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“You’re old enough to be my father,” She told him. In the kitchen, propped up and sitting on the counter, his look of thorough disapproval warming her skin. She liked the attention. There was not enough attention to go around, anymore. From only-child to crowded group home, to this…
“I’m older than your father was,” He corrected. His big hands cupped her hips, pulling her back down to the ground.
Hannibal is taller than her, tall enough that Abigail has to tilt her head back, when they stand so close.
In her kitchen, with a machine full of blood, he’d stood behind her, her back to his chest. He’d felt warm, solid.
Her father hadn’t felt like that since she was small. But Hannibal was not her father, whatever he may have told Will Graham.
“Can’t be that old,” Abigail insisted, leaning back against the counter.
“I’ll be forty-eight in April.” Hannibal turned back to dinner, sliding chopped garlic into a heated pan. It sizzled and popped in the oil. It reminded Abigail of take-out pizza night, cheesy garlic bread loaded with marinara sauce. She decided not to tell Hannibal about that association.
“You’re right. You’re older than my dad.”
Hannibal hummed his acknowledgement and added meat to the pan. The one thing he shared with Garrett Jacob Hobbs. Abigail had been with Hannibal in the basement, this time, had watched the meat peel back from the bone.
“Some people would find it inappropriate,” Abigail said.
Hannibal paused. He pulled the pan from the heat, setting it aside, and turned to her. “Would find what inappropriate, Abigail?”
Abigail flushed, but did not look away. “You can’t ignore it forever,” She said.
Faking her own death in the same place she’d nearly died. Her hand in Hannibal’s as she drew a line across her own throat. Warmth against her back. She’d been giddy with excitement, shaking with nerves. A hazy jumble of conflicting feelings warring in her head.
But she had felt only one thing, when she turned and pressed her lips to the soft curve of Hannibal’s secretive smile, and that had been ‘right.’
For a moment, he’d gone with it. He’d cupped her jaw, tilted her head so they aligned properly.
Abigail had kissed a boy once, in the tenth grade. When he’d come to pick her up, her dad had been charming, cordial. He and the boy had made jokes, shared hunting stories.
When the boy dropped her back off at home, her father had been waiting on the porch. They’d gone hunting that weekend. Her father had looked into the distance, had talked about her growing up. Had sent a chill down her spine with the ice in his words.
It was two more years before they took the first girl, but Abigail never went on a second date.
Kissing Hannibal was not like kissing that boy. Hannibal kissed the way men always seemed to kiss in books; thoroughly, sweetly, softly. He’d pulled back with a gentle nip to her lower lip. Sharp teeth. Monster fangs.
Abigail had fangs too, now. She’d sharpened them on Nicholas Boyle.
After the kiss, Hannibal had rejected a second. He’d stepped back, put himself back together into his formal human costume. He’d told her to think about it, think long and hard about what she was doing. About what they were doing together.
Well, she’d thought about it. A lot. Sometimes seriously, mulling over the choices that had led her to hiding in Hannibal’s secret cliff-side house, and sometimes a bit more wildly, alone in the privacy of her bed. She knew what she wanted.
“I’m not ignoring anything, Abigail.” Hannibal turned back to his pots and knives, as if chopped herbs were more interesting than the conversation they were having. “I told you to think about your choices.”
Abigail reached out, wrapping her fingers around the crook of his arm. “I thought about them. They haven’t changed.”
He looked at her with more curiosity than fondness. He always had. He might never be ‘fond,’ she wasn’t even sure he was capable. But he did not look at her like a broken, shattered thing. Like a child to be coddled and shielded and sent to bed early. He did not act like her parent, or her jailer, or like she was one step away from an explosion.
He looked at her like she was Abigail Hobbs, and he was Hannibal Lecter, and when she kissed him again, he let her.