Chapter Text
“We could leave now. Tonight. Feed your dogs, leave a note for Alana, and never see her or Jack again. Almost polite.”
The words, softly spoken like a love confession, mean something more. Something dangerous. Will knows, but the idea grows roots and flowers blossom in his mind. Someplace far away, no obligation towards Jack, no fear of monsters haunting his brain except the one he’s choosing to follow and the one he himself is becoming.
Almost polite.
Almost perfect.
“I don’t want to leave the dogs.”
It sounds stupid, but the truth can be stupid sometimes. The dogs are his family, the only simple thing in a life of complicated ones. He left them once; he doesn’t want to do it again. And it’s easier to blame his affection for them than conjure some weird motivation that will ring untrue.
Hannibal’s smile grows teeth.
He stands up with the usual grace, buttons his jacket and leaves the room. Will stays at the table, fork still in his hand, confused. Hannibal has lost the ability to really surprise him because Will has lost the ability to expect something other than the worst from him. His grip on the fork tightens to the point of pain. But when Hannibal comes back, he’s holding a document folder, neat like everything else he does. He places it on the table, near Will’s plate still full of perfectly cooked human meat.
“What’s this?”
“Transportation arrangements for your dogs.”
Will opens the folder and looks at Hannibal’s plan for his family. It’s not an overcomplicated endeavour, but it’s an expensive one. They never talk about money – too vulgar, yes, but also too much of a reminder of their poor childhoods – but a private flight for a bunch of shedding strays seems too much even for Hannibal. It certainly is for Will.
I don’t deserve this.
I’m betraying you.
Don’t make it harder than it already is.
Truths implode inside of him, causing singular sharp points of pain. He doesn’t let anything show.
“Is this what you usually do? Throw money at a problem until it disappears?”
“The world it’s not a fair place, Will.”
“Because of people with money.”
“Touché.”
Hannibal stops looming over Will and goes back to his place at the table.
They eat people in silence.
I don’t know who I am without you.
I want to go with you.
Be wherever you are.
“Will? Are you still with me?”
“Ok.” Another beat of silence, words few and far between like the pulse of a dying heart. “Let’s leave tonight.”
His morality has just flatlined.
***
They have to finish dinner, because Hannibal is annoying like that.
“Nobody is coming to get us, Will.”
Not true, but not false either. So they eat and decide the next steps together. Will will go to his house, leave the car and prepare a light luggage. Then he’ll wait.
Always waiting for you.
Hannibal will come to get him and the dogs, and they’ll leave for someplace Will ‘shouldn’t concern himself with’.
When he’s finally in his car, his hands trembling on the wheel while he drives, Will expects panic. Some kind of throwback to his encephalitis era when nightmares were more real than people.
But no.
There’s trepidation, a distorted sense of freedom, a hidden and dark hope. No panic, though, not at the moment. Decisions are malleable like that: hard to make, easy once made, and hard again when they bear consequences. He’s in the sweet spot, might as well enjoy it. So he plays music and drives and wonders where they’re going and how their life will be when they have only each other.
And the dogs, yes.
It’s still weird, but it’s also sweet, if Will allows himself to think about it. It was also a trap, that much is clear. ‘Feed your dogs’ and then he had a plan for them all along.
Manipulative asshole.
Sweetness with Hannibal is the kind brought by decay, the rotten smell of decomposition that clings to the throat. Oh so sweet and so, so nauseating.
I want more.
Another painful thought while he parks in front of his house – the boat on the sea where he once felt safe.
***
He lets the dogs out one more time to dispel some of their pent-up energy, he makes sure everyone has a treat, he chooses practical clothes and a few things he doesn’t want to leave behind. He wonders how Hannibal is feeling at the idea of leaving his belongings. He takes pride in them, they’re part of the set design when he performs his human deceit, so it’s weird to imagine him shedding them like old skin. Maybe there’s a private flight for them too. Maybe they’re Hannibal’s simple things in a life of complicated ones. More likely, Will is projecting humanity where humanity is not.
Anyway, it’s harder to fit an entire Japanese armour in a suitcase.
Will’s laugh at the thought is short and sharp. It echoes through the house, one last goodbye to the walls and the bed and the stupid chimney he destroyed and repaired. Not to his dogs, though, because Hannibal knows he cares and used them to get to him. Maybe. Will doesn’t know anymore.
He hears a vehicle approaching and for an instant he’s afraid again. What if it’s Jack? What if he has come only to catch them load seven fucking dogs in Hannibal’s Bentley? ‘We’re just going for a ride, agent, nothing suspicious, we swear.’ Yeah, sure.
“Fuck.”
He rushes to the door and pulls it open, but it’s just Hannibal. A reckless thought, just Hannibal. His smile is still sharp, but there’s a bit of mockery hidden in the lines of his face.
“Impatient?”
Will doesn’t grant him an answer, because it won’t be a polite one. Instead, he studies the van Hannibal arrived in.
“That is our ride?”
“Indeed, it is.”
“Not like you.”
“Precisely. It’s spacious, it can accommodate your pack comfortably and it will serve its purpose. But if you prefer, I can go back and retrieve my car.”
Another mockery, a note of affection in his accented voice. Will wants to punch him.
I want to kiss you.
“You're extremely proud of yourself, aren’t you?”
“You mistake happiness for pride, dear Will.”
Hannibal takes care of his baggage and leads him to the van. Will tries very hard not to think about the endearment and guides the dogs in the same direction.
***
The streets are quiet, from the radio comes a subtle classical piece. Will feels like he hasn’t slept in centuries. Since meeting him, probably. Minutes become an hour; Will still doesn’t ask where they’re going even if it would be smart.
“You should rest.”
“I don’t want to.”
It sounds bratty. He’s reduced to a whiny little thing, coddled with dogs and attentions and that sticky, manipulative sweetness.
“What do you want, Will?”
It’s a solemn question. It’s asked that way because Hannibal isn’t talking about sleeping. Will goes from looking outside the window to searching his face, trying to grasp the real meaning. It’s so easy it’s scary. Now that he sees him, now that they’re blurring into each other, reading Hannibal can be like reading a warning sign. The shape, the colour, the placement at the edge of a cliff… everything is screaming ‘danger’.
He asks anyway.
“What do you mean?”
“Is this the right time to talk about our beloved Freddie Lounds?”
Ah. That.
He's demanding to know what Will wants in the grand scheme of things. And Will can play the fool – he is a fool, after all – but the choice he just made requires honesty.
“You know I was playing both parties. I told you. I was Jack’s man as much as I was yours.”
“What a cunning boy you are, hiding behind the truth.”
“I learned from the best.”
“And now here we are." A second of quiet with something well thought hidden in it. "Tell me, Will, who do you belong to now?”
The silence stretches while Will considers his answer. Maybe Hannibal won’t like it, but he says it anyway.
“I’m finally my own.”
***
They drive and drive. Will recounts the last few weeks for another hour, interrupted only by Hannibal’s poised analysis on the matter. It’s a clinical tale, a cold recollection of events.
“Alana knows,” he concludes. “Now, at least.”
“Yes. She smelled of gunpowder and she’s been particularly absent lately.”
Will moves, suddenly uncomfortable in his seat. “Can we not talk about how she smells?”
There must be something sharp to the point of danger in his voice because Hannibal is wearing a satisfied expression on his handsome, angular face. Will can see it in the dim light of the night they’re driving through. He also wants to punch him until every bone breaks out of its shape.
And Kiss the blood away from the bruises.
“You resent her, Will?”
“She didn’t believe me. Facts had to slap her in the face, and she had no alternative but to wake up from her dreams of domesticity.” And then, exhausted. “You saw to that. You wanted me to have nothing that wasn’t you, while you had a lot that wasn’t me.”
Hannibal throws him a quick look, the controlled piercing of a scalpel.
“You had Jack.”
“Not the same.”
“Because I was intimate with her.”
“Because Jack was using me. He cares about the greater good, he doesn’t really care about me. He left me to rot in a cage, remember?”
“While Alana cared for me.”
Will doesn’t answer because there’s no question hidden in that stated fact.
Fuck the both of you.
“What will happen if I meet someone who cares for me, in this new life of ours?” he asks.
Hannibal seems to think about it, something dark in his eyes. Will lets him, looking back at the dogs for a second to make sure everybody is all right. They’ll need to stop soon for a little walk, or they’ll become restless just like him.
“You are your own, Will, just as you said.”
It comes out forced. An half truth concealing a more dangerous one.
“But you won’t like it. And you tend to destroy what you don’t like.”
“I must ask you the same, then: what if I encounter someone whose company I enjoy more than yours, in this new life of ours?”
Hannibal verbally lounges and draws blood like usual. Will wants to smash his head against the window and shut him the fuck up.
I want to kiss you until you suffocate.
“I’d kill the both of you.”
He doesn’t really know when these kinds of instincts stopped being a façade and became real.
Hannibal smiles, proud and happy and so beautiful.
“We agree then.”
***
They stop for a quick walk and to eat perfectly assembled meet sandwiches, while the dogs drink their water and stretch their legs a bit.
Will wants to fill the silence, to assess other boundaries. “We’ll need to find a balance,” he says.
“A balance?”
“What you are, what I’m becoming.”
“You see the two as… incompatible.”
“They are.”
“Not in my experience.”
“I’m more of a vigilante.” He cringes at the word and can feel Hannibal do the same, even if he’s not looking at him. “You know that’s what they’ll call me, if I start to follow my…”
He doesn’t have a word for his shadows. He’s not sure of his own design. Not yet.
“Inclinations,” supplies Hannibal, mouth curled around the sound.
“See? You find my inclinations tasteless. I find your motivations flimsy. We’re incompatible.”
Hannibal gets closer, puts one of his warm, firm hands on Will’s neck. When he talks, his voice is smooth and tender. So close it will take just a deep breath to kiss him.
“This is preventive sabotage, Will.”
“Then reassure me.”
It’s needy again, and a bit cruel. He wants to drag Hannibal in the dark forest of his doubts with him, but Hannibal is used to orient himself in those woods. He helped them grow, after all.
“We’re not just compatible, we’re one. We’ll conquer Troy alone, my dear Will, no matter the obstacles, despite every army.”
It’s a premonition, and Will eases. It doesn’t last for long: all his desires awake once again, demanding to be fulfilled.
I want to disappear under your skin.
I want to open you up and crawl inside your rib cage.
I want to kiss you.
Will disentangles from the hold and looks away. “Fine. Alright. I’m ok now. Let’s go.”
***
They’re on the road again in mere minutes, the dogs back in the van, the subtle music as the soundtrack of all their talking.
“Your pensive, Will. Now it’s the time to explore your thoughts and leave behind the ones that are dragging you at the bottom of your sea.”
“My thoughts are always heavy.” Will knows he’s just tired and weary. He pushes his hair back, trying not to hate himself for his restlessness. “To think I was in the sweet spot just a few hours ago.”
“The sweet spot?”
“The moment without doubts and fears.”
“Aren’t we past doubts and fears, you and I?”
“I’ve got shiny new ones.”
Hannibal’s smile is an amused one. “Tell them, so I can destroy them as I do with everything I don’t like. Isn’t it what you accused me of?”
Will sighs. “Ok, well, you manipulated me with my dogs. You knew about Freddie Lounds, you knew I was on the verge of betraying you.”
Hannibal waits, but Will doesn’t know how to continue.
“Is that a question?”
“You want a question? Here’s my question: why?”
“You think me indiscriminately cruel. I simply wanted to give you one last chance to be honest, Will. With me as much as with yourself. I wanted to put you in the best position to decide what was good for you.” A beat of silence pulses between them, filled only by the sound of the street under the tires, the wind against the windows and the soft music from the stereo. “A sweet spot, as you said. Isn’t it what we do for the ones we love?”
The word hits Will like a punch, robbing him of breath and retorts.
Love.
Can you love?
Is this what we’re doing: love?
It takes him a few minutes to regain control. He’s stubbornly looking everywhere but at Hannibal. He’s afraid to read the truth on his face as much as he’s afraid it’s all a lie.
“You were cruel with me in the past. I’m used to cruelty. Or manipulation, at least.”
“What you call cruelty allowed us to be here, in this moment. You were hiding, I wanted you free.”
There’s the matter of ‘why’, but Will lets Hannibal continue.
“Human interactions are always manipulative, in more or less explicit ways. We want the ones we love to love us back, we want our family to be proud of us and to support us, we want our coworkers to admire us. This requires some manipulation.”
“That’s cynical.”
“But true.”
“I don’t want to be manipulated by you, nor I want to manipulate you. Not anymore.”
“Oh, but you do. You’re doing it now, avoiding what is really worrying you while showing your worry so blatantly.”
“You know everything, mh? Go on then.”
“You won’t talk about it because there’s a part of you that is ashamed. And shame is interwoven with pain. You want me to breach your resistance and clear the passage, so you can come out of your fortress without suffering, following in my steps. A clean birth of feelings. Something akin to a rescue.”
“And you don’t offer safety, right? Rescuing me was never an option.”
Hannibal is dead serious when he answers. “Wrong.”
Will’s heart is beating like a trapped bird, fluttering in his fortress of bones, waiting to be saved.
“I care for you, Will. I crave every single part of you. Every tasteless thought, every haunting nightmare, all the darkness in your soul and all the brightness you still hold dear. I love all that you have been and all that you will become. And you, as you are, right in this very moment.”
Will would like to say something, open his mouth and let the words flow in the same effortless way of the river in his mind. But he’s afraid that, once started, he would not be able to stop. The insides all out, ready to be devoured by Hannibal. He doesn’t trust him, he doesn’t trust the calculated sweetness in this confession, he can’t.
I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.
But I want to.
“Speechless I see.”
“You said every human interaction is manipulation.”
“Are you searching for the manipulation in my words or are you looking for your words of manipulation, Will?”
“A bit of both.”
Will smiles. A tight thing, no sweetness held between his teeth.
“You want reassurances tonight. You want to know with certainty that you did the right thing, that I’m honest in my care for you, and that your care for me is not misplaced. I want to give you what you want because it’s also the truth. But only time will prove you that.” Another quick glance in Will’s direction. “I’m willing to wait. Are you?”
“You use honesty like a sharp weapon.”
Will lets his head rest against the seat and takes a deep breath. His lungs feel too big against his rib cage when he does, his body a binding prison of flesh.
The road goes on and Will thoughts become quieter.
They’re full of sickening sweetness.
“I’ll wait,” he says, a lifetime later, so soft he doesn’t really know if Hannibal can even hear him.