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“Ok, we are having this discussion.”
That really wasn't how Will had intended to introduce the topic. He had intended to be more subtle, less confrontational, more befitting of the way he and Hannibal had thrown off their adversarial impulses since their fall for a gentler companionship. However, yet another night in front of the fire in one of Hannibal's ludicrously well-appointed safe houses, in separate seats, their fingers ghosting together the most contact they'd had in all those months, save for the clinical checking of injuries… it was enough. It was either this, or Will was going out to find the nearest unspeakable bastard he could – present company excluded – and was going to eviscerate him. And he was just too tired for that. So.
“I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage, dear Will. To which discussion do you refer?”
Completely unruffled. Infuriating. Maddening. Mine. Will grasped the hand that brushed his own and raised it between them.
“We are discussing this,” he squeezed Hannibal's hand, “and how it is not enough. For either of us,” he added, shutting down Hannibal's protest. “I'm not blind and I'm not stupid and I'm done dancing around this topic. I was done months ago. I was done on the cliff. I am in love with you, have been in love with you for… God, Hannibal, probably since you had your hands in that idiot organ harvester’s botch job.”
A beat.
“So long?”
“Quiet, I'm far from done.” Will held a hand up, as much to stop himself diving on the look of wondering adoration Hannibal had just given him as to halt the interruption itself.
“And despite the fact that I'm not gay, it turns out that when you love someone so much, for so long, your body tends to follow your heart’s lead. I've thought about you. I think about you. And if I don't act on those thoughts soon, the nearby population is going to suffer a sudden, violent drop in numbers. Don’t look so delighted at the prospect.” Will lowered their hands again but kept his hold. “I assume, from the way you've been looking at me, that this feeling is mutual.”
“That would not be an inaccurate account.” The words were as controlled and refined as ever, betrayed entirely by the throaty growl in which they were spoken.
Will couldn't help it, a smile shot across his face before he had time to school it and he caught Hannibal's gaze, sure that the anticipatory glow there was a mirror of his own expression. Like smitten idiots – also not inaccurate, Will considered – they grinned at each other for what stretched into an embarrassingly long moment.
“So, yeah,” Will forced his brain back into service, “you and me, it's inevitable. And, imminent, I think.” He raised his gaze back to the other seat, eyebrow cocked in hopeful enquiry.
“Were it solely up to me, I would already have dragged you onto this rug and made love to you in ways that would make you forget any name but mine, including your own.”
Wow.
“God, Hannibal.”
“His too.”
Will suspected he had actually begun to pant with wanting. “Good, then, that's good.” He cleared his throat and tried to gather himself like a grown man and not a lust-crazed teenager. “But, and this is the important bit Hannibal, when we do this, it will close the last distance between us. The last distance there will ever be. You are the last and only person I want to be with. So, before anything happens, there's one last thing I need to understand.”
“We have already discussed much of our unfortunate past behaviour towards one another.”
“And forgiven it, too.”
Hannibal inclined his head in agreement. “And strive for understanding, where forgiveness eludes us.”
“Yes.”
“In which case, I believe I can guess which incident you wish to bring up.”
“Oh?”
“You wish to discuss the time I took a bone saw to your skull.”
“Yes.” Will squeezed Hannibal's hand again and kept his tone soft. “That.”
“I destroyed any chance you could ever trust me that day.” Sadness, the depth of which a cheerfully self-declared psychopath should not be capable, rolled in Hannibal's voice.
“My trust vanished in Abigail’s kitchen, years before. Not my love, though given that I hadn't even acknowledged its existence at that point, maybe it was kept safe from harm by my blindness. No, the funny thing is, my trust was long-dead by that day in Florence and yet it returned to me full-force – and has never left again – the very next day, when you carried me from Muskrat Farm. I have known, from that day, that you will not kill me. I know it the same way I know I love you. It's an essential truth. What I don't understand and what I need to understand, before I let you have me, is what changed, between Italy and home? When, and why, did you decide not to kill me?”
“Ah. I believe I must date it from the moment you tore a chunk of flesh from another man’s face, my love.”
“Alright, that's when. And mortifyingly predictable, by the way. What about why?”
“That will take a little longer to explain.”
“I'd expect so.”
Hannibal fixed him with a look that was the closest to pleading Will had seen from him and said quietly, “Alright. I will tell you it all. In as much detail as I can. I only ask that you do not speak until I am finished. If you have questions, I will answer them all fully, after. If you wish to leave and run from me, please wait until you have heard it all. And know that I would follow you, until you returned.”
Will rolled his eyes but nodded.
“I have had many years to think on this,” Hannibal continued, “and I have thought of it often, trying to understand myself. I have waited a long time to tell you this, dear Will, and now the moment is come, I need to say it all, so you may know it all.”
Will remained silent, as he had promised, and rubbed his thumb across the back of Hannibal's hand, encouraging him to begin.
Hannibal took a breath and spoke: “When I left you in my kitchen… when I left you behind, I knew you would not die. I did not wish to kill you then, Will, merely to put you down. I hoped you would stay there. Because my heart had shattered at the thought of a world in which I could not have you. The world to which I was returned when I knew Freddie Lounds still breathed. So I tried to ensure that, at least, it was a world in which you would not torment me with your presence. Selfish, I know, the outburst of a child thwarted in its desires, but I have never claimed selflessness,” Will inclined his head in wry agreement, “and broken-hearted men cannot be trusted to act rationally.
“I should have known, of course, that it was futile, that you would follow me, find me like one of your dogs hunting a rabbit. Truthfully, I do not know if I hoped you would. I had thought by releasing you, I would release myself. That time would heal my infatuation and the pain of separation.”
Conjoined, whispered Will's mind.
“I did not know myself after I lost you. Bedelia would tell you that there was no healing of the wound. I was irrational, impetuous, unable to accept that I could not have you, willing and aware and by my side. It became,” Hannibal paused, searching for the word, “messy. You are inconvenient, even when half a world away.
You think I'm the inconvenient one. I had to sail thousands of miles just to get into the same room as you.
“And then you were there. In Florence, teasing me with your forgiveness and your closeness, a shade of the thing I most wanted and could never have. Or so I thought.” He brought Will's knuckles to his lips and kissed them.
“I would like to say that my next actions were the result of Bedelia’s psychic driving but I will neither do you the discourtesy or give myself the excuse. In my broken, twisted, stupid mind, I believed that if I could not have you whole and breathing, I would take you from this life and keep you within me. If that was the only way to possess you, I would take a bone saw to your head and remove your most fascinating part. I would not have stopped, Will.” Hannibal's voice shook and ran low with pain. “I would have killed the thing most precious to me, eaten the mind I fell in love with and made art from your bones. As if any art could compare to the sound of your breath, the beat of your heart. I would have killed you and in doing so killed myself, I know it now.”
He was trembling and Will was caught between withdrawing his hand and folding Hannibal into his arms. Instead, he sat, quietly, watching until Hannibal seemed to gather himself enough to continue.
“Which is why,” he said with a small, shaky smile, “my precious Will, I give thanks every day, every moment, for the existence of Mason Verger.”
Will laughed. He couldn't help it. It was such a ridiculously inappropriate thing to say, yet he knew that Hannibal was both aware of its absurdity and utterly sincere in his meaning. He shook with laughter and relief, because the worst of it was over and Hannibal could still make him laugh.
“Not that I am sorry for his demise soon after,” Hannibal added, clearly relieved himself by Will's response, “but he saved me that day and he showed me that all was not lost, simply that I would never get what I wanted without some change on my behalf.
“I had long been convinced that, in order to make you mine, I would need to employ force. That I would need to break your mind to make you accept our bond. That I ever so underestimated Will Graham is the great shame of my life.”
Not murdering dozens of people and feeding them to your friends. Although, pot, kettle Graham.
“I wasn't lying when I told you it was your improvement of Mr Cordell’s face that inspired my change of heart. It restated something to me and taught me something, as well. It showed me that the darkness of your being, that which sang to my own, had not been imagined. That our resemblance, your ability to understand, had not been an illusion designed to tempt me. The Will Graham I wanted and loved was the Will Graham in that room with me and I could have him. Would have him. And to kill him would have been the single stupidest action I could ever have taken.”
Of course, from Hannibal, that is the greatest compliment he could bestow. And, damnit, I'm pretty sure I'm blushing.
“And it also taught me that Will Graham is not a being who can be controlled, predicted or influenced. He is a wild thing, made for the shadows and, by trying to force him into my mould, I would only ever drive him away.” Hannibal looked over to Will and pinned his gaze. “I had seen you, the man I thought I had lost, and I knew I could not make you come to me. I had to have faith, that you would come of your own accord, as that was the only way to have you and for you to stay.” They looked at each other for a long moment, Will seeing only reverence in Hannibal's eyes.
Definitely blushing.
Presently, Hannibal continued. “Which is why, when you told me to run, to vanish, I stayed and placed myself in the light. Because if you were to come to me, freely and openly, then you would truly be mine. So you needed to know where to find me. And you needed time to come to terms. Time, to try on normality and know if would not fit.”
Maddeningly polite.
“To accept that black creature within you, to know you could keep it safe with mine.”
Would you see through the bars of his plight, and ache for him?
“That it required only three years of my life as sacrifice has more convinced me of the existence of a benevolent God than any act of charity.”
Or, at least, a God who is benevolent towards killers and cannibals.
“Because I would have given a thousand times more, Will, to have you by my side again.”
Funny, because three years felt just like a thousand to me.
“That is, to my best estimation, the full and frank account of why I wished to murder you in Florence and knew I never would before we left Muskrat Farm.”
There was silence, then, for a long while. Giving me time, again.
After a while, though, Will looked at Hannibal. Will looked and saw the depth of his monster’s love, his care and his fear, emotions that had no other cause, could have no other cause, than Will.
Then he took a deep breath, let it go and stood.
“Ok then.”
Hannibal had tensed as he rose from the seat and looked up now with that fear Will had seen clouding his eyes. “Will?” Pleading, longing, hoping for safety from rejection.
Will tugged on his hand and pulled him from the chair. “I know you had your heart set on the rug, darling, but I think the bedroom will be better, if you can make it that far.”
Between them, they closed the distance.