He bought a room, stripped out of his dirty leathers, got into the shower and after a moment, his shaking knees gave way and he sank to the bottom of the tub.

He could see again. The balm that had wrapped him, swaddled him and clothed him in its numb embrace had disappeared. He was naked and exposed like a nerve, aching to his bones, a fragile string instrument just waiting for someone to come try and ham-fistedly play.  Worse by far, though, was that along with the return of his empathy, the yawning gap of desperate loneliness remained.

Will closed his eyes, and up from the black, tar-like depths of his subconscious emerged a shape. It oozed and slithered from the deepest recesses of his skull, taking shape as it came. Even from a distance, he recognized its silhouette, all long legs and leanness. It stepped closer, each stride measured. It came slow, with the quiet clink of chains… Will had beaten the monster back, stamped it furiously down, trapped it in the darkest and most impenetrable fortresses of his mind, chained it to the wall and left it there. Starved it there. Ignored it there.

But now it loomed, solidifying as it came. Will could feel his heart rate climbing, blood lurching through his veins – squelch, squelch, squelch – but could do nothing to hinder the monster’s progress. It came to him, leaned over in an elegant dancer's bow like a leopard drinking from a forest pool, and whispered to him with wide sensuous lips in an accented voice like a winter storm on the Baltic sea.

Hello, Will.

Will’s eyes sprang open, unfocused. The shower pounded down on his skull, plastering his hair over his scalp.

"Hannibal.” He wheezed, mouth stiff and tongue swollen; at some point he'd bitten it.

Will stood in front of the mirror, hands shaking where they grasped the sides of the cracked green porcelain sink. He hadn’t been able to look at himself yet, and he’d been standing there for fifteen minutes.

He knew who he’d see.

He’d see that pathetic shivering mess, sweating through the night, burning from the inside out, wandering through a fog of death and a melting world.

Will saw him, and he hated him.

He’d see that ignorant, raging beast in a cage, impudent and wrathful. That doomed seducer, false and frail, infinitely bloodless and culpable.

Will saw him, and despised him.

He’d see that righteous and two-faced leech who crossed the ocean and sat before Botticelli, smiling gormlessly and feeling the dull weight of a killing knife in his pocket.

Will saw him, and wanted to kill him.

“I am none of you now.” Will whispered to the dead air.

He took a deep breath in, feeling the cold damp air flash through his lungs, and then pour out again. He looked up.

He saw a man broken.

What do you want, Will? The question came like a match struck in the darkness, thrown down an empty well. The voice licked into his ear like a tongue.

Will let out another shuddering breath.

“ You. ” He hissed. “ I want you back. ”

Why? A ghost of a breeze across his neck

“Because I DON’T KNOW WHO I AM! ” It turned into a howl, and with both hands, Will ripped the sink from the wall, the porcelain clattering and the pipe screaming as it sprayed the walls with cold water.

His hands clenched and unclenched, spray pouring off him.

What had he said? ‘I don’t want to think about you.’

And he didn’t. But oh. Oh, how stupid he’d been.

Will got royally drunk that night. Royally, empirically, tyrannically drunk. He cleaned out the minibar, then wandered into the dusty, half-empty trailer park behind the motel. It was pretty quiet, which wasn’t surprising considering it was about one in the morning.

He watched a coyote chase a stray cat under a trailer, grunted, and then drained a whole mini bottle of Beefeater into his mouth in one go.

Things hurt less. The world hurt less. Being Will Graham hurt less. It was lovely.

“I don’t need you,” he said earnestly, and then staggered sideways into a trailer. He bounced off, stumbled, rallied a few strides, then went down on a patch of crispy grass. He tried to stand up again but the world rebelled strongly and swirled around him, so he stayed down. It was easier this way. Maybe if he was lucky, a rattlesnake would slither by and bite him in his sleep, he'd die of some terrible neurotoxin, and he’d never wake up.

When he did unfortunately wake up, however, it was not because of a rattlesnake. It was also, surprisingly, not because of the sun.

It was because of a middle-aged Mexican woman in a flower print dress, standing over him and looking mildly cross.

“You lost, gringo? Or just drunk?”

Will groaned and tried again to upright himself.

“Wh. Wh. What time is it?”

“Three twenty-five in the morning.”

 “Oh, God.” Will groaned. He got slowly to his feet and leaned with his hands on his knees.

“Ay. I don’t think God likes you very much, señor.” She smiled at Will in a not entirely unfriendly manner.

“Ah. No. He’s doesn’t.” Will said, rubbing his eye with his palm and giving a dry laugh.

“You need to sleep it off somewhere, or you gonna get chewed on by the chupacabra,” she cackled to herself.

“Do you know which way back to the motel?” Will wheezed, blinking at the dark desert around him.

“I do, but it’s a long walk, my friend. You can sleep on my porch in the hammock.” And with that, she walked off, leaving Will to follow dubiously.

She led Will to a trailer some ways down a line of uninhabited ones, denoted only by a plastic pink flamingo stuck in the sandy dirt. Will leaned on her mailbox.

“I don’t…I’m fine. Really.”

“No. You look like you get here by hanging on the bottom of a truck for a hundred miles. Come. There is your hammock. I will bring you a blanket, it gets very cold.”

Will followed her into a little screened-in area, populated with poorly growing plants. He sank onto the hammock despite his reservations, and immediately knew he was done for until morning.

A fleece throw came from nowhere and landed on him in a heap. Will tucked himself in as the lady glared down at him again.

“All my doors will be locked, so you won’t be able to do anything crazy while I’m sleeping.”

“Thanks,” Will said.

“De nada,” she replied, and still just looked at him.

“You have a name?” She asked.

“Will.”

“My name is Maria. Go to sleep, Will. You will be hungover tomorrow.”

She went back inside and, true to her word, locked the door behind her.

Will saw through his bleary eyes that the fleece throw, old though it might have been, had a deer on it.

He closed his eyes and tried not to think about it.

In the morning, Will did indeed have a hangover. His skull pounded and his mouth felt lived in by a small animal. He groaned as he sat up and scrubbed his scalp with his nails.

Beside the hammock was a heaping plate of chilaquiles and a giant mug of black coffee.

Will guzzled down the coffee and started on the food, eyes widening as he did so. It was delicious , cheesy and greasy and crunchy and chewy. It was everything anyone with a hangover could ever want.

“Slow down, or you are gonna be seeing that food again, señor.”

Maria was standing in the door, wiping her sun-aged hands on a dishtowel. She was in another flower print cotton dress this morning.

“It’s delicious, thank you,” Will said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Si. It was my abuela’s recipe, and she fed three husbands to death.” Maria cackled, and Will couldn’t help but smirk. It was a great laugh, wholehearted and sincere.

“I’ll be out of here as soon as I’m done. Uh, muchas gracias. Again.” Will said sheepishly.

“You don’t have to be rushing away.” Maria pulled out a rusty chair and sat on it. She crossed her arms. “You want to explain to me why a sad white boy is drinking alone and falling asleep in a trailer park? Seems dangerous to me.”

Will paused in lifting his fork to his mouth.

“I…had a rough evening. But I’m okay now.”

Are you okay now?

The voice slithered out from under a rock and twisted around inside his skull like a coiling snake, hissing that terrible, beguiling familiar tone.

Will lurched in surprise and choked on a mouthful.

“You don’t seem okay to me,” Maria said flatly.

Will put the plate aside and pinched his nose. His appetite had disappeared.      

“I’m... I will be. I’m always alright, eventually.”      

“You are running away. I see it every day, my friend, and I see it in you.”      

“I’m not running away!” Will snapped. His nerves were frayed, anger boiling.      

Maria chuckled to herself.      

“You have the temper of someone who is running away from his whole life. Do not be ashamed, you aren’t alone.”      

Will frowned and looked away. Maria’s trailer was on the edge of the trailer park, and past it was nothing but jumping cholla, barrel cacti and mesquite.      

“I’m sorry. I just…I was doing pretty well up until recently and now I…” Will glanced back to her, and she just returned his stare stoically, “I think I’m gradually realizing I’m never going to be free of…” Will chewed his lip.      

“El Diablo?” Maria was smiling now.

“Sure,” Will replied darkly. “He’d probably love that.”      

It wasn’t until Maria nodded in understanding that Will realized what he’d said.      

“I told you you were running away from something,” she said, and grinned and waggled her eyebrows to astonishing effect, “Or somebody. ”      

“Yes, well. If you knew who I was running away from you’d…” Will looked back out over the desert and let out a deep breath, “… you’d know why I was running.”

As it turned out, Maria DeSanta owned the bar a half mile down the road from the trailer park and motel, along with her son, Alejandro. It was a favorite of motorcycle groups driving east from Los Angeles. It served no food other than nachos, a few tortillas and chilaquiles, but the corn chips and tortillas were homemade, as was the salsa and guacamole, and always topped with heaps of jalapeños.         

She gave Will a job as a bartender, and set him up in the trailer next to hers for next to nothing. She fed him almost constantly and for free, and entirely ignored his moods and moping.      

She never asked him how he was, or how he was coping. She never even asked his last name. It was the perfect friendship.      

Being a bartender was an easy job. No one expected Will to speak to anyone other than the occasional passing small talk. He poured beer, made simple cocktails, learned the names of return customers. Maria named a cocktail after him, called the ‘Poco Poblano’, after Will broke up a bar fight by dislocating a man’s shoulder and rendering another unconscious with a pool cue to the head.

“I name it after you. Because you are usually quiet, and do nothing. But sometimes…you are a little bit spicy.”

The Poco Poblano was essentially a whiskey sour with jalapeño pepper oil added to make it hot, but it became a favorite for those who knew the story of its origins.

Will was comfortable at the roadhouse. It was usually quiet, pretty much always played Mexican radio, always smelled like spilled beer and leather. He could talk to no one if he wanted, talk about motorcycles if he wanted. He finished work around 2:00 a.m. every night, slept until noon the next day, and went back to the bar and helped Maria make tortillas, or fix the oven, or carry crates of bottles. It was a very easy life.

Alejandro DeSanta returned from an apprenticeship in San Diego after Will had been working about four months. Alejandro was a tattoo artist, and extremely gifted at his craft. As soon as he was back, clients started showing up in the bar and asking for ink, and Alejandro started up a defacto parlor in the far back of the kitchen. 

Alejandro was kind but quiet, and it took almost three days before he looked up at Will from his sketchbook, full of spectacular and bizarre drawings, and said, “Thank you. For helping my mother. She thinks she can do everything by herself, but it would kill her eventually. So you saved her. Thank you.”

After that, Will and Alejandro had a very quiet but understanding friendship. They worked together, ate together. Sometimes, on slow days, they’d sit outside and drink beers and say absolutely nothing to one another.

It wasn’t a profound relationship, but it was comfortable. It didn’t sate the subtle itching that suffused the noisome darkness in Will’s brain most days, but it dulled the gnawing hunger just enough to get by.

It was Alejandro convinced Will to get some ink. Will agreed without much hesitation.

“Just do what you want,” he’d said, and that had been that.

Alejandro was careful and methodical, but the tattoos were large and detailed, and hurt quite a bit. The pain was sometimes so great that Will’s hands would shake as he clenched them in his lap.

But it was delicious. He hadn’t hurt like this since he’d been gutted, since he was thrown off a train, had his head sawed into, his face almost cut off. The pain was like a lense, dragging abruptly into focus all of the memories Will had so carefully stashed and mashed. Hannibal’s voice accompanied every stab of the needle, infusing his mind with his poison as much as the ink did his skin.

He should have hated it. Should have shuddered away from the terrors and monsters of his passed and thrown away life. But he didn’t. He latched onto them like a parasite, draining them for all they were worth. They sustained him.

And so, because of this macabre and unhealthy association, Will soon was a canvas. All in black ink with no colours, as Alejandro insisted was best. Down his one arm and over one shoulder draped a diamondback rattlesnake, so shocking and alarmingly real in appearance it would have surprised no one if it came to life of its own accord. On his entire back, rendered to perfection, was an enormous Joshua tree, situated in the desert, with a single quail sitting on a branch. Every detail, from the scales of the bark to the bursts of spined leaves, was flawless.

His right arm was the last they did, and Will paid no attention to what Alejandro was drawing until they were almost finished. He was so deep into the halls of his memories that he barely heard Alejandro ask, “You still in there, amigo?”

Will blinked to clear the fog, and glanced down at what Alejandro had been working on.

It was a black elk antler, large enough to cover the underside of his forearm, from wrist to elbow.

“You like, sí?” Alejandro asked, smiling.

Will let out a long breath.

 “It’s…” he said, and swallowed.

What was it? Inevitable?

“It’s good. I like it.” Will said quietly.

Ursula started working at the bar about a month after Will did, to replace the old serving girl who moved back to LA.  Ursula was young- in her mid-twenties – but seemed an old soul. She was very pretty and tall, and well-liked by the customers for her quick tongue and banter. She had a pierced lip, which Will probably would have disliked a few years ago, but now considering large portions of him was covered in tattoos, he wasn’t exactly in any position to judge. She was a hairdresser during the day, and always had little short bits of hair sticking to her clothes.

Will and Ursula spoke rarely, if ever, outside of work beyond the occasional greeting or mention of the weather. Will rarely spoke to anyone for more than a few sentences, so it wasn’t an anomaly.

It was strange then, on a slow evening, that Will glanced at her, sitting at the end of the bar on her phone and looking bored, and decided to make her a drink. He made them both double tequila sunrises, and put hers down in front of her with a vague smile.

She blinked at the drink.

 “Did you make me this?” she asked, sounding incredulous.

Will smirked at her tone.

 “I did. I hope that’s alright and you aren’t a teetotaler or something.”

“Ha! No. I just didn’t expect it. I didn’t even think you knew I was here.”

“Just because I don’t say I know you’re there, doesn’t mean I don’t know,” Will replied and took a sip of his drink.

 “To be fair to both of us, you don’t say pretty much anything,” she said and sipped hers as well.

Will went back to cutting limes, smiling as he did so.

“You know, Maria hasn’t told me how she wrangled you to work for her.”

 Will raised an eyebrow at her. “Wrangled me?”

 “Yeah. I’m imagining you wandering aimlessly in the desert and she just scooped you up with a big net.”

Will couldn’t help but laugh in earnest.

 “Uh, well, with a hammock. So yes, I guess you could say that’s true.”

 “I knew it,” she said, and smirked in a self-satisfied way as she sipped her drink. She hopped off her bar stool and went over to the little radio by the cash register, sorted through some CDs, and put one in.

 Fast and upbeat trumpet and guitar began to play as she walked back to her barstool.

 “Malagueña Salerosa?” Will asked.

“Good ear,” Ursula said. She picked up her drink and started to swing around the room in time to the music. “I used to know what all the words meant, but that was a million years ago.”

 Will looked up in the air and listened for a moment.

 “You are stunning and bewitching, like the pureness of a rose,” he said, and looked back to her. He waved his knife back and forth. “Approximately.”

 Ursula glared at him with her hands on her hips.

“You speak Spanish?” she asked in mock severity.

“No. But I have a good memory.” Will smirked and halved a lime.

Ursula rolled her eyes and went back to dancing, but she kept an eye on him a she did so.

After a few songs worth of companionable quiet, while she danced and Will did his usual bartender duties, she came and plunked her empty glass down on the bar in front of him.

“You know,” she said, considering Will as she leaned on the bar, “I bet that with a beard trim and a haircut, you might look a little less…” she waved a hand, “Prehistoric. Cave-y... Tom Hanks in Castaway.”

Will snorted.         

“Thank you.”         

“Can I do it?” she asked, grinning brightly.         

Will paused in cleaning taps and looked up at her.         

“Uh,” he said vaguely. Well, his beard was itchy as hell lately, and his hair was more a nuisance now than it had ever been. And it wasn’t like she didn’t know what she was doing.         

“Sure,” he said hesitantly.        

“Oo! Yay! Okay. I have shears and a trimmer in my car, I’ll be right back.”         

Will finished up his chores as she fetched her supplies and got a towel for his shoulders. She produced a spray bottle to ‘wet down those curls of yours.’         

Will sat in the chair as she directed and draped the towel around himself like a shawl. She began to expertly spray down his hair, humming to the music as she did so.         

“Your hair is gorgeous,” she said, running her fingers through it as she dampened it, “Like really, gorgeous. I have clients who’d scalp you like an Apache for this hair.”         

Will ignored the offhand racist comment, as one often had to in a biker bar, and laughed quietly.         

“Thanks.”         

Ursula efficiently and skillfully trimmed his hair until it was just a bit past his eyebrows and curling around his neck, still humming but prompting Will to speak no further. When she was done she brandished a hand held mirror with a flourish.

Just a bit shorter than when I left prison, Will thought wryly. He snorted to himself.         

“What’s so funny?”         

“Oh. Uh, well I just…it’s been awhile since I had short hair, I guess.”

“Well, you’re only halfway there, because now it’s beard time.” Ursula snipped her scissors and smiled wickedly.         

Will closed his eyes and tipped his head back, letting her hands gently caress his face as she debulked his cheeks with the shears.         

With an internal start, Will realized it had been years since anyone had touched his face with any modicum of kindness. He could barely remember now; who’d been the last?

Who indeed?       

Will tried to suppress the shudder that the liquid words caused.         

Ah, yes. He knew who.

Was it before or after the handheld circular saw was slicing his forehead? Who could say for sure.         

“Oh wow. There’s a face under there.” Ursula said, bringing Will back to the present.         

“Glad to hear it,” he replied.

After about five minutes more with the scissors, she attached a guide to the clippers and trimmed his beard short, around the same as it had been all those years ago, how it had been when he first met Hannibal. When he first got sick.         

He heard her intake of breath, and he opened his eyes.         

She was looking down at him, looking somewhat shocked.         

“Holy smokes. You motherfucker , you’ve been hiding under there! You’re a fucking Burberry angel!” She turned off her clippers and gave him a stern look.         

“Hah,” Will said without humor.         

At Ursula’s exclamation, another memory came unbound and floated up out of the murk: Mason Verger’s slippery reptile voice hissing “That’s a nice face.”         

“Maria should’ve shaved you years ago. We would have had way more horny ladies in here buying you drinks and tipping!”         

“Yeah. Well. It’s easier to look like a bushman.” Will stood and shook off the towel gently, adding to the pile of chocolate hairs on the hardwood floor.         

Will made them both more tequila sunrises, so Ursula changed the music to The Eagles.         

Ursula sat and nursed her drink while Will finished up cleaning the bar, at which point Maria came in and yelled at them both to go home because she couldn’t afford to pay them to stand around.         

Two doubles in as it was, Will opted to leave his motorcycle behind the bar and walk home. He glanced at Ursula, who was looking guilty.         

“You can crash at my place if you want.” Will said, jerking his thumb in the general direction of the trailer park.         

“You sure?” she asked, arranging her purse on her shoulder.         

“Sure,” he said. And why not? He was a single man; he could have girls over.         

It was fine.         

So he and Ursula went back to his trailer, talking about the context behind Hotel California and whether it was about love or hell, or something else.

When they got back to Will’s, Ursula flopped down into one of his mismatched armchairs.         

“You got stuff for mojitos?” She asked.         

“Yeah,” Will said, and he made them mojitos.         

They ate corn chips and drank, and about half way through her second mojito, Ursula stood up and walked over to stand in front of where Will sat, chips in his lap.         

“I figured it out,” she said, and picked up the bag of chips. She dropped them in the floor.         

“Figured what out?” Will looked up at her. Their knees were touching.         

“Why you had long hair and a beard.”         

“Oh yeah?”         

“Yeah. You’re too pretty like this. And you don’t like to be pretty.”         

Will just looked up at her, face immobile.         

With careful purpose, Ursula grabbed the bottom of her t-shirt and pulled it up over her head, then dropped it beside the chips.         

She bent over, hands on Will’s shoulders, and kissed him.         

Will inhaled a tight breath in surprise before relaxing, and letting himself be kissed.         

It’d been years since he’d kissed anyone. Been kissed. Been touched.         

Hell, the last woman he kissed threw him off a train.         

Ursula, however, was not trying to throw him off a train. She was simply kissing him, her fingers playing in the little newly shorn curls under his ears.         

Will lifted his hands to her bare waist and pulled her into his lap, letting his lips part and his tongue dart out to meet hers. She made a quiet little noise but didn’t pull away, which Will took as a good sign.         

They kissed for a few seconds more, and she grabbed handfuls of his shirt and tried to pull it off him. He broke away from her long enough to help her, then returned to kissing her.         

Ursula ran her hands over his chest, up and down, and pulled away from him.         

“Did you…want to…?” she asked, breathing fast.         

Will nodded then dove back in, shucking her bra off her with surprisingly nimble fingers for the amount he’d drank. Ursula giggled against his lips.

 Will guided her to the bedroom, tiny and cramped as it was, and stripped off the rest of his clothes while she divested herself of hers. She lay back and bit her lower lip as she looked over him appreciatively.         

She didn’t ask about the big scar cutting across his abdomen, or the gunshot wound on his shoulder.         

Will lowered himself over her, kissing her tanned skin gently. She cupped his ass enthusiastically, grinding him down onto her.         

Grinding his decidedly not hard cock against her.         

Ursula didn’t seem to notice, drunk as she was. She whined in his ear and licked at his jaw.         

Will made a mistake then, and looked at her face, relaxed and flushed.         

He didn’t see her.         

He saw a sincerely delighted smile, turned slightly towards him, the muted shadows of the Uffizi Gallery suffusing the edges of his vision.         

Will blinked and the vision was gone, replaced by Ursula gasping.         

“Do you have-”         

Will kissed her to make her stop talking. His heart rate was climbing, panic rising with it.         

Will felt hands on his face and he withdrew, chest pounding.         

“Will?” she said. She looked as if she’d suddenly realized he wasn’t even remotely hard.         

“I…” Will said, letting out a shaky breath, “I don’t know. I don’t…”         

“It’s okay,” she said, running her hands through his wild curls. “It’s fine.”         

Will looked down at her, at her face and compassionate and sincere reassuring smile, and he let out a breath again, long and deep.         

Will sat up and moved away from her, sitting on the edge of the bed.         

“I’m sorry. I just…can’t, I guess.” He felt sick.         

Ursula was quiet, sitting up herself and tilting her head.         

“Maria did tell me one thing about you, you know.”         

Will glanced at her.         

“Yeah? What?”         

Ursula laughed quietly under her breath.         

“She said you had the devil chasing you, but you stopped running away from him.”      

Will swallowed and closed his eyes, scrubbing at his face with his hands.         

“Yeah,” he said.         

They sat in silence for a while, before Ursula got up and got back into her clothes.         

“I’ll sleep on the couch, let you have the bed to yourself.” She brushed her hands through his hair and kissed his forehead. “You’re a sweet guy, Will.”

Once she was gone, Will lay down on top of the covers on his back. He stared at the ceiling, dark and grey and bland in the half-light.         

“I’m not running away from you,” Will said out loud, voice barely above a croak.         

And why not? Came the immediate reply, a cold breath of Baltic air over his sweat dampened skin.      

“Because... I want you to find me.”         

Will’s hands tightened into fists at his side.         

“I want to see you.”         

I let you see me. Remember?           

The memory flowed over and into Will’s mind like gasoline, iridescent and poisonous.         

Hannibal’s blood spattered face, breathing ragged, eyes hard and glittering in betrayal. The perfectly cultivated façade entirely shucked, the terrible creature inside him free and naked and vulnerable and furious…         

Will pressed his palms into his eyes sockets.         

…one gentle hand, warm and sticky with blood, delicately caressing his cheek like the finest, most prized porcelain, fingertips rustling in his hair. Hannibal’s breath, tinged with molten metal and dragon fire, ghosting across his lips.         

Will had wanted to kiss him then.         

He wanted to kiss him now.         

With gradual acuity, Will realized he was halfway hard in his boxer shorts. He slipped a hand slowly down, grasped himself, stroked long and slow until he was fully hard.         

I gave you a rare gift.”It was almost a snarl, right in Will’s ear.         

“I…I…” Will whispered, breath speeding. He stroked faster.         

You didn’t want it.           

“I want it! I want it. Please, I want it.” Will was whimpering now, back arching up off the bed.         

Will squeezed his cock harder, rougher. As if he deserved the pain of it, like righteous exquisite agony.         

He remembered the precise, popping puncture and burning slice of his stomach, and Hannibal’s warm wet hand on his cheek and jaw, and he came, striping his belly, a gasping cry barely caught in his bobbing throat.         

The weeks passed. Will and Ursula spent no more time together other than was warranted by work, but now...well, they had a rapport. They understood each other, or at least as much as the other was willing to show. Maria didn’t say anything about their new dynamic, and Alejandro barely paid attention to anything, so it was a simple transition.

And then, while Will slept fitfully in his trailer on the other side of the country, seven hundred and twenty-four days after his sentencing, Hannibal Lecter escaped prison.

Will felt like he should have... felt something: jerked awake in his sleep, had a symbolic dream, felt a ghostly presence accost him in the night. Perhaps even been visited by that horrible inky black antlered creature with talons and wicked teeth that smiled at him in the mirror sometimes?

But he didn’t. He just woke up around eleven, walked to the bathroom, scratched his butt cheek idly, took a piss, turned on the shitty radio while he made breakfast, and heard the newscaster say “ Breaking news this hour. Doctor Hannibal Lecter, best known to the world as ‘Hannibal the Cannibal’, or the ‘Chesapeake Ripper’, has escaped from the maximum security detention centre at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Police and FBI are searching nationwide for him, and urge citizens to neither seek out nor confront Lecter under any circumstances. A sighting hotline is being set up as we speak.”           

He should have felt it. But he didn’t. He just felt hollow.         

The world went into an uproar. Television stations had photos of him on the screen near continuously, and barely went five minutes without saying his name. All the old stories- Will’s incarceration, Hannibal’s escape to Florence, Muskrat Farms- resurfaced. Will’s face was everywhere, and Will knew by the sideways looks, that people recognized him.         

He took to wearing sunglasses inside and the bandana over his curls to eclipse them entirely. He went back to speaking only when necessary, preferring to nod or shake his head.         

Will didn’t sleep, so wary was he of his own dreams. He stayed awake, staring off into the desert and listening to the yelp and yowl of coyotes. He could feel apprehension riding on his shoulder like a large spider, crawling around just out of his peripheral vision.         

Every time the door to the bar opened, Will wondered. And every time, it wasn’t him.

For four months, it wasn’t him.

When it was almost five months, there was a sighting of Hannibal in Texas. He was all over the news again, accompanied by the same classic warning of ‘do not approach- he is considered extremely dangerous’.         

Within the hour, Will told Maria he needed to go. Be somewhere else. Anywhere.         

“I’m going for a ride.” He said, “I’ll…I’ll be back. But maybe not for a bit.”         

Maria looked at him, and then went back to making tortillas.         

“You are waiting for the devil, but he doesn’t come for you,” she said. She didn’t look over her shoulder at him.

Will ignored the chill that chewed his bones.

Will rode around the Grand Canyon, from one rim to the other. He stayed far away from campgrounds and other people, fearing their judging and wary looks.         

The world unrolling before him, the roar of his motorcycle, didn’t wipe his brain clear like it used to. He tried so fucking hard to not think about anything.         

He thought about Hannibal.         

As he rode across the canyon lands, he thought about Hannibal. As he sat on a mat of needles fallen from Ponderosa pines and listened to jays in the trees, he thought of Hannibal. As he lay on his bedroll and looked at the stars, he thought of Hannibal.         

And when he came, gasping shaking breaths at the night sky and spilling over his fist, he thought of Hannibal.         

He could remember, in the years previous, thinking Hannibal was an attractive, if terrifyingly intense, middle-aged man. And that had been the surface of his attention.         

But God, beneath the surface, invisible to even himself, had been this . This desire, so hot and relentless it was like magma, surging and boiling under his skin. Just the thought of his hands , his lips , the arch of his solid jaw, had a simultaneous gust of fury cascading through him, along with an inescapable torrent of lust.         

He wanted . He wanted to consume, destroy, devour.         

He also wanted to take, claim.

To fuck.

It was somewhere in Arizona, after ten days riding, on a back road surrounded by untamed and overgrown desert, that Will got flagged down.         

The red hazard lights flashed up ahead, and Will slowed, the evening sky throwing a blue shadow across the rough pavement. There was a man, in his mid-fifties and poorly dressed, waving at him with both arms.         

“Hey!” He shouted, stepping out into the road. Will was already slowing.         

Will brought his bike to a stop, dropping the kickstand. He pocketed his sunglasses.         

“What’s the issue?” He asked, approaching the car.         

The man was sweaty in the desert heat, so much so that it was causing his shirt to turn dark and wet in places. He smelled like mothballs, fried food and motor oil.         

“Got a real bad flat, and she’s a bitch to change. Takes at least two,” the man said.         

Will nodded. It was a nasty old Buick, and understandably difficult to work with.         

“I used to do this kind of thing all the time, so no worries. Uh, you got a jack? Speed wrench?”         

The man nodded and opened his trunk, drawing out the big X-shaped speed wrench, and handed it to Will. The jack was already down by the tire, waiting to be used.         

Will knelt by the tire and gave it a look. It was low, and the tread on the tires was almost entirely worn away.         

“You should get new pretty soon. These puppies seem pretty ancient.”         

“Yeah. Well. Fix the economy, then we’ll talk,” the man replied. He was standing behind Will.         

“You’re lucky I came along- I haven’t seen anyone else on this road for ten, fifteen miles.” Will shimmied the jack under the car.         

Because of the squeak of the jack, he didn’t hear the sound of the speed wrench being lifted off the gravel.         

But some things had stuck to him. In fact, many things had stuck to him over the years, from too many people to count. And one of those people was Hannibal Lecter.         

Will jerked backwards precisely in time to miss being hit across the head with the heavy metal bar.

He didn’t have time to think or rationalize, he just reacted.

He launched himself at the man’s legs, bearing him to the ground just as the wrench swung back through the air with a ‘ whuummm’ noise. It glanced off the top of Will’s head as they fell, and it only served to make him angrier.

Will snatched at the wrench and yanked it away, throwing it into the shallow ditch. He slammed the man down on the ground, pressing his knees into his arms and using his weight to pin him. Both hands came down and clasped around the man’s throat. He squeezed and squeezed, the leather of his gloves squeaking as he constricted.

The man didn’t know how to escape a stranglehold, and Will knew quite well how to strangle someone. The man’s face turned red then purple then blue, his eyes bugging, mouth dribbling. It was disgusting and profoundly, deliciously exhilarating.

The scrabbling stopped, and the man slumped into a puddle. Will was panting, mouth gaping, heart going squelch squelch squelch in his eardrums. He staggered to his feet, looking down at what was essentially a sack of meat, with detached hatred.

After a moment’s consideration, Will stooped and removed the man’s wallet from his pocket. He let if flop open in his palm, and even as he did so, his memories as a profiler came rushing back.

Six credit cards, all with different names. A driver’s license, yes, but behind it…

More IDs, of women now. Girls. Boys. Other men. All carefully stored in the back part of his wallet.

Rage bubbled in Will’s soul.

Will turned and opened the back passenger door. Inside were clothes. Piles of clothes that clearly had never belonged to the man lying in the road: an oversized Ed Hardy shirt, women’s jeans, a skirt…a girl’s blouse.

Will slammed the door, disgust and fury rising. He went to the trunk and looked in.

Inside was rope. A utility knife. Shears. Duct tape.

A small camping machete.

Will was shaking with anger when he picked up the knife, realization dawning.

The man was a killer. A trapdoor spider setting his careful bait, ready and waiting for prey to wander along.

“ You delight- I tolerate.”

Will remembered the words leaving his mouth, as clearly as if he’d just uttered them. It was one of the last things they’d spoken to each other.

He might not delight. But he sure as shit wasn’t going to tolerate either.

Will let himself go.

It was easy; too easy, so easy. He just opened the door in his brain, and there it was, that slathering monster he knew had always been there. The one that Hannibal had seen so clearly, had tried so hard to set free.

Will shoved the machete in his belt, grabbed the man by the arms and dragged him off the road, across the ditch and into the desert. He weaved through cholla thickets, ignoring them as they snagged at his clothes, until he reached his destination.

A huge saguaro loomed over him, arms outstretched. It was flowering at the top.

Will withdrew the machete, and with no preamble, hacked off the man’s clothes. He slit open his peritoneum and removed his guts. They were warm and damp as he grasped them, and it didn’t bother him any more than the cactus scratches. They slithered out, followed by his lungs. His heart, Will lay carefully aside.

Then, Will lifted him and with a hard shove, stuck him to the saguaro.

He used guts to tie him, just to be sure.

He removed his genitals, and placed them in the open body cavity.

Then, as a last touch, he cut a piece of skin from the man’s leg and fashioned it into a rough bandit mask. He placed it on his face and pinned it there with broken off spines from a nearby barrel cactus.         

The man was a highwayman. And now, anyone who would look at this would also know; he had been gutless and heartless, and disgusting.

Will collected the heart and carefully wrapped it in cloth, then brought it back to his motorcycle and placed it carefully in the little cooler in his saddlebag. He drove the car off the road and into the desert, and removed any evidence from the highway. There was hardly any blood on the road- in fact, the only blood had dripped from the wound on Will’s head.

He’d completely forgotten about it until then. Fortunately, he knew blood on the side of a highway would be ignored- there were dead armadillos, snakes, rabbits and quails all along the highways of the south.

Will got on his motorcycle and rode back to the bar outside La Quinta in one long shot.

Maria said nothing when he returned after two weeks on the road.  She just looked at him, threw him a dish rag and told his to wipe down tables and get the empty glasses.

Will resettled. He was okay.         

He listened to the radio, watched the TV. He waited for news of a gruesome murder on the side of a back-road in Arizona.         

It never came.

Four days after he was back, around ten in the evening, a crowd of bikers no one recognized came into the bar. They were loud and smelled, and loudly ordered beers and nachos and ‘the hottest salsa you wetbacks got hiding back there.’         

Will ground his teeth but did as they bade. Hopefully, they wouldn’t get too drunk and make too big of a mess.         

As it turned out, he’d hoped for too much. They drank about two beers each, then ordered a dozen tequila shots for the table of four men. After that, they started smoking cigars and filling the bar with blue, pungent smoke, laughing and hooting so loudly the hanging lights jumped.         

Will glanced at Ursula, who was chewing the side of her thumb and watching them.         

“I’ll go. If you don’t want to.” Will said.         

“No. No, I’ll go, it’s fine. I ain’t afraid of big ol’ dumb drunk men,” she said.         

Ursula squared her shoulders and approached the group, tray under her arm.         

“How’re ya’ll doing over here?” she asked, putting on a big showgirl smile.         

There was some more guffawing that made Will clench his fists.         

“Hey there, honey. You wanna bring us some more of them nachos? How about a pitcher of beer, and you come have a drink with us,” one guy said, and put his hand on her arm.         

“That’s sweet, but I got work to do.” She shifted her weight so his hand fell off.

“Aw, c’mon little girl. There ain’t no one else here,” another man said, and without preamble, grabbed Ursula by the hips and pulled her into his lap.         

The table exploded into laughter, cigar smoke swirling like a maelstrom.      

Will stepped out from behind the bar. His fists were rock solid and shaking.         

“I ain’t kiddin’, I got things I gotta do,” she tried to pull herself up, and when her ass was around the level of the man’s face, he grabbed it hard with one big hand.         

Will was most of the way across the bar by the time she jumped forward, face crimson. He grabbed a pool cue from a rack on the wall, hefted it to get a sense of its weight, and brought it around in a brutal arc into the side of the nearest man’s head.         

The pool cue broke in half, and the man slumped like a ragdoll in his chair. The three other men tried to spring to their feet, but were drunk and slow and had never had police training, or lived in the heads of prolific serial killers.         

Will had.         

He took the broken end of the cue still in his hand and cranked the next man with it, breaking his nose and sending blood everywhere. He threw the broken piece of wood aside and grabbed the man by the sides of the head. He brought the man’s face down and knee up, and connected the two, hard.

As he went reeling, Will kicked him backwards and sent him into the wall. The third man had rounded the table, and caught him in the cheek with a glancing punch. Will roared and grabbed his arm, using his weight and momentum to throw him bodily across the table, sending beer and broken glass everywhere.         

The fourth man flicked out a big knife as he approached. He was swaying as he came, and Will snarled at him. He picked up a chair with one hand and whipped it at him, sending the man staggering. Will tried to tackle him then, but the man was like a bull in a rage, and got lucky with his knife, dragging it across Will’s ribs. He sliced straight to the bone in a long line under Will’s right arm.         

The pain only made Will angrier.         

He grabbed the hand holding the knife and brought his arm down over his knee, breaking it at the elbow. He grabbed the knife and hefted it, adjusting his grip. He brought his arm up, preparing to stab the screaming man in the throat.         

“ Will! ”         

Will froze.         

He looked up, and there was Ursula. She was holding a huge Colt revolver and pointing at the men, but staring at Will in horror.         

A moment passed, in which Will realized with sudden annoyance that he wouldn’t be able to kill these men. And then he realized he’d thought that .         

He let the knife fall out of his hand.         

He approached her, not looking her in the eye, and took the gun from her hands.         

He turned to the four men.         

“Out,” he said, chest heaving. He couldn’t feel any pain from the gash on his side anymore.         

They were getting up, slow and sore.         

“ I said get the fuck out! ” Will screamed, and they went, falling over each other out the door.         

When the door closed behind them, Will let out a long shaking breath.         

“Will…?” Ursula said quietly. She didn’t seem afraid, only shaken.         

“Don’t call the cops. Just…lock the door. Clean this up. I’ll call Alejandro and he’ll come help you.” He handed her the gun without looking at her, “I’m going back to my trailer.”         

“Will, he cut you! You gotta go to the hospital.” She tried to step into his line of sight.         

“I’ll deal with it,” he said, and shoved past her.         

He called Alejandro from the kitchen, then took a bottle of vodka from behind the bar. He stripped off his shirt and splashed the long slice with liquor, hissing through his teeth and biting his lip at the burn. He drank several gulps to numb out the pain, and ignored the strange roaring in his mind.         

The slavering, rabid animal in him had wanted to feast on death.

But he hadn’t let it, and now it howled.

Alejandro burst in the back door holding a baseball bat and shotgun. He saw Will and sucked in air through his teeth.

“Ay, que pasó?” he said, going pale.

“Nothing. Go help Ursula clean up, and make sure no one fucks with her. I’m going home.”

“But Will, you, ah…you…you no estás bien,” he grimaced.

“I’m fine,” Will hissed, with more venom than was probably necessary.

He ignored Alejandro’s worried Spanish contradictions and shoved out the door.

He stalked through the trailer park, blood trickling down his side. His trailer was on the outskirts, but no one looked through their windows to see him and his bloody trail.

He stumbled through the door and to the bathroom, where he sat on the toilet.

He felt cold and numb, and he knew he would go into shock soon.

Needless to say, it was a very familiar feeling.

He used medical tape to hold the sides of the wound together, then taped gauze over it. It would probably heal ugly, but he didn’t care. It was just another scar to add to his collection.

The next morning, he woke up stiff and sore and angry. The bitter resentment clung to him and followed him like an inescapable draft of cold wind.         

He wanted to kill those men. Kill them, and lay them out in front of the bar as evidence of their deplorable nature. Flay them, rend them, wreck them.         

Will absentmindedly ate his Two Scoops of Raisin Bran, and then growled in annoyance when he remembered the platter of chilaquiles Maria had left him in the fridge. He took a shower and carefully soaped the gash on his side. It was swollen and pink, but too fresh yet to be infected. He didn’t examine it too closely- he didn’t want to see the yellow of his bones peeking through the torn flesh.         

Carefully and slowly, he used medical tape in place of stitches to pull the sides of the wound closed again. He put on a loose shirt, and went to work.

A week passed.

The men who’d felt up Ursula didn’t come back. The news didn’t report any ghastly murders of men impaled on saguaros and tied by their guts. Will’s gash healed quickly, particularly considering Maria insisted on sitting him down twice a day and applying fresh honey to it in big sticky globs.  After nine days, it was just a big scab with fresh skin appearing around the edges.         

Alejandro wanted to give Will a chupacabra tattoo, because he felt they had similar personalities. Maria just rolled her eyes theatrically and said, “Sí. Poco Poblano. Like I said.”

On the tenth day after Will had kicked the bikers out of the bar, Will washed his bike with a bucket of hot soapy water. He went to the roadhouse and helped Maria hang up the assortment of ceramic sugar skulls she bought, then sat outside with Alejandro until people showed up.

On the eleventh day, Will swept the bar and played pool, very badly, against himself.

On the twelfth day, the Devil came.

Will heard the roar of the motorcycle, as he always did, through the thin walls and poorly installed windows. It was just after 9:00 p.m., and the bar was half full of regular visitors.

He wasn’t sure what made him pause. What made him inhale, wring out the bar towel beside him, and step from behind the bar and into the little office behind the rack of bottles. It was unlit back there in the little nook; the only light came from the weak little Christmas lights above the bottles, through which one could glean a partially obscured glimpse of the entire barroom.

He felt the incoming presence like a finger drawn just barely off the surface of the skin, in a gust of phantom sensation. He watched the door.

No one looked up when the door opened, and no one watched the newcomer carefully close the door behind him and survey the dark interior.

Will’s breath froze in his mouth, and his heart sputtered.

Squelch, squelch, squelch.

Hannibal looked around the bar, a slight smile on his face. His eyes caught in the low wall sconce lights and flashed bright gold for the briefest of moments.

Will’s hands were shaking.

He was still indescribably beautiful. His hair was silvered now, and longer than Will had ever seen it, arching over and past his spectacular cheekbones. He had a smattering of salt-and-pepper beard.

He looked so different, and so undeniably the same.

Hannibal crossed the barroom, headed directly for the stools. He wore road leathers similar to those Will had, but on him, looked vastly more… sexual. They hung off his broad shoulders like armor to a Viking king and flowed with his movements like tiger stripes in a jungle. His long legs, lean and precise, took easy and measured steps.

He looked like someone’s fevered version of a malevolent pagan god.

Hannibal took a seat at the bar, just a few feet from where Will stood. He didn’t look around, just removed his gloves and placed them on the bar beside him.

Will realized then that Hannibal could without a doubt smell him, but he still didn’t move.

The sound of shuffling footsteps announced that Maria had seen the newcomer, and Will’s stomach jolted in his gut when she faced him.

“Hello, señor.  What can I get for you?”

“Good evening. I’ll have…whatever you recommend.”

Will’s hand flew up and slapped over his mouth to trap the gasping whimper inside.

His voice. His voice .

He had curbed his accent, to the point where he sounded almost completely American. There was no trace of the Eastern European accent that usually lilted all his syllables. But…other than that…

It was the same. The same liquid metal, dripping off his tongue like thick burgundy mulled wine. Charming, dangerous, seductively, deadly.

The same voice that had been following Will around, licking his brain, tasting his thoughts and chewing his soul like a rabid dog on a bone.

“I recommend the cocktails because they make me lots of money,” Maria said, and Will could hear her smile.

Hannibal chuckled under his breath.

“I will have a Corona with lime,” he said, and placed a ten-dollar bill on the bar.

“Sounds good. Give me one second.” Maria bustled around, digging in the little fridge.

Will watched her withdraw a bottle, pop the cap off and place a lime wedge in the mouth, then go back to wiping down the bar like Will had abandoned.

“Muchas gracias.” Hannibal said to her in a perfect imitation of an American speaking Spanish poorly.

Maria nodded to him.

It was silent for a few seconds, filled with background noise of the bar.

Maria folded the cloth and placed it on a cutting board.

“I’m going to go in the back and make some more guacamole.  Did you want anything to eat while I’m back there?”

Hannibal smiled at her, in an open and friendly fashion.

“No, not at the moment. But thank you for asking, madam.”

“Ah, you have such nice manners!” Maria said, and gave Hannibal’s arm, resting on the bar, a quick squeeze. “So polite.”

She went back into the kitchen, humming the intro to one of her favorite Spanish soaps.

Will stood, looking between the bottles, shaking. He couldn’t breathe, move, could hardly blink for fear of the mirage in front of him disappearing like fog in sunlight.

Hannibal carefully withdrew the lime wedge from the bottle and placed it on a napkin with some disdain. Then he took a cautious swig of the Corona, seemed to mull it over, and then placed the bottle back down. He pushed his beer mat in a small circle with his index finger.

And then, without looking up, he said, “Are you going to come out, Will? Or are you going to stay hiding.”

Will’s knees almost buckled.

Though his voice was quiet, barely audible over the radio playing “New Kid in Town”, the accent was back in full force.

Will tried to move. His feet wouldn’t listen.

“Please, Will.” Hannibal said, a simple and gentle request. His eyes flicked up and stabbed directly into the darkness where Will was hiding.

Will let out a choked breath, and then stepped cautiously out of the gloom. Hannibal’s eyes snapped onto him as he emerged, and Will almost swallowed his tongue.

He’d neglected his bandana this evening, and his sunglasses. He looked…pretty similar to the Will that Hannibal had seen last. Except, now, in his faded and ripped collarless black t-shirt, his arm tattoos were clearly visible.

Will took the next few steps and stood directly before him, leaving the bar between them.

They stared at each other, faces immobile.

Will watched Hannibal’s eyes rove him. They took in his forehead scar, puckered pink and well-healed now. His sun-dark skin, and the freckles across his nose that came with.

He had a slight smile, and it was so similar to the one he’d worn that day in the Uffizi gallery that Will could almost smell the antique furniture and floor polish again.

“You came,” Will said. He didn’t recognize the sound of his own voice, as if he were speaking at the end of a very long culvert.

Hannibal’s smile grew slightly, and he tilted his head to the side. His eyes flicked over Will’s torso again, stopping only briefly at his exposed forearms.

He met Will’s eyes and then his face tempered somewhat.

“Yes. I did.”

More than five full seconds of silence passed between them.

“...Why?” Will asked, frowning.         

Hannibal smiled again, as though delighting in Will’s blasé façade.         

“Because the time seemed right. Was there another time you would have preferred?” Hannibal took a sip of his beer. To his credit, he didn’t make a face.         

“You…it’s been almost six months.” Will gripped the bar top, and the scorpion tattoo on his right ring finger stood out all the blacker against the white skin.         

Hannibal raised one fine eyebrow.         

“You would have preferred that I found you immediately upon my moyen de fuite ? Or should I leave and come back in by another door in five or so minutes?”         

Will stared at him. The reality of the situation leaked into his brain, drop by drop.     

Hannibal was every bit as snide and goading as he’d ever been. Even the teasing, “catch me if you can” glint flickered in his eyes.         

“We should go,” Will said suddenly, and realized he’d said it just as he’d finished the last syllable.

Hannibal seemed amused by this.

“Should we? Very well.” He got gracefully to his feet, in a movement precisely like the ones he made before, so many years ago, to get up out of the chair in his office, across from Will in his identical seat.

 It struck Will then that Hannibal Lecter didn’t stand up like a normal person. He unfolded like a perfectly tuned and oiled automaton, each motion balanced and premeditated.

It made Will want to trip him.

Will stepped into the little side room and grabbed his coat and keys. It was just as well he drove his motorcycle here today; he didn’t want to walk that half-mile back to his trailer with Hannibal following him like a nightmarish shadow in road leathers.         

The sun had long since set, and the lights from the bar flooded the parking lot. There were about thirty bikes parked, most of which Will had come to recognize.         

Hannibal was standing on the stoop. He didn’t turn, just started walking over to a lone black Triumph, parked a short way away from the common rabble.

“I’m around back,” Will said.

By the time he got his bike started, Hannibal had rolled up, helmet rested on his leg, elbow on his helmet.

Will set off without a word, roaring through the trailer park towards his place. He didn’t look to see if Hannibal was following; he could feel his proximity as keenly as he could his own limbs.

When they arrived, Will parked and watched as Hannibal did the same. He hesitated for a moment, as Hannibal gave him a warm smile that politely awaited to be led inside, and then went to his door.

As he unlocked it, Hannibal said “I like your flamingo.”

Will glanced over his shoulder at the plastic lawn ornament.

“Thanks,” he said wryly. “Maria gave it to me.”

“That would be the lime-in-the-bottle woman?”

“That’s the one, yes.”

It was so bizarre to be hearing Hannibal’s voice outside of his own head, he kept surreptitiously glancing at him to make sure he was actually there.

Hannibal wandered into the trailer, looking it over with an air of vague interest and looking for all the world like he was truly intrigued by the horrible 70's décor.

“Leave your boots by the door. Did you want a drink?” Will said, kicking off his own shoes and throwing his keys on the cheap gold-fleck vinyl counter.

Hannibal had his back to him. He was looking at Will’s coffee table, examining the array of old magazines.

“What are we drinking?”

“I have stuff for mojitos.”

Hannibal stooped and picked up a magazine. He’d unzipped his black leather jacket, revealing a plain grey t-shirt underneath. It rode up as he bent at the waist, giving the briefest suggestion of skin.

Will ground his teeth.

“So?” he said indignantly, “Yes or no?”

Hannibal pivoted. He was flipping through a three-month old edition of Guns & Ammo .

“Yes. A mojito. Why not.”

As Hannibal fastidiously unlaced his motorcycle boots, Will made them both mojitos in cheap, mismatched plastic cups. He made them as doubles, because the back of his throat tasted like fear and he wanted to drown it out.

Will held out the glass to the man opposite, who was in the middle of divesting himself of his coat. Hannibal hooked it gently over the back of a chair, then accepted his drink without comment and took a sip.

“Very nice, Will. Thank you.” He inclined his head like he was greeting the Queen.

Will’s lip curled in annoyance. He opened his back door and sat with a thump on the wooden step, looking out over the desert and the distant mountains. In the indistinguishable space between, a coyote yammered.

So? What now? Will thought, swirling his drink. He’d invited him back to his place for what purpose, exactly? Maybe he just didn’t want Maria to see him get his throat cut in her bar.

He would die here, he guessed, in his crappy old trailer with shitty retro art-deco interior design.

Ah, well. There were worse places.

Behind him, he heard the sound of the radio being turned on. He glanced back and saw Hannibal carefully adjusting dials. He apparently found a station he liked, because he took up his drink and sat on the couch, a few feet away from the open door.

Will looked back outside and breathed in the dry, sweet desert air. Yes, he could die here if he had to.

Neither of them spoke for quite some time. They drank their mojitos in loaded, lead-heavy silence. The radio played a few popular eighties songs.

Will looked over his shoulder at the seated figure.

Hannibal had his long lean legs crossed neatly, and he was flipping idly through another magazine.

Will adjusted himself so he was sitting on the threshold of the door rather than the step. He pivoted and rested one foot on the opposite door jamb, leaning back against the other. He observed Hannibal like a biologist might an idle lion.

The radio started to play ‘In the Air Tonight’ by Phil Collins.

Will shifted and frowned.

‘If you told me you were drowning, I would not lend a hand; I’ve seen your face before, my friend, but I don’t know if you know who I am.’

Will grimaced and took a sip of his drink. It tasted more sour than it had before.

“Are you angry with me?” he asked, eyes flicking from the crushed mint to the side of Hannibal’s face.

Hannibal was motionless for a beat, and then closed the magazine and placed it  on the couch. He smiled dryly and re-crossed his legs. Even in repose, his posture was impeccable.

“Yes. Very much so.” He looked at Will then, smile not shifted.

Will let out a long shaky breath that it felt as though he’d been holding for years.

“I gave up everything I was and had for you, Will, just so I could be somewhere you could find me when you needed to. I waited for you, yet you ran away.”

Will scrubbed a hand through his ragged curls.

“Yeah. Well. I wanted to pick up what tiny pathetic pieces of sanity you left me with.”

Hannibal laughed a little under his breath.

He looked away from Will, out into the night sky.

After a while, he said quietly “Do you know how many people I have ever been truly angry with, Will, since I was a young child?”

Will gave him an unimpressed look. “What? Four hundred? Five?”

Hannibal’s eyes met his.

“One,” he replied simply.     

Will raised an eyebrow.

“Hannibal. By the latest conservative estimate, you’ve killed over a hundred and fifty people.”

Hannibal’s full lips twisted in amusement.

“Mmm,” he hummed. “ Quite conservative.”

“And? You weren’t angry with any of them?” Will prompted.

“It is not a secret that I treasure my austerity and distance. Anger is an intimate emotion, one that requires a great deal of investment. I was never emotionally invested in anyone I killed.”

“You aren’t angry with Jack? Alana? That Du Maurier lady and her bullshit antics?”

“No, Will, I am not. They are gentle breezes in a hurricane; inconsequential to me.”

Will took a small sip.

“But… I am not inconsequential to you?”

Hannibal let out a long and resigned sigh, in a more emotive gesture than Will thought he’d ever seen the man make.

Hannibal got to his feet and came to stand near Will. Then, in a careful and terribly graceful folding of lithe limbs, he sat on the carpet near Will’s feet, leaning back against the inside wall beside the door.

He took a deep breath, but his face was a plain and impassive neutral, staring off into space.

 “You yourself designated me as a ‘sophisticated psychopath’. And in many ways, you were correct. I care nothing for my fellow man, much less for those that choose to be base and crude. The personal suffering of someone, their pain and misery, doesn’t register to me on any emotional level. It may serve to make them more interesting, but their existences generally remain mundane and tedious. I was always this way, with very rare exceptions, and after the death of my family, was this way entirely for many decades.”

 Will chewed the inside of his cheek, but said nothing.

 Hannibal was smiling at him again, and there was a…look in his eyes that Will had seen before. Something like awe.

 “And then, when I was least expecting it and woefully unprepared, you came into my life like a monsoon. You swept everything I had built, fortified and reserved, away in your fervor. There was no rope I could use to contain you, and no matter how I tried to hold you in your thrashing, you evaded me.  You captivated me as the old masters were captivated by their muses. But still you resisted. You fought me and tricked me and teased me with your intimacy, dangling everything you were, just beyond my reach. You were perfection incarnate, woven from the very fabric of my dreams, and I wanted to hate you for it. I wanted to kill you for it. I had never – have never- been...corrupted…in the way you corrupted me. I gave you all that I was, something I had never dared to do, and you did as you always will; you surprised me. Only you, Will, have ever had the ability to surprise me.”

 Will could barely breathe, let alone look at the man across from him. He could feel angry, bitter tears rising, aching in his throat.

 “You tried to kill me,” Will said, his voice coarse and sharp in his mouth. “You tried to cut my head open in Florence.”

Hannibal frowned lightly, and his deep set eyes slipped closed for a beat or two.

“I was not happy in Italy. I was betrayed and heartbroken more than I can possibly relate in words, and furious with myself for letting you in. For letting you make me breakable. Anger, unfamiliar as it was to me, made me reckless and flip. It didn’t matter how I tried, I could not escape you.”

Hannibal shifted slightly, rubbing his chin with one hand. His eyes were distant.

“Your absence yawned like a canyon. There blew no wind but wafted your scent to me, and sang no birds but called your name to me. Bedelia needled and prodded me constantly, in what I believe she thought to be a method of self-preservation, foolish though it may have been. It was her suggestion that I rid myself of you permanently, in hopes of divesting you from my every step. She was…incorrect.”

Hannibal looked at him again, and his gaze was direct and unwavering.

“I carried you from Muskrat Farms, motionless in my arms after I saved you from the macabre fate Mason had planned for you. Chiyoh drove us back to your house. She suggested I throw you in a frozen river or a ditch, knowing that in your sedated state, you would drown or die of hypothermia within minutes. But as I sat holding you in the back seat, as I felt your breath on my neck, and your heart beating beneath my hand, I knew I couldn’t. I never could, and would never be able to. You were mine; my foil, my counterpart, my perfect square. In that moment, I knew I was doomed to let you live. My penance for being able to continue to walk the earth was to see that you did likewise.”

 Will took a deep shuddering breath. He could feel a low-key rage burning inside his chest like a crucible. It ached.

“I put myself away for you. And I waited. But you never came.”

Hannibal’s voice was quiet. Sweet, even. Gentle.

Will glanced at Hannibal, who was just looking at him. He was benign and accepting.

 “So yes, Will. I am angry with you. You changed me utterly, and that is something no creature finds easy. But I forgive you.”

Will almost growled at him.

“You shouldn’t. I don’t.”

Hannibal tilted his head but didn’t move anything else.

Will put his drink down with a solid thud . He got to his feet swiftly and went over to the counter. He stood there, his back to Hannibal, hands as shaking fists resting on the plastic.

He heard Hannibal get to his feet.

 “You’re like a virus to me,” Will said, and looked over his shoulder at him, “You’re a parasite that lives in me and feeds off me. You keep me up at night because I can hear you chewing . Every second of my life, I can feel you eating me alive.”

Hannibal was motionless, barely a suggestion of breath shifting him.

“You made me kill someone. And I wanted to kill more.” Will swallowed, “I killed someone for you .”

“I know.” Hannibal said.

 “You know?” Will rounded on him fully.

“You haven’t wondered how no news has broken about a man, flayed and tied to a cactus by his own entrails? You were messy Will, and foolish. You could have been caught.”

Will’s jaw clicked as it fell open.

 “You… you ...took him down?” Will hissed.

“I cleaned up after you. But it was...” Hannibal took a deep breath, and he was smiling again, shaking his head in genuine wonder, “It was spectacular, Will. Nothing I’ve ever done could compare. You were imprecise and visceral and gorgeous , Will.”

Hannibal stepped closer to him, and Will didn’t recoil. “It was perfect. And I knew you did it for me. I know.”

Will looked at Hannibal, steel blue eyes into warm brown. He could see everything. Could see Hannibal looking at Will’s design and reveling in it like a devout follower in the word of God.

Will shoved him. He didn’t know why he did it, but it felt right the moment he did, so he did it again. His hands connected with solid, hard muscle, and Hannibal took several steps back to catch himself.

With a third shove, Hannibal was forced to sit on the couch, looking up at Will with an expectant face. Will loomed over him.

“I don’t forgive you. You gutted me and cut me and drugged me and played with me. I don’t forgive you .” He was snarling.

“Ours is a language of flesh and roses, Will. That is what there is between us.”

Will really did snarl then, one hand grabbing Hannibal by the throat, the other braced on the back of the couch by his head. He could feel Hannibal’s trachea beneath his palm.

“ I don’t forgive you, ” he hissed. Each time he said it, the more it sounded and felt like a lie.

“Good,” Hannibal said, voice slightly altered by the pressure to his windpipe. “You shouldn’t.”

Will panted at him, mouth hanging open.

Then he kissed him, hard.

Will felt like a shaken bottle of soda for months, and kissing the man in front of him was like uncapping it. The relief was almost enough to make his knees shake, but the nasty and bitter rage kept him upright.

Hannibal didn’t kiss back, and didn’t really have a chance to. Will pulled away, gasping for breath.

They stared at one another.

“You’ve wrecked me,” Will said, surprising himself with the lack of malice in his tone.

“And you me.” Hannibal replied. He didn’t look surprised or upset that Will had kissed him.

Will tried to straighten up, but Hannibal was faster. Much faster. He grabbed Will by the front of his shirt and kept him bent over him. Will let his hand slide down to the solid mass that was Hannibal’s collarbone and chest.

Will licked his lips as Hannibal watched.

“I tried to fuck a girl who works at the bar,”he said. He wasn’t sure why.

Hannibal blinked at him, slowly, like a crocodile in the sun.

 “And?”

“I…couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because. You.”

 Will’s eyes fell to Hannibal’s perfectly formed mouth and sharply defined nose. Under his hand, Will could feel his chest rise and fall, quicker than resting pace, and his warm breath ghosted over Will’s face, through his sharp teeth just barely visible.

His eyes went back up and met Hannibal’s. They glowed like a banked fireplace.

They came together simultaneously in a ferocious kiss that was mostly teeth. Will let out an involuntary moan, and let Hannibal lick past his lips and across his tongue as if he were born to it. At the taste of him, Hannibal growled and pulled Will onto his lap.

 Will planted both hands on Hannibal’s shoulders for support, knees bracketing the other man’s hips. He slid his fingers up into the silver hair, grabbing handfuls in fists.

 They kissed like warfare.

 As Hannibal sucked his lower lip and grabbed at the flesh on Will’s sides, his long fingers stretching and pulling his skin, Will opened his mouth and ran his tongue alongside Hannibal’s.  He caught his teeth on the other’s lips, and yanked his head back by the hair. He unbent his knees enough so he was above him, kissing Hannibal into ruthless submission.

Hannibal slid both hands up the back of Will’s shirt, over his ribs and shoulders and the tattoo he’d yet to see, leaving scratches with his nails that interlaced with the black over his shoulder blades. Will hissed into his mouth and nipped Hannibal’s lip.

They pulled apart. Will looked down with hooded eyes, while Hannibal's head pulled backwards, and looked up through the same. Both their mouths were slick with spit and tasted of mint and lime.

Will brought one hand up and brushed his fingers gently across the outer edge of Hannibal’s plush lower lip. His tongue darted out, just for a second, to lick at it.

Will watched his own fingers as his thumb stroked Hannibal’s rough chin. He looked up and met Hannibal’s gaze, taking in the wildly dilated pupils. He knew his would be the same.

“I want to fuck you,” he said quietly, and ran his tongue across the inside of his lower incisors. His other hand twisted in the fine silver strands of Hannibal’s hair.

He’d wanted to fuck him for months. Wanted to fuck him, be fucked, touch him, kiss him, destroy him utterly… it seemed like the right thing to say.

“And so you should,” Hannibal replied. His face was utterly sincere, and with his hooded eyes, tipped up chin and parted lips, he was a picture of wanton lust.

A deep-seated, sundering shudder escaped Will’s lips. He dipped his face back down and slid his tongue into Hannibal’s mouth. Hannibal grabbed Will’s shirt, peeling it off him, letting Will lean back to allow it to come over his head.

Will felt warm hands slide over his forearms. He looked down, and then back at Hannibal’s face.

He was examining Will’s rattlesnake tattoo, eyes moving in quick twitches that suggested he were surveying it in some detail. Then, he moved to the other arm, running his fingertips over the black elk antler.

“Beautiful,” he breathed, and looked up at Will with wonderment glistening in his eyes.

Will smirked. He extricated himself gently from Hannibal’s lap and turned, kneeling on the floor in front of him.

He heard the tiny intake of breath, and let his eyes slide closed when the touches started at the base of his neck. He knew what the tattoo looked like, and where the branches of the Joshua tree went on his body. He felt as Hannibal’s fingers drew across them, and it was a remarkably serene and calming sensation. He felt like a living marble statue, being appraised by the only person who could ever truly enjoy it.

“Maria’s son, Alejandro, did them.” Will said quietly.

Hannibal’s fingers came to a stop just below his right scapula, where Will knew the quail sat.

“He’s very talented.”

Will got up from the floor and turned back around. Now that they weren’t touching, it seemed…strange that he could just resume sitting in his lap as he had been.

Instead, he took Hannibal’s shoulders in his hands and pushed him gently sideways so he was lying along the couch. Then, as an afterthought, threw a leg over and sat astride him.

Will leaned over him, hands beside Hannibal’s head. He smirked knowingly down at him.

“I know you well enough to know that you’re deep down annoyed that someone besides you left marks on me.”

Hannibal looked up at him, his eyes catching the moonlight from a nearby window. They looked like liquid tree sap, molten and amber, waiting to trap Will like an unsuspecting insect.

Two hands came up to grasp at Will’s bare waist, thumbs touching the ends of the purple scar.

“Perhaps.” He smiled slowly, “Or perhaps I regret all marks on your skin, including my own.”

Will bent his elbows, and let his body come slowly to rest on top of the man below him. It struck his how warm Hannibal was, seeming almost scorching through his shirt.

Will shook his head infinitesimally.

“I don’t believe you,” he breathed, and devoured the other man’s mouth.

Hannibal hummed into Will’s lips, his hands grasping at Will’s skin on his side and ribs and pulling , nails gouging. Will grumbled against him and bit gently at the wide, sensuous top lip with his canines. Their breathing was coming in tandem, and when Will shifted his hips, he felt his own dick, hard and throbbing, press against a similar hardness beneath.

Hannibal wasted no time, his hands sliding down over Will’s waistband and grabbing at his ass, pulling him down in a hard grinding motion. Both their breathing caught at the added friction.

But Will wasn’t willing to give up control. He didn’t want to . He’d given up everything; his life, his sanity, his morality, his future, all because of the man he was kissing, with tongue and teeth and hard shoves. It was his turn to take, and take he would.

Will broke the kiss and leaned back, grabbing Hannibal’s shirt in both hands and yanking it roughly off him. He didn’t want his easy obeisance. He wanted his attention.

He ran both hands over Hannibal’s well-formed chest, fingers sliding through the brown and grey curls.

He looked down at Hannibal, who regarded him patiently.

Will grabbed two handfuls of chest hair best he could and slowly pulled, hard.

Hannibal’s eyes slid closed and he hissed, head tilting back. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat, and Will dove for it, licking at his neck, his open mouth latching on and sucking. Hannibal made a quiet gasping noise, and Will reveled in his victory. He slid his tongue over his pulse point, and then bit down on the strip of muscle running up Hannibal’s neck to the corner of his jaw, just hard enough to hurt.

Hannibal’s body bucked beneath him, and Will barely contained the moan as the jolt of arousal shot through him. He could feel himself leaking in his jeans.

Will made a decision. He grabbed Hannibal’s hands, pressing them down on the couch above his head. The man was strong and fast enough to get away with barely a thought or effort, but he complied anyway. His chest was heaving slightly, and Will knew he was cracking the shell of superiority and self-control.

But he didn’t want to just crack it.  He wanted to split it wide open.

Will scooted back, biting and sucking as he descended down Hannibal’s body. When he reached the top of his pants- perfectly tailored motorcycle leathers- he popped open the top button. The leather was soft enough that he could see how hard Hannibal was, how he was straining against the six-button fly.

Will glanced up as he popped each button with his one hand, his other splayed across Hannibal’s abdomen.

The older man was watching, mouth slightly agape, chest rising and falling just slightly too quickly to be called unaffected. His hair was strewn across his eyes, and, as Will had wordlessly directed, he’d left his hands pinned above him.

Will smirked at Hannibal, and paused unbuttoning long enough to palm the throbbing hardness firmly.

Hannibal’s eyes closed tightly and he let out a deep, shuddering breath.

Will grinned in self-satisfaction. He finished unbuttoning and shifted enough to take Hannibal’s pants down mid-thigh. He was left in black boxer briefs, finely textured and unlabeled.

Will dipped his head and licked at the obscene outline. Hannibal made a very quiet whimpering noise.

“Figures,” Will said, letting his hot breath ghost across the wet fabric, “Even your underwear is swankier than anything I’ve ever owned.”

“Would it make you feel any better,” Hannibal said, his voice hoarse and throaty, “if I told you that in this moment, you own me entirely?” He lifted head enough to look Will in the eye.

Will felt a strange lurch in his chest of simultaneous joy and dread, like being handed a newborn infant; so precious, and so infinitely fragile.

“Don’t say things like that to me.” Will growled.

“Why not? It’s entirely true.”         

“Because it makes me want to forget what you are.”         

“Oh? And what am I?”         

“A monster.” Will yanked down Hannibal’s waistband and let his cock, full and angrily red, spring loose against his stomach. Will took him in his hand, slipping the foreskin back.         

He looked up at Hannibal, who was watching with dark, wicked eyes, and licked at the head of his cock. Hannibal groaned, a full body noise, and dropped his head back.         

Pleased with the incoherence he’d inspired, Will dipped his head and sucked up the side of the shaft, grazing his teeth along the thin velvet skin. A strange noise came from above, and Will realized it was Hannibal’s nails on the coarse fabric of the couch. Will chuckled and took a breath, then swallowed him down as far as he could easily go.

He sucked hard, both hands sliding up Hannibal’s torso. He let his fingers delve into the creases at his hip bones where his abdominal muscles tucked in, then slide up again over his obliques and belly.

Hannibal was gasping. His legs fell further open, and Will hummed, making the muscles under his hands jump and lurch. He pulled back and used the end of his tongue to cradle the very tip, used a hand to hold it steady. He sealed his lips, experimenting with pressure, when Hannibal suddenly bent double and grabbed Will’s hair, pulling him up and off.

“ Will . Will. Please.” He panted, mouth wet and lips red from being bitten.         

“Maybe I wasn’t done,” Will said dryly, and twisted the hand grasping Hannibal’s length just so, making the man’s face contort in pleasure.         

“ Ah . Perhaps not, but if you continue, I will be.”         

Maybe I don’t care what you want was perched on the tip of Will’s tongue, just as Hannibal’s cock had just been. But he couldn’t say it. Not just because he wanted to fuck Hannibal until he was begging for release…but also because it wasn’t true. No matter how much Will wished it were.         

“Fine,”he said. Will got up off the couch and with little effort, shucked his pants and boxers in one swift movement. His own cock was about as hard as it had ever been, but he ignored it. Hannibal didn’t; his eyes roved Will’s body like water on a floodplain, taking stock and defiling with his gaze.

Hannibal was sprawled across the couch, skin glistening with a fine patina of sweat. He looked debauched and wanton, staring up from under his overgrown bangs, and Will was barely able to suppress a shiver of pure, predatory want.

“Take everything else off,” Will said, and walked away. He went to his bedroom and pulled out a bottle of lube from between his mattress and box spring. He considered condoms, and then rolled his eyes. Any other time, he’d insist. This time…

Will walked back into the living room and halted at the sight.

Hannibal was entirely nude, lying along the couch with one arm behind his head, looking completely at ease, cock rock hard against his belly.

Will took a deep breath. His heart was hammering, and his own dick was desperate for attention. It didn’t help that Hannibal looked like a veritable feast.

Will came to stand beside the couch. Hannibal observed him openly, but with less disdain than Will normally associated with his looks. His gaze was heated and desirous and it drew Will closer still.

Will threw the lube down and bent over Hannibal’s body. His hand grasped a lever under the couch, and with a smooth and fast shoop noise, the couch unfolded into a flat bed.  Hannibal raised an eyebrow as he was jostled, but it quickly disappeared when Will returned to loom over him on his hands and knees.    

“I felt using a condom would be redundant, considering.” Will licked his lips, and had a hard time taking his eyes off Hannibal’s mouth, red and glistening as it was.         

Hannibal raised one hand and drew it, gently, from Will’s bellybutton up to his collar bone. Will closed his eyes and let the goosebumps erupt over his flesh.         

“Let there be no barriers between us. For the first time since we met, let it just be us in this room and this moment.” Hannibal’s voice was quiet and gentle, and it made Will melt into his touch, lowering his body.   As their erections aligned, they gasped into the hot air between them. Will ground his hips down a few times, thrusting experimentally.      

 Will lifted himself on a knee, just enough to be able to get a hand between them and take a hold of them both. Will couldn’t contain the cry that whimpered out from between his teeth, feeling Hannibal so close and hot against him. Both the man’s hands had come up and were cradling Will’s hips and ass, coaxing him in his movements.         

Will let his head fall to Hannibal’s collar bone and he mouthed dumbly at his neck.  He could feel Hannibal breathing against his ear, hard and fast, and heard him say, in a broken, lust-filled gasp,

"Will."

Will stopped moving. He stopped stroking them together, stopped everything. 

That voice that had haunted him for months, panted in his ear, made unease suddenly seep into Will's bones.        

“Will?” Hannibal asked again, in a quiet and exceedingly gentle inquiry. It was too much.         

Will lifted himself off Hannibal with his forearms beside his head.         

Will looked down into Hannibal’s face. He was flushed, his eyes dark with arousal, but were now questioning also.         

“I want to be angry with you,” Will said.         

Hannibal shifted slightly, rocking them both. He licked his lips, and Will’s eyes followed the movement hungrily before he could check himself.         

“So be angry,” Hannibal whispered.         

One of his hands came up to the back of Will’s head and pulled him gently down, pressing their foreheads together. His eyes looked up, sincere and stricken with purpose.         

“Be anything. Just be what you are, Will, like I’ve always wanted for you.”      

Will let out a sharp breath, catching in his throat and turning into a little groan. He grabbed Hannibal’s hair in one hand, holding him steady as he kissed and lapped into his mouth. The other grabbed for the lube. He thrust again, dragging his cock along Hannibal’s and through the smattering of hair on the other’s abdomen.         

With slippery fingers, Will dipped his free hand down, between their bodies and slipped his fingers into the plush heat between Hannibal’s thighs.         

Hannibal dug his fingers into Will’s back, hard . He buried his face into Will’s neck and hiked his knees up, giving Will better access. He also bit at Will’s throat, weakly and with damp, hot breaths.        

“I…I don’t know what I’m doing,” Will panted, not actually wanting Hannibal to uncurl from under and around him.         

“You’re…you’re doing fine. Just…just keep going.” Hannibal sounded almost desperate, but the novelty of it was swallowed by arousal and Will’s throbbing, desperate cock, grinding against the man’s bellybutton.         

With one finger, Will teased in and out. He’d done this before to himself, more so in recent months when he’s had Hannibal in his brain almost constantly. He knew to take it slow. Or, he thought he knew.         

“T-two, Will.” Hannibal wheezed, and Will could feel him making aborted shifts backwards onto Will’s fingers, fucking himself as well as he was able.         

“Oh god,” Will hissed, clutching Hannibal’s face to him. The pleading tone of the man’s voice was almost enough to make him come.         

Two fingers slid into the tight inferno inside Hannibal, slippery and judging by Hannibal’s hands twisting in Will’s hair, extremely welcome.         

Will crooked his fingers, curled them and was rewarded when Hannibal keened , directly in his ear. And bit him, again, harder than before.         

Will realized suddenly that it had been years since anyone had even touched Hannibal. Even brushes of skin, touches of hands and arms, he’d been without for years while he was in prison. And as for touching like this… had he touched himself in the BSHCI? Under Alana’s watchful eye? Or had he been celibate and proper, like he always seemed to be?         

Will lifted his head, watching Hannibal’s face as he brushed, just gently, past his prostate. His eyes were closed, his face a picture of rapturous abandon. It was exquisite.         

Touch-starved or no, Will couldn’t help the surge of want crashing through him. His took Hannibal’s mouth with his own, fucking in with his tongue and simultaneously adding a third finger, twisting as deep inside as he could.         

One of Hannibal’s hands, which had been buried in Will’s curls, was suddenly wrapped around Will’s cock. Will yelped into the kiss, and Hannibal stroked ruthlessly.         

“Do it, Will,” Hannibal said, their lips barely apart, and kissed him sloppily once more, “Do it. I want you inside me. Please, Will.”         

Will bit his own bottom lip hard, trying to stop himself from coming into Hannibal’s hand.         

“Okay. Okay,” he panted.         

Hannibal didn’t seem to want to relinquish his hold on Will’s cock, so Will let him position him. He could feel his whole body shaking with violent tension as he lowered himself between Hannibal's thighs.

Hannibal curled his legs up around Will’s back, ankles hooked together. He held their faces together, hand tight in Will’s hair.   

This was the moment it had all led to.

Will could feel the head of his dick set against that crucible-hot opening, Hannibal holding it there carefully.         

“I’m not…I’m…I’m not…” Will said, and his voice broke. He felt choked.         

Hannibal’s hand came down from his hair and caressed his face. He looked into Will’s eyes, unblinking and calm yet blisteringly hot, like a still lake of molten lava.         

“You’re here, Will. You’re here, with me. Like you’re supposed to be.”         

Will huffed out a breath, and let himself push inside.         

As Hannibal held onto him, groaning in apparent delight, Will knew this was what dying must feel like. It was hot, so so hot , and all consuming. He felt immolated, devoured by flames, licking flesh off his bones with long wicked tongues.         

But he also felt vindicated.         

Will drew himself out and then fucked back in, cautiously at first. Hannibal had both hands on his ass now, fingers digging into his flesh. Will knew vaguely that he would be covered in scratches, bruises and bites tomorrow, and didn’t care in the least. He did, however, want to leave some of his own.         

He kissed Hannibal’s open, gasping mouth. Neither of them closed their eyes; they stared into each other, through the other, and back again at themselves.         

Will drew back again and then rocked in, harder this time. He dipped his head down and sucked under Hannibal’s jaw, feeling the scratch of his unshaven cheeks and throat. He sucked hard, and then bit even harder, and was rewarded by Hannibal’s whole body clenching around him and under him. Will groaned, and then moved on to nip at the sweat-damp skin of his trapezius.         

Being inside Hannibal was hell. It was hell, and Will was happy to be there. It was a hell he would never leave, and never wanted to. He would let himself be burned into nothingness to have this.

“ Will. ”         

Hannibal used his hands to encourage Will deeper, pulling him closer and rocking his hips. Will had wanted control, had wanted to be domineering and angry.  But this felt too right to ever considering combating it.         

Will took Hannibal’s face between his hands, fingers laced into his hair. He shoved their foreheads together, slippery with shared sweat. Their breathing puffed, hot and raw between their faces in the crowded space.         

Every drag and push of his cock into Hannibal’s body was memory of their lives together, the big ugly knots tying them down, being decimated. Every surge of pleasure, building in Will’s lower back, in his balls and lower belly, was obliterating the moments of betrayal and mistrust. Every thrust of his hips and resultant give of Hannibal's body was absolution of every prior sin.         

“Ah…fuck...this is… this is …” Will gasped, eyes screwed shut.         

“I know. I know, yes, Will,” Hannibal replied breathlessly, both hands sliding up Will’s back and clutching him closer.         

This is probably what love is , Will thought.         

Will felt Hannibal tensing beneath him, felt him lift his head up to Will’s throat and latch on, biting again over a previous bite, hands pulling his hair.         

Will dipped his head, let himself look between them at their coupling bodies, slick and shiny in the moonlight. He reached between them, grasped Hannibal’s cock where it lay neglected against his stomach, and stroked it in time with his thrusts.         

With a jolt that had him tightening around Will, Hannibal came in long, white stripes, spurting over their torsos. The sensation was too much.         

Will cried out in desperation, fucking into Hannibal in earnest, their whole bodies rocking with the primal violence of it.         

“Gorgeous, wicked boy,” Hannibal panted, taking Will’s face in his hand and looking into his eyes, his own wild and bright, “Come, Will.”         

Will saw the euphoric, undeniable adoration in Hannibal’s eyes, quivering like a candle flame, and he came, emptying himself deep inside. His hips stuttered as he convulsed, every sense eclipsed and whited out by the longest and hardest orgasm he’d ever had in his life.         

With their foreheads resting together, Will gasped desperately for air, sucking in great lungfuls. He could feel Hannibal’s hands stroking along his jaw and cheeks, but he didn’t dare open his eyes.         

“Don’t go inside. Stay here.” Hannibal said, exactly as he’d said all those years ago.         

Will felt himself shaking. The waves of pleasure, still shocking through him, made him quiver.         

“I’m...I'm afraid,” he hissed, voice barely audible.         

“Of what?”         

“I’ll look and you’ll be gone. And I’ll be alone again.” It came out choked and clipped, and Will could feel tears building behind his eyes.         

“Open them and see, Will. I’m here, I promise. I’ll be here as long as you’ll let me.”         

Will took three deep breaths. His hands were in tight, terrified fists on the couch.      

He opened his eyes.         

Hannibal smiled up at him, knowing and wise, face damp with perspiration and eyes with unshed happy tears.         

“I’m still here.” He said simply.         

Will swallowed, and then slowly and carefully kissed Hannibal’s lips. It was a soft kiss, sweet and gentle, chaste even.         

Then he let himself collapse on top of Hannibal’s body, utterly exhausted.

They stayed that way for some time, their breathing slowing. Hannibal's arms encircled Will's back, pressing him into him as tight as he could, their shared heat cooling slowly.

Their hearts, one atop the other, lay hammering against each other in twin prisons, in adjacent cells.

Squelch, squelch, squelch .

The bubble that had surrounded them was slowly being sucked away, the noise and closeness of the night suffusing their sweaty bodies.

A coyote howled, not far off. Crickets wheedled in the dark, and on the radio was the final bars of Edge of Seventeen.

What Will probably should have said, in their inaugural post-coital bliss, was something profound and meaningful.

What he did say was “Tell me we didn’t just fuck to Stevie Nicks.”

Beneath him, Hannibal chuckled, the vibration resonating through Will's whole hypersensitive body.

“It would appear that we did. I’m sorry, I would have picked a more satisfactory ambience if I’d known.”

Will laughed too, and then winced when he went to shift his whole body. He felt himself slipping out of the tight hold of Hannibal’s body, and he grimaced.

Hannibal didn’t let him get far. He caught Will gently by the curls and pressed their foreheads together.  

“Do you want to shower?” Will asked quietly.  

Hannibal smiled at him.  

“Yes, if you join me.” His accent was thick and loose, in a way Will had never heard before.

Will nodded against him. “Yeah, okay.”

They showered together, standing in the little stall, letting the thick steam fill what space their bodies didn’t take up.

Will felt stoned, as if everything were happening in slow motion, very far away.

He only woke a bit when Hannibal stepped up behind him, body slick and hot, and began to gently soap him, holding him tightly all the while.

It felt terribly nice as well as unbearably intimate.

Will didn’t step away.

Hannibal’s hands moved over his body, freely and without hesitation. Will inhaled sharply when his hands moved over his groin, but Hannibal’s movements were perfunctory and precise, despite the dark chuckle Will knew he hadn’t imagined, right beside his ear.

Will stepped out of the shower after he rinsed, leaving Hannibal to finish alone. He dried himself, roughly toweled his hair and wiped a hand through the steam in the mirror.

He caught his own eye, and surprised himself.

He didn’t see Hannibal. Or an earlier version of himself, much despised and now long gone. He didn’t see that horrible, inky black nightmare creature either.

He only saw…Will. Just Will.

He dried the mirror with his towel, still watching himself.

When Hannibal turned the water off, Will blinked at his reflection once, and then went into the living room, stopping to grab sheets and pillows as he went. He threw them over the futon pull-out, and was just tucking in the bottom corner of the top sheet when he felt a tug and looked up.

Hannibal was carefully tucking in the other side of the sheet, with a sharp and practiced corner not unlike the ones in fancy hotels. He was utterly naked, water from his hair leaving little rivulets running over his broad shoulders.

Will got into the makeshift bed, watching as Hannibal crossed the little living room and turned off the radio. The light from the street lamp outside was shining through the blinds, casting a strange dark, red-orange glow across the interior of the trailer, and across the twisted skin on the other man’s back.

Will watched him snap off the kitchen light, and return to bed, pausing only to twitch the blinds closed even more.

He pulled back the sheet and climbed in beside Will, relaxed and content.

Will just looked at him.

He could have said something about the brand on his back. About Mason, or Verger farms, or Florence before that.

He could have said many things. But he didn't.

All that could wait.

All he said was "I'm glad you found me."

Hannibal watched him, eyes examining every millimeter of his face, and then smiled, slow and easy.

"So am I."

The silence returned, interrupted only by noises from the desert.

Will looked at the bulk of Hannibal shrouded under his cheap, worn floral pattern sheets, where his toes pressed up against the fabric, his knees, his soft cock, his stomach. His one arm was tucked with the pillow behind his head, his other laying on the bed beside him.

Will reached out and touched his hand.

He didn’t hold it; he just touched the long, fine fingers, noting the fine scars on his knuckles, the tiny lines of weathering from age and use.

“I do forgive you.” Will said, not taking his eyes off Hannibal’s hand.

Hannibal didn’t reply. He just slowly flipped his hand over, palm up.

“I’m not angry at you, either, I don’t think. I think I...I think I was, but I’m not anymore.” Will traced the lines running laterally across Hannibal’s palm.

“You’re an angry being, Will, who was forced into circumstances even the most level headed would find infuriating. Most of which, I inspired. Your anger is understandable and warranted.”

Will began to carefully articulate Hannibal’s fingers, joint by joint.

They really were just hands. They were nothing special or extra, but they were killer’s hands nonetheless.

“I know.” Will said, and he finally let himself look up. Hannibal was watching him, eyes soft and kind. “I know. But...I’m not. I think I just want…” Will hesitated.

“Yes?” Hannibal pressed.

“I just wanna live.” Will said, “And I don’t think I want to keep trying to do that without you.”

Hannibal closed his hand on Will’s, like a fly in a venus flytrap. He lay closer to Will, pulling him in by the hand until they were face to face.

His eyes roamed Will’s face, and Will realized there were unshed tears settling in his eyes again. He felt gentle fingers carding through his hair.

“I think you’ll find I’m amenable.” Hannibal said, and Will leaned forward enough to press a little kiss to his smiling mouth.

Will woke up to the smell of coffee and the gurgling burble of a cheap drip coffee machine.

He grumbled a bit, and then opened his eyes.

Hannibal was laying on his side, only a foot or so away. He was watching Will, and when their eyes met, a wide smile spilled across his face.

“Good morning.” he said.

Will couldn’t fight the little laugh that jumped up his throat.

“You’re here. I wasn’t dreaming about yesterday.” He was only half joking.

Hannibal reached out and drew his thumb across the edge of Will’s jaw, his smile playful.

“Quite the erotic dream.”

Will couldn’t stop the blush if he tried. He rolled his eyes.

“Not the first one, I assure you.”

Hannibal shifted closer, his arm snaking around Will’s waist. His big hand stroked his skin from hip to shoulder. He dipped his head, pressing their noses side by side.

“You dreamed of me often, did you?”

Will looked into Hannibal’s eyes, at how they glinted with the early morning sunlight coming in from the now open blinds. In the indirect light, his irises were rippled and textured, coloured richly like the sweetest, most luxuriant caramel.

“Yes. Constantly. I didn’t want to go to sleep, by the end.”

“Were you afraid? Afraid of me?” Hannibal’s questions were not the clinical, direct questions he used to ask. They were soft, gentle, testing and forgiving.

“Sometimes. Sometimes I thought you would kill me. I even wanted you to occasionally. But a lot of the time it would be…” Will licked his lips and glanced down at the warm space between them, “It would be this. And God, I wanted it so badly. But then I would wake up, and it gutted me every time.”

Hannibal nuzzled him, sweetly, like a giant cat.

“I am here now. And I made coffee, if that’s what that substance can be called.”

Will watched as Hannibal got lithely and gracefully out of bed. He’d put his black briefs back on and nothing else, and in the sunlight, his tawny skin and long, long legs looked...indecently attractive.

Will huffed out an annoyed breath.

He got up, stretching and aching all over, blushing again as he did so. He glanced at Hannibal, who was standing in the kitchen and taking mugs down out of the cupboard.

If Will was sore… but perhaps Hannibal didn’t feel pain like a normal human.

Will let his eyes travel up from the man’s truly superb and shapely ass to the big round scar. Will had burnt himself before while cooking, working in the shop, welding. They stung and ached and throbbed in a way entirely specific to burns, and they kept hurting long after a normal wound would not. A little burn on the finger or arm was one thing, but one that size, Will couldn’t fathom the pain.

“You still take your coffee black, one small spoonful of sugar?” Hannibal asked.

“Yeah.” Will said. He went into his room and found a pair of loose shorts, pulled them on, then went to the little bathroom and rinsed his mouth with Listerine.He glanced at himself in the mirror, taking in the two dozen or so bruises, scratches and bites that peppered his body. He touched the teeth marks on his neck for a second, then went back to the kitchen.

Hannibal was reading the back of the box of Raisin Bran, looking mildly perplexed.

“This looks like something Frederic would feed me in prison as a joke.” he said.

“It’s good. I like it.”

Hannibal just looked at him.

“There’s homemade chilaquiles in the fridge.” Will said.

“Sounds perfect.”

He turned and put the cereal back on top of the fridge, but Will’s hand darted out and grabbed his elbow before he could do anything else.

Hannibal turned his head, looking at Will, who’d stepped closer.

Will let his hand fall from his arm, and stopped it around Hannibal’s lower back. He took a steadying breath, and let his fingers brush at the skin just above the waistband of Hannibal’s briefs, then down onto one cheek of his ass,  brushing softly then palming it.

His eyes flicked up, catching at the bite marks on Hannibal’s neck, at the hickeys by his ears and jaw. He met his eyes.

Hannibal leaned in, as if for a kiss, but stopped just a hairsbreadth away.

“Admiring your handiwork?”

Will’s breathing hitched. He pressed forward the last tiny distance and kissed him, firm but slow. Hannibal’s lips were luxuriantly soft, his chin decidedly scratchy, and his tongue tasted of coffee.

Hannibal’s hands were greedy, eagerly winding their way over Will’s bare body and enfolding him in his arms like a snake. One of his hands slipped under the edge of Will’s shorts, returning the favor and grazing past his tailbone.

Will broke the kiss but didn’t move away, keeping their bodies tightly pressed together.

“Before we eat, I-” he said and realized he was flushing yet again.

“Yes?” Hannibal purred.

“I want you to fuck me, now.”

Hannibal’s mouth slowly spread into a wide smile.

“Your wish,” he ducked closer until Will could only just feel his lips against his, moving as he spoke, “My command.”

When they got to the bar in the early afternoon, it was locked up tight. Will pulled the key out of his pocket and let them in, not bothering to turn on the lights; midday sun was filtering in through the dusty windows.

“We’ll wait here for Maria. Then we can go.” Will said, locking the door behind them.

“Go?” Hannibal said, not turning away from the large painting on the wall of beautiful woman sitting in amongst a pack of wolves.

“Alejandro painted that. He’s good, right?”

Hannibal’s head tilted, slowly and in a manner similar to an owl.

“It’s...certainly something.”

“Ah,” Will chuckled and went behind the bar, tidying automatically, “It’s not La Primavera, I guess.”

Hannibal hummed in agreement, then looked over at Will, busily gathering glasses. He approached the bar slowly, watching Will closely. He’d opted to stow his clothing back into his saddlebags, and was wearing Will’s jeans and a roughly worn ‘Montreal Canadiens’ shirt Will got on his trip through Canada. All of him was bigger than Will, broader and taller, and the clothes all hung on him tightly. Just his pectorals pulling the shirt tight across his chest was enough to make Will blush.

“Will.” he said, pointedly catching his eye.

“Yes?”

“You said ‘go’?”

Will paused in wiping a glass.

“Well...we’re...leaving, right? If I go with you, I have to tell Maria I can’t work anymore. That’s...that’s right, isn’t it?” Panic rose in his gut when he realized he might have misread the situation.

But as he shifted his weight, he body could still feel where Hannibal had been inside him that morning, hot and hard and close, and that aching stretch solidified his resolve. He knew.

Hannibal was smiling. It was a big smile, and it only grew bigger as Will watched him. Hannibal’s eyes began to glitter, delight brimming them with tears.

“Yes. Yes, that’s right.” he breathed.

Will hesitated, then leaned across the bar and gently pulled Hannibal closer by the shirt. He kissed him.

“I want to go with you. Like I should have. I want to stay with you.” he said firmly.

Hannibal was still beaming. He kissed Will again, and then withdrew to his side of the bar.

“I will play pool until such time as you feel ready to depart.” he said, and went over to the billiard table in the corner.

Will watched him go, and knew for certain his ass didn’t look nearly as divine in those jeans as Hannibal’s did.

About half an hour or so later, there was a jangling in the kitchen and the sound of trays of food being adjusted and checked on. Maria came around the corner at the sound of pool balls clattering around on the table, and then saw Will behind the bar.

She paused for a few seconds, watching Hannibal carefully and precisely lining up a shot, then draining three striped balls at once.

She came over to Will, her eyes on his face.

They stood looking at each other, neither speaking for another five full seconds, then Maria smiled a little smile and looked down at Will’s carefully piled cut limes.

“Your devil finally caught up with you, did he?”

Will didn’t trust himself to speak. He nodded.

Maria began to scoop the lime slices into a little container, gently packing them down.

“And you’re going to go with him?” she asked.

Will swallowed hard. He felt a rush of profound gratitude for this woman, who’d literally picked him up off the ground and brushed him off. He owed her everything, but he couldn’t think of anything to say.

“You love him. When I found you on the ground by my trailer, I looked at you and I knew that was a man in love. It’s terrible, isn’t it? Hurts you, right here.” she pressed a hand over her heart.

Will nodded again, and glanced up at Hannibal. He was chalking his cue, but Will knew he was listening.

“Yes.” he said, his voice catching in his aching throat.

“Go, cariño.” she said, and stretched up on her very tiptoes to press a sweet, warm kiss on Will’s forehead.

“Do you want to meet him?” Will said, smirking shakily.

“No, I will wait until after I die before I meet El Diablo, I think.”

Will laughed and sniffed and wiped his one eye with his hand.

“I’ll miss you. And Alejandro, and Ursula.”

“And we will miss you.” she said.

Will looked up and Hannibal was standing there, smiling benevolently.

“You are ready to go, Will?” he said.

Will nodded.

Behind him, Maria crossed herself.

“I’m ready.”

It took hardly any time to pack up Will’s essential belongings; he was a roamer after all.

He left the chilaquiles outside for the coyotes.

“You know,” he said, strapping his saddle bag closed, “I don’t know how much it would surprise me, if you actually were the devil.”

Hannibal grinned wide enough to show his sharp teeth.

“I have the aura of the inferno about me, do I?”

“Obviously. And honestly, if the devil were to look like someone, I think he’d probably look like you.”

“Oh? And how is that?”

Will grinned now. He came to stand by Hannibal’s gorgeous Triumph, it’s paint gleaming black like pitch.

“Like sin on legs.” he said, and put his sunglasses on.

Hannibal reached out and took Will’s hand, and pressed a kiss to his knuckle, eyes never leaving Will’s.

“As you say.” he said sweetly, and he beamed like the sun.