Work Text:
Hannibal Lecter's residence
Baltimore, Maryland
A critical moment
"You were supposed to leave."
"We couldn't leave without you."
Time stood still for a moment, hinging upon a point of uncertainty, a fulcrum around which the world's course could be shifted -
"I'm here now." The words came almost unbidden from Will's throat, blurted swiftly and desperately as if to avert impending catastrophe. "I sent Jack to the wrong place. He'll be at your office for - I don't know. At least an hour? Looking for evidence that isn't there."
Hannibal exhibited some visible surprise, at that. "Freddie Lounds is not dead. You lied - "
Will gestured ferociously at Abigail, watching the both of them with wide anxious eyes. "Pot, kettle, black, Hannibal."
The tension stretched. Then Hannibal turned and set his knife down on the kitchen counter. "You are packed, I assume?"
"Of course. Although hell if I know where we're going - "
It would be another two hours, accounting for Baltimore traffic, before the FBI made it to Hannibal's home. They would find no evidence save for the ashes of Hannibal's journals in the fireplace, burnt beyond recognition, and an envelope on the kitchen counter containing the keys to Will's farmhouse and a brief farewell letter addressed to Alana.
Dr. Bloom would not find out until the following morning, when Jack arrived in person with said letter and seven dogs in tow.
There was another piece of evidence left behind, however, that the FBI failed to understand: a teacup left sitting on the table, untouched, its contents still warm.
---
EIGHT MONTHS LATER
Cathédrale Sainte-Réparate
Nice, France
December 25, 1:14 AM
The Americans stepped out of the cathedral side by side, shoulders nearly touching.
The taller man was graceful, animated, wishing his fellow churchgoers bon soirs and joyeux Noëls in fluent, effortless French, greeting several of them by name as they exited the church and departed for their homes. His fair hair was unashamedly touched with grey - just enough to make him look distinguished - and he wore it long and tousled with artful nonchalance, along with a fashionable leather jacket and a pair of tortoiseshell glasses that had inexplicably defeated the FBI's best facial recognition software. He moved lightly, like a dancer; if there was anything of the coiled predator in the deliberation of his motion, he had left that part of himself at home tonight.
The shorter man was tense, head down, shoulders hunched stiffly inside a soft, charcoal grey wool coat. His dark hair was short, paired with a neatly trimmed beard that shifted the fine lines of his face away from beautiful and into handsome. He let his partner do most of the speaking, sparing only a few brief greetings in a stilted French that tried desperately not to be Creole-accented, succeeding only by being hopelessly midwestern-American. His feet were slightly unsteady on the promenade, but that could have simply been a lack of attention, or the lateness of the hour.
No one would have pointed them out as anything unusual. They were simply Americans - a sweet couple, one of many just like them who chose to holiday in Europe. They were good neighbors, better-behaved than most American tourists. Kept to themselves, certainly - but privacy was not a crime.
"I can't believe you dragged me to midnight mass," grumbled Will quietly, in English, once they were far enough away not to be overheard. Hannibal wasn't even religious - if anything, he regarded God as a peer. But he was fond of the cultural and literary trappings of religion, and this had been a convenient excuse to drag Will to go admire the restored Baroque cathedral.
Hannibal's expression did not change, precisely; it simply crystallized from no expression whatsoever into the deliberately flat affect he reserved for when he was particularly annoyed. "I can't believe that you pregamed midnight mass," he responded, code-switching effortlessly into scolding Will without missing a beat.
"Don't say it like that. I had… a couple fingers of whiskey. More than an hour ago. Not enough to embarrass you, Niels," he added, putting a small sarcastic emphasis on the false name on Hannibal's passport.
Hannibal's only response was reproachful silence.
The further they drew away from the cathedral, the emptier the streets became, until it was only them and a handful of tourists walking the Promenade des Anglais. Christmas in France was a quiet, intimate, family affair: most of the restaurants were shuttered at this late hour, save for the few offering special events for the holiday. (As if Hannibal would pass up a chance to cook le reveillon for Will; he'd been planning his menu obsessively for nearly a month.) Despite the stiff silence, they walked so closely that their elbows nearly brushed with each step, Hannibal deliberately slowing his own long stride to match Will's more leisurely one.
The night was the typical maritime balmy of the French Riviera, and Will was uncomfortably warm in his coat; even the wintriest weather that the Mediterranean had to offer was still half-hearted compared to the occasional nor'easters back home that dumped blizzards onto Wolf Trap.
He missed Virginia. It was a dull and distant ache that occasionally sharpened into an acute sense of hiraeth: a homesickness for a home to which he could not return, one that was half-built of memories of feelings that could never be truly recreated. The promenade around them was a festive parade of multicolored lights, drowning out the sky above into featureless black; in Wolf Trap, Will knew, the stars would be blazing clear and cold over the dark and silent woods, and the empty farmhouse he'd left behind.
Even if he could return, there would be no light in the windows there. No crush of eager, furry bodies at the door to welcome him back. He had left that life behind him deliberately, and with it the illusion of comfort and safety that it once brought him.
He walked now through the silent woods with a deadly predator at his side. Knowingly. Willingly. Hannibal was not tame, though he had put on a fine show of it at first. First London, then a whirlwind tour of Florence, then a leisurely dance from port city to port city along the Mediterranean - transparent appeals to Will's love of the water. They were lying low; not so much as a peep from the Chesapeake Ripper until they could be absolutely certain that the FBI was no longer actively hunting them.
Lately, Will had caught himself waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Something of his train of thought must have showed on his face or in his body language, because Hannibal's stride hitched and he reached out, briefly brushing his fingertips over the back of Will's wrist. "I am sorry for insisting on your attendance. I should have realized it would be stressful for you."
"It wasn't stressful, so much as - awkward, I guess." Will angled his head away, ducking eye contact and the weight of Hannibal's gaze. "It went on forever, and everything was in French. Hell, even if it had been in English I doubt I'd have been able to follow it." He'd been raised Evangelical Protestant, and long since abandoned any religious habits of his youth. And even if he had been raised Catholic, cultural Catholicism in Louisiana was… very different from Europe. Not enough of a shared touchstone to touch him.
"Thank you for humoring me, then." Again, that careful politeness from Hannibal, a self-effacement that was not at all like him. Will had been rude - deliberately rude, no less - and Hannibal was simply not rising to the bait.
Something had changed, these past few weeks leading up to Christmas. Will couldn't quite grasp the shape of it yet, but it sat at the back of his mind while he worried at it like an impending toothache. Hannibal had always been opaque, even to Will's nigh-uncanny empathy. There was a reason it had taken Will the better part of a year to divine the shape of the Chesapeake Ripper's design… and even longer after that to realize that Hannibal's driving motive was not cold curiosity, but ardent passion.
And even after that realization… Love did not remove the danger, when it came to Hannibal, any more than fire ceased to be dangerous when it was contained in a fireplace. After all they'd suffered at one another's hands, Will could not quite shake the fear of being burned.
Natural shyness - and a reluctance to shake the fragile foundations of their mutual peace - had kept Will silent up until now. Maybe it was the whiskey warming his blood, or the lingering friction from the insufferably long mass. But as they reached the spot where Hannibal had parked his motorcycle, Will opted to take the blunt approach for once. "What are you hiding from me?"
Hannibal raised an eyebrow. "Nothing more sinister than the gifts in the closet. What's troubling you?"
It wasn't a question there was an easy answer to. Hannibal had lately been prone to vanishing from the house for hours at a time, responding with polite smiles and vague, cryptic answers when Will asked how he'd spent his day. There were phone conversations muffled behind closed doors, e-mail chains discreetly minimized when Will walked behind Hannibal's desk chair. Will valued privacy as much as Hannibal did; he wouldn't go so far as to snoop into Hannibal's things without some evidence more concrete than paranoia and conjecture, but…
"You are still wary of my intentions," Hannibal cut in, when easy answers failed to roll off Will's tongue. "Understandable, given our history. But I assure you, I am not hiding anything that will harm you. Quite the opposite."
"Can you blame me for being suspicious?" Will moved a little closer to Hannibal so that he could keep his voice low, already regretting choosing to have this conversation outdoors instead of waiting until they returned to the house. "You've been acting oddly for weeks."
"You'll have to be more specific." Hannibal turned away, bending down to fuss with the motorcycle lock, clearly hoping that Will would simply give up and drop the subject.
"It took you two hours this morning to decide on wine pairings for dinner. For the two of us. When you know full well I can barely tell a Sauvignon Blanc from a Sauterne on a good day."
He could only see Hannibal's expression in profile, dimly lit by the Christmas lights around them, but the long-suffering sigh was practically audible in his voice. "It was an entre-deux-mers, Will, a Sauterne would be entirely too sweet. It would overwhelm the oysters."
"And then there was the whole Yule log incident -"
"It's a buche de Noel, Will, not a Yule log, and as I told you at the time I am not a pastry chef, it was my first attempt -"
"I'm not blaming you for what happened, I'm just saying you were stressed! In the kitchen! I have never seen you stressed in the kitchen!" He forced himself to stop, taking a breath, drawing his tone back down from accusing into something approaching level. Hannibal was getting defensive, understandably so, and getting his hackles up wouldn't help matters. "You've been putting more effort into this dinner than you put into most of your entertaining back home. Despite the fact that you know I won't be dazzled by truffles or prosciutto roses." He paused, frowning in dawning dismay. "Just to be clear, the prosciutto roses are actually prosciutto? Not -"
"It takes two years to properly age and cure prosciutto. Don't be gauche, Will."
"All right, all right. Just checking."
The lock clicked, and Hannibal straightened up, offering the spare helmet to Will, who took it wordlessly. (He hadn't thought of Hannibal as a motorcycle sort of person - Hannibal, who drove an insufferably expensive Bentley all over Maryland, was now blazing through the streets of Europe on a sporty racing bike. But after a few trips with Will riding passenger, legs wrapped around the roaring engine, hips almost flush against Hannibal's... well. He'd started to understand the appeal.)
Hannibal waited until they were both seated comfortably on the bike before speaking. His back was to Will, face obscured by the helmet, but he hadn't started the engine yet, so Will could hear every word clearly. "...This is our first holiday together. It holds some significance for me. My intent was to signal new beginnings, a chance to start over in the new year. I have been looking into options for more permanent accommodations in Nice, if you are interested."
Of all the answers that Hannibal could have given, this was not the one that Will was anticipating. The distance, the tension, the meticulous attention to what seemed to will like trivial details -
Hannibal was nervous.
This was his design, carefully orchestrated. But he was no longer planning solely for his own pleasure. It hadn't occurred to Will that maybe being in a serious relationship was a new and unnerving experience for Hannibal, too. For a man whose reactions to life-threatening danger ranged on a spectrum from 'cold, reptilian lack of affect' all the way to 'mild amusement', flustered was not an emotion that Will was accustomed to associating with Hannibal.
Will leaned forward, letting his forehead rest against the back of Hannibal's shoulder with a small sigh of mingled fondness and exasperation. "I'm not going to decide halfway through Christmas that I regret everything and run back to Jack Crawford. I made my decision that night at your house. Wherever we go, we go together."
Hannibal reached back, resting a hand on Will's thigh and giving it a brief, affectionate squeeze. Will wrapped his arms around Hannibal's midsection in response, leaning into him. Then the engine roared to life, and they sped off into the dark.
---
Hannibal killed the engine at the end of the driveway, not bothering to pull all the way up to the front door. Will said nothing, because he'd spotted it too.
There were lights on in the front windows.
They had not left the lights on.
"What did you do?" Will hissed in Hannibal's ear.
Hannibal looked affronted. "You're going to have to be more specific on what conclusions you're leaping to, Will."
"Did you kill someone? Are you planning to kill someone? Some sort of festive Ripper Christmas tableau? Is that why you've been hiding so much shit from me lately - fuck, the FBI is in our house!"
"Ah. That conclusion." Hannibal swung a leg over the motorcycle, unruffled as ever. "If the FBI had caught up to us, I strongly suspect they would have brought backup from the Sûreté - or at least a vehicle of some kind." This was a good point, Will had to admit; there was no sign of any cars in the vicinity, marked or unmarked. "More likely, we are being burgled. I haven't been as discreet as I could be about my spending habits."
This was something of an understatement. But Will was ready to accept any alternate hypothesis that didn't end in the two of them spending Christmas in straitjackets. He caught Hannibal's eye and mutely pointed towards the house. Hannibal nodded, and the two of them prowled up the driveway in near-perfect synchronicity. With barely more than an exchange of eye contact, Hannibal took the left side of the door, Will taking the right. Hannibal's hand slipped into his jacket and came out with an improbably frightening-looking folding knife; not for the first time, Will found himself missing his FBI-issue SIG-Sauer.
The curtains were drawn over the windows. Will couldn't see anything inside, only the telltale glow of the lights. Hannibal inclined his head towards the door, and Will nodded; in one smooth motion borne of years of muscle memory, he kicked in the door.
Abigail screamed.
So did Will, though he would fiercely deny it after.
"Abigail!" said Hannibal, looking delighted. "You didn't tell us you were coming home for Christmas!"
"I was going to surprise you," she offered, eyes on the knife as Hannibal folded it and stowed it away inside his jacket again.
"And a wonderful surprise it is," Hannibal said, "although next time some advance warning would perhaps be appreciated. Unexpected home invasions are bad for Will's blood pressure."
"My blood pressure," Will growled in faint protest, but any further argument was muffled because he was too busy hugging his semi-adoptive semi-murder-daughter. "You said you were going to be in Paris this holiday?"
She had. Abigail was studying creative writing at the Paris College of Art; they'd all collectively agreed that Abigail was welcome to publish her book after Will and Hannibal died, were caught, or the statute of limitations expired, whichever came first. Regardless, she'd be telling her own story, without pesky tabloid journalists involved. Her final exams had run her ragged - she'd texted Hannibal endlessly about it, making Will almost wish he'd succumbed to the inexorable march of technology and gotten a smartphone. The last that Will had heard, she was staying on campus over the winter break to do some sightseeing in Paris, actually enjoying the city and doing all the fun tourist things that she hadn't had time for during the semester.
"I was going to," said Abigail. "But then I didn't want to not see you guys at all over the holiday, and it turns out you can get last-minute train tickets from Paris to Nice. But when I got home, you weren't here, so…"
"We were at Christmas mass," Will sighed.
"At midnight?"
"Traditional, apparently."
"You're not even Catholic!"
Will turned to Hannibal and raised both brows in an unspoken see? Our daughter agrees with me.
Hannibal loftily ignored the expression, instead stepping around Will to embrace Abigail in turn. Then he paused. And frowned, nose wrinkled just slightly in the way that indicated his uncanny sense of smell was once again giving him information he shouldn't have and he was considering the most tactful way to bring it up. Holding Abigail at arm's length, he looked her up and down, then sighed. "All right, where is it?"
Abigail smiled sheepishly. "She's, um. In the living room."
She? "She who, exactly?" asked Will, feeling the conversation winging swiftly past over his head.
At that moment, something barked faintly from the direction of down the hall.
Abigail whistled, and something like an enormous brown furry tornado came galloping down the hall, stopping only long enough to sniff at Will's outstretched hand before giving said hand a thorough and enthusiastic licking. Judging from the size, the coat, and the shape of the head, she was probably some sort of shepherd mix, with some terrier and grizzly bear tossed into the ancestry somewhere. She was also missing one ear, in a neat little surgical scar, and one eye was closed into a more or less permanent wink.
"She got bitten on the face by another dog," Abigail explained, sounding almost apologetic about having brought a surprise dog home on Christmas Eve. She reached up a hand to self-consciously toy with her hair, still worn long to cover the scar from her own missing ear. "So she lost the ear and the eye on that side when it got too infected. The shelter said that no one wanted to adopt her, so she might get put down after Christmas, and -"
"We will keep her forever," Will said fervently, already sitting on the floor to better let the new dog lick his face.
Hannibal, meanwhile, was looking quietly livid. Will and Abigail briefly exchanged a look, one that said without words the dog is not negotiable, we are going to stand as a united front on the dog.
"Abigail." Hannibal's tone of voice had taken on an ominous note, one that was probably aiming for Stern Father but instead landed somewhere in the vicinity of I Faked Your Death Once, Young Lady, And I Will Finish The Job If I Have To.
Abigail winced slightly. "I know, but I knew you were going to say no, and -"
"Now what am I going to do with the puppy?"
"What puppy?" said Will and Abigail simultaneously.
"The Epagneul Breton that we were going to pick up from the breeder tomorrow morning. It was supposed to be a surprise." Hannibal was radiating wounded dignity from every pore; his gift had been upstaged. "I've already put down the deposit and signed a contract; it's too late to back out now. I should have known that fate would conspire such that Will Graham would never have just one dog."
"You've been disappearing for hours because you've been making arrangements. To get me a dog." Will's voice was warring somewhere between incredulous and delighted.
"Spaniels are very trainable, according to what I read. They make excellent house companions, and versatile gun dogs should you and Abigail ever decide to take up hunting agaimmf?" The last word was swallowed as Will pulled Hannibal into a fierce kiss.
"If the FBI finds a lead on us because you bought me a fancy dog, it was worth it," Will said, forehead pressed against Hannibal's. "Just for the record."
"Why is there an entire roast goose warming in the oven?" Abigail called from the direction of the kitchen, where she tended to vanish whenever she suspected that Will and Hannibal's hands were going to start wandering. "Were you guys having a party? This can't be just for two people."
Hannibal pulled away from the embrace, bustling towards the kitchen hastily. He paused in the doorway, glancing back at Will. "...Would you like to come help? I could use a sous chef for tonight. I may have been - slightly ambitious."
Which, by Hannibal standards, meant there were probably approximately two hundred components that needed assembling before dinner was ready. Will smiled, following him into the warmth of the kitchen, where the newest member of the family was already getting underfoot - and in the back of his head, Will was already mentally planning a training regimen to keep the dogs out of the kitchen while Hannibal was working.
For tonight, though, there was food and family. As night turned into morning and heads began to nod, two teacups and a coffee mug - Will stubbornly insisted on preferring coffee to tea - sat together on the table. Unbroken.