Now, death was another matter. He didn’t particularly enjoy thinking of the first times he witnessed death; that was too raw and painful a thing to bear, so cruel and contradictory to everything Hannibal knew to be true about society and the strict rules of it.
Time after such a jarring horror as that had given him enough understandings and skills with a scalpel to observe that societal rules were only as good as the people that kept them.
Despite all of this, death was one of Hannibal’s most favorite of things. He observed it as often as he could. Made notes of some of the most perfect of ways to consume people. Consumption was the only true way to understand, and Hannibal wished to understand everything that suited his fancy. One way or another.
One could partake in many, many ways, you see. Death was consumed through his hands, his knives. The taste, then, was victory laced with a good, strong bourbon. Sometimes, death was sipped through envious lips, savored like spices and mulled over. That paired with an aged merlot, and savored before a fire lit for ambiance.
Sometimes, death was all within the eyes, something so poignant and raw that it stayed deep within the recesses of Hannibal’s memory for long after, playing and replaying and replaying without ceasing. Those people were interesting to him, and he sought them out afterwards, to visit.
In that moment, fighting Tobias Budge for his life, Hannibal seeing Will burst through his door oddly tasted like Coq Au Vin. He’d likely find a chardonnay to enjoy with it, something that left an oaken taste for long after on the tip of the tongue.
Seeing Tobias strangling Hannibal made something within Will’s expression shift, change. Hannibal noted the exact moment that Will Graham’s eyes seemed to almost fade; what took place instead was something he’d been waiting for, something he’d been hungry to see since that moment in the alleyway when the man that had appeared so weak and drunk suddenly looked otherwise.
Then, he charged.
Will was slighter than both Tobias and Hannibal, but he hit like a concrete wall and took them tumbling over the coffee table. The wire was loosened from Hannibal’s neck; he gulped in a breath and wriggled out from the tangle of limbs.
Things like pain were irrelevant when he had decided that something ought to be done about Tobias Budge. He took in another breath, mind racing rather that focus on the blood oozing from furious wounds. He’d hoped that Will would have pieced it together sooner rather than Tobias ultimately ambushing him in his own office –he’d wondered about maybe Will deciding to kill Tobias on his own.
Whatever his thoughts were, they were nothing compared to what he was currently witnessing. Somehow, the truth was all the better for Hannibal having not guessed it.
Will stood and dragged Tobias Budge to his feet, striking twice; his lip was a snarl as his knuckles broke flesh. Before Tobias could quite get his footing, Will struck once more, a rough slap to his ear, likely bursting the drum. Tobias howled, and Will grabbed him by the shoulders, throwing him back until he was stumbling towards the couch, grappling for the wire that’d slipped from his hands.
Will tackled him over the couch, snarling something in a guttural voice that Hannibal had only heard once from him before.
Yes.
There was a scream, a stifled grunt. Something cracked, and someone sobbed.
Silence. What followed after was a decadent silence, and Hannibal tasted death once more. Quiet enough he heard the tremor of his breath, felt the humidity of the air on his cheeks.
It stayed like that for several minutes.
When the man stood up, Hannibal tracked his movements. He somehow looked bigger, stronger. Rather than the slouch and curved spine of a writer not used to much else but causing his own scoliosis and struggling for the perfect metaphor, he stood with a straight back and shoulders set, and the way that he spit Tobias Budge’s ear out of his mouth would stay with Hannibal long after, filed away within the many rooms of his memory palace to remember so long as he lived.
He stared at Hannibal, head tilted slightly as he considered him. Unwilling to break the quiet, sacred as it somehow was, Hannibal could only watch as the man picked his way over to him with careful deliberation, squatting down so that they were eye level, staring at one another.
His eyes were flat, ungiving. Devoid of the sort of expressions that Will’s normally held.
“Dr. Lecter,” he said slowly. His voice was rough, the exact same tone that Hannibal had first heard so long ago, when he’d stood at the mouth of the alley and debated killing the rude man from the bar.
“And to whom do I owe the pleasure of speaking with?”
“I’m Francis. Francis Dolarhyde.”
“I’ve tried to meet you before, Francis,” Hannibal murmured.
“I know.”
“You were disinterested?”
“Unnecessary.”
His tongue stuttered over his ‘S’s, and a scowl grooved deep into the lines on his face.
“Do you only take control when Will’s life is on the line?” Hannibal wondered.
“He lives, and I live. He wanted a protector, a Great Red Dragon. He got me.”
Hannibal pondered this, and he stood to his feet, brushing dust off of his suit jacket with care. In truth, his heart beat steadily, but it was a steady surety of just where he’d gotten after so much careful planning.
Things were going wonderfully well.
“How old are you, Francis?” Hannibal asked.
Francis tilted his head, crooked like a dragon might. A Great, Red Dragon. “I am beyond a realm of age. I exist as a weapon, a thing to be used. Age does not affect me as it does you.”
“How many times have you come out?”
Francis righted the chair that’d fallen over, and he sat down in it. Hannibal took the chair across from him, and he ignored the wretched sight of his toppled bookcases and the ripped painting, a favorite of his. It’d been gifted to him from Jack Crawford after careful insight to an interesting case of Existential Crisis.
“Once, after his dad died. Once, after a shitty home that fed us nothing but corn puffs and Mac N Cheese. Once, when some idiot tried to stab us. Once, when some idiot tried to slit you.”
Hannibal licked dry lips. He watched Francis track the motion, gaze alert to any movement. He was…flawed. His cleft palate, his enormous stature that seemed to take up so much space. His movements were predatory, what Hannibal imagined a child would suppose a dragon to do when trapped within the skin of a man. A child, hurting. He wondered when Will had to dream of such protectors.
“How many people have you killed, Francis?”
Francis smiled, cold and cruel. “Three, now. I thought three before, but you said the addict’s alive.”
“He’s alive,” Hannibal agreed amiably. He considered Francis, stiff and as taut as a hair-trigger. “Did he create you to do the things that he was too afraid to do?”
“No,” Francis said slowly. His brow drew down, and he stared off to the corner.
“Do you suppose –”
“Are you going to try and kill us, Dr. Lecter?” Francis asked, and he glanced back to Hannibal. Hannibal thought to maybe wet his throat with a glass of water, but it was just across the room to his desk. The thought of moving, of breaking the spell of conversation around them with something so petty as needing a drink, was appalling. Hannibal held just as still as the man across from him, more than aware of the line they were walking, toeing the whisper between life and death.
“Is it you or Will that entertains the worry? Or is it a shared thing?”
“Apart from his mental space, we don’t share much at all.”
“Then it is your worry?”
Francis shook his head, but it was an uncertain motion. “I’m a better killer than you,” he said. “They’d never find the body.”
“Do you suppose I’d mount you in some grotesque fashion?” Hannibal wanted to laugh, but he held in the impulse. He didn’t suppose Francis shared the same dark humor as Will did. “I wonder if you’d think of it as beautiful, if you could be around to see it after.”
“You’d elevate him,” Francis said after some thought. “He’d appreciate it, but that is because he is foolish.”
“Not you, though,” Hannibal observed.
“While he wondered at your metaphors, I’d wonder at our death.”
“Then you are his practicality?”
“I am his violence.”
Hannibal couldn’t resist, drawn as he was to the way Will’s face looked absolutely nothing like Will’s face. It was him, but somehow not, some form that was altogether different and wholly interesting. “And what am I to him?”
“I think you’re a puzzle to him. But he’s finally figured it out. Do you think you’ll be special then, Dr. Lecter?”
Hannibal had wondered much the same, in the short time he’d studied Will Graham. Would Will Graham still be interesting after he’d peeled back every layer and devoured every inch of his inspiration? After he consumed his words, his spirit, his soul, would he still continue to inspire, to ignite some sense of purpose within him that’d first even provoked Hannibal to begin this wildly spontaneous dance with the public world and the FBI?
“Do you hold his darkness in, Francis?” Hannibal questioned. “Or do you let it spread, relentless, encompassing everything like an oil spill?”
“His darkness is his own,” Francis hissed, leaning in. “I am merely the fist behind his wrath. I do what he will not because he will not Become that sort of person. The killer.”
“But he already has,” Hannibal reminded him. He softened his voice. “In making you, however long ago it was that he did, he put his wrath within you and let you kill for him. Whether his own hand, or the hand of you, both of you coincide within Will Graham. You are the same. Perhaps his subconscious is cruel to him because of that, because some part of him is well aware of the capacity he has for violence, considering however long ago it was that his trauma created you to be violent for him.”
Francis held still, as if poised to strike.
“He made some part of himself able to live with the idea of having taken a life,” Hannibal realized. “Because he knows his empathy would destroy him at the thought. But not…but not you.”
“I carry what he cannot,” he snarled.
“His cruelty,” Hannibal realized, delighted. “You carry his cruelty, therefore he can acknowledge his violence without having to entirely touch it.”
Some part of Francis contorted, shifted, at that and he let out a snarl, horrible and fierce before he looked back to Hannibal, livid. Livid, and yet…tired. Something in him was fading, fading, and Hannibal could only witness, enraptured.
He did not let out a great bellow; Francis Dolarhyde slipped into an unconscious state quietly, with the sort of dignity Hannibal hadn’t necessarily expected. After some thought, he conceded that perhaps it could be expected. A Great, Red Dragon wouldn’t cause such a scene as to scream and roar as they faded back into themselves. Perhaps a snarl, something small and dangerous. It was a tantalizing thought.
Hannibal sat poised just on the edge of the leather chair across from Will Graham for some time, thinking. With each new thought, a new door appeared within his mind palace, the place in which he locked away all precious thoughts he’d surely regret losing.
-
Will woke with the sloppy crashing of waves of consciousness. They crested over him, relentless, then caved away beneath his resistance. Something inside of him wanted to sleep, to push away the persistent urges to open his eyes, open his eyes, open his eyes…
He opened his eyes and sat up, dismayed, within Hannibal Lecter’s study.
“You have two suitcases currently taking up space within a derelict automobile,” Lecter said, strolling into the office. “Were you planning on running away with me, Will?”
Will stiffened, and he took careful stock of the office around him, muscles taut. Everything was in a horrific disarray, the coffee table decimated as though someone had tackled it to the floor. Books were scattered from where a bookcase had toppled over, and one of the stands that’d housed a brass sculpture was broken on the dented floor. Real brass, then. Real brass, a real dent, and Will quite suddenly had a very real problem.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Tobias Budge happened,” Hannibal said gravely.
Will didn’t see Tobias Budge, nor did he see any evidence necessarily of him having been there –a break-in? His mind leapt, dizzied, and he felt somehow drunk from it, like he’d consumed a lot of whiskey in a short amount of time. He looked around, then had to lean back in his chair to stave off of a rush of vertigo so strong he wondered if he’d vomit.
A break in because…
“He was the Maestro,” Will realized. He looked to Hannibal who was currently burning something in the fireplace –it took much too long for Will to realize that that’s exactly what he was doing –and continued, “you and your damn favor…”
Do you think he’s going to escalate his crimes if you don’t give him the attention he’s seeking?
“It’s a gift,” Hannibal said, and he turned back to the fireplace.
“A gift,” Will scoffed. Once his legs felt sturdy under him, he stood and walked over to watch him burn what appear to be a stack of files. The corner of the one on top read ‘Brown, Ha—’
“Yes, a gift. I thought to give it to Jack Crawford, since he surely would be too overcome to try and hunt two serial killers as opposed to one. A gift to you, as well, if you want to see it that way.”
Hannibal glanced to Will out of the corner of his eye, and his lip quirked ever-so-slightly.
“And am I the one giving him the gift when he takes me to the safehouse?” Will wondered. Somewhat of a joke, somewhat of a test. He was more than aware of the heat just in front of him from the fire that slowly grew with each stack of files, but he was also hyper-aware of the heat just beside him, close enough to lean into, close enough to touch. Something was stirring inside of him, seeing the file and the name curling and greying to ash. Although tired, aching like after a particularly violent fight, his mind was jumping, quick bursts as he began to see more and more of the room: the suitcase by the door, the purposeful care of all of the books on what shelves left standing turned around the wrong way, and the empty spaces where surely important books and documents used to be.
His throat was parched. His watch, surprisingly, didn’t beep to remind him to drink water. He wondered if some part of him was dreaming, but no; he was very much awake.
“Only if you want to be,” Hannibal replied. He tossed the next stack of files into the fire, and he smiled wanly. “Your prints are everywhere, here. You could carry the story of your survival, as well as an eye witness account right to Crawford’s lap. You’d be a hero doing something like that.”
“Jack can’t wear his wedding band again until he finds you,” said Will, and he thought of the stripe of pale skin, how it stood out so much now that Will knew the truth of it.
“I wonder if that makes you more curious than concerned,” Hannibal said, and he turned to face Will squarely, hands clasped behind his back. “You who only engaged with me because you wanted to have fun.”
“No,” Will rebuked kindly, and something was twisting just behind the thickness and density of his ribs. He wondered if Molly had gotten the letter yet, or if Beverly had, too; he wondered if right now Freddie was cursing him as they went over the edits for his final words to the column ‘Will Intentions,’ or if Charlie was thinking of ways to attempt to entice him back to Tattler News. He wondered if Abigail was panicking yet, if she was waiting for a sign or a call that could never come because Will was many things, but cruelty towards the innocent wasn’t one of his strong suits. “You said you wanted to be my friend,” Will reminded him, looking over to him.
Hannibal smiled, and it made his eyes shine bright in the firelight. It transformed his face, made him appear less predatory than he ever had before. “I did.”
“I am missing gaps of my memory,” Will said, tracking the movements of his face.
“Oh?”
Hannibal’s expression didn’t shift the slightest. Will smiled, and maybe it was the disarming way in which it felt utterly genuine despite what they were doing, the things they were saying. Hannibal’s perfectly calm poker face remained perfectly calm, but something about it felt all of a sudden rather rehearsed, like he’d had to think on it for awhile before settling on expression such as that.
“Can I trust you, Hannibal?” he asked. It felt dangerous, saying it like that.
“Such a question poses its own challenges, don’t you think?” Hannibal replied. His expression remained the same.
“Because I’m trusting you to honestly tell me whether or not you’re trustworthy.”
“Yes, that.”
Silence, save the devouring of perfectly flammable paper. Will licked his lips and tried again. “I’d like for you to read something later,” he said, looking back to the fire. “I think I’ve gotten it into its final editing stage.”
“A bout of inspiration?” Hannibal asked, and somehow he was much closer than before. Will kept staring at the fire, and suddenly he wasn’t thinking of Beverly or Molly or Freddie or even Abigail, confused and probably scared as she was. He wasn’t even thinking of their dance with words, how somehow they could share so much yet standing side-by-side now Will wasn’t quite sure where to even begin.
“Yes.”
“Are serial killers your muse, Mr. Graham?” Hannibal wondered, and he lifted a hand just close enough to ghost along his shirt. It brushed just shy of his throat, and he shifted close enough that Will could smell the scent of his cologne, something oaky and expensive.
“…Yes,” Will replied, and it sounded an awful lot like a confession. When he turned to Hannibal, he was surprised at the lack of space between them, intimate.
“You wouldn’t know, but I waited by the clock tower each day waiting to see how long it took for you to arrive,” Hannibal revealed. It was honest, genuine, and it somehow balanced Will’s confession with his candor. “I worried perhaps I’d misunderstood you completely. I wondered if you were so clever.”
“Someone like you would more than likely enjoy building walls up to see if someone is clever enough to either tear them down or climb over them,” Will scoffed, but it was light. He felt oddly…light.
“Then I assume you have another letter to write, for Jack Crawford,” Hannibal decided, and he dipped down and put his mouth remarkably close to Will’s. “As you’ll only continue to have inspiration for your works by coming along with me.”
Will held his breath, and he nodded. He grabbed the bastard by the curve of his lapels, and he hauled him in , thinking of the way he’d held him in the dark at the gala, the heat of his body as he whispered ugly things in his ear.
“You’ll tell me what I’ve forgotten and why,” he warned Hannibal, soft enough he wondered if he’d even spoke. “After our more pressing situation is over. You’ll tell me.”
That close, Hannibal looked mildly amusing; his eyes crossed slightly as he looked at Will’s mouth, then lifted his gaze so that they were staring one another in the eye, the most direct eye contact they’d held since the moment when Hannibal first sent him a letter asking if he had wanted to play a game.
“Then we have a deal,” Hannibal murmured, and he closed the distance between them, arms wrapped tight around Will’s waist. His mouth made Will think of things much like warm hands, cool Spring mornings, and sealing a deal with the devil by the giving of a kiss.
-
Beverly Katz cornered them at the Texaco twenty miles out of Baltimore where they were gassing up at the farthest back pump. She had a gun on them, and it’d never occurred to Will that Beverly would have ever hunted him down with a gun.
Let alone hunted him down at all.
“You know, I wondered the last time we talked that you were maybe going to do something irrational,” Beverly said conversationally, poised at the back of their sedan. They’d stolen it –Hannibal had stolen it. Will had wondered over the theft, the desperate and afraid person stuck finding the empty parking spot the next morning, and the large but revealing furry head set with care in the back seat.
“Beverly –”
“Then, I thought, ‘he’s not that stupid’,” she continued. Despite her blasé tone, her arms were stiff and unyielding as she kept the gun poised on Hannibal.
Hannibal, for everything, had all appearances of a mildly unrumpled and wholly bemused individual. He took her lack of shooting him immediately in great stride, and he seemed content, when Will looked at him, to allow him to continue reaching out to her.
“How’d you find me?”
“I’ve been following you around since the night after the gala!” Beverly snapped, and her mouth thinned to a flat, crooked line across the bottom of her face. It was her favorite feature, she’d once boasted. A crooked smile. Made all the boys at the bar nervous.
Will went very, very still.
“Yeah,” she said, and her eyes darkened. Will supposed that most of the trouble –should he live through the encounter –would be the fact that he’d be stuck remembering that expression for as long as he lived. “Yeah, I know that you broke into his house. I know you knew about this long, long before all of your bull shit excuses.”
She may have been a writer, but confrontation wasn’t necessarily Beverly’s forte. Like Will, left in the aftermath of her reveal, the punch in the gut that left him suddenly guessing everything took far too much for him to recover from. She stared at him, Will stared back. He sucked in a breath and thought of the night he’d first asked her to come along, when he’d treated himself to top shelf liquor and she’d promised to help him kick Freddie Lounds’ ass.
“We need to kill her,” Hannibal said lightly, just beside Will.
“No.”
The fact that Will spoke at the same time as Beverly didn’t soften her to him. Her glare was fixed between the two of them, switching periodically as her suspicion rose and lowered respectively.
“You have a letter waiting for you at home,” Will said.
“Oh, is that why you don’t want to kill me?”
“He’s spared your life before, you know,” Hannibal interjected. “At the gala, he informed me that you were not part of our game.”
“Funny, I’m feeling a bit played here, Will,” Beverly said pointedly.
“Did you see the blood on my shirt?” Will asked.
Beverly smiled thinly. It somehow didn’t suit her. “You think you can hide a stain like that? The moment you sat down in the car, I saw some of it. You’ve been lying to me for a long time, Will.”
Will nodded slowly. Something was scalding hot on his tongue, and it felt an awful lot like a confession. “I just didn’t want you to get hurt.”
“You are sometimes so full of shit,” Beverly hissed. “You think I haven’t called the cops and the FBI? Do you think friendship is keeping you alive right now?”
“Beverly –”
“You’ll lower your gun, or you’ll have to take a nap,” a familiar man said, and Will stared gaping awe as the homeless man from the alleyway strolled up behind Beverly with a pistol cocked lazily at his hip. “And I don’t mean the cat-kind.”
Abigail Hobbs skirted around him, although if she had a gun Will couldn’t quite see. She was determined not to look at Will, it seemed, as she stationed herself just behind Hannibal, luggage bag at her side. “I thought I’d stalled her long enough,” she groused.
“That wasn’t funny,” Beverly said, turning her head to glance back at the homeless man. She lowered her gun to the ground and lifted her hands out to the side.
“You’re not shooting her,” Will said, although he couldn’t be sure if he was sayign that to Hannibal or to the man behind her. “She’s going home unharmed.”
“Fuck you, Will,” Beverly snarled.
“I didn’t entirely fuck you over, you know,” Will replied, and he motioned back towards the city and where she likely had a very important package waiting at the house. “Go home, Beverly. Your front page awaits you.”
There was something chilling in the way she didn’t break eye contact, even as she backed up just enough to skirt around the homeless man. She climbed into her car, and maybe the pistol hadn’t been a personal token to her because she didn’t try to negotiate for it. Will stooped down, picked it up, and checked the safety.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” he said hollowly, and he jabbed towards Hannibal hollowly. “You’ve got some fucking explaining to do.”
“Fuck you,” the homeless man said cheerfully.
