Work Text:
Do you come
Together ever with him?
And is he dark enough?
Enough to see your light?
i.
Hannibal never really means to keep track of memories, yet images of Will wisp ghostlike into corners of his life to make certain that he is still in them, and he eventually puts it down to the fact that, after several years, even the great tangled mad metropolis of his mind palace begins to grow small, and Will’s presence in his head begins to grow stronger. And perhaps even he is growing old and foolish, after so many decades of living, foolish enough to be sentimental.
ii.
Once he imagines that he glimpses Will through the bright window of his comfortably wealthy house, wearing a plaid shirt that is somehow sensible and frothy all at once; he is leaning into a conversation, his face alight with listening, and he should not be able to catch at Will’s mood from so far away, but he can see how he is poised, bird-like, in this world, both at home and slightly uncomfortable, and at any moment he could leave this earth and go back to where he came from.
“Will –“ Hannibal calls, but Will is not there and he is standing in a room that is dark and cold and grossly empty.
iii.
“Hello, Will.”
“How do you feel about the recent murders?”
“I understand.”
“Human emotions are meant for you to feel. You are human, Will.”
“Of course, of course I am too.”
“I still think of you.”
He is talking to himself, and he thinks he is going mad.
iv.
He has no taste for feelings, only the thin, scholarly interest of an anthropologist – so this is how the human world works; how odd that it is so full of tears and happiness and grief?; can he even remember what was in a way that does not feel as though he is calling to mind something that was told to him, something read in a book? – he seeks out his prey and his purpose in an alley somewhere else, as he has always done.
He forgets Will, or tries to.
v.
Sometimes he thinks he has caught sight of a rough plaid shirt, and curly black hair in a place where it would not make sense to see them, and when he looks he is sure that what he saw must have been that brush of leaves or the corner of a building but he is never sure; and he is faintly, horribly concerned that he will find himself swallowed up again and presented with a series of impossible emotion in the under dark of the world.
“My name is Hannibal Lecter.” He tells himself. “There is no Will Graham.”
But Will is always there, his eyes laughing and his teeth glistening.
Well I know I make you cry
And I know sometimes you wanna die
But do you really feel alive without me?
If so, be free
If not, leave him for me
Before one of us has accidental babies
For we are in love
vi.
And once there is an dream: it is snowing, and the sun has barely set safely low, and he is restless again, so he has been wandering, tasting dim colours, the glimmers of sound, the thin pale flickers of dreams like will o’ the wisps skimming the surface of the world. Will is running towards him, almost tripping over his excitement, his hair in danger of flying beneath his fishing cap; he has just come home from a journey; not a very long one; they catch each other, and their greeting is entirely wordless; there is brightness in his smile beneath the spectacles and in Will’s burning hair –
“Hannibal, it’s been so, so long.”
“I know, my truth. I know.” Hannibal says, and he feels himself bend into Will. “It has been so long.”
vii.
Once, when he visits the prison, he sees Will and Alana in the depths of conversation, him staring at her with hunger and longing and affection, and Hannibal wishes deeply, almost desperately, that the look was directed toward him. But Will, even when they were friends, Will always looked at him with curiosity, intrigued, but never with the blinding hunger that with which Hannibal looks at Will.
Will takes Alana’s hand, and she looks at him, her eyes limpid.
Hannibal turns away from the sight with a feeling of distaste curling in the depths of him. This is not his world, this is Will’s world, and he has no part in it.
viii.
Oh, he feels himself becoming Will Graham, and he is angered for it. Will was supposed to become Hannibal Lecter. Not the other way around.
Still, supposes that they have accrued so many unaccountable debts between them that they cannot help but stumble against each other’s worlds, blurring lines that ought to remain fixed.
ix.
He is absolutely not looking out, or forward to seeing Will in the corners of his memories, and he is beginning to grow weary of the astonishing regularity in which he seems to flicker into corners of his existence, or he strays, unseeing, into the corners of his dreams, whichever it is. Indeed, the world grows smaller, and the parts of it which were Hannibal’s seem to be fading away, or turning into stranger things (he feels as if he is becoming Will, really), no longer fitting into their old shapes, like keys too damaged to turn in their locks.
He would be frustrated with this, but frustration is too hot and unnecessarily busies an emotion, so he folds it carefully and puts it away.
And is he bold enough to take you on?
Do you feel like you belong?
And does he drive you wild?
Or just mildly free?
x.
Hannibal talks to Will in the darkened room, about symphonies of killers, and the poetry that they have written to Will. I would have written verses a million eons better, Hannibal thinks, his eyes flashing in bitterness. Will discusses the crime scene calmly, he never looks at Hannibal more than necessary, even if they are seated only two feet away. Hannibal feels his eyes burn and his mouth tremble, he feels childish and selfish, but Will Graham was meant to adore him, even from the depths of prison.
“Do you want to let his love go to waste?” Hannibal asks, but he means his own love, that which throbbed in his veins with a desperate, screaming beat, that which woke him every morning with the word Will on his lips, and his own desire to maim, to hurt Will, see how far he could bend before he breaks.
Will does not say anything, for that is his way.
There, in the dim hallway of the prison, Hannibal wishes to kiss Will’s eyes, his twitching hands, his mouth. He watches for a long, long time, but he does not kiss him.
He wonders, later at home, how the world may have flowed differently if he had.
xi.
Every time Hannibal walks past a clock he can hear it ticking, ticking, ticking. He wants to wrench them from the walls and onto the floor until they are quiet. His books won’t tell him how to stop time. His books won’t tell him how to stop time for Will, so that he could touch him, look at his burning blue eyes and run his fingers over the shapely, boyish body.
He is in his bedroom, and the air tingles like the onset of a thunderstorm. He unbuttons his pants, and he closes his eyes, Will’s lips flit through his brain, smiling, pursed, and twisted in agony, his favourite. He thinks of the sweat standing out Will’s forehead, the way his hands are frighteningly cold, how his mouth trembles as he talks of deaths. Somewhere, Hannibal thinks, as he reaches a hand to his groin and began, maybe, Will may be touching himself as well.
He needs only a week, Hannibal thinks, as his forehead grows damp at the thought of Will and his hand moves faster, he needs only a week, or a day, on an hour, to love Will as he has longed to do. He touches himself, his hand almost tiring, until his breath is ragged and uneven, yet in each jagged pant hums the name of Will. He reaches orgasm, ironically, to the sight of Will’s first seizure, his eyes rolling up in his head, him staring at Hannibal with blind trust and broken mind.
xii.
He sleeps, at night, imagining that Will were next to him, but every time, Will seems to turn to stone in his arms, and no matter how tightly Hannibal grips him, he seems to fade away.
(stop stop stop stop)
He buries his face into the suffocation of his own pillow, as though by that, he could hold Will together. Everything inside him stalls and stops and he feels rawness and soreness, and he wants Will, he wants Will to look at him with limpid affection, oh God.
xiii.
He dreams of Will again.
He is lying on an awkward hospital bed, and his body is all wrong-angled, and he is so pale, and there is blood at one corner of his mouth, and for a moment Hannibal thinks he is dead and it feels as though something has clawed out his throat. But then he sees that Will’s chest is rising and descending, and he can breathe again, though raggedly, as if breath is coming from a long way away.
“What happened?” His dream-self asked Jack Crawford, who stood there, silent and wan. “Why is he injured.”
“A cannibal.” Jack says vulgarly, his mouth twisting at the words. “He fell into a tussle with a cannibal.”
“A cannibal?”
“The worst kind.”
His dream self isn’t thinking about anything else, and he supposes he ought to be – but Will fills all of his vision and all of his head and he does not know how it is he got to be beside him but now he does not think he can ever move again, and he takes Will’s hand – it is cold but there is a thin warmth behind the coldness – and then his head droops to Will’s chest and he is weeping, and weeping, but inside him something is stirring: he is beginning to feel human again.
He wakes with wetness on his cheeks and he wonders if he has finally joined Will in insanity.
Our minds pressed and guarded
While our flesh disregarded
The lack of space for the light-hearted
In the boom that beats our drum
xiv.
If he shuts his eyes, as he stands in the room, staring at Will, Alana next to him, he could pretend Will was looking longingly at him, not Alana, if Hannibal’s face is in the crook of Will’s neck, he can shut the darkness out. And he wants to be a screen, or a sun, and take Will’s darkness, too, make him drink and embrace it.
Will,” he says at last, when Alana has walked out. “Will, I am here.”
“But, Doctor Lecter.” Will says scathingly. “I’m not entirely sure if I want you to be.”
xv.
There is a memorial inside of Hannibal’s head, a glistening expanse of stone lined over with names and, in the way of mind things, with faces to which he would never bring to the surface of his mind. A man, black-haired and open-mouthed, motionless and dead, his father; a woman, whose last name was Lecter, with whom he used to play and sit by at the fire. Mischa (but he cannot think of her, of Mischa and death; to think of this is to approach the edge of a precipice, beneath which is a great and violent burning).
And today, Will joins these solemn ranks, even though he was not dead, even though he is still alive and burning and fighting.
xvi.
Will, at court, looked like an angel, Hannibal thinks, rather admiringly. He looks steady and firm and glowing, the suit folding perfectly over his frame, his eyes glistening with determination, Hannibal, again, wishes he could align himself to fit together with Will’s gaps and chasms, perhaps they would fit together like clasped hands and he would be the fullness for Will’s empty places.
“Will Graham is, and will always be, my friend.” The word friend tastes like a blaring lie, but friend sounded more socially acceptable than one-sided-lover. He looks at Will, only Will, and he smiles, because he fantasizes that he sees Will smile, pale behind the screen of hurt and stubble, he thinks he sees a still, grey-gold smile, and Hannibal watches and he is glad, almost delirious. But then the screen closes, and Hannibal realizes the smile is not real, there was no smile, and Will was sitting with his blank, angry expression, staring at him as if he were a speck of dust.
The illusion breaks, and his lover is gone.
What about me?
What about me?