This analysis goes out to my three followers. You know who you are ✨
Warning: spoilers obviously.
Anyway, I was just lying in bed trying to sleep, when I began thinking about Hannibal and Will’s intimate interactions. Mostly, their little hugs. You may have noticed that Hannibal does a thing where he puts his hand on the back of Will’s neck and/or his upper back. Exhibit a:
One thing to note is that a majority of the time, Hannibal doesn’t initiate this sort of thing. He did this time though, in one way or another. The way it started was him putting his hand on Will’s cheek. This distracted Will enough that Hannibal could stab him. Once he stabbed Will, Will fell into him and dropped his gun, Hannibal then embraced him in a hug. Hannibal shows how much he cares in actions much more than words. He could never outright say he loves Will to his face, save for elaborate metaphors (can’t think of an example lol but I know I had one in mind when I originally wrote this), comparisons (where he compared his and Will’s story to that of Achilles and Patroclus) and public declarations of love (like the heart in Florence or the judge after the trial). He says he loves him by the way he touches him, and I feel that in this way he can’t control himself.
I believe Hannibal has never felt any real connection to a sexual/romantic partner, friend, family member etc. This makes it very easy to tell when he’s doing something romantic, comforting or loving, because he simply can’t help it or if he’s using it as a weapon.
Here’s an example of him using tender touches to Will as a weapon:
Here he puts his hand on Will to establish trust. I trust you with the information that Abigail killed Nicholas Boyle and I trust you to keep it a secret that I helped her dispose of his body.
He also weaponises his charm in the form of manipulation as he does this. He tells Will that they are her fathers now and they must do better than Garrett Jacob Hobbs, and that means protecting her from doing jail time which was made impossibly worse by the fact that they hid the body and told no one what they did. If Will took more than a second to think about why he would hide this before falling into Hannibal’s beautiful lies, he’d realise that fatherly instinct be damned, any normal person would have told the feds (assuming Hannibal was telling the truth that Nick attacked them-he isn’t though) that it was self defence and his (Nick’s) intention was to kill them. Instead he manages to convince both Will and Abigail that no one would believe her (even with Hannibal as a whiteness) that it was self defence and she would be put away. I believe he tells Will that he’d be “murdering Abigail’s future,” if he turned this in, which is a very manipulative way of driving home his point. But “ruining Abigail’s future” was too chill for him I guess.
Next we have when Will was shot:
The way Hannibal touches him was so unnecessary. Hannibal doesn’t initiate romantic contact, but when it happens with Will, he can’t help himself but to lean into it, to embrace it and enjoy the moment. Hannibal doesn’t like touching people enough to initiate physical contact, but the second it’s happening, he leans into it completely and loses himself to the feeling for a short amount of time. He likes how it feels.
Hannibal has two modes when it comes to caring contact, 1. Manipulation, 2. Desperation.
When Hannibal leans into these feelings with Will that he usually neglects and buries, it’s always pure, raw and honest. And he can’t help the honesty.
I honestly believe that Hannibal has never felt any real love or compassion for any other human being in his life, so now that he has Will and he feels these feelings for Will that he’s never had the opportunity to feel before, he can’t let Will go. Any touch he gets he savours, and he does so without thinking and he does so without control.
Imagine never feeling like you’ve ever loved anyone or cared for anyone before, and suddenly someone makes you feel not only that, but makes you feel comfortable. Suddenly you have somebody that makes you feel like you want to be close to them. Hannibal finally found something in Will that made him feel compassion for somebody, ANYBODY. Will is special, and so is Hannibal, because Will can’t give Hannibal up and Hannibal can’t give Will up.
There’s also a moment where I believe that Hannibal is so overcome by joy and celebration at the way Will is turning out that he couldn’t help but touch him.
Will had just went to pull the trigger when Hannibal stopped him.
The point was that Will had every intention to kill the man and he really wanted to, he tried but the man was spared by Hannibal. Hannibal can’t contain his pride, and then he tells Will that “with all my knowledge and intrusion, I could never entirely predict you. I can feed the caterpillar, and I can whisper into the chrysalis, but what hatches follows it’s own nature and is beyond me.” Basically saying that Will is growing into something beautiful. And to compare him to a butterfly is actually pretty sweet. Butterfly’s are majestic, beautiful, he’s saying that he adores Will basically lol.
Also the completely over the top, romantic way he checked Will’s temperature.
In conclusion, Hannibal doesn’t say “I love you” when he says I love you. He just doesn’t touch anyone else like this. Sure, Alana, but you can’t tell me you watched that and thought “this looks like a genuine, loving relationship. He’s not just using her to get at everyone, manipulate the situation and make Will jealous. (And of course the reason the entire relationship was created, just for the sex scene when it kinda looks like they all, and more specifically Will and Hannibal, were fucking.)”
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