Work Text:
1.
Special Agent Jack Crawford asks Will to help on a case. It's the beginning of something, Will is sure of it, a certainty that crawls under his skin and keeps him up at night; the beginning of something dark and dangerous Will might not be able to walk away from.
He says yes.
2.
Crawford brings in a long, elegant lady in a yellow dress. Will distrusts her the minute he sees her, because of the way she holds two fingers to her mouth like all she's missing is a cigarette and because of her eyes that seem sharp enough to pierce through steel. But Will learned to ignore his paranoia when there isn't blood on the walls and a corpse in the immediate vicinity, so he pushes it down, down --
"You won't like me when I'm psychoanalyzed," Will growls, but he knows – there is only one thing he hates more than being psychoanalyzed, and that's when those who do it get it right.
3.
Will's entire life feels like a drawn-out suicide. Blood would be indulging – instead it's the soft-burning agony of a man who drowns, whose lungs fill with water by the minute. The sounds are remote, gunshots in a thick haze of mist; eyes prickly with chlorine, and Hannibal Lecter –
Hannibal Lecter doesn't save him. Her spark – the dangerous glint of fire on a deer-shaped brooch – makes him swim up to just under the surface, and she hauls him up, head above water, just enough to get one last breath before suffocating.
4.
She surprises him one morning on a case, showing up at his door early enough that his head is still full of nightmares and his skin itching from motel soap. She looks pristine, her lipstick a slash of red across her Nordic face.
"The adventure will be yours and mine today," she says, backlit by the tawdry sun.
They eat in the hot shade of the curtain, breakfast that Hannibal prepared and that she disposes on the table with precise hands, delicately manicured. Will doesn't ask for food but Hannibal pushes a container towards him and he eats mechanically, the habit of a carnivorous race.
Halfway through the meal, Will decides he's taken enough risks for the next century. Do the smart thing, he tells himself, thinking of his dogs at home and his dreams where he routinely imagines slicing young girls' throats. "Just keep it professional," he says, his eyes downcast.
He doesn't see Hannibal, but he imagines she might tilt her head – lean into the sun, as though she were considering his offer. "Or we could socialize like adults," she suggests, which Will finds ironic in light of what he said to Crawford about his ability to socialize just a few days ago. Hannibal takes a bite. Will listens – the clack of her teeth when they slice through the food and meet, probably perfect enamel; her lips pressing together, lipstick evening out with the grease; the soft gulp as she swallows, palate coated with saliva. "God forbid we become friendly."
Will keeps his eyes stubbornly down. "I don't find you that interesting," he lies.
Hannibal doesn't falter. "You will," she says, with the same quiet certainty that sets Will's teeth on edge.
5.
"The mongoose I want under the house when the snake slithers by," says Hannibal Lecter, her halo spread like butter on her shoulders, and instead of thinking I'm scared like a regular man, Will Graham –
A knack for the monsters. Yes. Yes, he does have that.
6.
Not only is the devil in the details, it seems Hannibal Lecter has elected permanent residence there as well. Her precision seems to be contagious in a strange, roundabout way: the more Will sees her eyes registering everything he does, from the difference between the way he laughs when he's delighted or nervous to the quavering of his voice when his visions come too close, the more he looks back and tries to scrutinize through her skin, an alternate hiding method.
It's almost an unconscious mechanism, as though Will were guilty too: when she sees, hide. Her eyes search, scan, prod; he trains himself to be as emotionless as a stone, and when she notices he realizes he's come to look close enough that he sees the wrinkles tighten around her eyes, like she's pleased. He knows better than to trust appearances, though – or, well, maybe he should say: he knows better than to trust her.
7.
Will startles out of sleep, monsters crawling on his shoulders. After thirty years, he still hasn't found a way to purge the nightmares, so he goes to the bathroom and plunges his head in cold water, because drowning, he learned, doesn't leave room for anything else. And sure enough, when he emerges he feels dizzy and light-headed but his brain is clear of splatter, which – small mercies.
What it is not clear of, however, is Hannibal Lecter. Will never has trouble remembering faces, damn his hyper-functioning brain, but he recalls hers in troubling, shaky detail; as though she were standing erect in front of a horizon divided between green-blue darkness and ochre sunlight.
"That woman is carnivorous," Will says absently to Ray, the three-legged greyhound. Ray, bless his heart, doesn't comment on the awed wonder in his voice where there should be mistrust.
8.
Hannibal Lecter ("Doctor," Hannibal sometimes insists, more playful than anything else) – Will notices over the weeks – eats meat at every meal. Sometimes it's nothing, a bite of liver, a little sausage; sometimes it's bloody sirloin or an enormous rib. She eats it like she does everything, in calm, measured bites, pressing her eyelids shut to appreciate the flavor. She makes it a point to offer Will some every time, but he quickly takes to refusing, distrustful of how much he likes everything she cooks.
"Doesn't it bother you?" he asks one time as they're having lunch in the atrocious FBI canteen; the question had been simmering under his tongue, slowly turning to gangrene. "Eating meat while we're chasing a cannibal?"
Hannibal hides the corner of her smile with a neatly folded napkin. "One can't just stop eating because the monster does it too, Will," she says. "After all, they're human too." She takes a sip of water – Will's eyes flit across her throat, unwillingly drawn to the play of the veins under the creamy skin. "Besides, we're all a little cannibalistic in our own way."
Will doesn't ask what she means, afraid she might make sense.
9.
"Would you be interested in getting dinner sometime?" asks Hannibal Lecter, catching an errant strand of hair between her lacquered nails and replacing it neatly in her bun.
Will gives her a look from under his eyelashes, as though that might somehow protect him. "I feel like I should be the one asking you."
A light smile flits across Hannibal's mouth. "You might have noticed, Mr Graham," she says, "but I'm about as far from traditional as you can get."
Nothing Will has seen her say or do really justifies this assessment, but he decides to take her word for it.
He doesn't remember saying yes, but he must've, maybe distracted by the startling red of her lipstick – she touches his forearm, her eyes shining bluer than ice.
"Good," she says. "I'll cook."
10.
Just because Will doesn't socialize doesn't mean he doesn't know how it works. Everyone has their favorite way of living with people – Will prefers to observe. Observe Hannibal Lecter, for example: the way she socializes can best be described as hunting, a slow dance as she circles her prey without showing her fangs, charming, seducing – sees how close she can get to the jugular before they start screaming. She terrifies Will.
Unfortunately for everyone involved, Will is the kind of man that is uncomfortable with churches, displays of affection and birthday cakes. Terror tends to galvanize him.
11.
Hannibal opens the door of her house – mansion would be a better word for it – dressed as though she were going out, which doesn't surprise Will in the least. Even in a suit and tie, she makes him feel underdressed. She's wearing blue, this time – she never wears red, Will notices.
"I'm surprised you came," she says, opening the door wide.
Me too, Will thinks as he walks in. The house screams with a distant vastness that puts him ill-at-ease: the high ceiling, spanning, spotless windows, the big cream-colored couch in the middle of the living-room.
"We're having meatpie," Hannibal says, the sharp clicking of her heels coming up behind him, "I hope that's okay with you? It's a little..." she waves a long-fingered hand, wrist rotating easily but never showing the soft, vein-stricken flesh, "rustic, I'm afraid."
"It's fine," Will says.
"Good. I do hope you will like it."
Will doesn't bother answering. She knows he will. Instead, he follows. That's all he seems to be doing these days, but he doesn't mind it half as much as he should.
12.
"Do you know who Baal was, Will?" Hannibal asks when they're sat face to face in the living-room. The sun descends to Will's right, drenching the room in orange blood.
Yes, Will thinks as he says, "No."
Hannibal gives him a serpentine smile that Will would swear tastes like watered-down wine – all part of the little game they've got going on, that Will couldn't – won't – name.
"He didn't have a precise identity," Hannibal says, stands up, smooths her skirt on her knees and gets a bottle of bourbon and two glasses out, "he – it, really – represented any semitic deity. In the Bible, they're the – you remember the golden calf, don't you? - the idols liable to turn God's people away from Him." She pours two glasses and pushes one across the table with her nail. "Isn't that interesting?"
Will doesn't say anything, but it doesn't seem to make a difference. Hannibal takes a sip – her lips are even redder in the soft darkness of her house, where the light now comes form unidentifiable sources.
"Drink, Will," she says. The softness of her voice doesn't hide the order underneath.
Hannibal, Will is understanding, is all about rituals. He's seen the way she wields the fork, alternately like a cross and like a knife – either burrowing deep into her meat or raising it reverently to her mouth. She undoes her bun the same way: taking out her hairpins one by one and setting them on the low table in neat rows; when she's done she lets out a small sigh and her hair floats thickly over her shoulders, as though called to attention by the sound. Will stares, mesmerized. No eye contact, he reminds himself, ignoring the fact that he's too far gone to be saved.
The oven pings in the distance. Hannibal raises a triumphant finger. "Ah," she says, the corner of her lip quirked in a smile, "dinner is ready."
13.
Will doesn't like eating with strangers.
14.
Hannibal Lecter, Will understood the first time he saw her, is a bad woman from the old world, one of those who believed in heaven and hell and took pleasure defying the first and courting the second.
He goes to dinner anyway, night after night, gets closer and closer until he's right up against the skin and Hannibal is grinning from ear to ear, looking like she's going to eat him.
Will remembers the old saying – keep your friends close... - and swallows the lie whole; lets himself believe he isn't giving in to fascination.