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Knee up, beer in hand, and face set in a grim line, Will was seated in the stoop of the sitting room window, staring out past expensive drapes and straight at a woman walking her dog. It was a border collie with specks of black everywhere and a happy tongue lolling out of its mouth as it trotted along. Will briefly envisioned throwing the woman off a building and taking the dog, but there were no high buildings nearby and the whole fantasy seemed vaguely overdramatic.
He sniffed and took a swig of his beer, looking far more sullen than he intended to and not giving two hot damns if Hannibal caught him sludging around like a depressive teenager who had just gotten stood up on prom night.
“I don’t know why you won’t allow me to buy you a dog.”
Will grunted, not looking away from the unsuspecting dog-walker as she rounded the corner. “You know why because I told you already.”
With a sigh and soft steps, Hannibal joined him in the sitting room, newspaper in hand and cup of coffee in the other. He sat smoothly down on the couch behind the cloud that was Will’s cantankerous mood and sipped the beverage apathetically. “I know that I find your reasons to be rather unreasonable.”
At this, Will finally turned towards the older man with his lips pursed and his beer resting on his knee. He tapped his fingers on the brown of the glass, simultaneously hating and loving the drink. It was one of the best beers he had ever tasted, but it was expensive and indulgent and far too superior for Will’s tastes. At least he wasn’t drinking Hannibal’s homemade brew. Will counted that as a small victory for his own independence, even if Hannibal had bought the one he was drinking now. “It’s not unreasonable.”
Hannibal hummed and continued to peruse his paper. Will thought all he needed was a cardigan and reading glasses and it would all be ludicrously old and exhausting looking. “Then perhaps you did not explain it to me in a way I properly understood.” He raised a brow in expectation but didn’t look up from his paper.
Will bristled and considered throwing his beer at him, but then he would just have to get up and get himself another and he didn’t particularly feel like spiting himself in order to spite Hannibal. Instead, he played along, knowing the day would be a whole hell of a lot easier if he just went with it. “How long have we been in Baltimore now? Eight months?”
“Eight months,” Hannibal echoed agreeably. “Give or take the times the wind decided to sweep you up.”
Will looked away and took another swig of his beer. “Yeah, give or take that.”
Eight months. Eight months since the cabin in Georgia and the dead ranger and the nasty stab wounds. Will scratched his chest reflexively, digging into the scar tissue there. He didn’t know why or how, but sometime between displaying the bodies and hiding the cars, Will had agreed to return to Maryland with Hannibal. It was an accord that had no stipulations or even much discussion—more of a spur of the moment agreement that shifted over time to become some level of permanence. Will hadn’t seen any reason not to. Here was a man, the only man Will had ever encountered, who could call himself a match. Hannibal’s mind was a steel trap whenever he wanted it to be so, letting Will sink comfortably into his own mind for a change. It was refreshing and revitalizing. Will saw no reason not to latch onto the sensation.
But then four months had passed and Will hadn’t killed anyone in weeks and he had been sitting stagnant and bored inside of Hannibal’s ridiculously expensive and over-decorated house, filled up on Hannibal’s endlessly amazing cooking and even more amazing concepts of reality. And Will felt trapped.
So he had left in the middle of the night like a wife fleeing an abusive husband; no note and shoving everything he owned that he had bought with his own money into his grubby rucksack that Hannibal had stopped arguing about throwing away two months prior.
Will hadn’t known where he was going, but then again he never really did. He would just step out onto the pavement and walk until his feet got tired or someone who caught his eye happened on by and that would keep him occupied for a few days before the walk started all over again. Eventually, he found himself holding his thumb out subconsciously and soon enough some lady was picking him up with wary eyes and pity on her face.
If he thought on it too hard, Will was disappointed with himself for how careless he was being. He usually gave more thought to who his marks were. He made calculated calls. This time, he’d just let the first car that stopped nab him up and he was on his way. He was that impatient. He was that bored.
The woman had droned on and on for two days. Turned out she was driving all the way to North Dakota and boy, did she drive slow. Will had to catch himself more than once from giving in to the temptation to just tell the bitch to get in the damned fast lane already. Fucking cyclists were probably passing them for Christ’s sake. But he said nothing and let her rattle and ramble about her children and how she was so incredibly proud of them.
Will couldn’t understand the pride. One was a shoe salesman and the other one was a dentist. Granted, the latter probably made a pretty penny, but wasn’t there something about dentists and high suicide rates?
The woman was so damn homely and accommodating and prattled on so much that eventually Will just felt smothered by his own desire to be rid of her. She smiled too much. She’d pat him on the shoulder and compliment him; bought him lunch and gave him motherly advice. She was kind and gentle and Will hated her for it.
He got out of the car in the middle of one of the Dakotas—not like there was a difference—and wished her and her family all the different types of southern drawls for good fortune and comfort. Told her “God bless” which made his tongue feel rotten and watched her drive off. He could practically kick himself.
With a groan of frustration over the lack of blood on his hands and the lack of motivation to put it there, he crashed at a motel for three days, feeling particularly like a hobo, before wandering out in whatever the hell city he had ended up in, searching for someone—anyone—to make a score.
No one caught his eye. They were all just blurs amidst blurs and it was all so incredibly dull.
Will sat at a bus stop for four hours that day, just staring across the street like someone with a mental deficit. Twice he had to wave a bus away. When the third bus showed up and Will had to spend a good two minutes telling the driver that “I don’t need a damned ride, alright?”, he groaned again and pulled his cell out of his pocket. Hannibal had given it to him and Will had snapped at him that he wasn’t some kept boy before taking it anyway and storming off.
With a jaw locked tight and resignation in his gut, he dialed the number.
Hannibal had been unsurprised by the call, simply asking where Will was and making the day long drive to pick him up. Will hadn’t asked why Hannibal hadn’t just flown out to get him and Hannibal didn’t bother to tell him. The younger man assumed it was likely some form of punishment. Twenty some-odd hours stuck in the Benz with Hannibal playing a torrent of ancient classical music and talking about the weather.
By the time they got back to Baltimore, Will had felt sufficiently wrung out.
After that, Hannibal had helped Will get a job. Assistant to one of Hannibal’s old colleagues at Hopkins, Alana Bloom. She had taken him in with some hesitance and a whole lot of delayed response interest when she figured out just how unique Will’s mind really was. It made Will feel like a bit of a science project, but Alana was polite and pleasant about it and the job gave Will something to do so that his cabin fever wouldn’t get the better of him.
Two months past that, Will had realized that suddenly he and Hannibal were living together like normal people did. They had jobs and acquaintances and Hannibal had held a dinner party and the whole thing was just too damn surreal and ridiculous.
That was the second time Will ran off. He still didn’t leave a note, but this time he only packed half his shit. He supposed, in hindsight, that leaving the belongings had been note enough. That time, he was only gone two days before he brought himself back to Hannibal’s house with a refusal to meet the other man’s gaze and a stubborn scowl. He fervently refused to call the place his own no matter how many times he found himself pulled back to it and the man inside it.
That time, Hannibal had suggested they get a dog. Will had told him to fuck off and Hannibal hadn’t talked to him for almost forty hours after that. Will made his apology by inviting Alana over for dinner and pretending like he was attempting to be sociable.
Now they were eight months in and Will was feeling it again. It was that nagging, niggling thing at the edge of his mind that was screaming about how inanely blasé this all was; how plain.
“You’ve gone somewhere.” Hannibal’s voice cut Will out of his reverie.
“Sorry.” Will blinked. “Went a lot of places.”
“’To observe attentively is to remember distinctly’,” Hannibal offered, finally looking up from his newspaper. “Have you been attentive as of late, Will?”
Recognizing the words of Poe, Will sighed and stared up at the rack of antlers hanging above the mantle. He decided he wasn’t in the mood to play the game. “No, Hannibal. I’m not feeling particularly attentive.”
“And this has to do with my offer to buy you a dog?”
“Yes. No.” Will grumbled and leaned forward with more purpose, elbows on his knees as he looked Hannibal in the eye. “Yeah, in a roundabout way.”
Hannibal blinked at him, nodded, and waited for him to continue.
Will licked his lips. “I told you why I don’t want that. I mean, look at us!” He gestured around as though the sitting room held all the answers. “We have jobs. I have friends, sort of. We eat dinner at a table and we read in front of a fucking fire and we go to bed together and it’s all just disgustingly…” Will scrubbed a hand over his face and practically spat out his next word. “Domestic.”
Hannibal regarded him for a long, contemplative moment. “Then go,” he said simply. His tone could not have been more casual if he tried. “You’ve already done so twice. Perhaps you’ll make it longer than a few days this time.”
Will scowled and slapped his own leg. “Don’t mock me.”
Hannibal let out an exhale and rubbed his temple with one finger, the only sign that he was feeling the stress of the conversation. “Forgive me. That was rude of me.”
Will huffed.
With a small frown, Hannibal mimicked Will’s position, setting his coffee and paper aside and leaning forward on his knees. “Would you prefer to be getting your hands dirty daily? Bathe of the blood of the lambs to slaughter until you, yourself, are made entirely of the lives of others—nothing more to you?”
“I’m not—“ Will bit his lip. “I’m not made for stillness. I don’t know how to handle stillness.”
“Perhaps you were wandering in search of something.”
“You trying to say that something was you? Don’t get sentimental on me, I’m begging you.”
Hannibal’s brow lifted in the man’s version of a shrug. “What I am trying to say, Will, is that appreciation of anything is lost in excess. You must allow more to your life.”
Will chuckled darkly. “You sound like a parent chiding me to broaden my horizons.”
Hannibal let his palms fold out in gentle suggestion. “And should I not press for such things? I enjoy you, Will. I would see you flourish, if you’d allow me to take you to such a place that you could be the very best of yourself.”
“You’ve taken me nowhere but Baltimore,” Will retorted childishly. He knew it wasn’t what Hannibal meant, but he also knew blatantly ignoring metaphors riled the other man up. Perhaps he wanted Hannibal to be riled.
A muscle in Hannibal’s jaw twitched, but he saw through Will’s attempt and remained placid. “As I told you when we first met, I am not a man who can succumb to the temptations of vagrancy. I have a life developed. I am known and possess a stability that was hard earned.”
Will felt his frustration mounting. His words began spilling. “I am not as satisfied by mediocrity.”
Something flashed in Hannibal’s eyes and it was dangerously close to hurt and even more dangerously shifting to anger. “Anything can become mediocre without the proper appreciation granted to it.”
“You want my appreciation? I already told you, I won’t be kept.”
Hannibal regarded him coolly for a moment and Will wondered if the man was considering snapping his neck. He half wanted him to go for it. “I don’t need appreciation. I want you to appreciate yourself. I want you to see that you can be more than you believe yourself capable. There is more to you than you have ever allowed for conscious thought.”
“Such reassurance runs risk of turning me into Icarus, you know.”
“I would always ensure that you never came too close to the sun.”
“Just enough to feel the burn.”
“I would never dream of allowing your wings to melt, Will.”
Will groaned again and leaned back into the window, feeling his aggression slipping away. “I’m not used to this, Hannibal,” he said honestly.
“Neither am I.”
They both rested like that for the longest while, calmed by the understanding that neither of them was wholly in their element.
“I don’t want to get a dog,” Will muttered finally. “That makes this something I don’t want it to be.”
Hannibal nodded. “What do you want it to be?”
Will stood and walked over to a bookcase. He lazed by it and ran his fingertips over worn leather spines. Half of the texts probably cost more than everything Will owned, but they were beautiful and Will couldn’t find it in himself to judge Hannibal for the expense. “I want to see you covered in blood.” He whispered. He was still looking at the books, mulling over his words. “I want to see you dripping and feral while someone else’s life sinks into the floorboards. I want to taste it in your mouth. I want you to make me feel what you did before.”
“And what did I make you feel?”
Will jumped slightly as he felt the warm breath of Hannibal on the back of his neck. Instinctually, he leaned back, braced instantly by the firm muscle of Hannibal’s chest and the arms that circled around him. “You made me feel alive and wanting. You made me feel…” Will trailed off as Hannibal dragged dry lips over the side of his neck, holding him tighter. “Made me feel clear.”
“You are always clear when I look at you,” Hannibal murmured against the skin under his mouth. He placed a soft, wet kiss there.
Will laughed breathlessly. “Be careful about how hard you look. You may fall through the looking glass entirely.” He could feel Hannibal’s smile.
“Now that would be quite the adventure.”
Will closed his eyes and let himself sink into that space in time. Hannibal’s hands caressed his stomach, he nosed his hair, mouthed his jaw. It was slow and sensual and so comforting that Will felt like he shouldn’t be liking it as much as he did. “I enjoy you too, you know.”
“I assumed there was a reason you continued to stay,” Hannibal quipped lightly. “Forgive me for not being more considerate of how much of a change this has been for you.”
Will shook his head and leaned a bit, pushing Hannibal harder against him. “No, don’t say that. You don’t owe me anything. We aren’t some married couple and we aren’t regular people. If you bent over backwards for me at every turn I wouldn’t respect you.”
“And I wouldn’t respect you for allowing it.”
“Then we’re in agreement.” Will turned around in the other man’s arms, staring resolutely up at him. “If you ask me why I’m still here, I’d have to tell you I have no fucking clue. I wasn’t looking for this…” He glanced around, helpless. “This. But here it is and even though it’s driving me half-crazy and sometimes I hate it, I don’t want to leave. I don’t know what I want, but I don’t think it’s leaving. Not yet, anyway.”
Hannibal’s lips twitched like he was holding back from saying something, eyes shifting away and back before he finally allowed the words. “I would be most disappointed if you decided to truly leave, I should think.”
Eight months was by no means an eternity but it was long enough for Will to have learned that it took a lot for Hannibal to say something like that outright. He sighed and ran his fingers through the other man’s soft hair, mussing it up. “At the risk of sounding insecure, why?”
Hannibal smiled. “I have never mistaken your curiosity for insecurity,” he assured. “But I am afraid my answer would be quite similar to yours. I do not know why. I know simply that I enjoy your presence much more than I enjoy the lack of it.”
“And if that changes?”
“Then I suppose that will be the time one of us makes on our promise to bring one of our ‘designs’ to light.”
Will shook his head as he continued to stroke idly at the base of Hannibal’s skull. They had agreed back in Georgia that if they ever got sick of each other, they would finish the fight they started that night. It seemed like a fair enough deal. After all, no point in dragging out something once it got dull and banal. They were not men of complacency. “Still intend to consume me entirely?”
“I would devour every molecule of you,” Hannibal murmured, leaning in to brush his lips over Will’s. “That, I can promise.”
Will found he liked that promise, giving into a languid kiss before finally pulling away and flopping down on the couch. Hannibal made his way into the kitchen and Will heard the clinking of metal and glass before Hannibal was bringing another cup of coffee out for him. He accepted it with a nod and propped his socked feet up on the table. Hannibal swatted at his legs as he walked around him to reseat himself.
“Off.”
“I’m not wearing shoes.”
“When you’re not wearing feet, you can do as you like. Until then, do try to respect the antiques.”
Will laughed but did as he was asked. “I’d ask how to not wear my feet, but you probably have at least a dozen answers for that.”
Hannibal hid his smile with a tip of his own coffee mug. “At least.”
Will rubbed his face and let off another groan. His own stress was beginning to feel redundant and he felt like he groaned more than he breathed. “I understand what you’re saying about expanding my interests, but eight months is a long time, Hannibal.” He wasn’t talking about living together this time.
“You had ample opportunity to stretch your legs and your knives in North Dakota.”
Will rubbed his thumb on the edge of the mug, frowning. “No. They were dull. Lifeless. What’s the point of taking life from something that has none?”
Hannibal glanced over at him and leaned back. “Perhaps it was simply not the life you were looking to take.”
“I’m not done with you yet.”
“I’m glad to hear it, but I wasn’t referring to me.” Hannibal crossed his legs and Will knew he was settling in for one of their convoluted talks of morals and ambiguous ethics. Those conversations often lasted long into the night until bottles of wine had disappeared and the fire was embers. “We all have our own preferences and ideals. Were we to run on murderous rampages, we would be no better than the beasts on which we dine.”
Will snorted. “Are you implying that we are dignified serial killers? That we have some sort of code of conduct?”
“I like to think that we are not rabid, yes.”
“You like to think a lot of things,” Will retorted. “Doesn’t always make them true.”
“Be that as it may, it is unlikely that you would find satisfaction in remaking simply any passerby.” Hannibal was patient, as he always was, playing the game of verbal tennis like an old hand at it. “You are an instinctual man, Will. If your instincts found a distinctive lack of interest in the game presented to you, perhaps the game was not worthy of your hunt.”
“’When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain’, right?” Will took a long and hot chug of his coffee, savoring the rich taste and burn of a liquid not quite cool enough to be drinking properly. “You’re saying I was trying too hard. I wasn’t going with my gut and so that’s why I didn’t catch anything.”
“It’s a likely scenario.”
“Then what do you suggest?” Will eyed the man next to him. “Stand on a street corner until someone worthy walks by? This isn’t my environment, Hannibal. This was never how I operated. I don’t know left from right here.”
Hannibal seemed to be thinking about something. About what, Will couldn’t know. “It’s February,” the older man uttered suddenly and without context.
Will stared. “Yeah. And?”
The moment the decision solidified in Hannibal’s eyes was clear as day. He stood abruptly, brushing nonexistent dust off his trousers and heading out of the room. “I have been meaning to take a trip. Now is as good a time as any.” He glanced over his shoulder from the doorway, giving Will a look so enigmatic that Will considered throwing something at him again. “Pack your things. We will leave tomorrow.” With that, he was gone.
Will blinked dumbly at the empty doorway. He supposed he couldn’t question Hannibal’s impulsivity. After all, that same impulsivity was what had brought him here in the first place. So, rather than questioning the odd turn of events, Will spent the rest of his day packing up his things and finding out that Hannibal had already called Alana to let her know that Will would be gone for a few days.
Better to just follow the flow of the river than fight the current.
It wasn’t until they were standing in the airport at a gate boarding for New Orleans that Will finally morphed out of his lemming state and questioned Hannibal’s intentions.
“Louisiana.” It was all he said, but the blatant layer of mistrust and seething was perfectly apparent. Will was not pleased.
Hannibal rest a hand on Will’s shoulder, knowing full well the other man wouldn’t make a scene in the middle of the airport by pulling away. “I understand your hesitance, Will. Returning to the place you grew up will not be easy, but I feel as though the experience might be cathartic for you.”
“Cathartic?” Will hissed, voice low and irritated. “I don’t need catharsis, Hannibal.”
“You have been struggling with a crisis of identity, Will,” Hannibal continued steadily. “Unknowing of what you want and how to go about obtaining it. Perhaps a return to your beginning will better help you understand where you desire your end.”
Will shrugged the hand off his shoulder and crossed his arms. “We had a conversation about psychoanalyzing me, I thought. Could have sworn we had that conversation.”
“We did.”
Will threw a dubious look to the confused stewardess waiting for them to board. She was glancing around awkwardly as though unsure of what to do. Will ignored her. “And yet you’re doing it anyway.”
“I am.”
Hannibal’s response was so matter of fact and unapologetic that all Will could do was sigh. “If this blows up in our faces—“
“Then I will allow you to tell me in vivid detail all the reasons I was wrong in this decision,” Hannibal interrupted smoothly. “Now, please, Will. We are holding up the plane.”
Will snorted and rolled his eyes. “Jesus, Hannibal. I don’t know why I go along with you like this all the time.” He tugged his rucksack over his shoulder and grudgingly followed the other man past the stewardess and onto the walkway.
The older man simply gestured for Will to follow along, keeping a steady and measured pace as though he had expected his victory all along. “Where else would you go?”
Will pinched his lips between his teeth and tore apart the questions in his mind for the thousandth time. In the end, he settled on appearing sufficiently disgruntled as they boarded the plane and found their seats, his at the window and generously separate from being next to anyone but Hannibal. He wondered if he should feel trapped—in a steel tube with Hannibal blocking the only way out—but he felt less unease than he expected to. Then again, most things that crossed his mind or stepped into the beat of his ribcage tended to be unexpected when they involved Hannibal.
“How long has it been since you’ve flown on a plane?”
Will was slightly miffed by the attempt at small-talk. “Long time,” he muttered, staring out the window as they taxied onto the runway. A chill tickled the back of his neck. It had been years since he had traveled by plane. The road had been his guide; steady and solid under his feet. He stomped down any nervousness that teased his senses. The resolution he made to accept his fate was a stubborn one. “I’m not afraid of flying, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“Not at all,” Hannibal replied, leaning back into his chair and shutting his eyes.
“First time first class, though.” Will added it as an afterthought. Seemed relevant.
“I’m well aware that you don’t enjoy being clustered up with groups of strangers.” Hannibal’s eyes remained closed, stoic and serene as ever. “First class was a way to ensure this was not an issue.”
Will rolled his eyes. “As if you would fly coach without me here.” He flicked a hand, dismissing the concept entirely. “And stop knowing me.” He saw Hannibal peer at him out of the corner of his eye, but when he turned the other man was leaning back once more, unaffected.
They were silent as the flight took off. Engines loud. Angle sharp. The feeling of unwelcome inertia sweeping into Will’s stomach.
The silence lasted until the seatbelt signs were beeping and the pilot was muttering something about electronics over the crackling intercom that Hannibal finally spoke.
“Would you prefer I make no effort to know you?”
Taken aback by the belatedness of the reply, Will simply blinked at the other man. “What?”
Hannibal continued to appear the epitome of restful, turning slowly to look Will in the eye. “Would you prefer that I make no efforts to understand your psyche? We spend an arguably extensive amount of time with one another. It seems fitting that I would desire to comprehend you.”
Will licked his lips and looked away. “I’ve never felt the need to be comprehended.”
“And yet here you are, allowing me to drink of your thoughts,” Hannibal said softly. His face was impassive and unclear. Will couldn’t read a single thought in his head and it was one of those rare moments where he disliked that fact. Hannibal’s lips twitched in the ghost of a smile. “Allowing me to savor you. Why is that, if you are so discomfited by the very thought of being known?”
“I’m not a wine.” Will tapped his fingers on the armrest. “You can’t swirl me around the glass and see how my flavor adapts to being exposed.”
“I have no need to expose you to the elements, Will. You exposed yourself to them long before you met me.”
A frown. “Then why this?” Will pointed out the window of the plane to the misting powder of the clouds. “Why go through all of these efforts? Is it for me? Because of me? In spite of me? Is it anything to do with me?” Will rubbed his hands over his face with a small groan. “Or is my arrogance completely diluting my understanding of anything at all?”
Hannibal observed him—considered him. “When you ask why this, I assume you are referring to the choice of Louisiana specifically.”
Will just shrugged.
“Would it frustrate you if my response was that it was all of those things and yet none of them?”
“Yes, it would.”
“’Who controls the past controls the future’,” Hannibal quoted blithely. He somehow managed to sound bored and amused all at once and Will wanted to smack him for it.
“No.” Will shook his head. “No, I’m not playing.”
Hannibal sighed. “I can see that. What you fail to realize is that I am not viewing this as a game. Perhaps that is the error in your perception. You conceive that I am toying with you.”
“And you presume to think that I believe that is never your intention.”
“To presume such would be an insult to your intelligence. I have never thought you to be unintelligent, Will.”
“Well at least that’s cleared up,” Will scoffed. He stretched his legs out and let Hannibal order for them from the drink cart. As long as it was something with alcohol, the flight might pass for bearable. As it was, Will felt constricted and borderline claustrophobic. He felt like a deer caught in a net—a stag with antlers slashing and swaying through the ropes in a futile effort to feel freedom once more. If he closed his eyes tightly enough, he could almost pretend he missed the repetition of what had once been defined as his freedom and now felt like redundancy.
This time it was Will who broke the silence; when their drinks had arrived and the steady drone of the plane had lulled them back into passive moods. “I’m sorry.”
“I dislike apologies.”
“So do I.”
“Then why did you apologize?”
Will wanted to be irritated but it had been a fair question. “It felt like I was supposed to.” He started when Hannibal placed a warm hand on his leg, pulling his attention back into focus.
“I have no desire for obligation.” The older man sounded strangely earnest in this and it was disconcerting. “Obligation begets resentment. Should either of us resent one another, we would be at an impasse.”
“One another.” Will rolled the phrase around on his tongue like a hard candy he had never tried before. “And what are we to one another?” He hated the question as soon as he’d asked it.
Hannibal’s hand flexed on Will’s thigh. “I do not know,” he admitted. “I very rarely find need for definition.”
“A ‘no labels’ kind of guy, hm?” Will chuckled and brushed his fingertips over Hannibal’s knuckles before returning his hands to his drink. He didn’t want to be affectionate. He just wanted to acknowledge. “Fair enough.”
“Labels create restrictions. Restrictions are not something I enjoy.”
“You don’t feel restricted by me?”
“Not in the ways I endeavor to avoid.”
“That can change.”
“It may change.”
Will glanced sideways. “And if it does?”
Hannibal was frowning clearly now and Will was taken aback. As commonplace as expression was on most people, Hannibal was not most people. His smiles, his frowns, every last aspect of his countenance was restricted and calculated. He was the very definition of micro-expressive and so whenever he opted to display himself openly, Will’s attention was rapt.
“And if it does?” Will repeated, voice barely above a breath. Perhaps he was prodding simply to deepen the frown—simply to see the uncustomary display at length. Perhaps he truly wanted an answer. He couldn’t be sure.
Hannibal searched Will’s eyes in a way that was reminiscent of the night they had met all of those months ago. He was searching for something. “You have been unusually occupied with attempting to predict us, as of late.” He didn’t exactly sound displeased, but he was far from sounding approving.
Will shrugged, not wanting to explain himself.
“When you joined me from Georgia, there was an acceptance of the spontaneous. You embraced it.” Hannibal was still looking, seeking, searching. “What has changed?”
“We have,” Will replied instantly. And then he paused. “Or maybe not. Maybe I have. Maybe nothing has. I’m not used to talking things out with someone on any level, Hannibal. I’m not even sure if I want to.”
“You seem to want to.”
“If I do, I don’t have the foggiest idea why that’d be.” Will rattled the ice around in his cup for lack of something better to do. “Or why you keep humoring me, for that matter.”
At long last, Hannibal appeared to have once more found whatever it was he sought in Will’s eyes and he looked away, withdrawing his hand. “Our situation is an odd one.”
Will made a sound of sarcasm but didn’t bother accompanying it with words.
“This is not something I wish to discuss at this time,” Hannibal stated suddenly—finitely—and Will gaped at him, startled by the precipitous shift in atmosphere.
“Wh—“
“This is neither the time nor the place,” Hannibal continued as though Will’s stammering confusion was the farthest from his concern. “Nor do I have sufficient words to respond properly.”
Will swallowed thickly, knowing damn well how tense Hannibal must have been in order to admit to being at a loss for words. It calmed him, somewhat. It gave him some much needed patience. “Alright,” he murmured cautiously. “I don’t feel like pushing it either.” And he really didn’t. He didn’t rightly know why he felt the way he did or why all of these thoughts were running flagrant and unhindered in his brain. Until he got grips on himself, he didn’t want to talk about it.
Talking wasn’t something he did well when it came to talking about himself. Hannibal could throw just about anything at him and Will could respond with equal wit and split-second banter. Hit Will with a question about his own inner-workings and Will would snap shut like a latch. It wasn’t a voluntary thing. Might have been a reflex or a defense mechanism or something equally human and droll.
But the fact remained that Will had only just started truly knowing himself over the past couple of years and no way in hell was that enough time to define it all to a point that he could translate it to someone outside of his sphere of personal reality.
Hannibal was the closest Will had come to not having to explain himself; to simply being seen. Maybe, as Will considered the implications of that, Hannibal’s ease of perusing Will’s thoughts like they were written text was exactly what had brought this all about in the first place. Will had come to expect being known. He had come to anticipate Hannibal anticipating him. Only now he was beginning to feel like he couldn’t begin to surmise his own intentions, which meant it would be impossible for Hannibal to surmise them for him. Didn’t it?
Only now they were flying back to the place Will had grown up and Will had gone along with barely more than a weak kick and a grumble. They were traipsing right back into rotten, forgotten territory and Will was just letting Hannibal drag him right back into it like it was nothing. This place that he had run away from like a dog with its tail between its legs and a vicious desire to abandon who he once was. Hannibal was taking him there—just as Will was allowing himself to be taken—for a reason. Will knew that.
So maybe Hannibal understood what was going on in a way Will hadn’t been able to grasp yet.
Will found he was more comforted by the idea than he should have been. There was a certain immunity to failure when someone else was calling the shots. The autonomy granted by allowing another to steer was contradictory and ironic. Will’s life had been nothing if not ironic, so he thought it was all pretty damn appropriate when he looked at it from behind those lenses.
Or maybe Hannibal was just as thrown by everything as Will was and this was some last ditch attempt at figuring shit out before they both lost their minds to the complex nature of their relationship and ended up killing each other for lack of something more productive to do.
That prospect was far less placating than the first.
Will still dreamed about killing Hannibal sometimes. He would wake up in a sweat, halfway between excited and panicked, with visions of Hannibal’s throat drawn by a ribbon of blood. In his dreams, he would open Hannibal up inch by inch. He would inspect every last aspect of him in the same way a painter would inspect each brush stroke on his canvas. He would burn every detail into his retinas. He would catalogue and admire.
Sometimes, when he woke, he would admit to Hannibal the contents of his subconscious. Other times he would deny entirely. He would pretend that Hannibal was no man, but made of stone and steel and indestructible things. He would convince himself that no matter how hard he cut and pulled, Hannibal would never come apart and so there was no reason to try.
It was by far the most pathetic justification he had ever made to himself, made all the more pathetic by the fact that he was justifying anything to himself at all.
The rest of the flight passed by without conversation. They both seemed to recede deep into their own individual thoughts and soon enough the plane was landing and people were filing into the sticky humidity of Louisiana’s spring weather. Will found himself feeling hesitant and paranoid from the moment they set foot on solid ground, convinced that every face that passed them would be the one that recognized him. His ears were attuned to every voice that faded into the murmur. He waited to hear his name fall from forgotten lips, cushioned by shock and disbelief. His bones crackled with every movement, ready to flee if someone approached.
But no one recognized him. No one recognized him at the airport, in the taxi, from the street corners they passed. No one knew his face as Hannibal paid the cab driver and helped Will pulled their luggage out and to the sidewalk to look up at the narrow and colorful row of houses that surrounded them. No one came running from around the corner, pointing and shouting that Will was back home; that he had returned like some long-lost son. Will scowled and scuffed his shoe heel into the pavement.
Hannibal regarded him curiously. “You are so incredibly focused, Will,” he observed. “What is it that you are preparing yourself for?”
“I feel like I’ve snuck in somewhere I wasn’t supposed to sneak into.”
Hannibal made a humming sound of cognizance. “The likelihood that you will come across someone who recognizes you is very slim.”
Will crossed his arms tightly over his chest. He wanted to get away from the street. He felt exposed standing there. He felt like he was tempting the fates to throw a curveball. “But there is a chance.”
“There is always a chance,” Hannibal agreed. He picked up Will’s bag when Will seemed too preoccupied to do so himself and started walking towards one of the houses. “Come.”
Will frowned. “Why are we in the French district? You have a house here?”
Hannibal fished a set of keys out of his pocket and slid them into the lock of the door. “I’ve rented one, yes.”
Curious, Will stepped back and took the sight in. At first glance, the house seemed entirely small. It was scrunched and squished between the innumerable buildings at the sides. A balcony hovered overhead with railings of black and twisted iron and tendrils of flowers and vines hanging loosely in the air. Stained glass beaded the edges of the windows and as Hannibal pushed the door open and stepped inside, Will was met with red carpet and tile and stone and mahogany wood. It didn’t take long, as Will followed behind silently, to realize that the house was much bigger than it appeared on the outside. It was as though some magical spell had been cast—illusionary and discreet—to conceal the extensiveness of it from prying eyes.
Heading up the stairs and into the thick of it all, Will smoothed his palms over the granite countertops in the kitchen and closed his eyes to the background clattering of Hannibal putting their luggage somewhere off in another room. “Where are we?” he called.
“Do you like it?” Hannibal emerged from one of the rooms and joined Will in front of an exquisite stone fireplace with hand carved mantelpieces and a heavy brass mirror at its center. Their eyes met in the glass.
Will’s lips quirked in a half smile. “It’s more your taste, but you’ve conditioned me to start enjoying your tastes.”
Hannibal met the smile with one of his own. “Alas, you’ve found me out.”
Will broke the stare and walked over to the balcony, taking in a deep breath of the breeze and watching as people meandered about below them. “So why this place?”
Hannibal joined him, palms bracing against the wrought iron rail. “This is Lafitte guest house. It’s a popular little hotel here in New Orleans. It’s edged back from the main parades of Mardi Gras. We will be able to see the festivities without being entirely overcome by them. We need only venture out if we so desire.”
Will’s eyebrows rose and he laughed, mostly at himself. “Shit. Mardi Gras. I forgot about that. That’s why it was so important that it’s February.”
“Yes.”
“You aiming to cover me in plastic beads and watch me drink the night away or are you going to throw me down the depths of voodoo and watch me twist and roil with the demons?” Will turned and leaned back against the railing, giving Hannibal an inquisitive and intrigued look. “Which is it?”
Hannibal was drawn to him, fingers sliding gracefully over the railing on either side of Will’s hips as he leaned in and breathed deeply at the crook of the younger man’s neck. “Perhaps both, among other things,” he said softly and teasingly into the warm skin of Will’s throat.
Will’s head fell back and he let out the slightest puff of air when he felt lips skirt over his Adam’s apple. “If you wanted to see me painted as a skeleton and dancing to tunes of death you should have taken me to Día de Muertos.”
“As tempting as that is.” Hannibal nipped at Will’s ear. “I enjoy the image of you in mysticism. There is a magic in voodoo, is there not? Promises of revenge or control or the manipulation of realities. Perhaps some versions are more bastardized than others, but no less unique. There is a recognition in Louisiana voodoo of the Christian god and the mingling of spirits with that god. A tempting dichotomy to explore.”
“And you wish to explore it with me? Are we going to be cliché and buy straw dolls and needles or do you want to dress me up in bones and bells and hear me sing?” Will grinned and slipped out from between Hannibal’s arms, stepping lightly back into the house. “You told me once that you believe gods to be a representation of the weakness of humanity.”
“That opinion is unchanged.” Hannibal followed him as though Will was a siren tempting him in and out across the sea. Perhaps he was. “But the concept of gods and men has always been a fascinating one. The Christian god is vengeful and violent.”
“And you like that.” It wasn’t said with accusation.
“I do. God kills and is righteous for it.” Hannibal reached out to card fingers through Will’s unruly hair, but Will pulled away after only a moment, continuing to explore the house. Hannibal watched him with good humor. “Were we to believe the claim that we are created in his image, it stands to reason that a similar righteousness should be afforded to us as well.”
Will’s laughter rang out through the house and Hannibal waited for him in the hall as he went from room to room.
Eventually, Will reemerged. “You said this was a hotel?”
“It is.”
“There are no other people here.”
“I rented the hotel.” At Will’s dubious expression, Hannibal added, “This trip was not one intended for socializing. I selfishly prefer to have you to myself when we aren’t on the streets below.”
“Your intentions don’t sound particularly pure,” Will joked. Hannibal said nothing to that and so Will ventured out into the kitchen. The counters were black and gleaming. “Do you plan to cook for me?”
“Do you plan to provide my ingredients?”
Will stopped, wide eyes shooting up and back across the room. His mind filtered through the possible contexts and settled on the most obvious one. “You want to hunt here?”
“I want to consider the possibility.”
“So that was the goal of this.” Will shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and sucked on his lip. “I was feeling shitty about the dry spell and so you brought me out here for some, what…” He shook his head. “Murder vacation?”
Hannibal leaned against the door jamb. “That is not my priority, no. Should an opportunity present itself, it would be adventitious.”
Will pursed his lips, suspicious. “Adventitious or advantageous?”
Hannibal’s smile didn’t quite reach his eyes, but it was there in the backs of his irises, gleaming in the red. “It could quite easily be both.”
“So this isn’t about placating me?” Will pressed the issue even though he didn’t want to. It was a matter of pride. He didn’t want Hannibal doing things for him out of duty or some misguided desire to give him what he wanted. It made Will feel incapable. “Because it feels like it is.”
“You placate a petulant child,” Hannibal answered with a minute shrug. “You are no child and so I see no need to placate you. The intention of this trip is to invigorate you. I have seen passion in your eyes, Will, but there is a malingering ghost in your past that is preventing me from seeing it as clearly as I wish. I thought perhaps a return to your roots, as trite as it may seem, would be the most efficient way to clear out your demons.”
“The demons you don’t like, anyway.”
“The demons that don’t belong.”
“And who are you to say which demons I should keep and which I should cast out?” There was an ever-present twitch in Will’s gut in relation to the situation. He couldn’t quite pinpoint the source. Was it doubt, mistrust, or hesitance? No, that didn’t sit right. But what did sit right, Will didn’t know. This continuous not knowing was getting old fast. The frustration was finding its way into his syllables and weighting down the conversation in uneasy slips. “Are you the authority on inner demons?” Now he was sounding like a petulant child and from the look on Hannibal’s face, it seemed Will wasn’t the only one who had noticed.
Hannibal’s eyes narrowed. His stance became sharper—more severe. “Are you entirely happy, Will? Are you content with everything that you are and that your life has become?”
Will sighed. “No. I guess not.”
“Then perhaps, though I am no authority on demons, I can claim to be at least somewhat of an authority on your discomfort.” Hannibal’s words were clipped and short. “Avoid the fact as you enthusiastically do, but I have found myself unavoidably linked to you in some unknown way. I, unlike you, do not make a habit of questioning my instincts.”
The accusation in the words was clear. Will didn’t rise to the bait and he felt sort of proud of himself for it. He was less inclined to admit that much of his control stemmed from guilt regarding the accusation itself. He knew, in whatever tarred up heart he had left, that he was making life difficult for Hannibal. He was constantly questioning him and his motives and part of him knew that was an understandable trepidation. But there were limitations. There is only so much validity in doubting a killer when you are one yourself.
Hannibal had been exceedingly patient with him. So, in some ways, Will felt guilty for dragging his patience through the mud over and over again. The louder, stronger part of him wanted to toss that guilt off a high-rise. This whole deal was never supposed to be about being patient. They weren’t supposed to be compromising or sacrificing. They weren’t supposed to feel obligated or responsible for one another.
Will leaned on one foot and then another, agitated. “You make me want to let you change me and I hate you for that. The part of me that hates you doesn’t care if the change is good or bad. The fact that you find me relevant enough to actively try and influence me. That pisses me off.”
“Is that all it does?” Hannibal looked as though he was about to step forward and then thought better of it, continuing to linger in the threshold of the room. “Is that the only association you make?”
“No. You know it’s not so asking is only you trying to inflate your ego.” Will moved to turn on the tap and splash some water on his face. The house was starting to feel hot and musty. They would need to find the air conditioner and get it switched on sooner rather than later. After a bit of consideration, he decided to change the subject. These conversations were beginning to run around in circles. They were chasing their tails. “So what’s the plan? I know you have a plan.”
Hannibal remained silent for a stretch long enough to make Will wonder if he wasn’t going to let the subject drop. Eventually, Hannibal pushed away from the door and stepped into the kitchen to open the fridge. He made a pleased sound. “Good, they stocked it as I requested.”
It wasn’t an answer to Will’s question, but at least he was letting the topic slide for now.
Will peeled off his shirt and tossed it onto a kitchen chair. His pale torso was beginning to take on the shine and flush of heat. “Where is the air conditioner? This isn’t as bad as Georgia was but it sure as shit isn’t cold. It’s never this hot in February, so what’s the deal?”
“Weather can tend to have a mind of its own.” Hannibal looked over his shoulder, eyes raking over Will’s naked torso shamelessly before pointing down the hall. “I believe I saw a utility room in a closet down there. There’s likely a switch.”
If Will was affected by Hannibal’s lingering stare, he didn’t show it. He nodded and set out for the closet, cool air on his mind and jet lag in his limbs. Truth was, he would never get used to how Hannibal stared at him. He would stare at Will like he was made of marble and gold rather than flesh and blood. It made Will feel flattered and insecure, as though he knew that one day Hannibal would look at him and realize that he was nothing so beautiful or extraordinary. He was just Will Graham. Will Graham was made of bone and grit and dark thoughts. He was no Greek statue or miraculous thing.
Will found the switch in the closet after stumbling over some old buckets and brooms and he heaved out a moan of relief when he heard the electric whir of the units turning on. He stumbled through the house, feeling more and more exhausted by the second, until he found the room that Hannibal had apparently chosen for them.
It had a big bed with a white and silver quilt and shining oak. Their bags were neatly placed off to the side by a door that revealed itself to be yet another balcony overlooking the streets. Will collapsed bodily onto the bed, not even bothering to pull back the covers. He was out cold in two minutes flat.
When Will woke, it was to a chilling gust of air on his back. With a shiver, he sat up and blearily looked over to find the balcony door open. He grunted and pushed himself off the bed to shut the door. The sun had fallen and the evening had brought with it the weather he had expected of the month. Cold, wet, and threatening of red noses and the need for jackets. He rubbed his arms and looked around. Hannibal was nowhere to be seen.
Frowning, Will zipped open his bag and rummaged around for a sweater. When he realized he had opened Hannibal’s bag instead of his own, he couldn’t be bothered to care, pulling out one of the man’s cardigans—the red one that he would never tell Hannibal just how much he liked—and putting it on. It was warm and smelled of Hannibal.
Will padded across the floor in his socks. He couldn’t remember taking his shoes off, but he had been tired so he couldn’t be sure. After a bit of wandering, he found Hannibal seated in one of the main rooms in a plush armchair, book in one hand and wine in the other.
“I thought this trip was supposed to be us getting away from habits.”
Hannibal looked up and chuckled. “Hard to get much accomplished when I discovered you unconscious.” He sipped at his wine, eyes lighting as they danced over Will’s body. “You’re wearing my cardigan.”
Will shrugged lazily and slumped down into the couch next to Hannibal’s chair. “I’m hungry.”
“So you put on my clothes?”
Will stretched out his legs. “Would you prefer me to take it off?”
“The answer to that will always be yes.”
Will let out a surprised little laugh, unused to Hannibal being so candid when it came to that particular topic. It made his chest flush all the way up to his face and he wondered if he was starting to match the sweater. “Have the parades started?”
“Small ones. The majority will be tomorrow, as you know. I have heard the sounds of celebration in the distance, but the night is young. Most of the festivities have been tame.”
“Suitable for children,” Will grumbled.
“Mardi Gras is a family affair,” Hannibal pointed out.
“Most of it, anyway. Somehow I doubt you intend to peruse the family-friendly sections.” Will grinned and pulled the cardigan tighter around his torso. It was too big for him and he felt like he was swimming in it. “Why do I have a feeling you’ll be carting me down Bourbon street soon enough?”
Hannibal finished his wine and set it aside. “It would be the most appropriate venue for our ventures.”
“I thought you wanted me to ‘find myself’,” Will added caustic quotations with his fingers as he said it. “I hardly ever went to Mardi Gras. Once or twice in my life, actually.”
Hannibal leaned forward, shutting his book with a soft snap of paper. “I would hate for this entire trip to consist solely of the rehashing of former experiences.”
“But you do plan to rehash.”
“I do. If you will allow it.”
It was the first time Hannibal had given Will an explicit choice in the whole ordeal and Will found himself warmed by it. He smiled in spite of himself. “So if I say no, we get back on a plane and forget it all?”
“We could go first thing in the morning, if you wished it so.” Hannibal’s face showed no sign of dishonesty. He meant every word.
Will wasn’t sure if he wanted to kiss the other man or strangle him. Then again, he faced that decision in regards to Hannibal on most days. Sometimes he wanted to do both. Sometimes he did do both. “I’ll stay if you tell me your plans.” It was a fair trade. Equivalence.
It seemed Hannibal needed no time for consideration, answering immediately. “I intend to take you out to dinner tonight, seek out a suitable prey, hunt with you tomorrow while the parades and parties are in full swing and we will be less likely to be noticed, and then I will take you back to your childhood home so that I may see where you began and you may face what you left behind.” His voice was monotonous and steady. He stared at Will unblinkingly.
Will licked his chapped lips and swallowed. “Well.” His mouth felt dry. “I wasn’t expecting such an extensive response.”
“I wish for us to stay.”
“Obviously.”
Hannibal tilted his head to the side, inquisitive. “And will we stay?”
“You’re leaving this decision up to me.” It wasn’t said as a question. Will wasn’t sure if he meant it as one.
“I am in your world now, Will,” Hannibal answered tamely. “Your territory. It seems only fitting that you rule this particular landscape.”
With a huff of breathy laughter, Will shook his head. He felt overwhelmed. Hannibal had a way of doing that to him. “You make it sound as though I should be wearing a crown and holding a scepter.”
“I would see you be greater than that of Caesar, Titus, Alexander,” Hannibal intoned, a deep an unyielding syrup saturating his tone and forcing a shiver down Will’s spine. “I would see you devour nations and bring them down to crumbling stone and dust. You would stand atop the rubble in a crown of blood and a scepter of skulls.”
Will shut his eyes, the vision Hannibal painted swimming across his lids. “Far too macabre for a leader. You fancy me the annihilator. The conqueror.”
“All leaders must conquer in order to claim that which they lead.”
“No.” Will licked his lips again and met Hannibal’s gaze head on. Crystalline blue and melting red. “You’d rather a pile of bodies at my feet. You’d rather no one left at all in my wake. You’d see me consume the world and leave nothing left for anyone else.”
Hannibal’s grin pulled slowly over his teeth, darkly and infinitely pleased. “Perhaps I would remain. I would be your witness.”
The grin was matched on Will’s own face—beast snarling at beast with admiration and reciprocation. “Would you survive me in my rampage?”
Hannibal’s expression morphed fluidly into one of careful introspection. He breathed in and the silence of the evening zeroed in on the room and stifled it. “I have yet to find the answer to that, I’m afraid.”
Will nodded and leaned his head back into the cushions, closing his eyes. “I doubt I would even survive myself. Maybe after the world was destroyed, we really would go insane. With no on left to devour but each other.”
“I have never found that to be an unappealing concept.”
Will snorted and poked at Hannibal’s knee with his foot. “The funny thing is, no matter which way you mean that, you still mean it.”
Hannibal snatched Will’s foot midair, gripping him by the ankle and holding it on his thigh. His thumb rubbed slow circles just north of the tendon. “Where would you like to eat?”
“Since when do I choose the food?” Will cracked an eye open and stared at Hannibal’s hand on his leg. “That’s your area of expertise.”
As tempting as it must have been to take that comment and inject it straight into his own ego, Hannibal merely hummed and stood, letting Will’s leg fall softly to the floor. “It has been a long time since I have been to New Orleans, but I believe I remember a place not far from here. I would prefer to walk, either way.”
Will didn’t see a point in remarking on the fact that the walk was just a way to scout out the area; get a look at the people. It didn’t need to be said. Will felt anticipation buzzing under his skin like static from an old radio. He and Hannibal had yet to hunt together. This would be their first. And somehow, Will knew that if it didn’t go well, it would also be their last.
His excitement was just as palpable as his trepidation. He reveled in both of the feelings. He let them eat him up from the inside. He let them feed the monster.
Will sucked his lower lip into his mouth and met Hannibal’s curious gaze. His own mood had been shifting and propelling into the room with each passing thought and Hannibal had noticed. “The parades will only conceal so much tomorrow.”
Hannibal tilted his head in consideration. “Parades conceal a great deal, in my experience. I am nothing if not careful. The fact that you are here with me now speaks to your own mindfulness.” We know what we are doing, he was saying. We will be fine.
But did they know what they were doing? Will couldn’t help but feel doubt. They were solo artists. They had hunted and preyed and consumed on their own for years. Neither had taken up a partner in the act. The involvement of another person left room for error, miscalculation, discord. One wrong step, one miscommunication, one flaw in their coordination and everything could crash around them in tatters.
They knew what they were doing, yes, but not like this. This was something new—something different—and Will couldn’t suspend his disbelief enough to think that they would fall into it as gracefully as a waltz. Learning to dance with a partner took time. It took stepping on toes and counting steps. It took practice.
Yet here, where one false move could mean the end of everything in their lives, Will wasn’t walking away. He wasn’t talking sense into himself and packing his bag. He wasn’t hitching the next ride out of Louisiana so that he wouldn’t have to experience the beauty of hindsight.
Perhaps that was what was so dangerous about Hannibal. It wasn’t the fact that he was a killer or that he consumed his fellow man as casually as he consumed an apple. That was what made him a danger to everyone else. What made him a danger to Will was how easy Will found it to ride off into the pits of Hell with him without batting an eye, not caring if they made it out of the flames alive.
Yet, despite the theatric nature of Will’s thoughts, their passage to the restaurant was an uneventful one. There were no cliché moments of some unfortunate man bumping into Hannibal and putting him at the end of predatory sights. There were no boisterous or raucous individuals who grated on Will’s ears and set something growling inside of him. In fact, the stroll was an entirely pleasant one that was buffered by a crisp breeze and the happy sounds of music a few blocks down. The occasional colorfully dressed celebrator would stumble by with their friends and family, smiling and laughing and enjoying life.
Thanks to the chill in the air, they chose to stay inside the restaurant for their meal. It was a place Will had never visited, even in his long-since faded past. A small mom-and-pop dive that seemed completely off track from Hannibal’s nearly supercilious tastes. Will quickly learned that regardless of gaudy tapestries and scuffed old wood, looks weren’t everything. The food was clearly quality and he found himself laughing inwardly at the thought that Hannibal would take them to anywhere other than perfect in its own unique and distinct way.
Quiescent to Hannibal’s judgment, Will allowed himself to be ordered for. Save for the time Hannibal had tried to serve him eel, a taste that Will had never acquired and refused to endure again, he had never been led astray by the other man’s palate. What resulted was Will eating his fill of genuine Louisiana gumbo while Hannibal watched him with a quiet amusement from across the table.
Will practically flicked a spoonful of gumbo at him for looking so smug. As some form of small retribution, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve, still wrapped up in Hannibal’s cardigan. “So what’s the plan?” He felt strange asking that, as though he was breaking some sort of silent agreement to stealth and mystique. It was a strange thing to talk about in general.
So how do you want to pick out the person we’re going to kill tomorrow? Seemed like an asinine question.
If Hannibal felt the same way Will did about the question, he had the decency to keep it to himself. “I don’t have one.”
Even though Will had thought the inquisition to be a preposterous one, he had still fully expected to have planned everything down to the finest detail. It was startling to hear otherwise. “Really?”
Hannibal chuckled and sipped at his wine, his pasta twirling around the tine of his fork. “Really. I believe we both agreed that this should be about going with one’s instinct, did we not? What good are plans in circumstances such as these?”
“I just…” Will set his spoon down and licked his lips. He glanced out the window and watched as the night grew darker around them. A cloak was falling around the world, preparing to shield them from view. Mother nature was ever the helping hand. “You always have a plan.”
Hannibal hummed. “You wish for some kind of last resort.” Another sip of wine. “In case this partnership results in a failure of some kind.”
“We don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“No,” Hannibal agreed. “And that, I believe, is the beauty of it.”
Will rolled his eyes but he didn’t argue. Hannibal was right, after all. “I don’t want to seek them out tonight.”
Hannibal tilted his head to the side, curious. “Second thoughts?”
Will met his gaze and smiled as he sat back in his chair, full and sated. “No. You’re right. It’s not knowing what’s going to happen that makes it, isn’t it? If we go around—find them now—it’s too rehearsed. It’s too…”
“Premeditated?”
A grunt. “Yeah. That fits.”
“You want it to be in the moment. Passionate.”
“Don’t you?”
There was a glint in Hannibal’s eyes; dark and seductive. “Yes.”
“Good.” Will nodded and finished off his drink as though that would drive the nail in home. “We’ll go out tomorrow when the parades are in full and everyone’s drunk and stupid. We’ll go with our guts.”
Hannibal lifted his own glass in salute, a smirk twitching at the corners of his lips. “Tomorrow it is.”
Tomorrow came more quickly than Will had planned for. The night had passed in a blur of wine and conversation and jet lag had them both in a deep sleep when the chill was high in the air and the sound of music was muffled by the walls of the guest house. Hannibal, as per usual, was up long before Will and was meandering about doing whatever it was that Hannibal did in the mornings.
Will, however, woke up at the ass-crack of noon because laziness was clinging to him like cellophane. Blearily, he blinked past sleep and a mild hangover and stretched out his limbs. The ceiling was popcorned and old and he stared up at it as he considered the day.
Because today was the day, wasn’t it? Today was the day that Will would find out just why in the hell he had followed Hannibal in the first place. If it was worth it. If there had been a point at all. Or if this was all just some fever dream he was overdue to wake up from so he could hightail it out of there.
Will had never hunted alongside another person before; never considered the prospect. Killing wasn’t a team sport. It wasn’t something you did at parties to keep the mood up. At least, not for Will, anyway. For him, killing was an itch to scratch. It was a way to bring all the complex and warped images in his mind to fruition. It was private.
The idea of killing alongside someone—sharing in that—was akin to exposing himself in a public place. It left Will feeling unmoored and naked. Hannibal had seen him kill before, but that kill had been out of necessity. Kill the ranger or let the ranger undoubtedly kill Hannibal. That wasn’t a hunt. It was a reaction.
This would be different. There would be no clear cut purpose here. There would only be Will without the protection of his facades or the sheen of his humanity. It would be nothing but Will, plain as day, naked as the day he was born with his innards peeking out like red eyes in a dark forest. Hannibal would look at him. He would see him.
Will knew as well as anyone that once certain things were seen, that didn’t go away. He gave Hannibal this and Hannibal would have it forever. He would take that shattered shard of Will’s sorry excuse for a soul and he would hold it in his palm and know every groove and curve of it. On that fact alone, Will was tempted to call the whole thing off. It was only the knowledge of reciprocity that kept him rooted.
Yes, Hannibal would see him, but Will would also see Hannibal.
He had seen beautiful, distorted, vicious glimpses of the beast in Hannibal’s darkness. He had caught glimmers of it when he forced that man to slit his own throat back in that cabin. He had caught brilliant, blinding flashes of it as Hannibal watched him gut the ranger like some kind of offering to Hannibal’s particular brand of devil. He had felt the tips of its claws when his face was shoved up against the side of the cabin and Hannibal was tearing into him like a meal.
But he had never seen the monster in full. He had never seen it shred out of Hannibal’s chest, breaking away that impenetrable person-suit that the man so elegantly donned. Will knew, somehow, that he would see that beast tonight. Just as Hannibal would watch the oil and blackness pour out of Will’s pores, Will would watch as Hannibal’s skin peeled away to show his horns and his fangs and his charred humanity.
The knowledge held him fast to the bed, staring up at a popcorn ceiling with heavy heartbeats and anxiousness. He was excited.
“Are you awake?”
Will glanced to the doorway to see the man of his thoughts looming there. “Haven’t quite mastered sleeping with my eyes open yet,” he replied with a voice thickened by sleep.
Hannibal chuckled and entered the room, sitting down on the side of the bed. He trailed a heavy palm over Will’s shirt, down his chest, sliding until it came to a rest on his stomach. “You’re edible in the morning.”
“Those jokes of yours aren’t as funny as you think they are,” Will grumbled.
Hannibal shrugged with nothing but his eyebrows. “Your penchant for denying me my humor is still unsuccessful.”
“I guess I just have to try harder.” Will reached out and tugged Hannibal by the collar, deciding the easiest way to shut up puns was with his mouth.
Hannibal gave into the kiss easily and with a languid amusement, chasing Will’s tongue as the younger man tugged softly at his hair and nipped at his lips. They kissed like that for some time, Will groaning when Hannibal pulled away just enough to look down at him and his flushed cheeks and swollen mouth.
“Tonight.”
Will groaned again and scowled. “Now.”
Hannibal smiled and kissed him again, quickly, before standing up and out of Will’s reach. “Tonight.”
Will could see Hannibal was hard through those ridiculously expensive pajama pants of his and he let out a gruff laugh, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes. “You just want to fuck me when I’m blood-soaked and battered.” He didn’t need to open his eyes to see the grin that spread over Hannibal’s face at the comment.
“Yes.”
Will’s eyes opened at that, meeting Hannibal’s own. The stare he received was nothing short of animal; desire and expectation and anticipation all boiling over into the red of his irises. “Careful, if you enjoy it too much, you won’t like having me any way else.”
The intensity of Hannibal’s eyes didn’t lessen, but it became creased with a smile. “I enjoy you in every way, Will. Tonight I simply want to enjoy you in a very specific way.”
The shiver that crawled across Will’s skin was involuntary and pleasant. He licked his lips. “Right. You’ve got ambitious plans for tonight.”
“It is a night worthy of ambition.”
“Build it up and it’s going to topple over like a bad game of Jenga.”
Hannibal sighed. “I understand your hesitations, Will, but I believe your doubts are wholly unnecessary. I am not concerned.”
Will sat up and threw his legs over the side of the bed, deciding then was as good a time as any to get up and face the day. “Are you ever concerned?”
Hannibal pressed his lips together and seemed to give the question some genuine thought. “Not often, no.”
Will felt curious at that. He took the answer in and let it roll around as he stood, cracking his back and slipping past Hannibal to go get some coffee from the kitchen. “When is the last time you felt concern or anything close to it?” He began pouring some grinds into the coffee pot, taking a moment to smell the richness of the beans. When he didn’t receive an immediate response, he turned around.
Hannibal was lingering in yet another doorway—a habit he tended to employ when he was uncertain about something, as though edging at the precipice of a room gave him more opportunity for escape should he desire it. It was a trait that made him entirely too human and it was a trait that Will had catalogued away into the part of his mind that felt things he didn’t want to be feeling.
Will frowned and turned back to the coffee. “Bad question?”
“A question I was unprepared for.”
Will made a sound of understanding and continued milling about the kitchen. Hannibal was a man of preparation. He was comprised of intricately strategized expressions, systematically organized responses, and general skullduggery. He was by and large a man of machinations. Every word, every look, and every action was something planned ten steps ahead of time. These facts about him were made glaringly obvious in the moments Will managed to catch him off guard.
In those moments, Hannibal would pause. His face would be devoid, voice caught in silence, and he would be still as a tree in a windless valley. On Will’s more humorous days, he would mentally refer to it as Hannibal’s “buffering mode”. On days where he was feeling particularly serious or contemplative, he would sink into these moments like a cool breeze, relishing the fact that he had the capability to render Hannibal temporarily off-track.
When Hannibal still hadn’t replied, Will chanced throwing his question back into the room like a boomerang. “So? When is the last time you felt doubt? Have you ever felt doubt?”
“I have.”
Will leaned his hip into the counter and crossed his arms over his chest, listening to the bubble of the coffee pot and watching Hannibal with a patient and inquisitive raise of his brow.
After what felt like an eternity, Hannibal finally sank back into himself. “I would say the last time I experienced something akin to doubt or concern would be after one of my earlier endeavors in Baltimore.”
“As the Chesapeake Ripper?”
Hannibal’s mouth twitched. It pleased him that Will knew that about him. “Yes. It was a couple years ago now. I was still deciding my design as it had evolved to become. The FBI was quite focused on pursuing me at the time.”
“Did you make a mistake?” Will was truly intrigued now. Hannibal rarely spoke of his past in any form and when he did the stories were usually as strangely enchanting as they were horrifying.
Hannibal shook his head. “Not precisely, no. It was more that someone was clever enough to happen upon me. I believe it was accidental, but it had consequences.”
The room was filling up with the satisfying smell of coffee and Will breathed deep. He could hear people chatting somewhere outside. Hannibal had left the balcony door open to let the breeze come in. “What happened?”
Hannibal’s gaze swept past and into the distance, looking at something far away and from another time. “A young girl from the FBI came upon me. She was a student who had followed the right set of clues and it led her to my doorstep. After a rapidly deteriorating sequence of events, I was forced to subdue her.”
Will’s eyebrows knit together. “She saw something.”
“A drawing.”
Will was well aware of Hannibal’s proclivity for drawing his hunts. It seemed to be his way of digesting the events of his life. Where Will would fish, Hannibal would draw. Drawing was Hannibal’s quiet stream. “But you didn’t kill her. You said subdue.”
“I did.” But Hannibal seemed intent to add nothing to that and so Will didn’t press.
“Well if you were able to get her before she could make anything from it, why were you concerned?”
“Her disappearance naturally caught the interest of the FBI for quite some time,” Hannibal explained, walking into the room to take the coffee pot off the burner. Will had been so focused on the story that he hadn’t noticed it was finished. Hannibal continued to speak as he poured them both mugs of the steaming black. “It was the first time I had ever assaulted the FBI directly, as it were. So, naturally, their interest in me skyrocketed. For a brief period of time, I was unsure if I would come out of the situation unscathed.”
“And yet here you are.”
“Here I am,” Hannibal agreed. He gave one mug to Will and blew on his own to cool it. “By all accounts, it is pure luck that I am standing here with you now.”
“Not like the great Hannibal Lecter to admit one of his successes was not due to his own skill.” Will let teasing coat his voice as he went to fetch some sugar for his coffee.
“There are very few situations where I considered luck to be a factor. That was simply one of them.”
Will shrugged. “That’s fair. I don’t think I’ve ever been close to being caught.” He sipped at the coffee and it burned his tongue. “But I never stay in the places I kill. You stay in one spot. That increases the risk.”
“Very true. Although one could argue it also increases the challenge.”
“Challenges find you often enough in life without you purposefully making more for yourself.”
Hannibal drank his coffee for a while, lost in thought. “Perhaps, one day when the usefulness of this current life has been outlived, you can show me what it’s like to live one of movement. Teach me what it’s like to be swept up from breeze to breeze.”
“Teach you?” Will grinned, liking the thought. “It would feel like a reversal of roles.”
“We are equals, Will.”
Will stared at his cup, lips pressed into his teeth. “There are ways that you’re beyond me. I’m not going to deny that.”
“And there are ways in which you surpass me.”
Will started when he felt Hannibal’s hand gently stroking along his cheekbone. “If you say so.”
“I do.”
Will was grateful that Hannibal didn’t expound. As gratifying as Hannibal’s compliments tended to be, they were easily overwhelming and they had a tendency to make Will feel like he was being smothered by his own oxygen. “I’ll take your word for it.”
Whether out of respect for Will’s discomfort or his own lack of desire to continue the conversation, Hannibal let the words tumble into silence. Will heaved an inward sigh of relief as the other man stepped away from the counter and peered into the fridge.
“What do you wish to eat tonight? It will determine what we must take.”
“I don’t know. I’ve never planned on it when I’ve taken from someone before. I just did or,” Will took a drink of his coffee and set it on the granite. “Or I didn’t.”
“I don’t normally plan either when it comes to that,” Hannibal said as he continued to rummage around in the fridge, mentally listing everything they had. Will could only imagine the recipes floating through the man’s head in that moment, each more complex and elegant than the next. “But seeing as we have a limited amount of time to make use of what we take, a little preemptive meal preparation might be in order.”
Will gave Hannibal a look that clearly said why are you asking me?
“This is your hunt as much as it is mine, Will. I want us to both have equal say in its results.”
Will stared at Hannibal for a moment. “Thank you.” And he meant it. “But my vote is that you decide. Your skills when it comes to… making use of a hunt are far more refined than mine. You should know by now I’m always going to defer to you when it comes to what we eat.” He froze as he said that, looking away and cursing himself for his own words. For what we eat. He made it sound like they were a couple—really and truly—like it was the most normal thing in the world.
Hannibal didn’t seem to notice the floundering. “Perhaps one day I will stop asking you, but I am still unable to resist the impulse to request your opinion.” Hannibal shut the fridge and held his hands up in mock defeat. “Call it the decorous side of my nature.”
Will snorted. “If you’re looking for decorum, you’ve landed the wrong guy.”
“I’ve landed you, have I?” Hannibal’s smirk was a toothy one.
Will waved a dismissive hand at him and left the kitchen. “Decide what you want for dinner. The aftermath is all yours, Hannibal,” he called over his shoulder.
Hannibal made no effort to reply, not one to shout from room to room if it wasn’t necessary.
Will took himself and his coffee into the bedroom, setting about grabbing some actual clothes to wear for the day. Since he knew what was coming, he figured it would be best to wear something he wouldn’t give two shits about ruining. He knew Hannibal would gladly take the opportunity to replace the entirety of Will’s wardrobe if he let him, but no amount of persuasion or blood was going to convince Will to let the older man have his way with his clothes. He dressed for comfort, not style. After so many years of roaming around, wearing jeans and a loose shirt became a matter of practicality.
Will saw no reason to change that. He wasn’t out to impress anyone.
Suddenly feeling particularly rebellious towards Hannibal’s clothing complaints, Will grabbed a shirt he knew the other man disliked. He could argue later that he wore it in case their clothes got ruined. Maybe, secretly, that’s why he was wearing it. It would be easier than throwing it away because Hannibal hated it. That would mean Will bent on something. He didn’t want to bend. His father didn’t raise him to bend. He raised him to flip the bird to anyone and everyone and then do what he wanted.
After a lethargic shower, Will got dressed and met Hannibal out in the sitting room.
Lafitte really was a beautiful little gem of a house. Shoved into a corner of color and activity, it was like a secret spot in the world that Hannibal had set in the middle of everywhere—just for them. Will almost regretted not taking the time to really look at it and take it in. It was obviously pretty damn old, if the hand-carved banisters and opulent antiques were anything to go by. If the point of this trip had actually been to take a real vacation, maybe Will would have appreciated it more. As it was, it was just a hole in the wall that held them at bay until they were unleashed into New Orleans.
The house was a muzzle, keeping their teeth from snapping at innocent bystanders until the moon was high and the saints had turned their eyes away from the city.
“You’re dressed.” Hannibal looked surprised.
Will matched his surprise with a nonplussed glare. “Yeah. Catch up with me because we’re going out.”
“Are we?”
Will made a sound as he searched around for his shoes. “Yeah. Where are my shoes?”
“By the staircase.” Hannibal rose steadily from his armchair, brushing out the wrinkles in his shirt. “May I ask where we are going? I had not anticipated our departure until night fell.”
“Hannibal, we’re in New Orleans.” Will looked at him with exasperation, sitting at the top step to pull his shoes on. “During Mardi Gras.”
“Yes?” Hannibal still wasn’t catching on and Will couldn’t tell if he was humored or irritated by that fact.
“So as happy as you are to let us be hermits in here until tonight, I want to go out. I want to see the city.” Will was aware how average the request was. It was bordering dangerously on the domesticity Will was so vehemently avoiding, but he couldn’t help himself. Hearing the sounds of the city and seeing it all just out of arm’s reach was driving him mad. He’d done enough sitting in fancy houses in the past eight months to last him a lifetime. He wanted to go out. He wanted to walk and feel pavement under his feet.
Sensing that Will’s desire wasn’t simply some spur of the moment whim, Hannibal nodded. “Allow me to get dressed and I’ll meet you downstairs shortly, then.”
For once, Will was glad for Hannibal’s desire to appease him.
He had barely been standing on the front stoop for five minutes before Hannibal joined him in all his three-piece glory. The suit was blue and had gold lining and red stitches and as tacky as the whole ensemble would have been on anyone else, Hannibal wore it well. He had an odd looking bag hanging over his shoulder. Will didn’t care to ask what it was.
Will, however, was decked out in plaid and denim and heavy work boots and the pure, unadulterated pleasure he felt at standing next to Hannibal looking like that wasn’t something he would trade for anything. Next to each other they looked like something out of a sitcom about odd couples. Will found it hilarious.
“You look insidiously pleased with yourself,” Hannibal observed.
And Will was. For the first time in days, he was suddenly enjoying himself. “Yeah. Now get a move on. Just because I don’t know good places to eat doesn’t mean I’ve never been here before. Time to show you New Orleans as seen by yours truly. Not gonna find any fancy art halls or five star restaurants on this tour.”
Hannibal smiled and Will blatantly ignored the affection in his eyes. “Lead on, Will.”
So Will led on.
He showed Hannibal the odd-end bookshops down in the garden district, dragged him to Joey K’s bar for a lunch of fatty foods and beer, walked him down the Riverwalk to check out the Mardi Gras floats , and the entire time Hannibal went along without a fuss, even going so far as to look like he was enjoying himself.
When they were walking up to Audubon Aquarium on Canal, Will realized the past six hours had been a goddamned date.
But at that point he was buzzed on three pints of beer and he couldn’t find it in him to care enough about how ironic it was that two serial killers were wandering around New Orleans like a couple of smitten tourists. If anything, it just made the whole thing that more surreal and laughable. Will figured the audacious nature of their very existence forgave any implications the day held and he let it go, instead deciding to enjoy what was his favorite part of the city. The aquarium.
He looked up at the angled glass of the building and grinned so wide that he felt like a kid again. For five minutes, he forgot who he was and he forgot who Hannibal was. For five minutes, he had never killed anyone, never eaten a man’s heart straight from his chest like an animal—a story he hadn’t told Hannibal, never been more covered in blood than skin. When Hannibal put his arms around Will’s shoulders in an uncustomary display of public affection, Will leaned into it. Because for five minutes, they were a couple and Will let himself revel in it.
For five minutes, Will felt human.
And then the five minutes were over and Will could taste the ghost of blood and ash in his mouth and see dead eyes staring up at him every time he blinked. It was good while it lasted.
Hannibal squeezed his shoulders. “Let’s go in. This should be our last stop. It’s nearing dinner time.”
Will nodded and they ascended the stairs together. If Will was to be plain about it, he would have gotten tired of those five minutes eventually. He would have missed the bloody tang. His throat would have gotten dry and raw and he would have felt just as useless as he had for the past however many months.
It took ten minutes before Will was forced to eat his own thoughts. They were standing in an archway of glass and the bright, vibrant colors of corals and fish were surrounding them with blues and life and Will wondered if maybe those five minutes were lasting a bit too long.
By the way Hannibal was watching him instead of the fish, Will was pretty sure that was the case.
“Forgive my staring, Will.” Hannibal’s eyes were raking over Will’s face. “But I have never seen you this—“
“Childish?” Will interjected, flushing. He knew he had no reason to feel embarrassed, but he had practically been pressing his face against the glass like a toddler and he felt embarrassed.
Hannibal exhaled softly and shook his head in the negative. “Happy.”
Will ran a hand through his hair and reigned himself in. “Yeah, I guess. I…” he trailed off as a family walked by them and gazed at a jellyfish as it floated on by, so colorful it looked like a Christmas light. “I have always loved water. Any kind of water.” He reached out and tapped his knuckle lightly on the glass, resting it there. “The ocean, lakes, rivers. Water has always been my escape ever since I was a kid.”
“It reminds you of safety.”
Will’s skin bristled at the psychoanalysis that he knew was inevitable, but he nodded nonetheless. “Yeah. My dad would take me out on boats a lot. Taught me to fish. Would take me out on rented boats in the marina when he had the money to rent one. He used to tell me he didn’t have a son, he had a giant fish that just wandered around on two legs.” His eyes grew distant at the memory. Long-since repressed emotions threatened to shiver up but he easily brushed them off.
“We all have places in which we are in our element,” Hannibal observed, coming up to Will’s side to follow his gaze into the water. “Your element, it would seem, is water. I can find no more suitable element for you, Will. ‘For whatever we lose, it is ourselves that we find in the sea.’”
Will shut his eyes. “Cummings.” With a turn, he continued down through the archway towards the innards of the aquarium. “It’s true, though. I’ve never felt more solid than when there are waves under my feet.”
“And yet your preferred method of travel was by road.”
Will laughed. “Hard to hitch rides on boats, Hannibal.”
Hannibal’s eyes glowed with levity. Will stared at him for a moment, feeling something tugging at the back of his brainstem like an annoying kid begging for candy.
“You know,” Will stopped mid-step. “I’m ready to go. It’s nearly seven. Let’s head to Bourbon.”
Eyebrows raised, Hannibal frowned. “Do you not want to see the rest?”
“I’ve seen what I wanted to.”
“Very well.”
Will could tell that Hannibal wanted to press it—find out why Will’s mind had changed so capriciously—but Will didn’t have a formulated answer for him and luckily Hannibal seemed to know that. Hannibal tended to have a sixth sense for when Will needed to talk and when he needed to be let alone.
Bourbon street was barely a ten minute walk from the aquarium, but with all the people out on the street in droves for the parades it was significantly slower. Now that the sun was starting to fall and drinks were starting to flow more freely, it took a hefty chunk of time for Hannibal and Will to bob and weave away from all of the street musicians, costumed celebrators trying to pull them into the fray, and vendors offering drinks or beads or everything else in between.
The two of them gave up on trying to make any kind of progress when they reached some pub a few stretches down the street. The scenery had slowly morphed from giant, colorful floats and ornate masks and headdresses to drunken teens and scantily clad women.
“Well, we’re in the right place,” Will muttered as he saw a topless girl run by with her friends. “A bit early for them to be started on that, though.”
“It’s almost tempting to rejoin the actual parades, isn’t it?”
Will glanced wistfully in the direction of the less-naked portion of the festivities. It was something to behold, to be sure, but it simply wasn’t why they were there. He could hear cheering and music in the distance and bright colored lights flashed through the sky. “Almost gives the impression that we’re missing the party.”
The wind was carrying glimmering confetti through the air and letting it rain down in bursts around them. A drunken group of young men were singing something nearby, off key and boisterous.
Hannibal smiled and it was shark-like. “We will make our own party.”
“Yeah, but let’s get a drink first.” Will grabbed Hannibal’s hand, emboldened by the music and the shouting and the colors of the night.
Hannibal resisted. “I don’t tend to drink on these particular nights. I prefer to stay focused.”
Will rolled his eyes and tugged harder until Hannibal relented and allowed himself to be dragged into the overcrowded pub. “Yeah, well I prefer to drink. It’s a fucking party, after all!” he shouted over the noise.
And then Hannibal was the one who looked out of place in his finely tailored suit and immaculate hair. Will laughed as a few girls came up to hang over Hannibal and look at his suit, cooing giddy praise at him for the colors. The older man allowed them to drape necklaces of beads around his neck and place kisses on his cheeks before running off into the fray.
Hannibal’s completely blank expression coupled with the ridiculous beads hanging around his neck made Will lose it. He laughed so hard his eyes teared up and Hannibal abandoned him to sit at the bar. Will stumbled through the crowd and by the time he got there Hannibal had already ordered a whiskey for him. The moment Will sat down, the bartender eyed the two of them, reached under the bar, and came back up with a handful of necklaces that he promptly dropped unceremoniously around Will’s neck.
Will gaped at him and the bartender winked before going to serve his other customers.
Will refused to acknowledge Hannibal’s smug look. “Yeah well I’m fine with the beads.”
“They look good on you.” Hannibal had to lean in close so Will could hear him.
Will grimaced and plucked up some of the beads, eyeing the cheap plastic. “I’ll leave them on, then.” He knocked back his whiskey in one go and tapped the glass on the counter to ask for another. When he saw that Hannibal had nothing, he ordered one for him as well, ignoring the protests of the man beside him.
“Will.”
“No. One drink won’t kill you.” He gave Hannibal a pointed look and waited until he picked up his own glass with a sigh and they knocked one back together.
Forty minutes later they were enough drinks in to be considered bad judgment, half covered in glitter from a woman who had run in with a basket of it and started throwing it on everyone, and were crammed into a booth with an exuberant Irishman and a man in a ten gallon hat.
For as much as Will hated being in crowds, the sight of a glittered Hannibal trying in vain to edge away from a handsy cowboy was worth it.
“Are ye two a couple, then?” The Irishman shouted over the roar of the crowd, nudging Will with his elbow.
“Something like that,” Will replied, just tipsy enough to not care about his answer. He was nowhere near drunk but he was on that teetering edge of over-talkative and relaxed. “You and cowboy here?”
“Nah, mate. We’re just pals. We go to school.”
Will didn’t ask what for. He didn’t care. He just smiled and nodded and let the man keep rambling on at him. Then Hannibal caught his attention because his body stiffened ever so slightly and his eyes were focused on the doorway the way a hawk spots game. Will followed his gaze but saw nothing but drunkards and colors and feathers. He tapped Hannibal’s thigh with his hand, giving him a questioning look when the man turned to him.
Hannibal leaned in until only Will could hear him, which wasn’t all that hard given the noise of the place. “Time to go.”
After shouting some half-assed excuse to the man next to him, Will pried himself out of the booth and followed Hannibal through the sardine-packed pub. The street wasn’t much better. It was overflowing from every corner now, people pouring out onto the street in a myriad of costumes and laughter and a few less than appropriate positions if you looked towards the alleys.
Hannibal’s eyes were scanning the crowd, but Will had no idea how he would be able to spot anything. There was too much going on—too many people—and it was all a blur.
Luckily, Hannibal spotted his mark because he was gripping Will by the elbow and pulling him down the street with purpose. Will let himself be dragged, feeling a bit like a dog and having no idea where they were going. Once they had pulled free of a large squall of people Will finally found a voice to his curiosity. Now that he didn’t have to outright scream to be heard, it was easier.
“Care to share?”
Hannibal slowed his pace and glanced over at Will. “A man took a very intoxicated young woman out of the bar. His intentions were apparent.”
Will couldn’t help but be a little stunned. “What, we’re playing white knight?”
Hannibal looked unimpressed by the comparison. “I have always found crimes of a sexual nature to be particularly detestable, Will. I know you share this perspective.”
“I do, but I just wasn’t expecting to be noble tonight.”
“This is not nobility. This is consequence.” Hannibal’s eyes were hard. His inner predator was leaking out from the seams. “Luring intoxicated young women to sexually abuse them is unspeakably rude. I do not tolerate rudeness.”
Will swallowed against his reply. Hannibal was not one to take offense to rudeness committed against another—only himself and, on occasion, Will—so there had to be more to it than the other man was letting on, but by the way Hannibal’s jaw ticked with tension and his gait remained steady and determined, Will thought it was best not to ask. “Alright. Do you have eyes on him?”
Hannibal stopped as soon as the last word was leaving Will’s mouth, causing the smaller man to stumble in surprise. “Yes. He just took her into that building.” He nodded towards what appeared to be an underground club of some kind, complete with neon lights and smokers hovering around the doorway.
“If you’re about to drag me into some sex club, I will never forgive you,” Will grumbled, pulling his pack of cigarettes from his back pocket. He raised an eyebrow when Hannibal stared at him with unmasked disbelief. “What? It’s not like they’re going anywhere so let me have a damned cig before we do this. Jesus.” He lit up and leaned back against the brick of the building next to them, eyes sideways and watching the door of the club.
Hannibal made sure to leave the disappointment on his face as he waited patiently for Will to suck the smoke into his lungs. “It’s unhealthy.”
“No shit,” Will snapped, taking another drag. “So are a lot of things.”
“I dislike the smell.”
“Christ, Hannibal. Do you have a list? Do I need to get a notepad?” Will bit into his filter and felt the menthol burn at his tongue. He gasped and barely caught the falling cigarette as Hannibal reached over and grabbed a fistful of his hair to yank his head back.
Hannibal said nothing, simply jerking Will’s head backwards until his throat was stretched taut and his lips parted from the strain. He didn’t even look at him.
Will let out a pained snicker. “Sorry. Too much sass? Must be the whiskey.”
Hannibal’s hand flexed in Will’s hair. Still, he said nothing, looking blankly ahead at the club.
Breathing unsteadily, Will slowly reached up and took another drag from the cigarette. He had nearly snapped it in half when he caught it and the paper was hanging on by a thread. A tiny curl of smoke was slipping free of the tear. He blew the exhale away from Hannibal’s face, not being suicidal, and tossed the butt to the ground. “I’m done.”
Finally, Hannibal turned to look at him. His eyes were a hollow black and he blinked deliberately. “Are you certain?”
Will licked his lips and made an aborted attempt at a nod, held at bay by Hannibal’s fist. “Yeah.”
Hannibal’s fingers leisurely unfurled from their grip in Will’s curls, sliding gently over the back of his neck and shoulder before falling away. “Shall we?”
Will’s response was a crooked grin and he fell in step alongside the taller man. Their walk was casual and smooth, drawing no attention and turning no heads. With any luck, most people in the club would be too drunk or too high to even notice they were there. If the lack of bouncer at the door was any indication, it wasn’t really the place they kept a close eye on the visitors.
If they were going to wing this extempore, the less observant the crowd the better.
Will felt like he had stepped into a bad action movie from the second they set foot inside the main floor. Complete with bass-assaulting techno and flashing lights, the club was a mess of bodies and clamor. Despite his initial distaste towards the music, Will couldn’t deny the way the beat of it made his bones vibrate and his chest feel heavy and focused. It drew him in, closed him off into a singular and separate world as Hannibal guided him through the crowd to the sidelines.
The expectation that the majority of the clubbers would be too far gone to pay them any heed was an accurate one. Will lost count of red eyes and red faces and the ecstatic and detached expressions of people with far too many chemicals in their system. He could smell the sweat of too many bodies and the tang of alcohol and too many mixes of colognes and perfumes that turned the air into what was probably one big headache for Hannibal. Will didn’t envy Hannibal’s sense of smell in that moment.
The same man who had scented Will in the middle of a forest off of nothing but bath soap was now being battered by the club’s effluvium. Just as Will was considering how noxious it must have been for him, Hannibal shut his eyes and leaned his face into Will’s hair, breathing in deeply.
Will resisted the urge to pull away, instead resorting to a disbelieving laugh as Hannibal damn near buried his face in Will’s hair in order to escape the smells of the room. Hannibal said something into Will’s crown and Will did pull away then.
“What?”
“I said it’s back that way,” Hannibal repeated, pointing towards a door across the left of the club.
Will frowned and shook his head. The door looked like it led to a staff room or something. “How do you know? Did you see him go in?”
“Not him, no. Another two men just went in there. They passed us a few moments ago and bore the scent of the same cologne from our friend.”
“How the fuck can you possibly smell his cologne in all of this?”
Hannibal’s lips pinched for a moment. “It’s there.”
Will shifted on his feet uneasily. “You said two more guys. That puts us at three, at least, if you’re right.”
“And?”
“That’s…” Will swallowed and looked at the door again. “Ambitious.”
Hannibal looked as unflappable as ever. “You have your knives, don’t you?”
“Yes, but you didn’t bring anything.” Will glanced curiously at the bag Hannibal had been toting around the entire day, only remembering its presence now. “Did you?”
Hannibal left the curiosity towards the bag unanswered. “I don’t need anything.”
“Now isn’t the time for arrogance.”
“Now is exactly the time for arrogance.” The look Hannibal gave the smaller man then was a challenging one.
Will groaned. “You’re going to get us killed.”
A tiny twinge of a smile was lingering at the edge of Hannibal’s mouth. “That remains to be seen.”
Knowing there was no point in arguing this any further, Will scowled and moved away towards the door. He didn’t need to look back to know that Hannibal was following him. He was.
It was no surprise when no one stopped them from going through the door. The club was dark—full of flashing and distracting lights and even more distracting people—and the chance that two random men opening a door were going to be given a second thought was next to nil. What was surprising was what lay behind that door.
The two of them stood at the head of it for a moment, staring down the empty hall as the door muffled the jarring sounds of club music behind them.
“Is there a whole second club back here?” Will narrowed his eyes and took a step forward. The hall had a row of doors down it and turned at the end, hinting at even more past the first glance.
The sound of laughter stopped Hannibal from answering. Their heads turned towards the noise in unison, honing in as predatory instincts began to claw up their spines.
Will’s entire body was tense. “That sounds like more than three.”
“It does.” And still, Hannibal seemed entirely unperturbed.
They crept quietly towards the sound. The laughs continued, punctuated by a few less traceable noises and clatters of glass. When they made it to the end of the hall and followed the turn, the dull buzz of the club now barely a hum in the background, they saw light poking out from a cracked door ten feet away.
Will went up to it first and looked through the narrow passage. He could see two men from the angle, young and drunk off their asses. They were guffawing like they had heard the best joke in the world, slapping their legs and sloshing beer bottles around. One of the men had his shirt undone and it was hanging around him limply.
Then, there were words.
“Fucking look at her. She’s so fucked up.”
Will’s spine tensed so hard he thought it would snap. Despite his skepticism towards the possible heroics of this venture, the confirmation that something like this was happening was making his muscles ache with the need to lash out. Will knew he was the last person to judge right from wrong, but the concept of someone being abused to sexual gain had never sat right with him. It was dirty and base. It was pathetic.
Real men didn’t rape. They didn’t molest. That was the action of insecurity and weakness. It was a desperate cling to power and dominance.
It was disgusting.
Will felt his stomach roil with acid as another man, unseen, responded. “You gonna fuck her or what?”
“No, man, look. She’s waking up.”
Bile rose in Will’s throat and he felt his eyes burn with revulsion. A glance back showed Hannibal’s countenance a display of antipathy.
There were whimpers then and a shrill cry before the raunchy laughter of the men started up again along with a catcall of “Come on, sweetheart!”
Will had heard enough. Standing straight, he let the cool wave of Hannibal’s mentality sweep over him. He let Hannibal’s beast drench him in the stormless sea it was comprised of; let that monster of ice and emptiness fill his chest like a burning chill. He let it change him. With the slightest of exhales, he tapped the door open with a finger.
The laughing tapered down as the scene came into view, the men looking stupidly over at Will and Hannibal as they tried to blink away enough of their drunkenness and savagery to understand what was happening. There were four men in total, three of them sloppily draped in chairs as one held a young, teary-eyed woman on the cement floor. Her eyes were fading in and out of focus, obviously drugged, and she sniffed back sobs as she tried to weakly pull away from her captor. Her blouse was ripped.
Will’s eyes flicked from face to face, taking each and every person into his consciousness in turn as he heard Hannibal click the door shut behind them.
“The fuck?” one of the men spat, stumbling gracelessly up from his chair. “Listen, this is a private party alright?” He hitched his baggy pants up his hip and took and unsteady step forward.
Will sneered at him. “Doesn’t look like she wanted the invitation.”
The man holding her to the floor barked out a laugh and gripped her harder, making her cry out. “What are you? Good Samaritans? Mind your own business before we mind it for you.”
Hannibal strode smoothly up beside Will, peeling off his suit jacket and laying it on a nearby chair. He looked every bit as composed as one would walking into a ballroom; all perfect posture and genial smiles. “I don’t believe we fit the description of the Good Samaritan, no.” He was unbuttoning his cuffs and rolling up his sleeves. “Humanitarianism requires not only doing good, but being good. I’m afraid the release of this unfortunate young lady will be but a pleasant consequence of this encounter. It is not, however, the purpose.” He took the Mardi Gras beads off and laid the necklaces neatly on the chair holding his jacket. His mysterious bag soon followed, its unknown purpose stacked against a chair leg on the floor.
The men blink dumbly at him, slow to process. One of them summed up their collective lack of intelligence aptly.
“Huh?”
Will’s eyes narrowed when one to the left had a bit more to say.
“If you’re not here for her, then why are you here?” The man’s face was calmer than the others. He was far less intoxicated. His eyes were dark.
He was the alpha of the pack, clear as day.
And just like that he marked himself as the one to pay attention to.
Unlike Will, whose focus was now riveted on the man in the corner, Hannibal was looking at no one in particular, still smiling and adjusting his clothes. “I’m afraid I must ask if any of you have guns.” The stunned silence in the room answered his question and only then did Hannibal look at the men. “Good. Now if you’ll be so kind as to let the girl leave the room, my friend and I would like to have a more private discussion with the four of you.”
“Go fuck yourself!” the one on the floor snarled. He stood and yanked the girl up with him, ignoring her babbling pleas to stop. “We’ll beat the shi—“
A deathly silence shot into the room like a stray bullet and the man’s words stuttered to a stop. He stumbled. Briefly, his grip on the young woman tightened and she whimpered, but then he was letting go of her and taking a jarring step backwards.
Will’s hand was extended past Hannibal’s side, hovering in the air with the ghost of action, the memory of his movement barely shimmering into reality due to the sheer speed of it. The man let out a garbled sound of confusion and reached up to his face, fingers scrambling against the knife sticking out of his eye. His hands weakly gripped at the handle of Will’s knife, pulling at it with nerveless fingers even as he sank to his knees. The smallest trickle of blood was pooling in his eye socket and dripping past the edge of the blade.
Dust was hovering in the air. Hannibal wasn’t breathing. Will’s shoulders twitched.
“I’ve never done that before,” Will muttered, watching with a detached fascination as the man’s fingers slipped around the blade in his eye.
Hannibal looked sideways at him and made an impressed sound. “You did well for your first attempt. Fantastic aim.”
Then the girl’s hazed mind caught up with what was happening and she looked at the man who had fallen to the floor next to her. She screamed.
The sudden shriek of noise burst the room back into full speed like someone flipping the fast forward switch. Just like that, the men were off their chairs, two coming at Hannibal and Will and the third dragging the woman by the hair to the back of the room.
There were no nods of mutual coordination. There was no checking to see where one or the other was going. There were no words.
Hannibal and Will simply moved—separate and together like vines curling away from each other on the stone facing of a wall. Hannibal’s body slid to a crouch like a panther, leg sweeping out to knock one of the men off their feet. The man fell to the cement with a thudding grunt and then Will was on his counterpart, his other knife digging into the man’s shoulder until it got blocked by bone.
The man was hulking and meaty and the adrenaline of the situation and the booze he had no doubt soaked himself in earlier had dulled his senses. He barely reacted when Will twisted the blade, feeling it scrape bone, and kept moving forward like a wave. Will threw his body weight back and followed the movement like a backwards tango, letting the inertia of the man propel him and keeping his balance with nothing but his grip on the blade currently wedging itself under the man’s collarbone.
Recognizing the opportunity, Will dropped his elbow low and angled the knife, shoving up and under the clavicle. If he guessed right, the tip of the steel was no more than an inch away from the man’s throat and the trapezius muscle was damn near severed in two.
That did it.
The man’s grip fell away with a snap as his shoulder spasmed and he lost control of his arm entirely, body trying in vain to dispel the blade digging into his sternocleidomastoid. His shoulder was soaking through with crimson at an alarming rate and Will wondered if he severed some kind of artery. His thoughts were knocked bodily from him when the man used his undamaged arm to bash a forearm into Will’s throat and shove him back in a wall. It was an attempt to push him away, but the knife in Will’s hand kept him held fast, locked in tight by bone and flesh.
The man hissed and tried to grab at Will’s neck, catching the plastic beads instead and snapping the string. Brightly colored orbs flew into the air in every direction, scattering across the cement like rain. Growling, the man shoved his forearm up again, catching under the jaw.
Will gasped against the bruising crush on his windpipe, eyes flicking wide and left when he heard a grunt that sounded suspiciously like Hannibal. He looked just in time to see Hannibal stumble back, wiping blood from his mouth and looking positively feral.
At first glance, Will thought he had come out the victor, but his eyes were still focused on something and Will quickly figured out that the older man’s opponent had yet to be overcome when he blocked Will’s view of Hannibal with a broad back. There was a knife in the man’s hand and Will realized with a belated type of offense that it was the knife he had thrown earlier. The man must have yanked it from his friend’s eye.
Had to give him credit, Will mused as his focus was slapped back to the man currently trying to crush his trachea, the guy had to have one hell of a stomach to get that knife. Or maybe he was just ten kinds of desperate.
In the end, it didn’t matter. Will had other things to deal with.
He met the eyes of the man pinning him down and grinned, wide and splitting. He knew how he must have looked—face red, teeth gleaming, and glitter probably still speckling his hair—because the man had a flash of perplexed fear on his face before Will was viciously yanking the knife out of him and kneeing him in the groin.
Will’s eyes darkened with the kind of humor that only struck him in his most murky moments where the lines of human and demon were diminished to smoky remnants. A thought occurred to him that he was playing with his food and he almost laughed. Almost.
The man was gripping his crotch with his good arm, the bloody one hanging useless and twitchy at his side, and he groaned in pitiful pain. Will watched him like that before another sound from Hannibal reminded him that he didn’t have time to toy. There were other men still in the room and they weren’t dead yet.
It was then that it hit him. The third man. The leader. Where was he?
Will chanced a look away from his whimpering prey to seek out the one who had dragged the girl off. His stomach sank into his shoes when he saw him.
“Ah, you fucking asshole,” he snarled, kicking the man in front of him in the head when he tried to stand up. The man fell back with a shout, nose bloody.
There, across the room, the third one was standing with an arm around the girl’s throat. Her face was a mess of tears and purplish red from where she had been socked in the eye. Against her temple was a gun.
Furious at the realization that there was a gun in the room and immediately going into survival mode, Will scowled and grabbed the man on the floor by his hair, not even bothering to look at him as he sloppily slit his throat. He held onto his hair, holding him up with frustration alone as he continued to stare in ire at the man across the room. The was the sound of impact to his left, but he didn’t look. He just stared at the gun and listened to the messy gurgles of the man shuddering at his feet.
His shoe shifted and he felt it slip. Good, that meant the man was almost done bleeding out. Unconcerned with his current victim, Will let go of the hair in his hand and stood up straight. The man was still standing across the room. He was not afraid. He was not panicked. He was collected and glowering, finger calmly resting on the trigger of his pistol as he stared right back at Will.
The girl had given up trying to fight entirely. She was hanging limply in her captor’s arms, drug addled mind forcing her to accept her fate.
A weak, dying hand smacked at Will’s shin and he impatiently kicked it away. The man on the floor stopped moving.
There was blood drying on the back of his knuckles and he adjusted his grip on the handle of the blade. His ears registered a distinct lack of sound coming from his left now, but no one was attacking him and so it wasn’t hard to determine the outcome of whatever had happened. He made no effort to turn until Hannibal’s voice lured him away from the barrel of the gun.
“It seems we are at a disadvantage.”
Will turned his head to see Hannibal standing a few feet away. The man’s voice was slightly raspy, like he was out of breath, but besides a split lip and a ripped shirt he looked wholly unscathed. Will would take time to feel relieved later.
When there wasn’t a gun in some random guy’s hand that could be pointed at them any damn second.
“Who the fuck are you people?”
Two sets of eyes focused on the man across the room. Hannibal was the one who replied, ever the charismatic one.
“Tourists.”
Will snorted.
The man with the gun, however, did not seem amused. “I’ve never seen tourists do what you just did.”
Will frowned. He reached out with his mind—with that indiscernible part of him that clung to others like sticky tack—taking the other man in. His frown deepened the longer he stared at him. He could feel it; that seeping coldness of slipping into someone else’s mind. The static and fog that accompanied leaving himself ever so slightly. The thick molasses of someone else’s identity encompassing his own. He licked his chapped lips and his fingers flexed on the knife again, forcing some dried blood to flake off to the floor. “But you don’t seem particularly put off.”
The man stared at Will for a second, considering him. “Oh, believe me, I’m put off. What’s dead is dead.” He looked with a sneer at the bodies on the floor. Will followed his gaze, taking in the chaos for the first time. One missing an eye, one festering in a pool of his arterial blood, and the last with his neck twisted back so far he was practically an extra from an exorcist movie.
The man waited to continue until Will looked at him again. For some reason, he seemed entirely uninterested in Hannibal’s presence. His sights were set on Will and Will alone. Whether it was from a foolish misjudgment of Hannibal’s threat or it was a belief that Will was the weaker of the two and more susceptible to his games, there was no way to tell. “But seeing as I’m the only one left not dead, you could say I’m a little bit put off by my options. So I’m holding some collateral.” As if to make his point, he shoved the nose of the gun harder into the girl’s temple and she sniffled, tears starting anew.
“As we explained to you before,” Hannibal replied coolly, picking at the rip on his shirt with a displeased twist of his lips. “We are not here for her. It would be dishonest to claim we are rescuers.”
As dull as Hannibal’s voice sounded, Will could hear the animal lurking under the still waters. The horns were sliding just beneath the surface; waiting.
The man, content to be a poor judge of character in regards to Hannibal, looked at Will again. He tilted his head, smiling in a peculiar and festering way.
Will felt his skin crawl at the look, his mind still tangled in the tendrils of another person’s thoughts. He could feel the insidious oil that was coating the man across the room. It was greasing up the walls and turning the room a sickly color of putrid intentions. And he was utterly fixated on Will. What he saw, Will didn’t know, but he was sure he wouldn’t like whatever it was if he figured it out.
“So you won’t mind if I off the bitch?”
Will stared him head on, face expressionless and apathetic. He felt grimy and smothered and he knew it was due to letting his mind stretch out like taffy.
Hannibal made an inscrutable sound. “It would be awfully rude to her, but it would not change our intentions here, I’m afraid.”
“And your intentions are to kill me?” The man looked more curious than afraid. That wasn’t ever a good sign. “Why? I don’t know you.”
Will wondered how much longer Hannibal could keep this going. He could feel murder rolling off of his companion in waves. It was more than he was usually able to glean from Hannibal, likely due to the fact that he had already thrown enough of his own walls down to feel anything and everything around him. That combined with Hannibal’s predator rearing its head and it made sense that Will was able to latch onto the normally vacant emptiness that was Hannibal’s mind.
Hannibal’s mind was a universe—a black hole that consumed the world and planes of reality that came into its orbit—and Will was feeling its gravity as sure as his own heartbeat.
They would only be able to play this game for so long. He could feel impatience and he wasn’t sure if it was his or Hannibal’s or both. They had to find a way to get the gun off that bastard across the room.
But Will had no idea how.
“You will never know us.” Hannibal’s voice cut through the thick of the silence. “You have no reason to.”
You have no right to, is what Will heard.
“Well then I guess we better get a move on. I have places to be.”
“By all means.”
Will tensed. Whatever way this was going to go, there was no space for a wrong move here. A bullet was a lot more final than he liked it to be.
The man tapped the gun roughly against the girl’s skull with a painful metallic jab. She shivered violently and tried to pull away. He held fast.
Panic and despair poured from her like the vinegary acidity of wine left too long to the air. Will’s eyes flicked to her inadvertently before he caught himself and returned his gaze to the man. It was too late. Catching the slip did nothing to deny the fact that the slip had happened. He had shown concern. He had made a mistake.
Will could have punched himself when he saw the man smile at him.
He was such a damned idiot. He had let his empathy stretch out to get a sense of their opponent and forgotten to reign it back in. He had left it there, hovering in the air unchecked, and it had latched onto the girl like a leech. It fed her fear into Will’s veins before he could turn the tap. And he had felt concern.
And the man had seen it.
Will locked his mind down like a cage. He cornered the stray emotions, both his and anyone else’s, and locked them away in the dusty and shadowed rooms that housed his unwanted selves. But it was too late now. The damage had been done. It was best if he didn’t let himself regret the consequences and so he locked his regret away in those rooms too—his capacity for guilt and compassion. Those things wouldn’t help him here. They would only lead to more mistakes.
The man’s smile was corrupt and polluted. With force, he shoved the woman in front of him, moving the gun to the back of her head and holding her still with a tug on her shirt. She looked at Will and Hannibal in turn, pleading and begging with her foggy eyes and quivering lips. Both men regarded her, said nothing, continued to stare on in silence.
Neither of them had anticipated this; predicted this man. He was like a snake that had slithered out of their world. He was like them and not, far too savage to be considered an equal. But that savagery was compelling. He didn’t have the grace of Hannibal or the fervor of Will, but he had something. Will found himself wondering just how many people this man had killed because it wasn’t a question of if.
“Should I let her go then?”
Hannibal had trained his gaze back on the man and his gun with a countenance of pure detachment. His body was relaxed. Will’s knife was in his hand.
Will, on the other hand, was looking at the woman. The doors in his mind were creaking on rusty hinges soiled over from disuse. She met his eyes and flinched as the man tapped the base of her skull with the pistol.
“Please, help me.” And her voice was so afraid.
Will frowned. He knew what was going to happen. He could hear the man’s thoughts as clearly as his own; images of death flickering like snapshots. He could see his design.
Without intending to, he responded to her, voice soft and listless. “You’ll be okay.” He saw Hannibal turn to him ever so slightly, but he didn’t care to see the expression he had received.
“Yes.” The gunman’s voice was light and airy. “You’ll be fine.” And he shoved at her back, sending her stumbling forward towards Hannibal and Will.
Will tensed violently. His fingers dug into the knife handle and his feet spread. The woman looked shocked for a moment, unable to understand that she had been released and why. Shaking and tormented, she looked up at Will who was now a foot away from her. She had hope in her eyes.
Will refused to shut his eyes when he heard the bang; refused to look away. Even as her eyes blew wide and her pupils stretched thin, he kept on looking at her. When the warm and invading jolt of blood and brain matter hit his face, he didn’t wince away. He didn’t shut his eyes. He made sure to watch every second of her death even as she careened towards the floor, long-since gone from this world.
When she was still and silent on the ground with the exit wound in her forehead looking vulgar and obscene, Will reached up to wipe the blood away from his eyes and focus his attention back on the man. Will had been watching the woman long enough that the man had let the gun fall to his side, not even bothering to aim it in his opponents’ direction. He did not look pleased or satisfied and that pissed Will the hell off. It was a helluva lot easier to hate an arrogant son of a bitch.
As it was, the man simply looked complacent, as if he had only done what he needed to and nothing more.
In the end, Will supposed he had. Even if Will and Hannibal succeeded in their hunt, the woman would be a witness to them just as easily as she would have been a witness to the atrocities of her kidnappers. Fear had an uncanny way of overwhelming gratitude. Will didn’t avoid the understanding that it was just a justification to remove himself from caring and preventing him from disgust.
He could not be disgusted. It would be hypocritical.
He and Hannibal would have killed her too, in the end.
Hannibal was done waiting for contemplation. For the first time that night, the older man moved without Will expecting him to, jolting to the left and forward and jarring Will from his thoughts. The man started, moving to aim his gun at Hannibal after a brief moment of indecision regarding his target. Will had a split second to act. Once more, he threw his knife with as much strength as he could manage with the instability of his adrenaline.
This one proved that the first throw had been beginner’s luck and reinforced his irritation toward colloquialisms. The knife hit far from its intended target, instead skimming just past the man’s chest and slicing his upper arm before hitting the wall behind him with a clatter. Will cursed loudly—the curse muffled by the crack and reverberation of another shot firing—and ran forward even as he realized that despite the inelegant throw, the knife had done its job. It had distracted the man just enough that his aim had shifted and he had missed Hannibal entirely.
Will took that chance. Leaping forward with a speed he didn’t know he had, he tackled the man to the ground. The gun went off again and Will vaguely registered a thud of momentum in his left arm as it was pushed back with force. He gasped when pain bloomed seconds later, filling his arm with a vicious throbbing that chilled his muscle like dry ice. He barely had the sense to grab the man’s wrist and shove the gun away from him. But the man was strong and he was fighting.
A stabbing pain jetted through Will’s arm and he lost his grip. The man shoved his hand up and slammed the butt of the gun against Will’s forehead, catching skin and bone with a pistol whip that made Will’s vision go white and splotchy. Will reared back and made a scrambled grab for the gun again. His vision refocused to see Hannibal grabbing the man by the throat with the kind of monstrous strength that Will hadn’t seen in him since Georgia, hauling the man to his feet by his neck and sending Will toppling off of him like a rag doll.
Will groaned and grabbed at his wounded arm, making a loud noise when he accidentally dug into the bullet hole. Quickly and with gritted teeth, he assessed the damage. Entry, exit, they were both there and Will sighed with relief.
His hand was slick with his own blood. His shoes were slick with some other man’s blood. His face was slick with the blood from the woman. Even his sweat felt viscous and thick.
Hannibal had the man up against the wall, legs thrashing and face turning purple. He tried to swing his gun to Hannibal’s stomach, but the larger man grabbed his wrist and dug his nails in the tendon in an attempt to force his fingers open.
Will got unsteadily to his feet and ran towards them. He didn’t see Hannibal’s knife anywhere—his own knife discarded when he’d thrown it—and so he resorted to the weapon he’d been given naturally just as sure as his own skin; his hands.
He went straight for the gun, curling his thumb under the man’s trigger finger and yanking the grip outwards. Together, he and Hannibal pried his hand away and let reflex and inertia do the rest. With a practiced ease that had been rigorously trained into him a long time ago, Will flicked the safety and tossed the gun out of reach.
Strangely, it was the scratching slide of the weapon across the floor that inspired the absurd thought that no one had come running at the gunshots. It seemed like duking it out behind a club was a stroke of genius. The music, the liquor, the drugs, they were all ensuring that this room at the back of some squalid hall was in its own world—unknown and unseen and unimportant.
As soon as the gun was gone, Hannibal practically threw the man away from the wall and face first into the floor. For a moment, Will simply watched him.
Hannibal’s presence was an ominous one. He towered over the man like a god stepping down to the earth. Each and every muscle was coiled and braced as he stalked towards his prey. Will’s attention was refocused when he saw the man scramble and heard a scrape. He had found one of the discarded knives and was grabbing for it. Will scanned the room for the other one, but all he could see was the ever-growing body count and dilapidated remains of unwanted furniture.
Hannibal wasted no time, grabbing the man by the back of his shirt in what was likely an attempt to pull him away from the knife. Will realized he was too slow the same time Hannibal did.
The man curved backwards, swinging his bodyweight in a twist and slicing the blade manically outwards. It caught Hannibal across the stomach and Will bolted, forcing Hannibal away with his bad arm and nearly screaming as his bullet wound was briefly assaulted in the action. He caught the tail end of the attack on his hip. The knife shredded his trousers open at the pocket and hit bone. He could feel blood bubbling out of his body like a leaky faucet from too many places to count.
The man leapt up and stabbed at Will again, this time digging the steel into Will’s shoulder in the place almost identical to the man Will had stabbed earlier. He felt his deltoid tear and then his attacker grabbed at the back of his neck with sweaty fingers, pulling Will close and driving the knife in deeper. Will could feel the man’s breath on his face. His left arm was nothing but fire.
With a snarl, he ducked forward and sunk his teeth into the soft flesh of the man’s face. There was no sound as Will clamped down—the man blown still from shock—and then Will was tearing away and taking half a cheek with him. He could feel it all. Hear the tearing sound of rending flesh, taste the salt of sweat and metal of blood, feel each piece of skin as it gave way. His mouth was full of it and it was raw and primitive and heavy on his tongue. The man was letting off a garbled cry now and pushing his weight into the blade. Through the watery pain in his eyes, Will found Hannibal.
He looked straight at him. And he swallowed.
He could feel the thick slide of it down every centimeter of his throat. It was almost as if he could hear the drop of it in his belly. Falling down to feed the beast.
And Hannibal’s eyes, oh, his eyes, they lit up like fireworks.
Will’s eyes shut against the onslaught on his shoulder and he pushed the crazed man digging at him like he was trying to claw out the prize trapped in Will’s body. The knife twisted and turned and then the weight of the man’s body was off of him and Will fell to his knees from the change in balance. Thoughtlessly, he yanked the knife out of his shoulder, immediately regretting the move when blood rained down on his palm in a soaking spill. His lips were slick and for a moment he forgot why, licking them as he tried to get a grip on his racing thoughts.
The taste of claret brought him back to reality.
His eyes cracked open at the sounds of struggle and he saw Hannibal kneeling over with hands on either side of the man’s face, bashing his head repeatedly into the floor. With each sickening crack, the man began to shudder and weaken until he was grabbing lamely at Hannibal’s shoulders and his feet were kicking out underneath him.
Crack. Will looked out over the room. The left arm of his shirt was saturated through with blood and sticking to him like a second skin.
Crack. The limp body of the woman lay in the middle of the chaos. Bodies surrounded her like worshippers come to venerate a fallen angel.
Crack. Will got to his feet. He was quivering. He could feel his muscles protesting every movement.
Crack. The man had almost stopped fighting entirely. Will limped over to them and placed a hand on Hannibal’s shoulder. He pulled, nearly as weak as the man Hannibal was currently beating into catatonia.
Hannibal froze. His palms were still flat on either side of the man’s bruised face. Blood was seeping through his fingers like syrup—coating the floor, pooling. “Will?”
At some point, Will had picked up one of his knives. He didn’t know which one it was. He couldn’t even remember picking it up. “I want to,” he rasped, meeting Hannibal’s questioning gaze. “I want to.”
For the briefest moment, it seemed as though Hannibal wasn’t going to relent, but slowly he nodded and let the man’s head drop to the cement with a wet slap. The man’s eyelids were fluttering rapidly as he struggled to stay conscious. Will had no doubt he would die either way now, even if they stopped.
When Hannibal moved to stand, Will shook his head. “No.”
Hannibal frowned and stayed put. He was watching Will with unnerving focus, like a tiger gifting its hunt to a lion.
Willing his shaking legs into submission, Will moved to crouch in front of Hannibal and pressed his back to the older man’s chest. They knelt over the body together, curled into one another and presiding over the macabre scene. Then, he waited, staring down at the eyes of the man beneath them. So slight the movement was in danger of being called tentative, Hannibal’s hands curiously slid over Will’s arms. He was careful to avoid the bullet wound as he moved to cover the back of Will’s hands with his own.
Will felt enveloped. Hannibal was surrounding him, covering him, consuming him. His warm, heavy chest was pressed to his shoulders like a blanket. His large, smooth hands enclosed over Will’s like gloves. He leaned forward and over Will’s shoulder, pressing their cheeks together.
The room was heady with stillness.
The only thought in Will’s mind was that Hannibal was probably getting blood all over his face leaning into Will like that.
Gently, Hannibal turned the knife in Will’s hand until the blade faced wrist-down. He covered his hands again and tightened his grip. “Together?” he murmured, lips brushing against the crimson stains on Will’s skin.
Will’s breathing shuddered and skipped. His heartbeat felt like a scratched cd—shocking over the same beat over and over again. The man’s eyes were distant and fading fast. One of his hands was pushing at Will’s forearm feebly. With the taste of blood in his mouth and the hot burn of his wounds, Will let Hannibal’s hands push his own down and in.
The knife went through just below the sternum. Will’s muscles tensed and reacted to the feeling, straining forward, but Hannibal held him back and they eased in with a precision Will had never been able to accomplish himself. The man’s body tensed and he gurgled, adrenaline kicking a flash of fight back into his system. He pushed at them, grabbed at them, but it meant nothing. He was no longer in the room. He was no longer relevant.
All that matter was the steady press, the way Hannibal angled their hands so the blade curved down and sharp, the way Will watched, fascinated, as they pushed just enough to sever the muscle and flesh and nothing beneath. The man’s body was opening to them as easily as the parting of curtains revealing the stage of his life. It was a performance. Hannibal was the director and Will his eager audience, pulled into the show and thrown within the spectacle like he was born for the role. In some ways, he felt like he must have been born for it.
When they reached pelvis, the man’s fighting had ceased entirely. He was shivering and twitching, chest making aborted attempts to breathe, blood pulsing and roiling over the sides of the wound. Will’s system received a stripe of electricity when he felt Hannibal’s lips on the side of his face again, whispering against it. “What shall we take?”
“I thought you had decided.” Will sounded more breathless than he meant to. He wanted to say it was from the blood loss. It wasn’t true.
“Have you ever taken a man’s heart, Will?”
For a split second, Will’s eyes left the body and turned towards Hannibal. He felt the double meaning in the words—the implication—and then remembered the story he had yet to tell. There had been a night maybe a year ago. It was a night he had never talked about, but that night answered the question. “Yes. I have.”
Perhaps from surprise or perhaps from pleasure, Hannibal leaned more heavily into Will. His approval radiated. “He’s still alive. Do you want to feel it beat?”
Will’s eyes widened. It was true. The man was still alive, but barely. “Yes.”
Hannibal put the knife aside and guided Will’s hand into the places they had exposed. It was a hypnogogic experience, putting his hand into a man’s abdomen. It was nothing like when he had gutted the ranger in the woods. That time had been hasty and rushed. He had grabbed at whatever his fingers would fit around and pulled. This time, the movements were slow and smooth. Hannibal made sure he felt all of it—that he could sense the warmth and wet and smooth and all the strangeness that was this sensation.
Their hands went up under the ribs, past things Will didn’t recognize, and the man began to make awful and rattling sounds.
Then, he felt it. Just at his fingertips. The weak and failing hiccups of movement. The drum of life. Will’s hand felt trapped and the muscle quivered against his fingers. One beat, two, three, and then it was still.
Will released a breath he hadn’t realized was caught in his chest and his eyes watered. Hannibal’s free arm had wound around his stomach and Will felt the blood from Hannibal’s cut seeping into his lower back.
“Did you feel it?”
Will nodded. He didn’t trust his voice.
They sat like that for what felt like the longest time, hands coiled around the man’s lost life. When they retracted, Will felt the unexplainable twinge of loss as though he had let go of something important. “Are we taking his heart?”
“Yes, but not from here.” Hannibal replied. The deep tenor his voice had tuned itself to was trickling back into passivity. Will could hear the calculation and the planning in every syllable. “I will open him from the side and take what we need.” He pulled back and stood, offering his viscera-tainted hand to Will. It took two slipping tries before Will was hefted up to his feet. The blood was slick between their palms. “Fetch me my bag.”
Realization dawned and Will felt like a fool. The goddamned bag. Of course that’s what it was. Will crept carefully over the bodies and picked up Hannibal’s bag with a sticky hand. Unzipping it, he confirmed his suspicions. It was a cooler, of sorts, two icepacks and a tiny roll of plastic settled at the bottom. The packs were cold but had long-since melted from frozen. He tossed the bag across the room and Hannibal caught it easily.
“I would impress the importance that the final result here be that of your design, Will.” Hannibal gestured towards the myriad of bodies. “It wouldn’t do for my signatures to be recognized in the very place I so suddenly decided to vacation to.”
Will let out a noiseless laugh. He hadn’t thought of that. Hannibal had never been connected to the Ripper—not truly—but the last thing they would need was someone getting curious and finding out that the Chesapeake Ripper just so happened to go on a spree in New Orleans at the same time Hannibal Lecter was in town.
As Hannibal set to work on their final victim, Will surveyed the scene around him. His mind wandered back to the images his imagination had conjured earlier. The fallen angel and her worshippers. Praying to her for forgiveness, perhaps, or absolution. Will wasn’t sure the men deserved such positions of begging. He wasn’t sure it would do the woman justice. Then again, he wasn’t sure why justice was factoring into his design at all.
Gritting his teeth, he began his own performance.
They had to move quickly. There was no telling how often people came down to this room. It was obvious that no one had heard the commotion, but that didn’t mean just any passerby wouldn’t wander through unannounced.
Hannibal and Will focused on their tasks, efficiency overtaking the hunt. Soon enough, Will was standing back and taking in the spectacle as Hannibal made quick work of wiping down the room.
“Our blood is in this,” Will said.
Hannibal sighed. “Nothing to be done about it. Unless you have a power hose tucked away, of course.” His lips quirked in a tiny smirk. “My DNA is not in the Louisiana system. Is yours?”
Will shook his head. “Prints yes. DNA no.”
“There will be no reason for them to test us. A connection to you and I will not even be considered.” Hannibal sounded unconcerned, but he always sounded unconcerned. “As long as that lack of consideration remains a constant, the presence of our blood will simply become a fading mystery in cold case files.”
Will swallowed, not completely convinced.
Hannibal tucked the cloth away in his bag and zipped it closed. “Your design is a beautiful one, Will.”
Will’s thoughts stumbled at the praise and he inspected his work again, trying to see it through Hannibal’s eyes.
He had retrieved one of the metal chairs from the side of the room and moved it center. The woman was slumped upon it, head tilted down and hair covering the wound in her forehead. She looked as though she was merely asleep. Surrounding her were the men. Will had opened each of them, one by one, and scooped out their innards like pulling filling from a pastry. Body by body, he had placed his collections in a pile at the girl’s feet like an offering; a grisly sacrifice on the altar.
The men were all fallen on their stomach’s, faces shoved to the ground to soak in their own blood—turned away from her, away from what they had done, away from knowing whether or not their offering would ever be accepted.
Will thought it was appropriate. He licked his lips and realized he still hadn’t wiped his face off. He was soaked through in blood now, both his own and that of every other person in the room. Hannibal wasn’t much better off. Will looked at him and laughed when he could still see bits of shimmering glitter amongst the gore. “We can’t just walk out like this,” he commented wryly.
Nonplussed by the sudden humor in Will’s voice, Hannibal nodded. “Very true. I have a feeling we would be stopped quite quickly if we were to wander about as we are.” He frowned and looked momentarily displeased. “I don’t normally hunt in such a state.”
“Yes, I’ve seen the plastic suit.” Will rolled his eyes.
“It is practical.”
“And ridiculous.”
Hannibal’s lips pursed and Will was suddenly struck with a vicious consternation. He had expected Hannibal to kiss him by now. He had expected him to claim Will like he had planned when he was feral and beastly and covered in death. But Hannibal gave no indication that he was going to do anything of the sort. If anything, he was exuding an odd sort of professionalism about the whole thing. It was baffling.
“As ridiculous as you might find it to be,” Hannibal said somewhat tersely. “It would have saved us this particular predicament.”
“I had assumed you had a plan seein’ as you look ready and rarin’ to go.” Will felt inexplicably irritated then and his old accent was finding its way through his words in force. His arm throbbed and he felt a warm rush of blood down his arm with the pulse. For some reason, that just pissed him off even more. “Or we just going to lock ourselves away in this damn room until the end of time?”
Hannibal tilted his head to the side, looking at Will with an unreadable expression. “I do have a plan.”
Will’s shoulders sagged. “Oh.”
Eyebrow quirked, Hannibal pointed at the door they had entered through. “We passed some other rooms on the way to this one. I recognized the layouts of some of them. I believe this building used to be a butcher of some kind. Perhaps a meat packer. If my suspicions are correct, we might find some old pipework in one of the rooms along with access to floor drains. Most butchers tend to have them in the rooms in which there was a great deal of overflow from their work.”
“Overflow?” Will chuckled. “So we are quite literally gonna wash our blood off in blood drains?”
“Yes.” Hannibal moved to carefully open the door, just enough to peer outside. After a moment, he waved for Will to follow him.
Will spared one last look at his design. The woman rest in her throne, foot extended towards the male supplicants. He imagined her as Judith slaying Holofernes—saw her in that power and felt satisfied, following Hannibal out of the room.
Sure enough, one of the doors led to a dusty old butchering room. Despite the fact that it might have meant their capture, Will was almost annoyed at the fact that the room had been there. He wondered if Hannibal was ever wrong about this sort of thing or if he was always ten steps ahead on the chessboard of the world. To Hannibal, the world was comprised of nothing but an endless torrent of pawns.
The longer Hannibal continued to be apathetic towards him, even as they washed themselves off with one of the hanging hoses and watched the red sweep away in spirals on the tile floor, Will couldn’t help but think that maybe he was another one of those pawns. At best, he was Hannibal’s castle; moving straight and blind in whatever direction Hannibal sent him.
Will shook his head, shivering as Hannibal stuffed their shirts into the bag and magically pulled new ones out of some hidden pocket. He didn’t want to envision himself so helpless. He was no pawn. He was more than that. Perhaps he would never be Hannibal’s true equal, but he would never be his lesser either. He would reside in permanent limbo between usefulness and independence. It should have felt like a trap in the way it laid itself out. He would be forced to hover in the uncertainty of outliving Hannibal’s interest.
But really, it felt like a challenge.
Hannibal inspected Will’s arm with a deep frown before giving him the darker of the two shirts. With his suit jacket still intact, he didn’t need to hide as much as Will did. Then again, Will was also sporting about twice the amount of injuries as Hannibal. “I neglected to bring medical supplies. It will have to wait for our return to Lafitte.”
Will thought Hannibal looked repentant as he said it, but the look disappeared so quickly that he couldn’t be sure. “Doubt you were expecting for it to go this sideways.” And damned if that didn’t sound like forgiveness.
Hannibal was looking at him again with that same unreadable enigma in his eyes. “We should attempt to find an alternative exit,” he said after a pause. “Though we remained unnoticed upon arrival, departures prior to the discovery of our activities will be more keenly remembered.”
Will sighed and nodded dejectedly. Hannibal was shrugging him off like this had been business. Had it really been so impersonal for him? Will couldn’t wrap his mind around that. He could still remember the warmth of Hannibal kneeling behind him, cradling his hand as he slid his fingers around that man’s heart. That wasn’t impersonal. That was wanton.
Where had that intensity gone? It was as though the flames in Hannibal’s eyes had been doused entirely. The steel trap was back up and Will was thrown without balance back into the loneliness of his own mind. The weakness of it was infuriating. His heart gave a nauseating throb of anger, but he ignored it. “Yeah. The hall turned right too. Gotta be a back exit somewhere.”
Hannibal said nothing as he washed away any remnants of blood from the floor and switched the hose off. Making sure Will was following him, he moved back out into the hall and followed it further down. Will’s prediction had been an accurate one. Blinking in half-dead fluorescent lighting was a dusty exit sign. Apparently it was just going to be that easy.
Part of Will expected an entire SWAT team to be waiting right outside the door with their guns and voices raised. He could hear their shouts to get down on the ground and not make a move echo even as Hannibal pushed open the door and revealed nothing more than an empty alleyway.
“Luckily Lafitte is on Bourbon street, so we have a straightforward journey.” Hannibal wasn’t paying attention to Will and his overactive imagination, instead straightening himself out into something resembling a dignity that did not imply that he had just murdered four men. “We will be there quickly.”
Will grunted and followed after Hannibal, lagging behind in his steps. He didn’t feel like walking next to him. Something in Hannibal’s demeanor made them feel eerily separate in a way that Will hadn’t felt since they’d met. It was only fitting that it showed in physical distance.
They walked along the sidewalk, the celebrators of the night once more coming into view. Hannibal made no comment on Will’s hanging back and Will was too focused on making sure there wasn’t blood dripping past his sleeve to be all that bothered with the indifference. The cheers and the laughter and the music were all faded background noise; barely there at all.
Will was moving through it all like a haze. His forehead hurt and he reached up to feel a small cut there. His throat was tense and thick from its earlier battering. His arm was an absolute mess. And the whole while there was confetti being thrown and people with masks and beads and colors. Will stared blandly at Hannibal’s back. People were smiling and drinking all around them—a slow motion blur of happiness that fell outside of the sheen of gloom that Will was steadily rolling into.
This wasn’t how he had expected the night to go. Will sighed as they continued to walk. Hannibal’s posture was perfect and composed. Each step he took had purpose. Will felt like a stumbling newborn foal behind him. It was everything he could do to keep standing after all the blood lost and disappointment gained.
Each moment Will spent trying to understand why Hannibal had reverted into himself just made him angrier. He shouldn’t have been trying to figure it out at all. He shouldn’t have cared.
Don’t know what you have until it’s gone, right? Will scowled at the ground. Hannibal had been so damned attentive the whole time he’d known him. Patient and affectionate in his own peculiar and overwhelming way. Even when Will had run from him, yelled at him, argued with him, Hannibal had always stayed within reach.
Now, three feet ahead, Hannibal felt like he was in another world.
Was he playing some kind of game? Will grit his teeth at the thought. If this was some sort of test to see just how much Will would miss Hannibal’s attention, he was in for a rude awakening. As soon as the consideration made itself known to Will’s thoughts, all stopped there. It was the only explanation he could find. It had to be some kind of fucking game.
Which was why the moment they were stepping into the house and Hannibal was shutting the door behind them, Will was shoving the older man up against the wall with his good arm and getting in his face.
“Alright, fucking spill it!” Will hissed. “What are you playing at?”
They hadn’t even turned the lights on yet and Hannibal was blinking at him in the darkness. “I don’t know what you mean, Will.” His face was still cold and empty and Will felt his fury mounting by the second.
“The hell you don’t!” Will practically yelled. “As soon as it was all said and done you changed your damn tune like nothing I’ve seen. Like suddenly you don’t even know me. What the hell are you playing at, Hannibal?”
Still, Hannibal’s face gave nothing. He just blinked again, the bastard.
Will groaned in frustration and backed away to trudge up the stairs. “Fine,” he snapped. “Fuck if I care.”
Resigned to the realization that he wasn’t going to get any answers out of the other man and resolved not to keep asking for them, Will stormed into the bedroom and the ensuite bathroom. He gingerly peeled off his clothes and tossed them into a heap on the floor. Naked and irate, he looked at himself in the mirror.
He was a hot mess. A swollen gash hooked the top of his forehead. His neck was purpling with bruises. His hip had a poorly clotted slice over the bone. And his left arm—his goddamned useless wreck of an arm—was a mottled mess of red, angry skin, a shredded laceration just below his shoulder, and a nasty bullet wound inches from his elbow. He’d be lucky if he didn’t have nerve damage from all that shit.
He heard sounds coming from the kitchen and figured it was Hannibal putting the heart away, preparing them dinner, or doing whatever it was Hannibal had decided to do. With a frown, Will turned the taps and let the shower drown out the noise.
Jaw clenched and body braced, he stepped under the steam of the spray. He barely contained the pained sound that scratched at his throat when the water hit his arm. It was agonizing, but he knew he had to rinse it out. Some old as shit butcher hoses were not exactly ideal cleaning procedure. He was going to have to let Hannibal patch him up. No way in the seven levels of hell would Will be able to stitch his arm up on his own. He knew that and yet there was still that childish little part of him that wanted to be stubborn and tell Hannibal to go fuck himself.
After a long time of pinching his eyes shut and forcing himself to breathe, the pain became the kind of consistent burn that he was able to push into his subconscious. He was halfway through a sigh of relief when he heard the bathroom door open.
Will watched silently as Hannibal reached into the shower without a word and switched the faucet off, grinding the shower to a sudden halt. Will stared at the slithers of blood chasing into the drain. “I was using that.”
Hannibal handed him a towel and pointed to the side of the tub. “Sit.”
Will felt drained and exhausted and so he wrapped the towel around his waist and did as he was told, watching Hannibal with defeated eyes. Hannibal’s shirt was gone somewhere and Will noticed with surprise that his stomach was already bandaged. Had he tended to himself in the kitchen?
Hannibal didn’t meet his gaze, setting about gathering medical supplies from his bag. The silence was giving Will a headache. Hannibal knelt at his feet and began treating his smaller wounds with peroxide. It wasn’t until Hannibal was grabbing a foreboding looking syringe and eyeing Will’s arm that either of them said something.
Will shifted uncomfortably. “Not a fan of needles.”
Hannibal felt around Will’s undamaged muscle and injected it before Will had a chance to object. “Local anesthetic. You will want it for these stitches.”
Will could already feel it; the deadening that was similar to being in a dentist’s office. He vaguely remembered almost biting his own tongue off once after getting a cavity removed. “Get on with it, then.” He stared at the wall.
Hannibal waited for a while longer, presumably to be sure the anesthetic was in full effect. Will didn’t appreciate the consideration. When Hannibal was reaching up and sliding the needle into the gash on Will’s shoulder, the younger man wished he could feel more than a tug.
“Will.” Hannibal sounded as tired as Will felt.
“What.” It was a question, but the way Will spat it out made it sound like a conclusion.
Hannibal paused momentarily before returning to sewing Will’s broken body shut. He licked his lips and took care with his words, something he did more often with Will than Will liked to notice. “I had a sister once.”
Will frowned and looked at him. Out of all the things Hannibal could have thrown into the room to remove the silence, that wasn’t anywhere close to Will’s expectations. “What?”
Hannibal didn’t look up at him, focusing on his work. “I had a sister.” His eyes faded to the past before refocusing on Will’s arm. “Mischa. She is dead now.”
Will didn’t say he was sorry because he knew Hannibal wouldn’t want to hear it.
Hannibal trimmed the thread and began working on the bullet wound next. That time, Will felt a bit more than a tug and he gasped. “Still,” Hannibal urged, pressing his hand to Will’s thigh. “My sister became my responsibility after many unfortunate incidents occurred. I was like a parent to her. I felt responsible for her.”
Will dared not speak.
“Then, one cold night, men came. It was a terrible time in my country. People were not themselves. They did things that people do not do in the light of day.” Hannibal’s face was still distant and even but Will could see it beginning to fade into something less detached. Piece by piece, Hannibal was returning to the room from wherever he had gone back at the club. “They did many things to my sister. Unforgivable things.” He swallowed and Will watched the movement. “I failed to protect her.”
And finally, Will understood. Flashes of Hannibal’s face when he had questioned his motivation to go after those particular men. His expression as they waited outside the door and heard what was happening inside. The nearly barbaric way in which Hannibal had slammed that man’s head into the concrete. Another piece in the puzzle of Hannibal was sliding into place. “Oh.”
Hannibal cut the next thread and sat back on his heels, finally looking up to meet Will’s gaze. The coldness was gone now and the look was making Will’s head swim. Hannibal was looking at him, really looking at him, with no person-suit and no contrived humanity. It was simply Hannibal. “Forgive me for disappearing on you, Will. Some thoughts occurred to me while we were in that place that had not occurred to me before.”
Will reached to tentatively feel the edges of his stitches. His arm was numb and heavy. The stitches were unsurprisingly flawless. “Did you kill the men who hurt your sister?”
“Yes. Quite some time later.”
Will’s arm fell to his side and he held onto the edge of the tub, staring at Hannibal kneeling before him. He searched his face. “What thoughts occurred to you?”
“When I saw your design, it occurred to me that it was not so very far from my own. I looked upon your masterpiece and it was as if it had fallen to the canvas from my own brush. I looked upon it and I saw you.” Hannibal reached up, rubbing a thumb over the curve of Will’s cheekbone. “And I saw myself.” Hannibal was searching Will’s face in the manner he always had—that mysterious and ephemeral scrutiny.
Only this time it was different. This time Will knew what Hannibal was searching for. It was clear in the man’s eyes, now lacking in their usual cryptic nature. He was seeing Will. He was seeing him.
And what was more, Will felt seen.
Will hung his head. “I didn’t mean to honor her.” He didn’t want to be dishonest.
“And yet you did.”
“I felt her fear when she died.” Will’s mouth was dry. “Like it was my own.”
“You sculpted her fear into power. You gave her control in death that she was denied in the last moments of her life.” Hannibal stroked the side of Will’s face again. “You gave her a gift and it was a beautiful one.”
“You gave me a gift.” Will’s eyes slid shut and he could practically feel the warmth on his fingers. “You let me feel life in the palm of my hand. Held me while I felt it leave.” When he opened his eyes again, he saw Hannibal’s had darkened. The look was magnetizing.
Hannibal’s other hand joined his first as he cupped Will’s face and pulled him close. “Your mind is a masterwork, Will. Believe me when I tell you that I was merely repaying a gift given to me in being allowed to witness it.”
Will let the fingertips of his hand trail over Hannibal’s throat. Felt his Adam’s apple bob, felt his pulse, the warmth of his skin. “Why did you wait until we were here to tell me this?”
“Because these were not the only thoughts that occurred to me.”
Will felt his brow twitch and furrow in interest. “No?”
The barest hint of a smile was stretching Hannibal’s lips. “Upon seeing just how similar our designs truly were, I realized that I did not wish to contain such an awareness to that room.”
Will’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t understand.
“Our first awareness of one another was contained,” Hannibal continued, patiently explaining his train of thought as though translating another language. “We reveled in both our beasts and each other within the same breath and as such this acknowledgment was contained in that sphere.”
Will’s fingers had paused on Hannibal’s collarbone, hanging there. He was beginning to see what Hannibal was saying. “So, put bluntly, you don’t want our relationship to be at its best only when we hunt. You want that understanding we share when we kill to continue afterwards.” Will grinned. He couldn’t help it. He wanted to laugh. “It’s a bit too romantic, don’t you think?”
Hannibal’s eyes were nearly glowing. “I think perhaps we should be willing to consider that romance is not entirely beyond us.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“After Georgia, we both regressed into our shells. We became the people we are not and expected those people to understand one another just as our natural selves understood one another. It was a naïve and ridiculous expectation.” One of Hannibal’s hands slipped back into Will’s damp hair. “Should we limit seeing one another solely to the moments where there is blood on our hands, we will always find ourselves in circumstances in which you are running and I am ignoring your departures.”
Will swallowed with some difficulty. His chest felt strange and he wondered if he had lost too much blood. “You make it sound dangerously close to wanting me around forever, Hannibal.”
“You have long since established a room in the palace of my mind, Will,” Hannibal replied evenly. “I simply wish for it to become an entire wing.”
“No simple wish.” Will could feel his chest flushing and he shut his eyes again.
“I would see myself walk through your doors until the end of time.”
“Jesus, do you even know how you sound?” Will’s breathing was short. His hands went to Hannibal’s wrists, holding them there at his face. “And what about when you run out of doors?”
Hannibal chuckled. “Tonight I saw that I could walk through the same door a thousand times and still discover something new.”
That time, Will did laugh. “I’m getting sick and tired of waiting for you to kiss me.” He opened his eyes just in time to see Hannibal’s smile before the other man was pulling him forward. And there it was. There was the passion Will had expected when covered in blood and surrounded by violence. Hannibal kissed him the way Will had expected to be kissed when they were high on adrenaline and viciousness. Yet now they were cleaned and bandaged and safe and Hannibal was kissing him that way anyway.
Will wrapped his arms around Hannibal’s neck and the other man stood, lifting Will with him and practically carrying him out of the bathroom. Their kiss broke when Will was set on the bed and Hannibal moved to get his bag.
“No.” Will reached for him and grabbed his arm. “No just… just come here.”
Hannibal didn’t need to be told twice. He followed Will onto the bed, renewing the kiss as he pressed him down onto his back. Will’s hands slid over Hannibal’s back and he could feel small, jagged marks from when the other man had hit the cement back in that room. He traced each mark in turn, biting at a lower lip before grabbing him by his belt and pulling him closer.
Hannibal grinned at Will’s eagerness, canines showing. “Tell me something, Will.” He was pulling off Will’s towel and throwing it somewhere behind him. Will groaned when Hannibal’s trousers pressed roughly against him. “Is this a yes?”
Will groaned again as Hannibal sucked at his neck, surely leaving a mark. “You never asked me anything.”
Hannibal bit into the meat of an uninjured shoulder. “Yes, I did.”
With a gasp, Will moved his hands to undo Hannibal’s belt so he could push away the rough grind of the fabric. “What, you mean about turning my room into a wing?” He shivered when Hannibal’s tongue laved over his clavicle. He felt like he was an inch away from being feasted on.
“Yes,” Hannibal growled. He helped Will push his pants away and soon they were pressing against one another without so much as the barrier of air between them. They both made noises at that, shutting their eyes and sliding hands over skin. “That is what I’m referring to.”
Will’s head fell back and he saw that the balcony door was open again. He could hear the sounds of music wafting into the room from the streets below. “You don’t need my permission for that.”
“No,” Hannibal agreed. He leaned up and grabbed Will by the jaw, forcing his head back down to look at him. “But I want it.”
They had stopped moving and Will’s legs were shaking from the restraint. He sighed and wrapped one leg around Hannibal’s hip, taking a moment to simply enjoy the hot and heavy weight of the older man’s cock resting on his stomach. He combed his fingers through Hannibal’s mussed hair. “Hannibal, I couldn’t leave you even if I wanted to. Where would I go after this? Anything I found would be…” He trailed off and bit his lip. He tried to picture his life before he had met Hannibal and found all the images coming up in black and white and shadow. It was hollow. “Would be plain.”
That was the first time Will ever saw the extent of what Hannibal felt for him. Lips parted and eyes hooded, Hannibal’s expression was the epitome of adoration and Will was positively blown away by the sight. Somehow, he knew he must have been looking at Hannibal in much the same way because they were kissing again and this time it was frantic.
Will kept trying to pull Hannibal closer to him but his left arm was weak and slipped any time he held it up for too long. Hannibal pressed his arm gently into the cover and moved to trace his fingers along the thigh draped over his hip, tongue dipping into Will’s mouth and swallowing away the impatient moan there. He moved his hips in a slow, purposeful circle and Will was reflexively trying to reach for him again.
Hannibal smiled against his mouth and laid Will’s damaged arm down again, holding it in place.
Their movements were starting to take on a leisurely pace; deliberate. Will tangled his free hand in Hannibal’s hair and pulled at it, leaning up and sucking his tongue into his mouth. The reward was a throaty sound and Will sank into it like liquid as he pushed his hips up to drag Hannibal’s cock across his own. It was a pace they had never taken to before, sensuality overriding carnality.
The sounds of the Mardi Gras celebrations were cascading over them with ringing bells and a breeze was periodically brushing over their heated skin.
Sex with them had always been fucking. It had always been primal and powerful. They would spend those times tearing into each other to feel heartbeats and taste sweat and energy. Those times, Will would feel strong and reckless. He would feel like nothing in the world could break him.
Now, Hannibal was dragging his tongue across the stubble on Will’s jaw and rubbing a thumb over the heads of their cocks and nipping at Will’s collar and Will felt breakable. Every shift of movement had the potential to shatter him. There was no strength here. No power. But there was fire.
He could feel the flames licking at his skin and Hannibal’s mouth was the only thing that cooled it—his body, his touch, his presence. Everywhere they connected, Will felt relief. His breathing was coming in open-mouthed pants and he wrapped both arms around Hannibal’s back, gripping the wrist of his left so it wouldn’t fall. He buried his face into a warm neck and clung to the ubiquity of the man above him.
Hannibal was as solid and present as gravity itself. He let Will wrap around him and continued to lavish open-mouthed kisses along his shoulder and neck, hands steady and measured. When Will’s breath was coming in short pants and his hips were jerking with every little touch, Hannibal nipped at his jaw one last time before sliding down.
Will watched him descend with an open mouth and flushed face, hands instinctively going to the other man’s head when Hannibal propped his legs up on his shoulders.
“Fuck,” he gasped. Because there was something so dangerous and fantastic about Hannibal doing this to him. He had seen Hannibal’s fangs. He had seen the predator in his smile. He knew what that mouth had done because it was exactly what his own had done. He could taste the ghost of blood and flesh in his mouth when Hannibal’s tongue slid up the length of him and he had to close his eyes before the sight alone made him lose it.
Sweat was dripping over his brow and Will had the asinine worry that he would sweat his bandages off. The worry was promptly knocked out of existence when Hannibal’s lips closed over the head of his cock, hand wrapping around the shaft. Will cursed again and dug his heels into Hannibal’s back. He heard fireworks and laughter outside and his eyes opened to follow the sound. All he found was the black night sky and he let out a surprised cry and thrust of his hips when Hannibal deep throated him all at once.
Will put his hands at his side before he was tempted to pull too hard at the other man’s hair. “Ha—“ his mind stuttered when he turned down again to see Hannibal looking up at him, lips wrapped around him, as shining and red as his eyes. He sucked hard when their eyes met and Will’s hips rolled into the feeling. “You’re beautiful.” It came out of his mouth without him meaning it to, but the way Hannibal’s palm slid up his stomach to his chest and he began bobbing his head in earnest made it worth it.
Will felt fingers rubbing over the scar on his pectoral, claiming the mark. Hannibal’s scar. Will didn’t stop the gasp of breathy laughter as he thought about how that mark was the proof of what he had been denying for a long time. They would never kill each other. They would claw and scratch and open each other up, but those wounds would heal and they would remain, slipping their fingers over the scars like trophies.
He could feel pleasure down to the bone. Hannibal’s tongue would roll every time his head went up, his thumb pressed to Will’s perineum, his nails digging into Will’s scar. The wet sounds of Hannibal’s mouth could be heard in between the sounds of a street drum somewhere. A jolt ran up Will’s spine and curled into his stomach when Hannibal moaned around him. He reached down and pulled at Hannibal’s hair, urging him up.
“Come up,” he breathed. “Come up here.”
Hannibal’s lips slid off lazily and he kissed Will’s cock when it twitched against the younger man’s belly. He crawled up Will’s body unhurriedly and their mouths met in a sloppy kiss. Will tasted himself and tasted Hannibal and it made his stomach tighten. Hannibal’s hand wrapped around them both and he pumped them slowly—torturously—as his tongue traced the seam of Will’s lips.
“What do you desire, Will?”
Will smirked and pushed at Hannibal’s chest. “Roll over.”
Hannibal flipped them over with ease, pulling Will on top of him.
For a while, Will had to stare at him. Hannibal in pleasure was something to behold. His lips were swollen and parted. The tan of his skin was ruddy with red. His normally immaculate hair was sweeping over his face in a tangle. He looked debauched and perfect.
Unable to hold himself up with his arms, Will straddled the other man’s hips and sat up straight, wrapping his hand around Hannibal’s cock and watching every twitch and shudder of movement. “I want you to come,” he said. His voice was rough and harsh, like he’d been sick for days.
“Is that so?” Hannibal’s voice wasn’t much better off. His accent was in full form, tangling his words into a roll of syllables. He grabbed at Will’s hips and pressed his thumbs into the hollows of the bones.
Will looked down at his hand and pressed his thumb to the glans. It was shiny and slick and Will admired the view. He had always loved touching Hannibal this way. The man was large and uncut and it was fascinating to watch the way his foreskin would slide along his length, smooth and soft and unique. He dragged his fist up and then down, making it do just that, and swiped his thumb over the head. “Yes,” he murmured. “That’s so.”
Will’s own cock was resting on the back of his thumb. Every stroke of Hannibal gave the barest hint of friction to his own hardness and he bit into his lip hard, moving his hand faster as he watched the tense of Hannibal’s stomach, felt the shift of his legs underneath him, heard the hitches of his breath.
Whenever Will got to watch Hannibal like this, it felt like he was uncovering some buried secret. Layer by layer, he would strip Hannibal bare until he could dive into the unfathomable depths of his mind at will. And Hannibal would let him. He would allow himself to be exposed. He would allow Will to pry into his thoughts and watch them unfurl. Will would drink it up greedily and without remorse.
Hannibal grunted and his hips pushed up, lifting Will off the bed for a moment. Will’s eyes shot to his face and he felt his own cock twitch. Hannibal’s cheeks were flushed and heated, eyes locked on Will’s own as his hands tightened on the hips under his palms.
Will couldn’t resist. He wanted to hear him. He wanted to pull out everything he could from him. He tightened his grip and worked him faster. “Does it feel good?”
Hannibal exhaled roughly and dragged his hand over Will’s stomach. “Let me touch you.”
A tremor ran down Will’s back. He slid his entire palm over the head in a circle and Hannibal’s hips jerked again. “Does it feel good?” he repeated, the memory of their first time lingering in his mind; of Hannibal whispering into his ear.
“Yes!” And Will felt such a victory in that moment for breaking Hannibal’s composure however slightly. Hannibal scratched his nails across Will’s skin. “Let me touch you, Will.” His voice was thick and he gasped a couple words that were most definitely not English. His eyes flickered down to their cocks and then back up to Will and he knew what the younger man wanted from him. “I’m going to come, Will. I want to touch you.” As if to solidify his point, he groaned again and tried to push his hips into Will’s hand, blocked by the body on top of him.
Will didn’t know if the desperation was feigned for his benefit or if Hannibal was truly that far gone, but hearing it inspired the same reaction within him regardless of the source. He nodded distractedly and moaned unabashedly when Hannibal’s hand gripped him without hesitation, matching the speed of his own.
The slick and shameless sounds of skin were overwhelming the chorus of commotion outside now. The music was a dull and distant noise pushed away by their breathing and rising heartbeats. Will felt his back giving way and he tried to lean forward on his arm, but it wouldn’t hold him. Hannibal’s free hand shot out and pressed into Will’s shoulder, holding him upright.
Will leaned into the strength of the grip and tightened his hand when Hannibal did the same. Their hips were pushing into one another, knuckles knocking, moans mixing into the air. Hannibal’s hand jerked erratically and he groaned a breathy rush of Will’s name before Will felt a hot, wet spill over his hand and a pounding throb in Hannibal’s cock.
Will was spitting out a string of curses and his eyes rolled shut. Hannibal tugged Will down to his chest the moment he reached the edge and held him close as he came between them. Will sobbed into Hannibal’s shoulder. The grip of the man’s fingers and rub of his stomach and lips on his neck were all too much and it made his orgasm violent and oversensitive.
They lay there for a moment stretched thin and long in time. Holding onto each other as they came down from their highs. Sweaty and hot and messy. Eventually, Will rolled off and onto his back. He didn’t complain when Hannibal laced their fingers together. He didn’t point out how sickly sweet it was. He didn’t whine about the intimacy. Instead, he lay there next to him and listened to the sounds of New Orleans permeating the room until their stomachs were sticky with drying come and they decided it was time to move.
Hannibal’s bandage on his stomach was completely ruined and after they wiped each other off, Will helped him change it. His own were a bit better off but the amount of them made cleaning up difficult and tedious. They spent the entire time in a companionable silence and when they were finished, Hannibal stroked Will’s hair back over his brow. Will felt more drained than he had in a long time. Sated and debilitated.
Hannibal led him back to the bed. “Get some rest. You have lost a great deal of blood and our recent activities were admittedly not the best idea considering that fact.”
“I’m hungry, actually.” Will didn’t even think of the heart until after he’d said it. The thought only intrigued him more. “I’ve never eaten heart cooked.”
Hannibal froze, eyebrows raised and looking absolutely delighted. “It seems there is a story you will need to share with me sometime.”
Will’s smile was nothing but teeth. “I will. Sometime.”
“I will go prepare our dinner. It will take time.” Hannibal pushed at Will’s shoulder until he was sitting on the bed. “Sleep until then.”
Will didn’t have the energy to argue. He laid down in lethargy and Hannibal left the room after pulling on some clothes, shutting the door quietly behind him.
He shut his eyes and let the ever-present music of the night lull him to sleep.
The next time his eyes opened, it was to a kiss.
Hannibal sat back. “Dinner is ready.”
Will stretched and winced when he realized the anesthetic had worn off. “Is this a new method of waking me up?”
“Perhaps on occasion.” Hannibal reached down and inspected Will’s arm. “I have pain pills for you at the table. You should take them with food.”
“Well then you’ve seen to both counts,” Will answered as he sat up. “Let’s eat.”
Hannibal looked him up and down. “Do you intend to eat in the nude?”
“Would you complain?”
Hannibal simply raised an eyebrow.
Will waved him off. “I’m getting dressed. I’ll meet you out there.”
Ten minutes later, they were seated at the table. Somehow Hannibal had managed to find candles and enough odd plants to make one of his eternally strange centerpieces. Their wine glasses were already filled and the plates already served. Will took a sip of his wine as he regarded the dish. Noticing the pain pills next to his plate, he tossed them back and washed them down with more wine, which probably wasn’t recommended on the label.
“It doesn’t look like heart.” He inspected the meat. It was darker than usual, but that was the only indicator of its unique source. “What does it taste like?”
“Rich and heavy. You will enjoy it.”
The heart was cut into thin strips that almost looked like steak. Yellow vegetables were layered beneath it in a graceful circle. “It’s simple for you. What is it exactly?”
“The heart, I find, does not need much embellishment.” Hannibal picked up his fork and gestured for Will to do the same. “The strength of the taste is overwhelming for many. Additions are hardly needed.”
“And the vegetables?”
“Golden beets, thyme, parsley, and fresh horseradish.”
Will frowned. “Horseradish?”
“You will like it.”
“Of course I will. You cooked it.” The response had come so immediately that Will had to blink at himself for how blatantly complimentary it was. He chanced a glance at Hannibal and saw the man smiling down at his plate. He cleared his throat. “So let’s eat, then.”
Together, they picked up a strip of the meat and placed it in their mouths, chewing together, savoring and enjoying. Will’s eyes widened at the flavor. Hannibal hadn’t been joking when he’d said it was powerful. He couldn’t remember ever eating something that tasted so strongly of life.
“Do you like it?”
Will took a minute to swallow the mouthful, washing it down with wine. “It really punches you, doesn’t it?”
Hannibal’s eyes crinkled in amusement. “Yes. It does.”
Will speared one of the beets with his fork. “It’s amazing, Hannibal.” He ate the beet and thought on his words. “I can’t help thinking that we had our hands wrapped around this thing while it was still beating.”
Their eyes met over the table. “It’s an invigorating reminder of life. Both the strength of it and how easily it can leave us.”
Will nodded. “A meal centered around mortality.”
“Aren’t they all?”
“Not for vegetarians,” Will joked.
Hannibal smirked. “True.”
Will took another bite of the heart and had to shut his eyes at the taste. It really was amazing. “So are we still going to my old house tomorrow?”
Hannibal was watching Will eat, drinking his wine placidly. “Do you want to?”
“I didn’t,” Will admitted. “But now I think I do. You made a good point. Sometimes looking at the past can be a good thing.”
“Skeletons will always remain in our closet until we find it within ourselves to open the door.”
“I don’t know if this qualifies as a skeleton.”
Hannibal hummed and took another bite of his meal. “What does it signify for you?”
Will tapped his wine glass and watched the crimson ripple. “The angel on my shoulder, whispering tempting good deeds.”
“People are primarily concerned with avoiding their devils, not their angels.”
“The devils make life interesting,” Will countered, gesturing with his fork. “The angels make things difficult.”
Hannibal let the words sink in, taking a moment to savor them alongside his food. “I am tempted to agree.”
Will snorted. “Only tempted? You don’t strike me as someone who values the advice of the white gowns.”
Hannibal nodded, conceding to the point. “I am not, but I believe you are, on occasion.” He gave Will a long and tempestuous look. “It is something I enjoy about you. Were we both to acquiesce solely to devils, we would sink endlessly into the void.”
Will leaned back in his chair, surprised. “So I’m the person to pull you back from the brink of hell? Am I your gatekeeper, Hannibal?”
Hannibal’s eyes gleamed. He seemed pleased with the imagery. “I have not needed one until now.”
“What changed?”
“I met you.”
“That makes it sound like I’ve pushed you deeper, not kept you from falling,” Will replied with a frown.
Hannibal took the remaining bite of heart from his plate and chewed it thoughtfully. “Not quite.” He picked up his wine and breathed it in. “You have awoken something within me, Will. I will not claim to fully know what it is.” He sipped from the glass, staring into it. “It only seems appropriate that you would be the one to hold the tether of that awakening.” He met Will’s eyes. “To send me further into its depths or bring me back to its murky surface.”
Will set his fork down and examined Hannibal’s face. “That gives me a great deal of control over you, you know.”
“I suppose it does, yes.”
“I could let go of that tether. Watch you fall.”
“I suppose you could.”
Will sucked his lip into his mouth; tasted the wine and meat on his skin. “You’re alright with that?”
Hannibal’s lips tilted into a hidden smile. He finished his wine and looked out across the room. “I suppose I am.”
They were almost reticent for a time. They refilled their wine and finished their meals, drank until there was nothing left to drink and the noises outside were finally beginning to fade and dim, saturated themselves in one another’s company.
When the night had grown dark and the dishes had been cleared from the table, Will remained in his seat, tapping his fingers on the wood and staring at the centerpiece. Hannibal walked out of the kitchen and watched him from the doorway.
“Will you sit at the table all night?”
Will shook his head, half grin passing by. “I was just finishing a thought, is all.”
“Must be quite the thought.”
“Maybe.” Will turned in his chair and looked over at Hannibal. The taller man was leaning casually in the doorway—not poised to escape, simply waiting. “What if I choose to abandon the angel on my shoulder when we go tomorrow? What if I no longer have the capacity to pull you back from that darkness?”
Hannibal didn’t miss a beat. “Then we will fall into it together.” He crossed the room in two large strides and stroked his hand through Will’s dark curls. “I can think of no better end.”