Hannibal for the headcanons!
Okay so my headcanons for Hannibal:
Hannibal doesn't particularly care about sex until he and Will are officially together. He's always used it as a manipulation tactic, a way for him to get ahead, and with the men he's been with in the past (because let's be realistic, that man couldn't give less of a fuck about his sexual partners' gender or sex), he's always taken the role of the top because it's the role others naturally assume for him, and what better way to get ahead and lower suspicion than by playing into the role someone already thinks you play? Will changes this, because Will is focused on both of their pleasure (most of the time—he does sometimes have a sadistic streak and we love him for it), he doesn't assume anything about Hannibal's sexual habits. Hannibal actually enjoys sex with Will; he doesn't have to play into a preconceived notion of how he's supposed to act and it's one of the areas of life in which he's learned to let go and give over his control to Will. The first time Will initiated anything sexual, Hannibal found it shockingly easy to let him have control. Turns out he quite likes being a bottom. Who knew? (All of us, we all knew.)
B: maybe not realistic but funny.
We know that Hannibal doesn't like Will's aftershave and thinks it's atrocious. My proposal to you is that he does like it (because it smells like Will and I'm delusional), and his little quip about Will wearing bad aftershave was to save face because he had a slip up and refuses to admit that smelling Will was weird. He needed an excuse and by god, that man commits to the bit. He is nothing if not dedicated.
C: heart-crushing and awful but fun to inflict on friends.
Hannibal obviously has deep-seated trauma regarding his sister and what happened to her, although he refuses to admit it. In the show, he says he ate her to forgive her. I headcanon that the reality of the situation is that they were held hostage by Soviet deserters (closer to his original backstory and also because his childhood would have been spent in Soviet occupied Lithuania), who starved both he and Mischa, then proceeded to take her from him, kill her, and eat her. He convinces himself that he made the choice to eat her instead of being delirious from hunger and illness and being forcibly fed her remains via soup. He knows this isn't true, but it's something he can't admit to himself, because that would mean that his entire philosophy on cannibalism as forgiveness and honor/love is flawed, and that he was at a point in his life not in control of the world around him. When he got away, he aimlessly wandered through the blizzard raging outside before being found and taken in, then rightfully returned to the custody of his uncle. As an adult, he learned to cope with his loss and his fear of harsh winters. Until the fall. Both he and Will obviously suffered damages in the fall; Hannibal suffers from a mild to moderate traumatic brain injury and has to learn to cope with this. He no longer has as much control over his mental barriers and therefore cannot reasonably keep certain doors closed in his mind palace. No matter how much he managed to convince himself otherwise before, he remembers what actually happened to him every time it snows more than a few inches. He insists that Will can't go out during snow storms, under the guise of it being unwise because they're on the run and if he gets stuck in the storm and someone recognizes him, they may as well be dead. The one time Will does leave, he returns home to find Hannibal nearly catatonic, unable to speak more than a few words in his native language. Will has obviously noticed changes in Hannibal's personality, especially his ability to hide his emotions, but he's so shaken by this that he refuses to leave Hannibal alone if it so much as flurries.
D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it.
Post-fall, Hannibal is basically a glorified housewife. He cooks, cleans, and looks pretty for Will, and it's his greatest pleasure in life. He buys anything Will wants, and does whatever is asked of him simply because he can.
