Hannibal doesn't rise to his husband's bite, supporting the weight of that double-edged brain in his palm. They both know the purpose behind his kills. Because he enjoys it and he can. Like Antony's poetry, Hannibal, too, has a need for artistic expression that bleeds and wounds and claws with desperation as it succumbs to death.
He thinks, perhaps, Antony has calmed enough to be moved without incurring physical harm, settled and trusting between hands that have killed and dismembered more than seventy people. Prepared more than eighteen with detailed tact and care to see his beloved whole and hale. But no battle is easily won between himself and his husband. He should have known. Antony's carotid bulges a split second before he lunges forward, breaking out of Hannibal's loose hold and knocking the doctor back a step in his frantic state.
This is becoming ridiculous, now. Fists clenching, Hannibal's eyes narrow with distaste upon his husband, hunched over his desk and spilling blood onto parchment from pricking his own fingers in his haste to write. Casual use of drugs was nothing for him to reprimand, given his own propensity when the whim for experimentation periodically appeared. Using opioids as a crutch for personal, emotional issues was another, more dire matter entirely. "This is not a proper method of coping with your loss," the doctor states, firm with a hint of chill that greeted lambs before their slaughter. He snatches up Antony's wrists as they fly, manacling bone and blood and delicate flesh with a punishing grip that will most likely add to the bruises already present. That he will most likely regret, come morning, when they are wrapped warm and safe from this mercurial madness in their bed.
"Am I no longer muse enough for you to draw inspiration? Has your well run dry and now you are scrambling towards a delusion that promises water where there is only sand to drink?" He shakes him then to break the drug's feedback loop on his synapses and wrestles Antony out of his seat- like a doll with strings cut.
"Let me write!" He roars out, his deep voice cracking upon unshed emotion. "You draw your life from bone and blood and flesh and I draw mine from ink and words! You damn me!" It is a yell now, his voice scratching against itself as he calls out. He is dehydrated and it doesn't aid to his feeble tirade.
Between the both of them, Hannibal is only slightly stronger. His strength comes from the hunt while Antony's comes from regular exercise regime's put in place by pride. So it is no surprise that it is a tussle as Hannibal wrestles Antony from his seat, tearing him from his work. From paper and pen.
"You damn me!" He cried again as his nails claw at the wood. He hadn't delved this deep within his mind since their school years.
In the end Hannibal does win. Antony heaves himself against the Doctor in a last feeble attempt to knock him off and return, but he curls into the others arms, his words biting and vicious. Antony was always the more outwardly emotional of the two.
"You are only one of many muses, beloved. Do not act as if you are surprised by this." He hates how he sounds. Weak. Pathetic. Addicted. His fists curl upon the others shirt, nails biting into the skin there. He wanted to see blood. Wanted to taste it upon his lips. Wanted it be another, not just his own. He was tired and angry. That is what drove him, that pure anger. It was deceitful and clouded his mind beyond any comprehension of rational thought. But oh, how he loved it. He loved it so. “Let me write.” @intimatewithyourinstincts