Chapter Text
The date was circled on the calendar, and underneath was written in the same colored ink
'Dentist appointment 10:30'
Clarice M Starling adjusted the strap of her bag, glancing over at Hannibal before grabbing the door handle. "You ready for this tiger?" she jokingly asked, eye brow raised.
Hannibal quickly laughed off his wife's jab "Now please Clarice, tell me why I wouldn't be. It's the dentist," Clarice smirked and shook her head, thinking back to how Hannibal had acted last time they visited 'just the dentist'. Throughout the drive down to the office Hannibal kept up his tough and brave attitude. "So your not scared? Not even a little?" Clarice asked at the last intersection before the Dentist's office. Hannibal just chuckled and held his head high
"Oh please, what do you take me for? A small terrified child shaking in fear behind their mother's leg?" He laughed. Clarice rolled her eyes, yeah he says that now... Clarice pulled the car into the parking lot, and the couple entered the dentist's office. The waiting room was incredibly generic, grey tile and white walls framed by many blue, lightly padded, chairs, several of which were filled by people already. Once Clarice and Hannibal stepped into the waiting room, she could immediately feel a dramatic shift in Hannibal. When they were both seated Hannibal became very tense, he subtly crept his hand over the arm rest and grabbed Clarice's. Hand holding, that was casual and normal, there were other normal couples holding hands in that room. Hannibal's eyes darted back and forth, trying to construct a 3-D image in his mind with a list with thousands escape plans in case something went horribly wrong. He came up with six. He gave his wife's hand a good hard squeeze for comfort and she looked up from her magazine and smirked at him.
"Still 'just the dentist' tough guy?" she whispered to him in knowing mockery.
Hannibal's face contorted in shame "shut up" he whispered back. Clarice in triumph, leaned back into her chair, grinning widely.
Hannibal started to tap his foot , when that failed to calm him and only increased his own anxiety he puled his legs up and curled himself into a ball on the chair, letting out a low whine, "Clarrrriiiicccccce".
"Don't you dare start a scene! if your going to act like a baby than i'll carry you in there like a baby!" she grumbled in response. A small child sitting with his mother in the row of chairs parallel to Clarice and Hannibal picked up on the grown man's terror and started to whimper and cry. All morning the child's poor mother had been trying to comfort the child and lull the child into believing the dentist was not a scary place. The now aggravated mother turned to her child and tried in vain to comfort him, confused as to what triggered this outburst, the mother looked up and over to where her son was looking beforehand. She glared at the couple in anger and disgust and of the man's behavior and lack of action on the woman's part. Feeling eyes on her, Clarice looked up from her magazine and smiled shyly and in deep embarrassment when she met eyes with the glaring mother, and then quickly flashed a look of indefinite rage and disappointment down at Hannibal, who was now rocking back and forth in his seat like a maniac.
The crying child triggered a domino like effect and all the other children who had been equally afraid broke out in a choir of screaming and crying, all pissed parents' eyes now on Hannibal and Clarice. Clarice just smiled humbly, refusing to try at all to deny her relationship to the man-child. They were a couple, they were a team, they did everything together and supported one another through anything and everything, despite how much Clarice desperately felt the urge to strangle the life out of Hannibal right then and there. Prior to the outburst, the room had been completely silent. The eruption of screaming and sobbing quickly drew in the attention of the people sitting in the immediate area around Clarice and Hannibal and several more people began to notice the middle aged man whom was handling the reality of being in the dentist's office worst than the children he had upset. A couple of the younger people in the room began to share the story of the man freaking out in the waiting room of the dentist's office on social media. Clarice shot angry looks at anybody she noticed holding their phones up in the direction of her emotionally distraught husband.
Feeling the eyes of the room staring at him, Hannibal began to tremble in shame, still curled up in on himself. His grasp on Clarice's hand tightened.
Time passed, the wall clock ticked away the seconds and minutes, and gradually people began to lose interest in documenting the public nervous breakdown of a Mr. Hannibal Lecter Starling. Finally, Hannibal sat up and lessened his grip on his wife, much to her approval.
"This isn't so bad, is it?" Clarice asked him, seeing as he had now calmed down and was no longer ready to pounce. Hannibal meekly shook his head in agreement, he was still anxious and on end, but now just less so than how he had been about 10 minutes prior.
"Uh, Mr. Starling? Dr. Fritman will see you now,"
Panic.
plain, simple, complete and utter panic shot up through Hannibal's veins and his arms firmly wrapped around Clarice's arm before he could even process the situation. Finally defeated, Clarice promptly put her magazine down and stood up with Hannibal. With Clarice at his side, Hannibal could no longer think about running off or mauling the office's staff, he had to be brave, he had to do this for her. The two walked, still with Hannibal clamped down on Clarice's arm, up the aisle of chairs to the door leading into the dentist's operating room. Eyes followed them in disapproval as Clarice walked her husband, 20 some years her elder, to the doorway. She coldly played off the judgeful gazes as if this were the most normal thing in the world, and that by that same merit, that they were the most normal couple in the world and that her husband had in fact, not broken down like a child in anticipation of seeing the dentist. Hannibal's breathing rapined with every step they took, by the time they reached the operation room, he was panting like a dog.
Clarice forced Hannibal off of her arm and placed her hand on his shoulder sportively, "I'll be right out here waiting if you need me," she kissed him on the cheek to aid validation to her statement before walking back to her seat. Hannibal froze up when Clarice left his side and the door to the waiting room closed, the room filled by his terrified heart beat.
"Please take a seat," instructed the Dentist. Thinking back to Clarice, Hannibal mustered up his courage and sat in the examination chair. The dentist pulled down the over head light and held his dental hook over Hannibal's face, the only person who would have noticed the light gleam off of the tip of the tool. "Alright now open wide, you won't feel a thing," The dentist brought the hook down closer to Hannibal's face.
Adrenaline shot through Hannibal like a firecracker and his fist sprang up and grabbed the Dentist's wrist and forced it out of his face. The dentist, taken a back by this childish behavior tried to pull his hand away, "Mr. Starling! This is completely uncalled for, I am simply trying to perform the routine examination your insurance is paying for!"
Hannibal only responded by grabbing the dentist's wrist with his other hand.
Realizing that Mr. Starling was not a diplomatic man who could be reasoned with the dentist turned over his shoulder and called over his assistant "NURSE! QUICK! BRING ME THE ANESTHETIC!" The nurse rushed over to the dentist's side with a large syringe, meant for putting patients under for removing teeth, and forced it through Mr. Starling's shirt and into his arm. Hannibal shrieked out in pain as the drug was induced, and in the other room the children began to cry louder, much to the dismay of the adults in the waiting room. He tried to pull out the syringe, but Hannibal's strength and body was already failing him, he let go of the dentist and flopped down onto the examination chair. The dentist and nurse exchanged glances and began the routine procedure on the now unconscious Hannibal, he was too heavy for them to lift and he wouldn't be awake for some time so they might as well take this time to accomplish something productive.
When the dentist was finished and Hannibal was awake, although still very woozy, he sent Mr. Starling back out to leave with his wife. On their way out the nurse stopped Clarice to inform her that their family was no longer welcome in Dr. Fritman's office. Clarice groaned in annoyance. This was the third time Hannibal had gotten them banned from a dentist.