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Hannibal’s first real taste came in stitching Will back together.
He was still, perched on the edge of the bathtub, tense as Hannibal worked a needle through the gash between his ribs.
“This could have killed you,” he murmured, gaze trained on the wound, fingers working deftly to linger just long enough that it was almost a distraction from the pain.
That was the point.
The thread tugged a sharp, final pain through his flesh. Hannibal looked up at him. He knew the words on Will’s tongue, heavy with silence. But Will wouldn’t say it, wouldn’t speak it, not when he still had to adjust to the shame of survival, and the pulsing heat of Hannibal’s hands still on him in the guise of keeping him steady. He had to focus to remember that he existed outside this section of skin, between Hannibal’s touch and the dull drum of pain that settled into the gash in his side, leaking blood, sticky sweet; prime rib.
He recalled a joke that wasn’t a joke, laden with truth, at the dinner table in a purposeful display of power and affection, a comment that Hannibal could carve those ribs out of his companion. It could have been a memory or it could have been a dream. The part that followed was surely a figment of his own overactive imagination and hidden temptations; the part where he followed the shadow of a stag to Hannibal’s bedroom to find the stag gone and the man waiting in the flickering light of candle fire.
“We will have to talk about it,” he said, as he rose to stand. His eyes were full, earnest in the only way he could be. “When you’re ready.”
His mouth twisted into something bitter. “You aren’t worried about what I’ll do before then?”
It was rhetorical. Whatever history he had, whatever cards he’d played, Hannibal had the advantage now, and there was always going to be a way for him to wrap Will up in his skilful hands. Keep him close. Will knew too well the pleasure and fear of being kept in his company.
He smirked, so familiar and once so infuriating that the passion with which it was received never disappeared. Will’s heart lurched, his eyes flickered away.
“I’m always worried about what you’ll do.” But as he stared at him, his forehead creased and his eyes shone out from the shadows of conviction. “But I would like to trust you someday.”
“You think there’s going to be a someday?” He’d thought the words bitingly but they came out empty. He was too far from resenting Hannibal. He was even farther from hope. This house was limbo. Anything outside of it was purgatory, and nothing beyond that existed.
Eyes locked, he wondered if this could be the way out of the horror outside. The blood-marked tracks of their own betrayals. There would never be an end to this story, there would be no concept of moving on until they were both dead and gone, but this was the first true moment he’d experienced of just existing. Existing with Hannibal was another world, but maybe… This time, maybe he could hang on to that world a little longer. Maybe, in this moment, there was a place for him here.
Hannibal straightened. “I believe it is possible. If you believe it too.”
His throat was dry. It was never easy. It could never just be simple. No family to return to, no villain to blame, no vengeance or love or mission to fight for. He was back where he was four years ago, except that now there were no dogs to rescue, no quiet class, no murderers to retreat into and expel. Just the one standing before him. The only person he could blame, the only person he could feel so much with, the only person who understood him. Maybe not the depths of his mind, but the depths of something darker, warmer, stronger. The best and worst in him were tied to the best and the worst in Hannibal, and now that he wasn’t trying to incarcerate him he had no idea what to do with it. That scared him more than all the likelihood of being served at Hannibal’s next meal.
Hannibal’s gaze travelled away from his and down to his hands, covered in Will’s blood. There was a smile on the edge of Will’s lips, he could feel it, and it felt absurd.
“You finally have my blood on your hands.”
Amusement reached the edges of Hannibal’s eyes. “So I do.”
There was a ghost smile, gone before it appeared as he pressed the edge of his palm swiftly against his lips. Mouth open, he pulled it away more slowly, and there was a visible smear of blood against his palm, at the base a few drops too slow to congeal, perfect shade to match the red that stained his lips.
He rose and turned smoothly to wash his hands in the sink. Will had to keep one hand on the wall where he stood, heady from the sight as much as the blood loss.
Back turned to him, Will couldn’t make out Hannibal’s expression in the mirror as he rinsed with a level of attention fitting of a former surgeon. The rushing sound of water through old, rusting pipes was the loudest in the room, breaking any quiet that would quickly fill itself with everything unspoken, pressure in the air from the weight of endless thoughts and wishes that bred humidity. No, this water was soothing to his mind, an element to drown out Hannibal’s presence.
He could close his eyes and almost imagine he was alone.
Until a voice broke through and the water stopped. “I am curious.”
His eyes opened and he waited, the lines of Hannibal’s back visible through his sea and sweat-soaked shirt.
He dried his hands, grabbed an empty glass from beside the sink, filled it, and turned to hand it over to Will. He brushed a hand through the hair that had fallen across his eyes, but a few strands swung back to their place. This was not the most dishevelled Will had seen him, but these were new circumstances and he had a better sense that he could undo him.
He took the glass and drank it fast down the thickness in his throat.
His gaze was sharp as he said, “Where we would be if Abigail were alive.”
Will sighed. “Let’s not go through what ifs.” Particularly when they involved thoughts of Abigail, imaginings of Abigail. He got enough of those involuntarily.
“I have a curious mind, Will. That we share.”
He nodded and leaned against the wall, aware of how much his face must be giving away. Abigail tied him to Hannibal, and Hannibal knew that. She was their equal ground, or she was until he murdered her. Now she was a figment in Will’s head, to appear only in his deepest phase of sleep.
Hannibal turned toward the bath as he worked open the buttons of his once pristine shirt, now spattered with blood. “Just as we shared Abigail.”
There was a flicker in his expression, one he knew that Will would catch, and the double-blinds of deciphering Hannibal should have exhausted him long ago.
“Are you trying to elicit a reaction from me, Doctor Lecter?” he asked, faint flirtation to his tone that came with old habits. Old habits that came from being in such close proximity.
Dealing with Hannibal was easier with a glass wall and prison jumpsuit between them.
“Of course.” He stripped the shirt off his back in one easy motion and let it fall into the bathtub. He turned back to face Will and moved toward him, bare feet silent on the tiles, another reminder of the predator at his core.
Will stood up straight, stared right into his eyes as more wayward strands of hair fell across his brow. It should have been some sort of triumph to see him mussed as he was, bare chest broad and lean and open for him, but he saw it for the challenge it was.
He took the glass gently from Will’s hand and placed it on the ground. He straightened, closer, a breath too close to contact, a breath when inches didn’t count to measure what was okay and what shook through Will’s back and stopped his own lungs. Hannibal’s hand grazed his and as his fingers curled just tight enough around Will’s, the sensation echoed up his arm and into the rest of this small, warm room.
“I was seeing Bedelia,” he said, a harsh murmur. His voice was certainly not audible above this register.
“I know,” Hannibal said, all fact, all knowledge, all observation.
“We talk about you.”
“Talked,” he corrected, eyes glinting with something Will recognised but could never name. That glint laid with this touch, in some realm beyond affection.
“We still talk in my sleep.” His fingers tightened their grip on Hannibal’s.
Hannibal did not flinch. “And what do you say?”
“I say nothing. She says the same things she did the last time I saw her.”
“Which were?” he prompted patiently, only a subtle hitch in his breath to indicate that anything was out of the ordinary.
Was Bedelia another person who escaped his absolute mental grasp? Maybe that wasn’t even possible. As far as Will could tell, the two of them had been twisted in similar ways. He had learned to live with the fact that he hadn’t made it out of Dr. Lecter’s office unscathed, but she succumbed to it in a different way. The only way she could not feel like a victim was to play up exactly what it was that made her one. She was the way she was because of Hannibal’s tinkering in her mind.
Will was the way he was because there was a part of him already ripe for the plucking when they met. He knew that. He could face that. He wasn’t ruled by it.
“Oh, patient-doctor confidentiality doesn’t extend to you anymore,” he said, the only piece of straw he had left in a stack of needles.
“You are not the doctor,” Hannibal reminded him easily, head tilted. “There is nothing unethical about relaying a conversation to an old friend.”
“Ah,” he sighed. His grip loosened only to move his hand to Hannibal’s chest, and in the space of three days, compressed into three seconds, he moved his face in to press his cheek to Hannibal’s. He could feel the pressure of his cheekbone, and the quick brush of his eyelashes as Hannibal blinked, turned his profile closer against Will’s to breathe him in. Hannibal’s breath was warm against his ear. He suppressed a shiver, held his lungs tight in his chest. He pulled away too slowly, as Hannibal leaned with him for a moment.
But then he could see him, could see his face. The wonder in it, analysing every detail of his features, scrutiny that was only flattery because of the thumb that moved across his cheek like a brush stroke.
Hannibal’s hand fell to his side and the space between them was the smallest fraction to ever hold a universe. It was in the downturn of Hannibal’s mouth and the ache in Will’s chest, an ache he’d lost control over the night he learned how black blood can be.
“It’s not about ethics.”
Hannibal’s expression remained unchanged, but he nodded. “Some lines should not be crossed. That is a weight to bear, but we bear it every day, with every interaction, with every social grace.” He paused. “Perhaps this line between us now will be the one to break you.”
“You’ve done much worse to break me,” he scoffed, air leaving his chest like there wasn’t any left to replace it.
“I never wished to break you. And I never did.”
Will’s eyes were hollow, his chest was throbbing. This was a weakness specific to Hannibal’s company. It was something like desperation. He thought he’d be long past that by now. It was a wonder, how tireless emotions could be.
“You didn’t want to lose me.”
“That is true,” he conceded, a small smile on his lips.
Will couldn’t hope for a real answer, but a question had been sour in his gums since he woke up on the shore, dragged there by the same hands that curled around his waist now. “Why did we survive?”
It was too existential, so existential and theoretical that it was an avenue for a discussion that pulled him to the least customary parts of himself. Not the worst, not the most shameful, but perhaps the most dangerous. The spark of unfiltered intelligence that drew him to Hannibal in the first place.
“Despite our efforts, it would seem this world must have us in it.”
“You don’t believe in fate.”
“I am open to the impossible. So explain to me how this is not impossible,” He reached out to brush Will’s hair away from his face, let his hand travel down to press his palm against his jaw, “if it was not designed.”
Will brought his hand up to cover Hannibal’s, and lifted it off his face, held it suspended between them. “This was not by design. There is no fate here, and it wasn’t your plan either.”
“You continue to underestimate me.”
“I could never. I just never forgot how to read you.”
His eyebrows rose. “That’s quite a claim.”
“You know this wasn’t fate, and I know it wasn’t you. You think… You think we’re here because we want to be.”
“Do you disagree?” The admission was not in his words but in his fingers as they caressed Will’s neck.
“I don’t know,” he breathed. “This time, I don’t know.”
Bedelia’s voice was faint in the back of his head, but he felt it as much as he heard it. He wanted it gone. Vehemently, he wanted it gone. He craved this sense of revelation in the lilt of Hannibal’s voice, not even his own.
“You told me that I could leave, and you would not follow, that we could lead separate lives.” The words were careful, his tone full of purpose. “Do you believe you could do that now?”
His eyes locked onto Will’s, and it was the first moment of real fear since that night on the cliff face.
He hadn’t planned on any future. He hadn’t planned for their survival.
“I think at this point, your death is the only way I don’t end up in your freezer.”
“I would rather have you by my side.”
“Like Bedelia?”
He stepped closer. “She didn’t understand what I was doing.”
“That’s all you want, isn’t it?” He leaned in, pressed his body against Hannibal, kept their chests close, bloody and healing, their hips together, Will’s nails digging in. “To be understood.”
Hannibal’s hand slid up into his mess of dark hair, propped his head up off the wall to look at him properly. “Bedelia adopted the role of hostage so she could live with how she chose to survive. You, Will, you understand the beauty of hidden things.”
“If you’re going to kill me,” his hands travel upwards, barely grazing the pale torso between hips and throat, the throat his fingers come to rest around, “I’d rather you do it now.”
“Do you still dream of my death?”
“Among other things.” Slowly, each hair and skin fibre striking his hands, they relax against Hannibal’s shoulders. His voice is hoarse. “Did you ever forgive me?”
Hannibal’s hand against the back of head pulled him close, pressed them together, and his arms fell limp to his sides. His head rested against Hannibal’s, the sweet, rich smell of him almost unbearable. His nails scratched at his back until his fingers found a solid place to cling to. His chest was gaping wide, exposed for any knife or waves, heartbeat in harmony with the vein in Hannibal’s neck, pressed to his ear.
Strong hands held his back and caressed his neck and he felt the pain of every betrayal that had come with this embrace before. Hannibal stroked along his spine.
He was trembling.
It was a small and quiet, “Yes.”