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–Scherzi–
Will and Hannibal are children. Or at least, they act like it. Will knows it, their neighbors know it, and Hannibal probably knows it too but would never for the life of him admit to acting so immature.
He can’t exactly deny it though, since their first fight in their newly found domesticity is about goddamn puns. It’s loud and stupid and ridiculous, and ends with an awful lot of sulking. Abigail gets herself involved at one point, after she’d stopped laughing, proving that their surrogate daughter is more capable of being an adult than they are.
____
–Sangue–
Will and Hannibal fit together like specially made gears, in the simplest but most perfect of ways. They run silently and efficiently, their thoughts and movements as coordinated as deft fingers on a surgeon’s hand.
Major decisions come easy. They are already on the same page, the same line, the same character.
They move around each other like stars in a binary system, bright and beautiful, but also blinding.
_____
–Scherzi–
It starts because of the dinner parties. Will never really went to them back home, because there were too many people. Theoretically, having Hannibal by his side should make them much easier. There would at least be one person in attendance that truly understands how he functions, what his words mean.
Theory doesn’t always carry over to practice.
Will has always been more upfront with people than Hannibal about everything, including himself. Any façade he used to have to cover that darker side of him has crumbled to dust, not that it was that thick to begin with. Hannibal has pulled everything to the forefront, and it is almost impossible for Will to shove it back down just to impress people.
Hannibal doesn’t seem to mind, smiling almost proudly at the jokes Will’s more morbid demeanor elicits (“Watch out for this one, Dr. Fell, he might be taking your seminars too close to heart,” or other variations, is the most popular one). Their guests love him and his odd sense of humor, as they call it, not realizing it isn’t quite humor at all but rather Will’s inability to fake normalcy as well as he used to.
It’s all well and good in Hannibal’s mind, and every time someone makes any comment alluding to Will, to the food, or anything of the sort, he feels the need to twist his words into the most elaborately constructed puns Will has ever heard. Flowery, silly puns that are only funny to Hannibal, because only he knows exactly what he is saying.
They are not funny to Will.
(Abigail, however, at one point has to retire to her room to keep herself from snorting)
_____
–Sangue–
“Investigatore Pazzi paid me a visit today.”
Will doesn’t look up from the news article he’s reading, staring at the gruesome pictures with a certain undercurrent. Most would call it vaguely unsettling. If they thought about it for any length of time they would characterize it as warmth, which makes it worse.
He speaks slowly. “Your old friend from la polizia?”
Hannibal hums an affirmative, looking back down at the large paper in front of him. He continues to draw Will with precise strokes of his pencil. “I don’t think he appreciated the gift I made you.”
Will continues to look at the pictures, his voice approaching fondness. “Well, I appreciated it. The sentiment of it. ”
Hannibal smiles, and draws a bloody, exposed heart onto his subject.
_____
–Scherzi–
Will brings it up after everyone leaves. He’s seething, because Hannibal looks almost smug about the whole ordeal.
He’d started getting visibly upset by the end of the night, and Hannibal had just kept going with it. Will knows he’s always made these jokes, and sometimes they were funny, though always in extremely poor taste. He’s never gotten this riled up about them before, though, because until now they never directly involved him. They never poked at his side while trying to fool a room full of people that what they were eating was not, in fact, a person. A person that he had cooked with Hannibal earlier that afternoon.
Not that that requires any active fooling, since no one would ever come to that conclusion on their own. But for Will, keeping up any pretense whatsoever is, frankly, exhausting.
Jokes about what they actually do in their spare time have no business being told, at least around Will.
Abigail is in her room, probably for the night, so Will sits Hannibal down in the kitchen and fails miserably at not sounding like a pouting child when he brings it up.
Hannibal, who might be even more of a child than Will at this point, refuses to drop his formal manner of speaking and responds with yet another goddamn pun.
_____
–Sangue–
“I’ve heard from your colleagues that Pazzi has taken an unusual interest in your work, Dr. Fell,” Will whispers against Hannibal’s shoulder. They’re on the loveseat in the living room, listening to Abigail play piano.
“Mmh. He has.” Hannibal turns his face into Will’s hair on the way to resting his chin on Will’s head, arm trapped between the couch and his back. His hand curls into Will’s hip. “He visits me often.”
“We should repay the gesture.” Will says, absently spinning the ring on his left hand. It is a necessary detail; married couples must wear rings. Will has taken to wearing it outside of the public eye, however. He likes the weight of it. It gives his hands something to do. He’s also noticed Hannibal doing the same.
“I’ve already persuaded him to join us for dinner.” Pride over Will’s similar ideation radiates off Hannibal in waves.
“His place or ours?”
“He has kindly invited us to his. Abigail is welcome as well.”
Will smiles. His and Hannibal’s thoughts are two cars on the same train, speeding along together.
_____
–Scherzi–
“For fuck’s sake Hannibal!”
Abigail is sitting in her room, trying very hard not to laugh audibly as Will drops any and all formalities. She hears Hannibal respond, in an even voice. She can’t tell what he’s saying, but she’s sure it’s a jab of some sort – an eloquently worded, overly poetic jab.
She pictures Will seething and on his feet, Hannibal sitting peacefully and speaking in a manner that is so overly convoluted no one could possibly understand what he’s even saying. Except, possibly, Will. He’s doing it on purpose, because Will had asked him to stop taking lines out of a 19th century novel and speak like a goddamn normal person.
A small snicker escapes her. Her surrogate fathers are two of the most dangerous men in the world, and at this moment they are fighting like 7 year olds on a playground. About puns.
She supposes she understands, on some level, Will’s aversion to them. He’s never been as good at playing pretend as her or Hannibal. Constant joking can’t make it any easier.
There’s a beat of silence, another quiet exchange, before: “You are fucking insufferable. I’m not going to stand here and feed your ego.”
Abigail strains to listen, knowing what’s coming.
“Of course not, Will. The job of feedstock belongs to the Fiorentini.”
Abigail giggles.
Will yells incoherently.
____
–Sangue–
Hannibal adjusts Will’s tie. “His wife is currently out of the city, visiting her sister. It’s a small town; she likely won’t hear the news until she returns.”
Will nods, turning to face the mirror. The two of them, he admits, are almost sinister in their formality. There are no outward signs of ill-will – they look the picture of perfect houseguests. There is a certain worrying vibe about them, however, that they cannot seem to extinguish.
Though, they aren’t exactly trying.
They say goodbye to Abigail, both receiving a kiss on the cheek in return.
____
–Scherzi–
They’re sulking. It makes sense they would – Hannibal is dramatic and Will is a very sulky person in general – but it’s almost elevated to a contest between them. A “who can hold out the longest” type of challenge.
Abigail would have allotted hardly any time at all if she based her hypothesis solely on how much they crave each other. But she knows them better than that, and she knows both of them are stubborn enough that any feelings of the romantic sort aren’t going get in the way of winning.
But it’s been 2 days, and something has to be done. If they aren’t going to play parent, she supposes she’ll have to.
She tries Will first. He’s the first one she runs into, so she figures she might as well get things moving along.
His fond smile sours when she tells him, in so many words, to suck it up and stop being infantile. He opens his mouth to speak.
“Don’t even go there Will. I don’t care who started it.”
____
–Sangue–
“Dr. Fell, Mr. Fell. Please, come in,” Pazzi greets brightly in accented English.
Hannibal smiles warmly. “Where is your lovely new wife, Rinaldo? I had wished to meet her.”
“Ah, she is visiting her sister, about an hour away. The town is called Modigliana. Where is your daughter?”
Will speaks this time, his warmth slightly fractured, but still present. “She’s with new friends. They invited her to stay over. We told her to go, since the chance to make friends isn’t always there. She sends her apologies.”
“Well, I hope she is having fun.”
The formal air quickly grows stale. Each rotten breath breaks down the pretense all three of them have built.
Pazzi knows what this is, but he thinks he will win.
He is wrong.
____
–Scherzi–
Hannibal doesn’t react much differently, when Abigail finds him, and so she resolves to drag both of her new fathers into the living room. She sits them down on the loveseat and takes the armchair across from it.
Silence.
“You both realize how childish this is, don’t you?”
More silence, coupled with a huff and a glare or two, with no particular target.
Abigail stands. “I’m leaving you two in here until you start acting like the married couple everyone thinks you are. According to everyone in Florence, you are my parents, not the other way around.”
She goes to her room, leaving the door open a crack to listen.
It doesn’t start at first, but soon angry whispers float through the apartment, with sentiments such as: “I underestimated how deep your immaturity could run, Will,” and: “My immaturity? If you removed your head from your ass for just five seconds-”…
Abigail rolls her eyes.
This goes on for a while. Eventually they devolve into something less angry, more exasperated. A mix of “I don’t understand how you can’t see how uncomfortable they make me” and “you were incredibly rude and mean-spirited in your communication of this fact,” trudge down the hall, dragging their feet with the ever-growing quiet.
Abigail falls asleep in the hush, the end of the conversation shut out by the night.
Half taken by dreams, she thinks she hears some sort of acquiescence from both: sincere, and, quite possibly, apologetic.
____
–Sangue–
It could be called art, their final product, entrancing as much as it is horrifying. It shocks and captures attention, like so many great pieces do.
They’d hung him like his ancestor, bowels split open in a smile, his entrails winding like a snake around his neck and up the noose. It’s a tribute, of sorts: modeled after the wood carving Hannibal had shown him just this afternoon.
They’re silent, Will and Hannibal, admiring the work they accomplished together. Police will not come, not for Pazzi. At least not until his wife returns.
He’d gasped out his true allegiances before a gurgling death overtook him.
Will stares at Pazzi’s mutilated body and licks blood off his fingers. Hannibal kisses him.
____
–Scherzi–
Abigail walks into the kitchen the next morning with banana pancakes filling her nose. Hannibal is humming at the griddle, and Will is pouring juice.
There’s an air about them that seems closer, more in tune, and Abigail smiles.