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He was precise, that’s why Will kept coming back to him. Well, that’s what Will told himself.
It certainly wasn’t because of the price. Every time he came to Slaughterhouse Ink, his bank account suffered for weeks. He ate nothing but instant ramen and picked up extra shifts to cover the thousands of dollars he left here, but every penny felt worthwhile. It’s not like Will really appreciated the delicacies of fine cooked food as opposed to what he could pick up at the corner store for fifty cents. As long as it kept him going, he was fine.
Picking up extra shifts was half the reason he found himself back at the shop, sometimes. A vicious cycle of purpose, suffering, and ink soaked stains. Take the trauma of the world, let it leave reminders across his skin, and then be burdened with their knowledge no longer. His body could remember what he needed his mind to forget. Will loved his job. It was important, it gave his life meaning. But he’d be hard pressed to say the job loved him in kind. There were more atrocities he’d seen than his canvas of flesh could hold.
Even in the heat of summer, Will was never seen in anything shorter than ankle cut slacks and a long sleeve button up. With the sweat field work could bring about, he’d removed all the white dress shirts from his closet after getting a tattoo that wrapped around his bicep. Social expectations and ‘professional appearance’ were slowly going by the wayside, but he still kept everything hidden. It surprised him every morning as he got dressed, but the tattoos weren't like the stories they held. They weren’t like the gore of his work; they were beautiful, they deserved to be seen. But they also belonged to Will. They were his to enjoy and no one else’s.
Well, that was a lie Will couldn’t even attempt to tell himself. He was the medium of the masterpieces, but he wasn’t the master who crafted them.
Hannibal Lector was actually the inspiration for Will to step away from the thin white fabric of summer cut shirts. At first glance, the tall, fair-skinned man seemed perfectly vanilla in his suit pants and collared shirts. He didn’t look like he belonged in a place called Slaughterhouse. All his colleagues were in tank tops, showing ink over every piece of skin visible. They were also all occupied on the day Will stumbled into this tattoo parlor, and he was happy to take whatever artist was free.
At first glance, Hannibal’s skin seemed unmarked. There was nothing on his face or hands. But in a catch of the light, Will could see through the facade of that thin white shirt. A map of a thoroughly lived life stretched out along the canvas of Hannibal’s skin, and even after all these sessions together, Will still lacked an art’s cartographic skills to read it fully. He could read some of it. And some of it, Hannibal read to him.
“How curious, that which drives young people to their first permanent mark on their own reality. I was also eighteen when I got my first piece done.”
Will had to bite back a laugh, not wanting to jostle Hannibal’s delicate work. “Yeah, but then you kept going. That one word tattooed on my ankle hurt so much and I stayed away for years.”
In his memory, Will imagined Hannibal smiled, but he could never be sure of the truth. He’d be facing away from the artist while getting his left shoulder done. “Tell me, Will, what was it that tempted you back to this pain?”
At the time, Will said he didn’t know. At the time, he didn’t know. When Hannibal asked him again, the fourth session he returned for, Will said he didn’t know. But by then, he knew. Saying it, of course, would be a completely different challenge.
That first shoulder piece had been reckless, and Hannibal told him as such before they even started, but Will had been too lost in his own head to care. Even as Hannibal warned him that what he was asking for was bordering on rude, Will still couldn’t find it in himself to care. He apologized when he came back for the second one, when his head was clear enough to experience guilt, but the person he was during that first Lector-designed tattoo simply wasn’t capable of it.
He wished he knew what he’d done to convince Hannibal to work with him, despite all his faux pas. He liked to tell himself that Hannibal saw him as a challenge, as an interesting canvas for creative freedom. He liked to tell himself Hannibal saw other opportunities in him too, but Will tried not to think about that today, as he went in for a detailed piece spanning up his inner thigh and over his hip.
Will didn’t know much about tattoo artists before meeting Hannibal, but he hopes that his initial rudeness was made up for with the generosity of his request. “I don’t care what the design is, just put something on me.”
Hannibal was precise. He sketched a geometric work of art that Will lacked the expertise to understand at the time, but he could understand that it was beautiful. And once Will was in position for Hannibal to work, that’s when the talking began. That’s when the lines and shapes and shading took on new meaning. He didn’t need an art degree to understand that Hannibal was taking the words of suffering and loss Will had endured in his most recent case, and replacing that pain with the push of ink in a needle.
It was five hours of work. He remembers Hannibal cancelling on another client to finish the job. He also remembers the swell of emotion invoked by those precise clipped words to the shop assistant. “Tell her to reschedule.” There was no doubt, no blurred edge. Hannibal chose Will as his canvas. And when the work was done, Will was sore, but he felt better than he had since starting his job. His job that he loved but was tearing tiny pieces away from him. Hannibal stitched those pieces back into the fabric of Will’s form.
So he kept coming back. Each session, he learned more about his artist. Somedays, Hannibal would roll up his sleeve and share one of his tattoos directly, without the voyeuristic thieving Will had found himself addicted to through the layers of Hannibal’s shirt. Somedays, he’d ask a question that Will couldn’t answer of himself, until weeks later, staring at his reflection and the newly healed art, and self-discovery would wash over him. He no longer came into Slaughterhouse in a fugue state, trying to force humanity back into his veins. Hannibal gave him another piece of himself with every pattern laid across his skin. Will feared the day he’d run out of room on his body.
Along the way, Hannibal stopped showing Will the sketches. Will was pretty sure Hannibal had stopped sketching altogether. He could feel the design being born as they talked, forming something beautiful together. Pain was laced into the linework, horrors of Will’s life bled into the dark colors, but every piece would make angels jealous with the harmony it invoked.
Today’s piece was the first one he had a request for. It was a pleasant surprise to find Hannibal unphased by it. He hadn’t wanted to be rude yet again, but this tattoo had to be something more than what they’d done so far. And after all Will had shared, after all he’d learned of his artist, it would be unlikely for Hannibal to be phased by anything.
“It is said that tattooing is unavoidably personal.” Hannibal’s voice washed over Will, soothing the nerves in asking this question. He wasn’t looking at him as he prepped the ink and needles, but he didn’t need to. When they were together, Will was always certain he had Hannibal’s singular attention. “Even if a client comes in with a design, even if you use the same flash on a thousand clients, the artist forms a new relationship with each unique canvas. Some believe that relationship is visible in the ink long after the work is done. Tell me, Will, what relationship do you see between us under your skin?”
“Whatever I see, I won't be able to…” Will rolled his wrist in circles, trying to form words that escaped him. “Craft it like you can. I’m not an artist, I’m not an author. What I see will never be shared by my own hands. That’s why I’m asking this of you.”
“You wish to know what I see of our relationship, hoping for that to be a reflection of what you see.”
It wasn’t a question, and yet it was a loaded one. “Yes.”
Hannibal gave a single nod, turning away from the needles and looking directly at Will. That intense hazel gaze should have made him glance away, like all other eye contact did, should have made him flighty. Instead, it made Will blissfully still, at peace with the attention in the best possible way.
“Let us begin.”