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Hannibal didn’t sleep.
Both as a general rule and in this very particular circumstance.
As a general rule, it was the habit of an apex predator, living in a world filled with other contending predators. One eye always half open, ears perked for the slightest noise so as to snatch up the nearest weapon and fight to the bitter, bloody end.
This very particular circumstance was something new. Hannibal had shared his bed before. In the past, it had always been part of the game, albeit with additional hedonistic benefits. Hannibal had never taken a bedmate without an ulterior motive, though: some manipulation or maneuver, strike or counterstrike. Until now, he hadn’t even conceived of a situation in which he’d want a partner simply for their own sake. As such, he’d trained himself to remain on hyperalert after coitus: some simple repression of biochemical signals combined with a naturally lower release of oxytocin, vasopressin, and prolactin, and he would earn himself several hours’ unfettered access to his partner’s unconscious body. It was a useful trick.
Taking Will to bed was something entirely different, transcendent. Hannibal had thought that perhaps Will would fight his biological inclinations as well – Will’s fight-or-flight instincts were uniquely skillfully honed, after all – but Will had rolled into his pillow almost immediately after their lovemaking and dove into a deep sleep.
Hannibal was suspicious at first. It would not be unlike Will to try to lull Hannibal into sleep, all while Will waited to strike. Hannibal pretended to fall for the trap at first and then, after two hours of non-reaction from Will, conceded that Will genuinely had no such intentions. Hannibal still didn’t sleep, though.
Instead, he took advantage of the occasion. He began by sniffing his way up and down Will’s body, lingering in the areas where Will grew annoyed during wakefulness at Hannibal’s devoted attentiveness. Now, however, Hannibal had all the time in the world. With a connoisseur’s intimate attention, Hannibal learned the subtle differences between the hollow of Will’s throat, the aroma of his armpits, the salty sweat of his lower back, the heady intensity of his pubic curls, the sweet succulence of his opening, the clean skin of his calves, and the nuance of each and every toe. Will muttered and shifted from time to time, when Hannibal’s nose brushed or tickled, but he slept throughout as Hannibal had his own peculiar way.
At one point, halfway through Hannibal’s analysis, Will rolled onto his back and broke into a night sweat, much to Hannibal’s pleasure. Will stained the pillowcase and the sheet under his upper back a darker blue, nearly black as midnight. Hannibal indulged himself in a quick taste: first of the sheets, the lingering piquancy of their union combined with Will’s darkest nightmares, and then Will’s skin, acrid fear and satiated umami, salted to perfection.
As always, Will was absolutely delectable, and Hannibal savored every bit of him.
Will’s body and its secrets were more than consuming enough to occupy Hannibal throughout the sleeping hours. By the time dawn broke, Hannibal had not exactly had his fill – never that – but found himself at least content for the moment. Hannibal lay back and instead preoccupied himself with how the ever-changing light played over Will’s skin. The sun rose faster here, closer to the equator. It started a deep blue before flaring briefly through purple into a sudden brilliant red – rosy-fingered dawn, indeed. The red seemed to glow from deep within Will’s flesh, blood become light, before bursting forth into rich gold. The colors haloed Will’s hair, limned his cheeks and lips, until Hannibal could well believe that Will was Helios himself, a god of molten fire whose merest touch would melt Hannibal’s flesh down to the bone for the hubris of daring to draw so close to this fiery sun, the sacrilege and folly of Icarus.
As Will brightened and brightened past the point of brilliance (Will was always beyond brilliant, to Hannibal) and rose from the depths of sleep, Hannibal settled himself back onto his side of the bed and feigned repose. There were advantages to both faking sleep past the moment of Will’s wakefulness or pretending to wake together. For this first morning, Hannibal chose the latter: best not to give Will any openings yet, enjoy the honeymoon phase while their truce lasted.
And enjoy it, he did. As did Will, if Will’s receptive moans were any indication. For now, Hannibal’s fickle god did not set him aflame for daring to approach. Or, at least, not in an unpleasant way.
***
Hannibal did not sleep the second night, either.
Even though he’d been awake the first night, that had been dreamlike. It had seemed like something that did not happen, should not happen. Hannibal had not trusted that first night and so had treated it as something ephemeral, a reward he’d accidentally been allowed to taste and commit forever to his mind palace. Although he generally considered himself optimistic, he had not genuinely expected this second night to come, let alone so soon.
Will, however, continued to confound Hannibal at every turn. He’d retired to Hannibal’s bed as though it were his right, and there was no doubt whatsoever. His only acknowledgement of a surreal – delightful! – change in their interdependency had been a raised eyebrow and a snort of annoyance and amusement at Hannibal’s disbelief in return.
Hannibal had hesitated no further. He prided himself on taking advantage of every opportunity granted him. Regrets were a waste of life.
That night, after he’d sated himself on Will’s fire and passion, and Will had again fallen into serene, seemingly innocent sleep, Hannibal plotted. It seemed he was to be granted access to an unconscious body again, as he had in the past, and it would be downright rude not to take his advantage of this fortuitous circumstance as well.
The first experiment was a simple one: deny it though he might, Will was every bit the deadly predator Hannibal was, and it was incongruous that Will should sleep so soundly while so great a threat lurked nearby. Will had not had Hannibal’s practice resisting the body’s natural reaction to sex, so Hannibal could well believe that Will instinctively fell asleep afterwards. However, what if awakened? Surely, that would shake something deep, dark, and interesting (terrifying) loose.
Hannibal waited until Will cycled through his first deep sleep and was drifting upward towards REM. Once Hannibal heard the first mutters of Will’s dreams and saw his eyes dart behind closed lids, he pulled in closer to Will’s body and draped himself around Will’s back in an implacable cocoon. His fingers lingered affectionately down Will’s side before he located the pressure point that would agitate Will’s bladder, and he began pressing and releasing the spot in a regular, deliberate rhythm.
Will squirmed in his sleep, crossed his legs, and then suddenly consciousness flooded his limbs. Hannibal, very carefully, regulated his breathing into a simulacrum of peaceful slumber. He allowed Will to slip free of his arm and bound into the bathroom. Hannibal kept one hand curled under his pillow, on the hilt of the switchblade he kept there for emergencies, and waited.
He heard the toilet flush and the water run, and run, and run, for far longer than was expected. What was Will doing in there? Hannibal’s back was to the bathroom – carefully planned – so that by the time the door finally opened, the light flooded over his exposed spine. It took every strain of his self-control not to tense in anticipation. Almost as soon as the light came, Will flicked the light switch, and the world turned black again. Hannibal’s eyes adjusted – uselessly: any battle now would be fought via touch alone, not sight – and he could barely make out the sound of Will’s bare feet on the carpet, softly, closer, closer…
Past Hannibal’s back, around the foot of the bed, and then descending in a chaotic flop onto the mattress beside him.
Bewildered, Hannibal cracked open one eye to watch Will settle sleepily into bed beside Hannibal, pull the sheets back up over his shoulders, and nestle into his pillow, his nose mere inches from Hannibal’s shoulder. Within minutes, Will’s breath had eased into slumber once more.
Hannibal, very slowly, one knuckle at a time, released his grip on the switchblade. Will did not stir.
Cautiously, Hannibal reached out to brush his knuckles against Will’s exposed flank. Will muttered, twitched as if uncomfortable, and then grabbed Hannibal’s wrist and looped his arm about Will’s waist instead. All without the twitch of an eyelid, perfectly comfortable and relaxed.
There were times Hannibal despaired of ever understanding Will.
He repeated the experiment a second time, but Will seemed dogged in his determination that their nighttime bed was meant for sleeping and not multidimensional games of murder chess.
A final test was in order.
That morning, as dawn bloomed, Hannibal pretended to sleep through it entirely, past the rising sun, past the wakening movement of Will’s limbs, past, past, on and on, until the discomfort itched along his spine, anxious and wary. Hannibal knew Will was awake, but Will didn’t leave the bed, nor did he make any move for or against Hannibal. With his eyes closed, Hannibal had no way of knowing what Will was doing, and his imagination ran rich and deep for too long before finally he yielded and let his eyelids flutter open in a carefully composed mask of a man waking from gentle sleep.
Will was as beautiful and deadly in the late morning light as he was in the dawn. Even more so, when his eyes met Hannibal’s and his lips blossomed into a smile even more radiant than the sun.
“Good morning,” Will said, and finally made his strike, lightning-quick and lethally precise, to catch Hannibal with one gentle hand over his vulnerable throat and his lips hot and sensual smothering Hannibal’s mouth.
Hannibal made a dying sound deep in his throat and let Will hold and kiss him bare.
“So,” Will asked as he finally pulled away, “who are you making for breakfast?”
Perfect incorrigible monster…
***
The days and nights turned to weeks, yet still Hannibal did not sleep. Will was an experienced fisherman; he knew patience, and so did Hannibal. Will had waited before, had let Hannibal chew his bait until his hook was sunk all throughout Hannibal’s innards, until Hannibal could not pull free of Will without gutting himself irreparably.
Instead, Hannibal survived via half-awake states. A half-nap hidden during his evening read, a half hour’s repose parked behind the wheel when he was out running solo errands, minutes of rest stolen here and there where Will was unlikely to catch him: in the kitchen, staking out a hunt, trawling for dinner.
At night, though, Hannibal remained on guard. He had begun to feel ridiculous for it. Will, for all his disturbed, sweaty nights, did not often awaken. On the nights when he did – on his own, or via Hannibal’s various machinations – he generally chose to go immediately back to sleep. Occasionally, when Hannibal decided to reveal that he was awake as well, Will stayed awake for a time, usually for sex but once or twice for conversations that lingered past sensibility and meandered through metaphor, metaphysics, and destiny, until the hook Will had in Hannibal found itself sunk deeper than ever before.
Hannibal hated this dying feeling Will invoked in him, and yet at the same time he felt elated by it, as though he were flying, free, unstoppable. He would kill for Will, wanted to kill for Will, did kill for Will, and still Will did not yank out his hook and end Hannibal.
It was unbearable. It was untenable.
It was wondrous.
Until the curious incident of the dog in the night. (And the fact that Will had allowed Hannibal to call it that with only a passing huff of amused resignation really did signify that they were becoming horribly domestic, didn’t it?)
As a principle, Hannibal was neutral of the subject of dogs. He didn’t want them (or, more accurately, their associated messes) on his person or property, but he wasn’t egregiously opposed to the concept either, which was an especially crucial life skill now that he was cohabiting with Will.
Hannibal had not expected the issue of dogs to arise so immediately, though, although perhaps he ought to have. He had noticed Will was up to something: slipping out somewhere in the evenings, coming to bed late, often with freezing feet. He’d also heard the neighbors’ complaints of something getting into their garbage. In retrospect, it was obvious.
Yet still, Hannibal had somehow not expected to come downstairs one evening due to the sounds of Will being uncharacteristically noisy, to find himself faced with a dark-brown mutt.
Hannibal cocked his head to one side and studied the creature critically. It was missing the tip of one ear, and its tail had a kink in it where it had broken at some point, and it appeared to have mange, and all its ribs stood out in sharp relief. It shivered and backed up when it saw Hannibal at the foot of the stairs, immediately recognizing the predator before it.
“Shh,” Will hushed the creature, kneeling beside it and holding out a treat. So that was where the leftover scraps from Mr. Arteaga had gone; Hannibal had been wondering.
“Perhaps I should leave,” Hannibal said. Will had clearly earned the dog’s trust, but it was eying Hannibal like he was a deadly foe.
“No, you should stay. You’re not going anywhere. Better that he learns the whole pack structure at once.” Will succeeded in distracting the creature with a slice of Mr. Arteaga’s liver.
“What would you prefer I do?”
Will gestured over to the sitting area. Hannibal went and sat.
“That animal certainly has fleas. Also mange.”
“I gave him a flea bath with the hose in the backyard, and I’ve put a collar on him,” Will said, seemingly undeterred. Hannibal watched, with some fascination, as Will turned the dog’s attention back solely to him with a series of careful touches and strategically placed food. Soon, the dog seemed to have completely disregarded Hannibal’s presence. “His name is Jasper,” Will concluded, after some deliberation. “Isn’t that right, Jasper?”
Jasper made a truly pathetic appreciative noise when Will scratched behind his ear. Hannibal only wished he were in a position to judge.
“Keeping a dog will hinder us if we need to make a quick escape,” Hannibal pointed out. “And the authorities will most certainly be on the look-out for dog owners, knowing your proclivities.”
“Jasper,” Will ignored him beautifully, “this is Hannibal. Ironically, he thinks that I worry too much.”
“When we need to flee, will we take him on the boat with us?” Hannibal demanded.
“I’ll train him for boats, no problem. Besides, don’t even pretend you don’t enjoy the chase more on hard-mode.” Will was inching his way back toward the sofa Hannibal had settled upon, while Jasper followed with the first tentative wags of his crooked tail.
“I suppose that is one way of classifying him,” Hannibal conceded, warming slightly to the idea.
Hannibal watched while Will worked in starts and stops, luring Jasper past his excellent self-preservation instincts and over to Hannibal. Finally, Will sat on the sofa beside Hannibal, their thighs brushing, while Jasper awkwardly stood a few steps back, between Will’s splayed legs.
“Give me your hand,” Will ordered; Hannibal obeyed.
Will held out their joint hands in offering for a while, another morsel of Mr. Arteaga between their entwined fingers. At long last, Jasper warily approached and snatched it up.
“Now, you on your own.” Will stripped off another piece and handed it to Hannibal.
Hannibal did so, and it took Jasper a very long time indeed to accept the food from Hannibal’s fingertips, with Will’s constant encouragement.
Afterwards, Will settled Jasper in the corner, using some pillows and linens from the closet, while Hannibal shopped online for more appropriate bedding.
“You know the authorities will be watching for purchases of obscenely expensive dog supplies, right?” Will asked.
“Then I imagine they must be very tired of interrogating little old ladies.” Hannibal eyed the total in his cart. Surely, such an amount couldn’t be deemed ‘obscenely expensive’? He hit purchase. “And now you see,” he directed this to Jasper. “Excessive worrying, just as I’ve always said.”
Jasper, somehow, had fallen asleep in the interval.
Hannibal found himself even more perplexed at that.
Will’s gaze went from Hannibal to Jasper and back. “Simple pack dynamics,” he explained. “We’re a unit now. Either he trusts that and learns to relax around us, or he rejects it and leaves. He knows what it’s like to be on his own. Better to try trust.”
Will had never, once, even hinted that he was aware of Hannibal’s odd sleep issues. In fact, he gave every indication that he believed that Hannibal slept alongside him nightly. Hannibal should have been more suspicious of that. Will knew him dangerously well, after all, perhaps even better than Hannibal himself did. It was a terrifying and exhilarating thought, all in one.
“I’m going to stay in the room with him tonight,” Will said. “Do you want to sleep down here or upstairs?”
“I’ll stay down here,” Hannibal said, and they made arrangements to settle themselves on the sofa for the night, spooned up tighter together than even their usual configuration. Although, of course, Hannibal wouldn’t have slept in either place.
***
In his heart of hearts, Hannibal was not surprised to find himself jealous of Will’s dog. He was, however, surprised at the reason he was jealous.
Hannibal revered Will’s time and attention; he would have expected to resent sharing that. But that was not what he begrudged Jasper. What he truly resented was how easy Jasper seemed to find his new living arrangements.
Jasper settled in trustingly, almost immediately. Will said that earning a dog’s trust took time, but it all seemed to happen very quickly to Hannibal. Jasper had been living on the streets, in direst circumstances, for years, and yet he took to Will and Hannibal’s company as if it were perfectly natural.
“It is, for dogs,” Will said.
Hannibal was clearly a different sort of predator.
As such, Hannibal welcomed the occasion when everything reversed.
Hannibal knew when he was being hunted, from long experience. He had cultivated inventive and varied enemies throughout his career, and welcomed their attempts – although lamentably feebler than Will’s – to even the score.
Hannibal had been aware of the current agent acting against them for over a week now. The man must’ve been a mercenary of some sort, with private detective in his job description as well. Hannibal knew that the man was an enemy and not merely the police by the way he continued to watch Hannibal and Will, rather than moving decisively to detain them. Driving his enemies to murderous revenge had yet to fail Hannibal in this regard (except once again for Hannibal’s one universal, beloved exception).
Hannibal lulled his latest enemy into a false sense of security. The man was not entirely incompetent at surveillance, but neither was he cautious enough, given his adversary. Someone with adequate funds and inadequate brains was behind this, then. Chilton immediately came to mind.
It served as some amusement to lead the man on wild goose chases. Hannibal was particularly fond of the afternoon he led his pursuer through a local crowded kindergarten playground, apothecary, abandoned warehouse, and finally pottery studio – how he wished he could know what the man made of that! Hannibal had taken to taking Jasper out on strange walks solely to further perplex his shadow, and although Will gave him odd looks for it, he didn’t ask questions.
One day when Hannibal was at the local fish market with Will, Will scoffed and asked, seemingly out of the blue, “Are you planning on acting on that, or not?” Because of course Will would notice their pursuer too; how could he not, perfect foil as he was for Hannibal?
“Why?” Hannibal asked hopefully. “Were you planning on acting?”
“Stop trying to manipulate me into committing murders in crowded marketplaces,” Will demanded, perhaps not entirely unreasonably.
“Where would you prefer that I manipulated you into committing murders, then?”
Will fixed him with an exasperated look and slapped him across the chest with the mahi-mahi Will had chosen for purchase (fortunately, wrapped).
Nevertheless, Hannibal took that as a directive to move on with the matter. He turned the tail on the man one day and managed to follow him back to a dingy motel. Security on the windows was not what it could’ve been, and after the man stepped out of his room for dinner, Hannibal climbed in and did some investigating of his own.
“Michael Edwards,” Hannibal informed Will when Will arrived home that evening. “Ex-marine, ex-police, currently for hire.”
“Never heard of him. Baltimore area?”
Hannibal took it as a rhetorical question.
“Must be Chilton,” Will concluded.
A shiver ran down Hannibal’s spine, the same way it did every time he realized how deeply connected they were, their thoughts and hearts and souls in perfect accord.
Jasper expressed mild alarm, and then confusion, when Hannibal tackled Will to the kitchen floor and proceeded to ravish him. In the end, Jasper concluded there was no cause for concern, beyond nudging his food dish out of range of Hannibal and Will’s wrestling limbs. Clever mutt.
Hannibal had a plan for how to deal with Mr. Michael Edwards, but had yet to decide on the menu, when hurricane season started. This suited Hannibal well enough, because the crux of his plan was to lure his prey to him. It was something he had learned from Will, that pleasure could be taken not only from seeking prey out, but also from having it come to him willingly.
As Hannibal had anticipated, Mr. Edwards took the chaos of the incoming storm as the ideal time to strike. Will went out just before noon, when the skies blackened, to secure their boat against the pending gale. A half hour after Will left (safe enough to ensure that he was entirely absent), the security cameras Hannibal had set discreetly around their villa detected the intruder. Hannibal moved Jasper to the upstairs spare bedroom – best not to have him underfoot – and left on the lights only in the front rooms, to make the darker rooms – the kitchen, dining room, and pantry – all the more enticing.
The first patters of rain sounded on the veranda shortly thereafter. That was inconvenient; the rain covered any sound their pending intruder might make. Hannibal flared his nostrils instead, eyes closed, breathing deeply, until he scented the electrified air indoors instead of merely through the battened-down windows. A sure sign that a door had been opened and closed.
Hannibal caught a hint of movement in the dining room – Mr. Edwards had opted for the side door, then – and trailed him in the dark. He caught his prey’s silhouette first when the man paused in the doorway, hanging back in the shadows, and assessing the sitting room.
Hannibal had, in the last week, taken the habit of sitting in one of the tall-back, leather armchairs. Will had either ignored the change in Hannibal’s usual preferences (unlikely) or else intuited what Hannibal was up to.
Indeed, Mr. Edwards was laser-focused on the armchair, whose back was towards him. Hannibal had left his wine glass, half-drunk, on the end table where it was easily visible to Mr. Edwards, enriching the illusion that Hannibal was seated within.
The glint off a gun barrel flashed in time with the lightning outside. Mr. Edwards, on sock-clad tiptoe, proceeded to creep up on the back of the armchair. Hannibal, also on sock-clad tiptoe, crept up on the back of Mr. Edwards.
Mr. Edwards launched his attack first, but Hannibal was faster and landed ahead of him. Mr. Edwards struggled briefly to turn the gun around on Hannibal, but Hannibal had caught Mr. Edwards’ wrist in his opening pounce, and easily twisted it out of Edwards’ hand. And the same time, Hannibal remorselessly squeezed Edwards’ windpipe, forcing the air from his lungs. Mr. Edwards struggled, but despite his superior size, Hannibal had fully gotten the jump on him, and he was already irreparably weakened by the time he was able to react.
Slowly, his struggles waned, and he slumped to the floor.
Equally slowly, Hannibal followed him, counting the seconds to ensure that Mr. Edwards had no chance to play possum on him.
Finally, Hannibal had his prey unconscious, conveniently located only feet from Hannibal’s larder, and with no one to witness the man entering Hannibal’s home in the first place. Will might call Hannibal an incurable culinary snob, but even Hannibal could appreciate the modern convenience of food delivery.
Hannibal had maneuvered Mr. Edwards’ body halfway through the kitchen before he discovered the flaw in his plan.
“Don’t move.” Hannibal heard the release of the gun safety in the dark, even above the rain. “On your knees. Hands on your head where I can see them.”
“Of course,” Hannibal agreed, “my apologies for not welcoming you at the door, but as you can see, I was preoccupied with another guest.” Hannibal had made an amateur mistake, and so he certainly could not begrudge this new enemy for taking advantage of it. No, this new enemy had slipped cleverly into Hannibal’s blind spot: Hannibal was naturally a solo hunter, not a pack hunter. He had thus overlooked the ensuing pincer movement, how one predator’s weakness was compensated by their partner’s strength. Mr. Edwards had been strong and skilled in killing, but weak in stealth and intellect. This partner was the opposite, and yet until now Hannibal had not anticipated their existence. Hannibal was almost impressed.
Less so now, however, for though Hannibal had been a solitary hunter most his life, he too now had a partner who was his equal, his complement, the one who compensated for his weaknesses and elevated his strengths.
Hannibal did not see or hear Will enter. But Hannibal knew Will was there, the same way he was aware the presence of his own limbs. Will gave no signal, no warning, but Hannibal knew the correct moment – in time with the next lightning flash.
Hannibal dove behind the countertop, Will grabbed their enemy from behind, and the ensuing gunshot went wide. Hannibal crawled around the kitchen aisle in an elegant scramble and came upon the struggling pair from the side. He knocked the gun from their opponent’s hand with the cheese grater he’d grabbed at random.
Will, in the meantime, got a solid hold on their enemy’s throat and, with cold, expert efficiency, snapped his neck like a twig. Will’s eyes bored into Hannibal’s the entire time, dark and deep and fathomless. Intensely intimate. Another boom of thunder crashed above as they stared into each other’s inky-black eyes, and then darkness. Silence.
The corpse fell from Will’s hands and slumped to the floor, followed closely by both Will and Hannibal. The pair of them collapsed back against the cabinet below the sink. Hannibal’s breaths rose and fell, straining against his chest, louder soon than the rain. But not so loud that he didn’t hear Will’s synchronized pants for air as well.
“We’ll need a second freezer,” Hannibal finally said.
Will laughed. “We’ll need to go on the run,” he corrected, “dog and all.”
“The second freezer,” Hannibal agreed, “can go on the boat.”
“You’re moving it.”
“Yes. Fine. I will do that.” Hannibal paused. They didn’t often speak unneeded words between them. They knew what each other was thinking. Banalities were blasé. However, in this one particular circumstance, perhaps Hannibal should state the obvious: “You killed for me.”
“Let’s just say that you inspired me.”
Hannibal could conceive of nothing more exquisite.
***
Corpses chilling in the pantry, Jasper released from the spare bedroom to hide under their bed from the lightning instead, and house finally secured against the storm, Hannibal and Will went to bed early that night. Passion had already taken them away twice since their kill, and it seemed Hannibal’s mastery of prolactin was not entirely complete, because he felt in no way capable of staking his claim on Will a third time.
There was nothing left to do until morning.
“Sometimes,” Will said into the dark and storm, “it takes longer for a stray to take comfort with the pack.”
Jasper whimpered under the bed.
Hannibal sighed. “I doubt he will sleep tonight.”
“I think he will. He knows we’re here together, that he’s safe.”
“The presence of others does not inherently imply safety. Quite the contrary, in our cases.”
“But think of it this way,” Will said, “I would rather trust you and have you murder me in my sleep, than suffer a single waking moment doubting that you’re mine.”
“That is your definition of safety?”
“Is that not yours?”
Hannibal considered Will’s position. The greatest happiness he’d ever known had been those moments he had given in to Will’s hooks, let Will string him along in the ecstasy of being together. His greatest despair had always been in the aftermath of Will’s betrayals. Hannibal was not a particular adherent to the concept that ignorance was bliss, but if Hannibal had to pick a moment to die: that night when he’d first believed that Will was coming away with him, or that moment atop the cliff where they’d joined together truly for the first time.
“We are the same in this, as in all else,” Will confessed to the darkness. “Do you trust yourself? What do you do in the night when I’m asleep and you’re watching me? Have you ever once thought to do me harm, or are you now changed too much for that?”
Hannibal’s mind settled. His faith was deeply held, but highly specific, and this was one of those items of faith. He and Will were meant for each other, were two cleaved halves of the same whole, so terribly powerful together that even the gods had feared their power and separated them into two bodies. If the worst Hannibal could do to Will was worship him in his most vulnerable state, then certainly the reverse was also true.
“Come here,” Will insisted, and curled up against Hannibal’s back, entrapping him and entangling them both inescapably in the line that twisted and bound around them.
Will’s hand came up to splay across Hannibal’s neck, holding him just as he’d held the man he’d murdered earlier that evening. Hannibal could feel the killing power in Will’s palm, in the way Will’s knuckles tensed once in clear threat, before relaxing until his grip was so tender, so gentle. As loving as he was beloved, Hannibal finally dared to think, to believe.
Hannibal settled back into Will’s lethal embrace, and amid the wind and rain and lightning of the rising storm, at long last, Hannibal slept.
***
The next day, Hannibal awoke unconscionably late, to the emergence of the sun once more. Hannibal knew he was being watched, the way a hunter always knows when they’re being watched. Lazily, he opened his eyelids, to find himself trapped in a waiting predator’s sights.
“I always knew you’d be beautiful in your sleep,” Will said, with a dangerous smile.
Hannibal licked his lips in anticipation. “And I always knew you would be deadly to wake up to.”
In the best possible way, of course.