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inlovewithquestionablecharacters · 5 days

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Hannibal X Reader: An ethical issue

Summary: you wanna fuck your therapist thats it thats the plot

Warnings: smut, sex, penetration (p in v), fingering, pet names, making out, light choking, light bitting, hickeys, patient x therapist, unprotected sex, pet name (dear), not proof read (got lazy)

Word count: 2,9K

“It's unethical, you know?”

You raise your head to look at Hannibal, eyes making contact with his. He can see the questions swimming inside your head. You’d been deep in thought when he’d spoken and he had managed to break your train of thought . You placed your cup on the table, wiping your hands on your legs before focusing on Hannibal once more.

“Sorry, what did you say?”

“It's unethical.”

“What is?”

“Wanting to fuck your therapist.”

Your eyes widen at Hannibal's words. His eyes bore into you, observing the way your face flushed the more he maintained eye contact. You should probably refute him but it's no use. Dr Lecter has seen into the deepest parts of your mind. He knows who you are. And now he knows your secret. The truth is the sessions had really been helping. It wasn't until recently that you’d found an ulterior motive for coming to every session.

You had a crush on your therapist.

You focus your gaze on the wall in front of you, trying your hardest to avoid looking directly at him. Your mind races to try and find something to say but you come up empty. From the corner of your eye you see Hannibal stand. He stays standing for a moment, looking at your frame. You close your eyes as you hear his shoes begin to move against the floor. A nervous sigh leaves your mouth as you feel his body move closer to your position. He stops a couple steps before you, causing you to bite the inside of your cheek. You wish the floor would open up and swallow you whole. Maybe you should just apologize to him. Tell him he was right and that you would figure out a way to get over him but that would be a lie. And if there was one thing you could never do to Hannibal was lie. He knew you too well. He'd be able to call you out immediately.

Hannibal watched you squirm slightly, observing your nails scrap against your skin as you rubbed your arms nervously. You still hadn't looked at him. He had already begun to miss the eye contact. Hannibal called out your name.

“Look at me.”

“I can’t.”

“Of course you can, my dear. I want to see your eyes.”

His voice sent shivers down your arms. He was always soft spoken with you but the deepness of his voice as he spoke seemed to have shifted. Slowly, you turn your head to look at him. You have to raise your head a bit to see him properly due to the position you were in. Hannibal stared down at you tenderly. He looked at the doe eyed look that had made its way into your features. A smile spread across his face, a silent way of trying to calm you. Unfortunately it did quite the opposite. His smile seemed to stroke the fire that was already burning in between your legs. You shifted in your seat, trying to conceal your desire for him. Hannibal noticed the way you shift under his gaze. It made him feel powerful. He enjoyed it but he also couldn't help but reach out for you.

“I can help you. If you ask me to.”

You watched Hannibal sink to his knees, allowing him to be face to face with you. You stare into his eyes, head tilting to the side as you do. He reached out for you, one hand moving to caress your thigh as the other made its way to your face. He’s trying his best to hold on, not wanting to go too fast and scare you off.

From the moment he’d first seen you you’d intrigued him. Despite everything you’d been through you were kind and trusting. Maybe even a little too trusting. It made Hannibal feel protective over you. He saw himself as your knight in shining armour and despite you not knowing it he would do anything you asked of him.

“Hannibal…”

Your lips part as his name slips through them. It sounds almost like a moan which causes blood to go rushing down to Hannibal's groin.

“Yes dear?”

“I…I hum-”

“It’s okay. Tell me what you want.”

“You. I want you.”

A satisfied sound left Dr Lecter's lips at your confession. You shut your eyes expecting him to finally close the distance between you two but he doesn’t. Instead he rises from the floor and begins to walk away from you. You give him a puzzled look. Had he just been toying with you? Was this some sort of experiment? If it was you were sure you’d failed. But if that was the case why had he given you a hum of approval?

“Come back to the real world dear. Don’t get stuck inside your own head.”

You forced your brain to focus on what was really happening instead of dwelling on negative thoughts. You’d been exercising your focus ever since your first session with Hannibal and you’d gotten pretty good with coming back to reality. Hannibal could tell by the way you looked at him that you'd managed to silence your mind. He gave you a proud smile.

“That's the fastest you’ve ever focused. Well done dear.”

“Thank you.”

“Come sit with me.”

You rose from your chair, making your way to the blue loveseat Hannibal was sitting in. You left a small amount of space between you too. The appropriate amount of space you thought there should be between a patient and their doctor. Hannibal couldn’t help but shake his head.

“Always so formal.”

“You’re one to talk. I don’t think I've ever seen you without a suit on.”

“Do you think about that a lot? Me without a suit I mean.”

“More often than I should if I'm being honest.”

It was strange. Despite everything that had happened moments ago this whole conversation still felt extremely professional. You felt like you were in one of your regular sessions. The only difference was the change of topics and the sitting layout.

“You can come closer. I won't bite.”

Hannibal paused for a moment, turning his head so that he was looking directly in your eyes.

“Unless you want me to.”

He’d expected you to be shocked, perhaps even to get up from your spot due to his bluntness but to his surprise you didn’t. Actually you did quite the opposite. You began to laugh. He’d never heard the sound of your laugh before but he enjoyed it thoroughly. He’d have to make you laugh more often.

Once your laughter died down you went back to looking at Hannibal. He watched your eyes shift over his face before you lifted your hand. Your fingers grazed against his cheek as you traced his skin. He never broke eye contact, eyes glued to yours even as you caressed his face.

“I don’t think you have any idea how handsome you are.”

Your statement caught him off guard. Your soft touches and loving gaze combined with your tender words had managed to make his head spin. For the first time in a while Hannibal felt his stomach bloom with what he could only describe as butterflies. He’d started off this conversation with the intention of touching on a sore subject, your infatuation with him, and had ended up discovering something about himself. It was unethical for you to want him but what was even worse is that he wanted you too.

He’d moved so quickly that you hadn’t had time to react. Before you knew it Hannibal's lips were crashing into yours. Your body fell down onto the loveset at the force of Hanibal’s kiss, causing you to find yourself trapped beneath him. Your legs widened on instinct, allowing him to slot his large frame between them. Hannibal’s kiss was rough but caring. He nipped at your lower lip as his hands guided you to wrap your arms around his neck. You did as he asked, fingers digging into his shoulders as he pushed his tongue into your mouth. His mouth may have muffled your moans but it couldn't stop you from bucking up into him. You felt the outline of his dick against your thighs causing you to whine.

Hannibal loved the way you felt against him. He loved how your fingers clung to his hair as he kissed you. He loved the feel of your breasts pressed against his chest. But most of all he loved how desperate you were for him. You decided to wear a dress today. You didn’t even really known why but you were glad you had.

And so was Hannibal.

One of his hands traveled down to your clothed cunt his fingers moving to the edge of your dress. He broke the kiss for a moment, leaning his head down so that he could see what he was doing. You watched him push your dress up allowing him to see your underwear. Hannibal’s head snapped up to look at your face. He gave you a small grin.

“Lovely color.”

“Shut u-hum!”

Hannibal’s fingers moved over your lips spreading them open before beginning to insert a digit inside. Your mouth fell open at the feeling, a broken moan slipping from your lips as it did. Hannibal watched your face fill with ecstasy as he continued to finger you. He’d orignally planned on bending you over his desk and fucking you from behind. But now that he’d seen the angelic look that came over your face as he pleasured you he knew he wanted to watch you cum on his dick. He’d fuck you on your back like a gentleman.

Well, perhaps not like a gentleman.

He’s barely done anything and you're already babbling nonsense beneath him.

“Hannibal i-i fuck- there please there.”

“That feel good?”

“Yes please i wanna… i wanna-”

“Tell me what you want dear.”

“I wanna cum. Please make me cum.”

The way you beg for him makes him think the men you’d been with before hadn't really cared about your pleasure. The thought angers him but it also motivates him to show you how good you can feel. He enters a third digit and you can’t help but latch onto him as you cry out. You pull his body closer to yours and he lets you. He feels your hardened nipples rub against his clothed chest making him want nothing more but to rip off his shirt. Later though, right now he needs to focus. His hand moves expertly against your pussy thumb moving to caress your clip as his fingers continue to penetrate you. You sigh out his name making him lift his head from where he was looking so that he could stare into your eyes.

“Hanni… I'm gonna cum.”

“Go on then, cum for me.”

It was as if a verbal command was all that you needed to let loose. The second the words had left Hannibal's lips he felt your cum begin to coat his fingers. He watched your lips part, eyes rolling to the back of your head as you spasmed against him.

What a sight you were.

Hannibal removed his fingers from inside you placing a kiss to your temple before he rose to his feet. Your head lolled to the side, trying to follow him despite your blissed out state. Through blurry vision you saw Hannibal remove his suit jacket placing it carefully on his desk chair. He began unbuttoning his shirt slowly. As he did so he watched you come back to earth. Once you’d gained feeling in your body again you turned over, lifting yourself up so that you could watch Hannibal undress. He felt your eyes on him turning to face you. You gave him a smile which he returned.

“How are you feeling dear?”

“Wonderfull.”

“I’m glad. Tired?”

“Not really. Why?”

Hannibal tugged down his pants in one quick movement allowing his dick to spring free. You watched his member bob for a moment before turning your attention back to his face.

“Because i’m going to fuck you. Take your dress off for me.”

You tugged at the edge of your dress pulling it off your body with ease. Once you’d gotten it off you threw it to the side before moving to unclasp your bra. Hannibal watched you throw your bra in the pile along with the rest of your clothes.

“Stand for me dear.”

You did as he asked, hands moving to fidget with each other as he made his way back to you. Hannibal placed his hands on your cheek, cradling your face in them. His eyes trailed over your naked body before he gazed into your eyes once more.

“You are magnificent.”

Your lips latched onto Hannibals in desperation, legs moving backwards towards the love seat. You crashed down onto a small couch once more tugging Hannibal down with you. You thought maybe he’d scold you for your desperation but by the look in his eyes and the feeling of his hard on against your thigh you could tell he needed this just as much as you did. You spit in your hand moving to stroke Hannibal's dick. He groaned against you, allowing you to caress him for a moment. He rested his face against your neck breathing in your scent as you stroked his member. His teeth grazed against your collarbone making you bite your lip. He sucked at your shoulder enjoying the small gasp that left your lips. Hannibal maneuvered his hand so that he could wrap it around your wrist stopping you from moving.

“That's enough dear. I want to be inside now. Do you want me inside?”

“Yes Dr Lecter.”

Hannibal grined down at you as you gave him a cheeky smile. Without any warning he plunged into you making your body move backwards at the force. He fucked you with incredible speed, hips moving in a pace you didn’t think was possible. You dug your nails into his back as he continued to ram into you. His hand moved to your throat, fingers wrapping around it with a gentle squeeze. Once he saw you didn’t flinch away from him he tightened his grip around you, not enough to stop your breathing but enough to give you a bit of a thrill. It was embarrassing how fast you reached your orgasm. Before you even realized you had begun spilling your juices around Hannibal's dick. You’d been so high on your own plesure you only noticed when Hannibal let ou a small “fuck” against your ear. Your body sagged into the loveseat as Hannibal continued to pistol into you. For someone whose job consisted of sitting for most of the time he had a lot of stamina. You drifted off into your head only realizing Hannibal had finished when you felt his body fall into yours. He wrapped his arms around you pulling you as close into his as fiscally possible. You moved to stroke his hair instinctively, the need to touch him consuming you.

“You did so well for me dear. Rest now.”

Hannibal placed a kiss on your chest. You felt him pull out of you making you feel empty. But you didn’t feel that way for long because before you knew it you had drifted off into sleep.

You woke up on the loveset. Your lips part as you stretch, a yawn escaping your mouth. You could feel something soft surrounding you causing you to open your eyes. A blanket that hadn’t been there when you had fallen asleep was carefully wrapped around your naked frame. You pushed yourself onto your elbow, rubbing your eyes as you gazed around the room.

“Sleep well?”

Your head snapped at the sound of his voice. Hannibal was standing on the other side of the room with his back turned to you. He was still completely naked. When you didn’t respond to his question Hannibal turned on his heels to face you. Instinctively your eyes trailed over his naked body, your mind going to last night's events. You moved to look at the clock on the wall. It read 9 o’clock.

“Don’t you have any appointments today?”

“I canceled.”

“Why would you do that?”

“So that we could have breakfast together.”

Hannibal moved away from the table he’d been working on giving you a clear view of the breakfast he’d laid out. You rose from the loveseat moving towards him. Hannibal watched you make your way to him, admiring the beauty of your body as you moved. He could see the hickeys he’d left on your neck last night. The sight pleased him greatly.

You looked over the contents of the table. Everything looked delicious. You shifted your gaze to Hannibal, a smile spreading over your face. You wrapped your arms around his waist giving him a hug. Hannibal's arms wound around your body, his hands moving to hold your head.

“Thank you.”

“No need to thank me. Now sit. Your food is getting cold.”

The two of you sat down and began to eat. The room was quiet as you ate. It was a sort of quiet you’d become accustomed too. The quiet that came when your mind decided it needed to jump into action.

“What are you thinking over there?”

“What are we gonna do? About us, I mean. We clearly crossed a line yesterday.”

“Do you regret it?”

“No, of course not. Do you?”

“No. I do not.”

“Someone could find out. It could ruin your job.”

“I won’t tell if you don’t. It’ll be our little secret. Patient confidentiality and all that.”

“Our secret huh?”

“Is that alright with you?”

“Yeah. It is.”

“Wonderful. Now drink your coffee and finish your eggs.”

#smut #smut fanfiction #smut tag #hannibal #hannigram #hannibal lecter #dr lecter #mads mikkelsen #mads mikkleson #mads mikkelsen smut #hannibal fandom #hannibal fanfiction #hannibal x reader #hannibal tv show #hannibal x you #hannibal smut #dr lector smut #therapist reader #therapist x paciente reader

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k-s-morgan · 3 years

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Hi! I've been in the Hannibal fandom for two years now. Rewatched the show many times and yet Will Graham still confuses me like no one else. Hannibal's design is complex but somewhat understandable after watching the show again again. But Will's design is like a loophole. He can empathise with the killers. That means he can understand them. If he can understand them then why does it feel good for him to kill them? How does it work for him exactly. Does he feel for the killers? If he felt for the killers then what about his violent tendencies towards them?

I've always thought that he is like a God. A God of the killers. The killers offer him their design and he takes sacrifice in return of understanding. But how does his psyche work exactly?

Hello! Oh yes, Will is a very confusing character - it’s his defining trait, and I think that’s because he lies to himself, to others, and to us as an audience. He wants one thing, wants to want another thing, does the third thing, and making sense of it is a complex process.

I think Will’s empathy is a big red herring. I agree with Freddie here: he understands killers because he’s one. He has an almost supernatural gift that helps him recreate the situations almost exactly as they happened. He understands what motivates killers, he might sympathize with them, but I think he might also envy them their freedom to be what they are. They are a reminder of what he is and what he can’t allow himself to have. But most importantly, they are a way for Will to find a compromise with himself and feel better about his true self. Killing bad people is an excuse to justify his darkness, but I don’t think it’s a part of his design per se.

I agree with you that Will is like a God - he and Hannibal both are. That’s one of the things that separates them from others and elevates them above everyone else. Let’s make an overview of Will’s victims.

1) Hobbs. Hobbs was a monster and Will killed him. But it wasn’t about justice and righteousness, not according to him. Killing a person and feeling pleased that you saved someone versus liking the act of killing itself are drastically different things. Many police officers have to kill in their line of duty. Very few of them get off on the act of murder. Those who do are killers, and they are especially dangerous if they immediately try to follow it up with another murder. Will never once says he liked killing Hobbs because he made this world better. When asked, he says that he felt a sense of power. This is a motivation of many actual serial killers. If Will was just glad that he saved Abigail, he would know it's normal. He wouldn't have been almost on the verge of a break-down and haunted by Hobbs. So it’s not about helping others, it's about murder, even if the victim was a monster.

2) Stammets. Will had no reason to try to kill him (which he admits to doing). Based on his and Hannibal’s talk, he understands that he just wanted to feel what he felt after killing Hobbs, and this makes him panic. So again, no someone. He’s chasing the high of killing someone, and Stammets is the most appropriate victim.

3) Ingram. On the surface, it looks like Will wanted to avenge Peter and himself by proxy, hence pulling the trigger on Ingram. However, after Hannibal manages to stop him, days later, Will complains about losing a chance to feel how he felt when killing Hobbs. Murder high is his main motivation again - everything else is background or an excuse, depending on your reading.

4) Randall. Will threw away the gun on purpose to make the murder more intimate. This is not about justice and this is not about protecting himself because by doing this, he reduced his chances. Will also beat Randall up until he wasn't moving. There was no reason to snap his neck. Mutilation, cannibalism that followed, keeping his suit, admitting he enjoyed the murder and calling it his design - this is about murder and WIll’s love for it primarily. The design part is especially important: based on it, we can conclude that Will loves a performance just like Hannibal.

4) Chiyoh and her prisoner who Will set up. Chiyoh was innocent and didn't deserve to die. Her prisoner might not have been guilty - in fact, Will was the one to suggest that, and yet Will still set him up. It was a game and he was an observer - he lied in waiting for Chiyoh’s scream. He then turned the body of a losing party into art. Very creepy and very like Hannibal.

5) Chilton. Will clearly explained his motivation: he wanted Chilton to pay just because he wanted to be famous and messed with Hannibal by writing his ridiculous book. Will showed no remorse and admitted he did it on purpose.

6) Police officers he set up to be killed by cooperating with Francis. The ones he stepped over without a second look. They were innocent and they were a collateral damage. Will is a cruel God who doesn’t bother with mere mortals as long as it fits his purpose. In this case, his purpose was freeing Hannibal. Everything else was still a blur in his mind.

7) Francis. Enjoyed the murder, admired the blood, called the situation beautiful.

8) Bedelia. She's innocent in comparison to Will and his body count. If Will faced no repercussions and continued getting more and more people killed, she had every right to go free. But God doesn’t have to be fair, and Will proves it by targeting her.

What does it all say about Will’s design and philosophy? Apart from Godlike attributes and indifference toward collateral damage, I think Will is led by his bloodlust - he just tends to control it and direct it at specific targets.

Will might prefer to kill “bad people” in the first two seasons, but it’s the process of murder that excites him. So I see his righteous choices as a preference that helps him justify his dark nature partly, not the core reason for his violence. Hannibal seems to be moved by his interest in human nature and his hunter instinct, but Will, I think, is a truer killer because he actually feels drunk on murder. Unlike Hannibal, he looks downright euphoric when/after he kills Randall and Francis. In TWOTL, Hannibal is more focused on the fact that his dream came true and he and Will killed someone together, but Will seems primarily caught up in the murder after-shocks themselves. Hannibal thinks about Will, Will thinks about how beautiful blood looks under the moonlight.

So, post Fall, I believe that at first, Will will stick to killing bad people like murderers, but once some times passes, his need for justifications will fade. He’ll move on to rude people, only his rude will differ from Hannibal’s. Hannibal doesn’t differentiate between genders and ages, but I think Will will. He’s interested in a feeling of power, like he himself says, in a sense of dominance, so he’ll look forward to a fight. He won’t be interested in attacking a teenager like Cassie, for instance, because the power imbalance is too prominent. But as soon as someone more equal does something Will heavily dislikes, something that wakes his bloodlust (a personal insult, physical or verbal abuse toward other people/animals, etc.), he’ll attack. He’ll be careful - he knows how to avoid being caught, but it will still be unpredictable and passionate. Will is a storm to Hannibal’s calm.

Then there is unpredictability. Hannibal tends to plan everything methodically. The only times we see him being impulsive is in Europe, where he’s descending into self-destructive mode, so it’s not a norm for him. For Will, though? Will consists of unpredictability, and Hannibal is fascinated by it.I think Will is going to kill when an impulse strikes. For example, he might go shopping, without having any dark plans, and end up murdering someone because the circumstances pushed some unfortunate soul onto his path. Will might or might not display the body depending on his mood. Today he can be in an artistic mood, but tomorrow he’ll be in a violent and impatient one, wanting to destroy the body entirely and leaving a total mess behind.

How Will would prefer to kill? In my opinion, in an intimate way. It doesn’t mean he’ll be weaponless, but something like a knife would fit his tastes well. He’d be able to feel it plunge into his victim’s body, tearing through skin and muscles, etc. - personal and intimate. Akin to what he did with Francis - his feral half-snarl, the way he paused after stabbing him before opening him up - it was dark and mesmerizing. Will might get into strangling, too, because it takes a lot of time and it is even more intimate. It might end up being his favorite. So, I can see him using his hands or small weapons to fully sense what he’s doing to a victim. This is something that he has in common with Hannibal because from what we saw, Hannibal also enjoys more intimate and prolonged murders that give him a glimpse into a person’s pain and struggle for life.

#hannibal #hannigram #will graham #hannibal lecter #meta

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young-dumb-and-vaccinated · 3 years

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The Sommelier (Hannibal x Female!Reader) pt. 1

Ding dong fannibals I’m back on my bullshit :)

I discovered that I cannot for the life of me be concise so this one might come in a couple parts. I don't anticipate it's gonna go as long as Cult Girl but we'll see. Y/n is an introverted waitress at a fancy restaurant with a crush on a mysterious regular. An encounter with a dangerous criminal pulls her into his world.

Trigger warnings: graphic descriptions of violence; implied drug use; religiously-motivated violence.

In some ways, waitressing was the perfect job for an introvert. Customers didn’t see you as a person, they saw you as an NPC. As long as that was the case, you weren’t expected to engage with them beyond the script: you take their order, bring them the food and they, hopefully, leave a tip. To ensure that, you perfected the art of fake happiness. You were there to make money, not friends.

Well, there was an exception to every rule. Yours was the sommelier.

The sommelier was a regular at the restaurant, but never ordered a meal. He mostly just sat at the bar, drank expensive wine, and watched the people come and go for hours at a time. Among the waitstaff, he was a bit of a local cryptid. Waitresses whispered about the handsome gentleman with an unidentifiable accent and deep pockets. About how lucky you had to be to score a bartending shift on one of the nights he showed up. It got to the point where bartending shifts were swapped like currency, because every woman on staff wanted the chance to meet the sommelier.

One of the more religious line chefs liked to remind you all that the devil would come as everything you could ever desire. He was fully convinced that the sommelier was Satan incarnate, and he wasn’t completely off the mark. Standing at six feet tall with features sharp enough to cut diamonds, the sommelier wouldn’t look out of place in a vampire thriller. He always dressed in dark suits. Your coworkers hypothesized this was so the bloodstains wouldn’t show. Despite the chef’s well-intended (if not condescending) warnings, even the threat of eternal damnation couldn’t scare you off.

As much as you liked to believe you were above stupid workplace gossip, you knew you weren’t. You were never the most socially adept person, but this gave you something to connect over. It’s how you discovered that you and the other waitresses were all in the same boat; broke, lonely and in desperate need of some excitement. And if that came in the form of a wine-loving vampire taking a liking to your restaurant, there were certainly worse ways to go.

Unfortunately, not even the chance at encountering the sommelier could make you look forward to working Easter Sunday. Your manager had you working from noon to midnight that day. As employers went, he wasn’t much of a tyrant. He offered you time and a half and even let you switch from waiting tables to bartending halfway through the shift. He, too, knew how coveted the bartending shifts were. And you weren’t in any position to refuse, either. You quite enjoyed having a roof over your head and food in your stomach.

That didn’t make up for the fact that most of the other twenty-something employees had left for the holiday, and you were one of the few stragglers left available. Easter was the most dreaded workday of the year, because the infamous after-church crowd quadrupled in size and lasted all day. They came in double-digit parties, had no concept of birth control and tipped in prayer. Too many times had you reached for what looked like a generous cash tip, only to find that it was a church pamphlet disguised as a fifty.

You clocked in at noon exactly, after waiting for the second hand to pass the twelve just to be sure.

“[F/N]!” Your coworker, Charissa, grabbed your attention before you could walk away. “I heard you’re at the bar this evening. Congratulations.”

“He’s not going to show up, Charissa.” You rolled your eyes. You decided to go into this shift expecting the absolute worst, that way you wouldn’t be setting yourself up for disappointment. “It’s Easter.”

“You don’t know that.” Charissa nudged you in the side.

You grinned. “Why would a vampire come to dinner on the one day everyone is gonna be wearing a cross?”

“Oh, shit, I didn’t think of that.” Charissa gasped. “Well, good luck anyway.”

The first wave of customers filing through the door and filling the restaurant with noise pushed all optimism out of your head. Sighing, you approached a person that Charissa had already seated.

“Hi, my name is [F/N], I’ll be your server today.” You greeted the first customer in your block. “Can I get you something to drink today?”

The man couldn’t have been a day over twenty-five, if that. He was still lively in a way that meant he hadn’t experienced the drain that was a minimum wage job. He was wearing a shirt that said ‘on fire for Christ’ under a flannel with no buttons. One look and you knew he wasn’t going to tip.

The man flashed a row of eerily white teeth. “I thought you said you would bring the wine?”

You momentarily thought you’d already taken his drink order and shook your head. “I’m sorry, did I--”

“Ah, I see your confusion.” The man shrugged and forced a laugh. “You’re waitressing this week, you and I are going on a date next week. My mistake.”

Great. You thought. It hasn't even been five minutes and I'm already being gaslit.

Any interaction that forced you to go off-script was bad, but this was a particularly irritating diversion. “Would you like to see a wine list?”

“I’m Chase.” He said. “It’s nice to meet you, [F/N].”

“Have you decided on a drink?” You repeated, trying not to grit your teeth too obviously.

"I'll have a glass of your finest coke, please." He faked an English accent, poorly.

"We only carry Pepsi products." You said, dreading how this joker would react to such a minor inconvenience.

He threw his head back and made a face like he had just taken a bullet to the chest. "No, it's gotta be coke! It's coke or nothing!"

"Did you want something else, then?" You tried to hurry him along. "The bartender makes a very nice mimosa-"

He smacked the table as if he had some urgent question. "McDonald's or Chick-Fil-A? There is a right answer, so choose wisely."

"...uh," You mumbled, just praying that he would order a drink already. There wasn't even a Chick-fil-A in the area. "I like McDonald's."

Again, he acted like he was shot in the chest. "Oh, you're down zero to two!"

"If you need a few minutes to select a drink," You said. "I can come back-"

He grabbed your arm and forced a laugh. "I'm just kidding around with you, [F/N]. Pepsi is fine."

You scribbled the order down on your notepad, mostly just to pry your wrist from his grip. You wanted to go into the bathroom and scrub yourself down, but perhaps it was just easier to chop the whole arm off. That way you could get worker's compensation, too.

The tables were filling up and you had spent far too long coaxing a drink order out of this youth pastor creep. You had actual families to wait on. The shift was off to a horrible start.

You made him wait for as long as you could get away with. You took drink orders from three full booths before returning to the youth pastor. Because you knew he was raring to corner you again.

You planted the pop in front of him, the glass already wet with condensation. "Have you decided on a meal?"

"I was just looking over this menu and something caught my eye." He began, looking at the holiday menu your manager had printed off. "This rack of lamb, it's a special, right?"

"Right." You nodded. "It's a pretty large meal, though, so I'd recommend sharing it-"

"No, y'see.." he cut you off. "Jesus was the lamb of god. He died on the cross for your sins. And, look!"

He pointed to the menu. "It says it's a 'praying hands' lamb!"

"Oh!" You forced yet another smile. "I can see the confusion. That just refers to how the rack is arranged."

"I think it's a sign from god." He said.

You demonstrated the shape of the dish with your fingers. "See, the rib bones are long and the racks are Frenched, so the dish takes the shape of a pair of, well, praying hands."

"I'll take it." He nodded furiously.

He took a sharp breath in through his nose and you started to seriously wonder if his definition of "coke or nothing" had a double meaning. It formulated in your head as a joke, but it became more and more of a serious inquiry by the minute.

You leaned in just slightly to get a closer look at his face. Some details you hadn't noticed before were beginning to come into focus. His eyes were vacant and glassy. A small but noticeable stream of blood trickled from his nostril.

"Sir?" You said in a clear, projected voice. "Is there someone I could call for you?"

He turned his head. "Jesus died for your sins."

You looked around the room for any sign of your manager, a supervisor or anyone with a shred of authority. "This man needs help!"

In your haste to call attention to the situation, you didn't see him pick up his steak knife.

"You want to know what Jesus felt when you pierced him?" He muttered, just loud enough for your ears alone.

You felt the serrated knife puncture your skin before you had time to process his words. The pain shot through your body, making you freeze in place.

A chorus of screams filled the restaurant. Blood was pouring from the open wound in a quantity you didn't think possible. Underneath, the knife went straight through your hand and into the table.

The man gripped the handle and gave it a twist, a look of horrifying pleasure on his face. At this point, several people had stepped in to restrain him. He was tall and athletic and could easily overpower many of the other customers, which he did. He found another steak knife and began to cut throats while chanting an incomprehensible prayer.

An older woman claiming to be a doctor rushed to your side. She made a makeshift tourniquet from a napkin and a butter knife. Everything after that was a blur. You struggled to stay conscious as the woman tried to guide the knife from the table while keeping it embedded in your hand.

Soon enough, police and ambulances arrived on the scene. The woman placed you in the care of one of the many EMTs, then rushed away to assist the others.

"I'm just doing what Jesus says!" The youth pastor shouted, before gouging his knife into another man's throat. "Spreading his love!"

The officers notably didn't open fire and made an attempt to de-escalate. Maybe that was how the youth pastor was able to escape.

#hannibal nbc #hannibal x reader #hannibal lecter #hannibal x you #tw religion #tw christianity #long form #tw customer service #tw blood #tw violence

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storiesforallfandoms · 4 years

Text

are you going to hurt me? ~ hannibal lecter;hannibal

word count: 2259

request?: no

description: after she finds that one of the fbi’s most trustworthy psychiatrists is actually the murderer they’re looking for, she decides to confront him about it

pairing: hannibal lector x female!reader

warnings: swearing, mentions of murder, violence, implied smut

masterlist

From the minute he entered his office, Hannibal knew he wasn’t alone. He carried on to his desk, waiting for her to step out of the shadows, as he was almost certain he knew who was there as well.

“You’re the murderer they’re looking for.”

Hannibal turned and was unsurprised to see the FBI’s newest intern, (Y/N), standing at the railing of the floor overlooking his office. She was still in her work clothes - dress pants, a white blouse tucked into her pants, a pair of black dress shoes. She tried too hard to impress her superiors, especially Jack Crawford, but Hannibal could tell she was an intelligent woman that didn’t need to dress so well to impress them.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he responded, simply.

“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” she said. “The murderer, the one taking their organs, it’s not someone trying to illegally sell organs on the black market. It’s you.”

Hannibal chuckled, amused by her discovery. “Funny that it took an intern to figure that out, not one of the professionals.”

She seemed shocked that he was admitting to it, like she didn’t want him to be a murderer. “You’re...you’re admitting to it?”

“Well, there’s no reason to lie now since you’ve figured it out.”

(Y/N) felt uneasy now. She was starting to see the error of her ways. Why would she just come and confront Hannibal like this by herself? If he hadn’t confessed, she was basically risking her job on the FBI by accusing him of murder, but now that he had confessed, she was locked in a room with a murderer, and no one knew she was there.

Hannibal approached the ladder that led to the floor. (Y/N) took a step away from the railing, thinking he was about to come up after her. He stopped, noticing her hesitation.

“Humor me,” he told her, “tell me how you figured it out.”

“I heard you and Will talking,” she responded. “You were telling him about the black market and people stealing organs for it. Up until then, he hadn’t even considered that to be an option. He just thought that the murders were that of the Chesapeake Ripper, or a copycat. Or both. Then, when we were talking about it today, he started talking about black market organ selling. He was convinced that that’s what the Ripper, or the copycat Ripper, was doing. He was trying to convince us into looking into the black market to find a suspect, and everyone believed him.”

“Everyone but you.”

She nodded. “I’ve been in toxic relationships, I know what manipulation sounds like. You were manipulating him to get him off your scent, and it worked.”

She was perceptive, he was impressed. But now that she knew, a million solutions to his problem were running through Hannibal’s head. She had come alone, he could kill her right now and no one would even know she had been there. Of course, he’d have to wash down his office to rid it of any fingerprints that she may have left. But could he get away with killing another FBI intern? He had gotten lucky with Miriam Lass, maybe he wouldn’t have been so lucky with (Y/N).

He was also shocked to find that he didn’t want to kill her. Hannibal had grown fond of (Y/N) over the short few months he had known her. They had grown such a close bond that he often invited (Y/N) over for dinners, and he found himself excited when he would enter Jack’s office, or follow them to arrest a killer, and (Y/N) would be with them. He wasn’t sure if he’d be able to kill (Y/N) like he had everyone else.

She began to descend the ladder, an action that her mind was screaming at her not to do, but her heart was telling her she could trust Hannibal. He wasn’t going to hurt her, not now anyways.

“I have to know,” she started, “are you...are you the Chesapeake Ripper?”

Hannibal nodded. “I am.”

“So...you killed all those people? Even the newest victims, the ones missing their organs?”

“I did.”

“There was never a copycat. It was always you.”

Hannibal nodded to confirm again.

(Y/N)’s entire body was shaking. She was standing inches from a murderer. Of course, being an intern with the FBI, this wasn’t her first time coming face to face with a murderer. But this was different, for one, she actually knew this murderer. It wasn’t some unknown face in the crowd, it was someone she considered a friend. And two, she wasn’t protected this time. No one knew she was there. He could’ve killed her and disposed of her body and no one would even think to question Dr. Hannibal Lecter for the murder.

“What happens now, (Y/N)?” Hannibal asked, approaching her again. She fought the urge to back away from him. She had to seem brave in this moment, not weak and afraid.

“I didn’t come here to turn you in,” she admitted. “I came to get the confirmation, to find out if I was right about my suspicions.”

“And now that you have?”

“I’m impressed,” she admitted. “You’ve been so close with the FBI, with Will, close enough that your cover could’ve been blown at any moment, but you’re so confident that you weren’t going to be caught.”

“Not confident enough, so it would seem.”

They were inches away from each other now, but (Y/N) suddenly didn’t feel scared of him. She wasn’t sure if he was going to hurt her or not, but it was as if she didn’t really care anymore.

“What happens now, Dr. Lecter?” she asked him, looking up into his brown eyes.

Instead of a response, Hannibal acted on impulse and wrapped his hands around her throat. The action took (Y/N) by surprise as he began to lift her off of her feet, squeezing her throat between his large hands. The air escaped from (Y/N)’s lungs quickly and she felt herself becoming lightheaded. In a moment of panic, she began to swing her legs, managing to make connection with Hannibal’s stomach. He doubled over in pain, dropping her to the floor.

(Y/N) landed with a thud and began to breathe heavily. She had mere moments before Hannibal would regain himself, and she knew she had to use that time wisely. While still gasping for air, she got to her feet and raced for the door. Just before reaching for the knob, she felt an arm being wrapped around her throat and her airways closing again. Hannibal began to drag her back into his office as she flailed her arms and legs, trying desperately to get out of his grip.

She managed to start clawing at his arm, digging her nails so deep into his arm that she managed to pierce the skin under his shirt. Hannibal exclaimed in pain, but only loosened his grip on (Y/N) slightly. It was enough for her to wriggle free. She turned to face him and swung a punch, managing to connect with his face.

Before she could make another get away, Hannibal grabbed her and shoved her back until her back collided with his desk. He shoved her so she was leaning back onto his desk and grabbed a nearby knife that he always kept for cases like this. He held the knife to her throat, the cold blade just lightly touching her skin. (Y/N) knew she should’ve been terrified, but she couldn’t bring herself to be properly scared. Instead, she looked into Hannibal’s eyes yet again, waiting to feel the blade pierce her skin.

“Are you going to kill me, Dr. Lecter?” she asked, her voice just barley a whisper.

Their faces were inches from one another and they were both panting from the fight. Hannibal had planned to press that blade to her throat and to kill her right then and there, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Above all else, he couldn’t imagine not seeing her anymore, to live with her death on his conscious, and that was a feeling that he had never had before.

Instead, he dropped the knife onto his desk and kissed (Y/N) in one swift movement. (Y/N) was caught by surprise, but it didn’t take her long to melt into the kiss. Hannibal took hold of her shoulders and pulled her so that she was sitting up on the desk instead. He placed himself between her legs, wrapping his arms around her so he could hold her as close to him as he possibly could.

(Y/N) moved her hands to start unbuttoning his blazer and his shirt, while Hannibal wasted no time in ripping her shirt open, her buttons flying off and scattering over his floor. His hands slipped under her shirt and ran over her bare skin, causing her to shiver at his touch. She pressed herself as close to him as she could as she put a hand on the back of his neck to deepen the kiss.

~~~~~~

Some time later, they were tangled together on the couch in Hannibal’s office. (Y/N) had her head resting on his chest, listening to his rapid heartbeat beginning to slow back to normal. She was mindlessly tracing circles on his chest with her hand, still trying to grasp what had just happened.

“You’ll have to burn this couch now,” she joked.

“I may,” Hannibal chuckled. “Or I may leave it as it is. A constant reminder of what happened on this couch, even when a patient comes and sits on it.”

(Y/N) moved her head to look at him. “That’s dirty, I like it.”

Hannibal smiled and kissed the top of her head.

“So, what happens now?” she asked him. “With me knowing your secret, and now us having slept together.”

“I trust you knowing my secret, I don’t think you are going to tell anyone, especially not Will or Jack,” he responded. “As for us sleeping together, it does cause a conflict of interest if anyone within the FBI finds out, especially Jack. We may not be allowed to work so closely together anymore as it could be argued that we’re being bias towards the other if they know we’re together.”

Hannibal’s choice of words intrigued (Y/N). She sat up slightly so that she could really look at him. “Together?”

“Maybe I’m being a little too ambitious with my phrasing,” Hannibal said.

“I’m just shocked that you’re so willing to decide we’re together after sleeping together once,” she admitted. “Most guys aren’t like that, not the ones I’ve been with anyways. They use you for sex then they’re out of your life for good.”

Hannibal at up as well to cup (Y/N)’s face with one hand. She looked into his eyes yet again. (Y/N) could get used to having those eyes looking at her with so much affection, it made her feel warm and fuzzy inside.

“I’m not like most guys,” he responded. (Y/N) tried not to chuckle at this, as it was very apparent that Hannibal was not like most people at all. “I don’t believe in having sex with someone without having some sort of affection for them.”

“Neither do I,” (Y/N) agreed. “Does that mean you have feelings for me, Dr. Lecter.”

Hannibal smiled. “I believe you should start calling me by my name if we’re to be intimate like this again.”

(Y/N) smiled so wide her cheeks were hurting. She couldn’t help herself as she leaned forward and began to kiss Hannibal again, lightly pushing him back on the couch so that she could straddle him again. They were so lost in one another that they almost didn’t hear the sound of Hannibal’s phone ringing, but when it continued with persistence, they realized it couldn’t be ignored.

Hannibal shifted (Y/N) so that he could carefully place her on the couch before reaching for his phone, which was in the pocket of his discarded pants on the floor.

“Hello?” There was a brief pause as whoever was on the other end spoke. (Y/N) sat up and began to kiss Hannibal’s exposed shoulders, moving slowly to his neck, in an attempt to tease him. It worked, as Hannibal moved his head to give (Y/N) more access to his neck, and she could see he was holding back a groan. “Yes, I am free. You can come over as soon as you can. See you then.”

(Y/N) pouted as Hannibal stood.

“Will is on his way here for an emergency session,” he explained. “I don’t believe it would be good for him to walk in on the two of us like this.”

(Y/N) sighed. “Yeah, you’re right. I should get going.”

Hannibal offered her his blazer. "I can replace the shirt that I ruined.”

She gratefully took it and pulled it on over her exposed body. It didn’t hide everything as much as a shirt would, but she was going straight home so it wasn’t like she had to worry too much.

As Hannibal ushered her out of his office, he grabbed her arm to stop her before she left completely. (Y/N) giggled as he pulled her to him, giving her one last kiss.

“I will see you again soon,” he promised her.

She smiled and responded, “I’ll be waiting.”

i was originally going to call this imagine “are you going to kill me?” but figured tumblr wouldn’t appreciate that

#hannibal lecter #hannibal lecter imagine #hannibal lecter x reader #mads mikkelsen #mads mikkelsen imagine #mads mikkelsen x reader #hannibal #hannibal imagine #one shot #imagine

2K notes · View notes

prurientpuddlejumper · 3 years

Text

Don’t Look! [Part 3]

<- Part 2 | Part 4 ->

Frederick Chilton x Reader

Once again, transformation AU by @we-are-all-just-a-bit-crazy, I’m just making a fic with it! (Going to try to wrap this series tomorrow; we’ll see if I can keep up the pace). Mutual pining + Chilton having trust issues.

2,160 words

The door opened a crack, and Dr. Chilton’s eyes appeared, searching up and down the hallway. Your pulse quickened. Finally, you were going to get answers—some logical explanation for what you’d seen last night. At least you could show him support this time instead of leaving him trembling in the dark.

He seemed to be human again. You found yourself checking and rechecking the texture of his skin for lingering signs of spikes and swirling darkness. A chill ran down your spine at his proximity, like it did when you saw a spider. You wished it wouldn’t. You didn’t want to be afraid of spiders. You didn’t want to be afraid of him.

Finding the coast clear, Chilton opened the door another few inches and stepped out wearing your grey hoodie and sweatpants. His hair was a mess, the hood pulled down to hide it.

“I cannot be seen this way. If you need me, I shall be at home. You have my personal number. Please call Nightengale Restorations and have them fix the office. Tell them I will pay a fifteen percent bonus for having it done this week,” he prattled in his professional tone as if this were just another workplace matter. He walked away, a slight hitch to his swift gait, but turned after three steps and met your eyes. “Thank you,” he said.

***

There was no confrontation after that. Dr. Chilton resumed work the next day, and things simply went back to normal. That is to say: awkward silences, reading novels into every word, and the simmering tension of pretending everything was normal when, in fact, nothing had been resolved.

Questions burned in your eyes, but fear restrained your tongue. The answers would only make you more afraid, and so Chilton did not volunteer them.

You didn’t run away, but you didn’t ask, either. Chilton was satisfied that you were just as in denial as he was.

The daily routine went on exactly as it used to: you would arrive at 7:30 am, knock at his office door, hand him a coffee, and take the file of paperwork he wanted done that day. Only there was hesitation in your knock, and you waited for him to say, “Enter,” instead of sauntering in like you owned the place. He had you put the coffee down on his desk so you would not risk brushing his fingertips as you sometimes did. When you took the file, you stared at him like he might bite.

“That will be all,” he said, dismissing you before your stoic mask faltered and you showed your true disgust.

***

Chilton’s skin crawled beneath his suit from his arms to his feet, and his scar throbbed for the first time in weeks. Having Abel Gideon back under his care was disconcerting, but a necessary part of Will Graham’s therapy—or rather, another clue in the case Graham was building against Hannibal Lecter.

He was skeptical at first. Graham was a lunatic—a sociopathic manipulator. Delusional. Yet, even a sociopath could not fabricate such elaborate lies with that much sodium amytal running through his veins.

The nightmares would be worth it when he was the man famous for bringing down the Chesapeake Ripper.

“Hey.”

Chilton looked up, eyes rimmed with red from hours of staring at a computer screen, working late yet again. You held up a bag of takeout, a weak smile on your lips.

“Need a break?” you offered, moving to sit across from him at his desk. Everything in the office was tidied up—you had cleaned most of it yourself the day Chilton went home in your sweatpants. The damage wasn’t as bad as it looked. Most of the furniture was simply overturned, not broken. Only the antique in-wall shelving waited for professional repair.

“No. Thank you,” he said, waving away the food. His lips thinned wanly. “You may help yourself if you like.”

He was equally surprised and suspicious when you stayed, unpacking the container of vegetarian pesto tortellini. He watched hungrily as you lanced one with a plastic fork and brought it to your lips. His stomach growled.

“Are you alright?”

“What do you mean?” he asked, straightening defensively in his seat.

“With Gideon here. That must be difficult.”

“I manage.”

You chewed another pasta in silence. Finally, he couldn’t help it and grabbed the second fork, stealing a tortellini off your platter. It was rich and flavorful—a bit heavy on the salt, but obviously from a fine restaurant. He held the bite in his mouth. No strange aftertastes. He did not feel woozy after swallowing. There was always a chance you were willing to drug yourself to get to him if you had an accomplice waiting to spirit him away to some secret facility.

“All right,” he snapped, chair shooting back toward the wall as he stood. “What are you after?”

You gave a startled “Mmph?” around a mouthful of pesto.

“What is the catch? A price for your silence? Why are you here, bribing me with dinner?”

“I… I’m not—what? I was worried about you.”

“Unlikely, considering the circumstances. Tell me what you want.” His eyes locked onto you, cold and piercing.

“Fine!” you broke. “I want you to forgive me!”

“For what?” he sneered, half believing your words were a veiled threat.

“I’m sorry, OK? Please—what can I do to make up for it? I tried giving you space, but now you look at me like I’m going to kick you, or”—your eyes widened at the plate of food he only touched after you ate some—“poison you! I swear I never meant to hurt you. I’m so sorry.”

“For what?” he asked in an entirely softer tone. He sat back down, hunching forward across the desk to search your face.

Your head hung low, and you murmured quietly, “I know I didn’t handle it well. I should have left when you asked. Now I understand… you didn’t want anybody to see that. I invaded your privacy. And then I freaked out!” Your voice broke. “And I’ve been trying to… to make up for it. I know you don’t want to talk about it, but—dammit, I’m pushing you again! Sorry.”

The urge to hug you overwhelmed him. If there wasn’t a deliberately massive table in between you—meant to keep others at a distance—he would have hugged you.

“Are you not afraid?” For once, the broadness of his desk seemed obtrusive.

“I could never be afraid of you.”

Your arm crossed the divide, reaching for his hand. It touched, warm and easy, and gave a sympathetic squeeze that set his blood racing. Then it retracted, and his skin ached for the lost contact.

“I just got scared because I didn’t understand what was happening. I still don’t. Maybe I am still afraid, a little. But not because—! Please, just… tell me what that was. What happened to you?”

His Adam’s apple bobbed. Eyes narrowing, he answered cagily, “First, what do you think you saw? Light can play tricks on the eye, especially after long hours in a morbid environment, possible exposure to hypnotic drugs… Let us be sure we are on the same page.”

“Are you seriously going to gaslight me now that we’re finally talking? I’m not an idiot. You still owe me those pants back!”

While he floundered for words, your eyes squeezed shut, and a hissing laugh burst from your nose. A red flush crept up his neck, under his shirt collar. It was inappropriate to laugh in this situation, but perhaps that was why it was so contagious—it had been too long since he’d seen you laugh, and even longer since he’d done so himself.

“Those cheap, scratchy, torture devices? Consider it a favor that I tossed them,” he quipped. (Forget the fact that he had been sleeping with his face buried in them for the past week and simply did not wish to return them before wringing them for every drop of your scent.)

“And yet you wore them, which means I saved your ass. Checkmate, doctor.”

“Please. It is barely a Vienna Gambit.”

Laughter felt foreign in his throat. It was soft, and only lasted a brief second, but it was cleansing. You smiled at him, rolling your eyes, and his soul lifted.

“Very well,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “Ask your questions.”

Your eyes darted to the windows. Another late night. Stars appeared (the handful not blotted out by Baltimore’s light pollution). You chewed your bottom lip.

“Are you going to transform again?”

“Only on the night of the new moon, when twilight gives way to the black of night. No need to worry.”

“Just once a month, then? Werewolf rules?”

He shot an offended glare, though you weren’t wrong. “Sometimes two, near the aphelion. And during an eclipse. It… hates sunlight. Even the reflection of the sun. It wants to be in darkness.” The thought disturbed him—the way the beast called him to the shadows. He always fought it to stay indoors, locking himself away from any nocturnal roving. It frightened him what might happen if he gave in. The coppery taste of blood haunted his dreams.

“Then… would you transform if you went spelunking? You know, in a cave? Or a submarine?”

“I have not tried. A darkened room is not enough. I would not tempt it.”

You swallowed and thought. Your lips twitched, building to the important question: “Is it still you in there?”

“Yes. More impulsive—I would never have smashed the decor—but I am still there.” It brings my true self to the surface, he thought, but withheld this. A slimy, dangerous, unlovable wretch. He looked at you, sitting across from him in front of a container of food you brought to share, and wondered what you were doing there after seeing it. How could you bear to be near him?

“But you’re not going to… eat me or something?” You were embarrassed to ask, and he gave you a fittingly scathing glare.

“No. I would not eat you.” He stabbed a tortellini and popped it in his mouth.

“Then I want to see it.”

He choked.

“I want to get a better look. To wrap my head around it. Besides, it seemed painful—next time I could bring you a hot towel, or… a cold pack, or… I don’t know, some tea? An ibuprofen?”

“There is no next time. You were never supposed to see that in the first place.”

“Please? If it’s going to happen again in two weeks, I want to be there. Prepared this time.”

“This is not a zoo. I am not some freak show to be gawked at! What happened to you being sorry?”

“I just want to get to know you,” you answered, and your voice sounded so small his heart reeled. You snapped your head up, “I mean—I want to be there for you. You shouldn’t be alone.”

He scoffed, defensive again. “Why? Because I might do something dangerous? I am more than capable of controlling myself.”

“Because you deserve to be comforted when you’re in pain.”

Your words struck him like a nuclear bomb of basic human decency. Deserved? Comfort?

“Does anyone else know? Does anyone… take care of you when you change?”

Only his family knew, and they certainly did not take care of him. Bringing him that bag of clothing in the morning was the first time anyone had done something thoughtful for him—helped him with his condition. Even if you had run away at first, you wanted to be supportive. To know his dark side.

Why?

Was it possible? Did you feel the same way about him as he did about you? His hand still felt warm from where you had briefly touched it.

He had to admit, it was nice having someone be there for him. Even a small gesture like old, loose-fitting sweatpants in a bag made a world of difference. Or dinner at his desk. He imagined you pressing a steamed towel to his forehead, and he did not hate the idea—doting on him like a spa therapist, taking the edge off the pain as his hair fell out and skin split open. Or watching him become hideous. Vomiting at the sight of him. Losing all interest you might have had. Realizing it was a mistake to be there.

“Thank you for dinner,” he announced in curt, clipped syllables. “That will be all.”

“Frederick…” Your voice was low, personal. Pleading. He did not like how personal it was. How you were giving him everything he wanted, like you were baiting a trap.

“Fascinating as this must be for you, I still have work to do. Your shift ended an hour ago. Go home.”

“OK. Right. I’ll see you in the morning.”

You didn’t see him trembling as you left, clutching his hand over his fluttering heart.

• ● • ━━━━━─ ••●•• ─━━━━━ • ● •

Taglist: @beccabarba / @itsjustmyfantasyroom / @thatesqcrush / @dianilaws / @permanentlydizzy / @mrsrafaelbarba / @madamsnape921 / @astrangegirlsmind / @neely1177 / @onerestein / @dreamlover31 / @isvvc-pvscvl / @shroomiehomie / @storiesofsvu / @welcometothemxdhouse / @feedthemadness-sweetie / @law-nerd105 / @amelia-song-pond / @michael-rooker / @xecq / @madpanda75 / @alwaysachorusgirl / @bananas-pajamas / @leanor-min / @mad-girl-without-a-box / @katierpblogg / @worldofvixen

#Frederick Chilton x reader #Frederick Chilton #Hannibal AU #my writing

59 notes · View notes

detectivehannibal · 3 years

Text

Instructor

Hannibal Lecter x Fem. Reader

Warnings: None.

A/N: I have started writing requests! I just wanted to get this short one posted first!

Word Count: 1,086

“Will you teach me?”

You weren’t a good cook. Scratch that. You were a TERRIBLE cook. You could barely boil water without catching the entire stove on fire. You were no Martha Stewart and you definitely weren’t that of Hannibal Lecter. He did all the cooking for you both. Not that he minded this. He wouldn’t do it if he didn’t want to.

Despite knowing this, you still felt a twinge of guilt whenever he spent hours preparing a meal and you didn’t offer any kind of help. There had been several times where you attempted to make dinner yourself, but alas, it always ended up a disaster.

He was met with quite the chaotic scene when he made his entrance into your shared kitchen to see that his sacred space looked like a culinary war zone. Flour was messily dusted all over the countertops (as well as a little on your face), water spilled on the floor, and he was pretty sure he could smell something had been burned not too long before he arrived.

“Again?” He questioned, already knowing this was another futile attempt at cooking.

You looked to him, sadness and disappointment in your eyes. He approached you silently, not the least bit disturbed at his horrid kitchen that was usually tidy. He eyed the water soaked recipe that you had sitting next to you. He knew better than to mention that it was one of the easiest dishes to possibly prepare. He smiled lightly, brushing the flour off of your cheeks.

“I appreciate your effort. Get yourself cleaned up. I will make dinner.” He said as he always did when your dinners failed.

Normally, you’d retreat in defeat, but you felt your face get hot. You sighed harshly.

“No, I want to do it. I know I can.” You bantered back.

His eyes widened a bit in surprise. He placed his hands on your slumped shoulders.

“I assure you, darling, that I don’t mind. I take pleasure in doing it.” He explained.

He watched as you grew more frustrated as the conversation continued.

“There’s no reason why I can’t manage to pull off a nice dinner. It’s not exactly rocket science.” You argued.

He agreed with you there. He could prepare most meals blindfolded and with one hand tied behind his back. Still, that didn’t encourage you.

“It doesn’t have to be difficult. However, it takes a heavy amount of patience and you must be willing to allow yourself to learn along the way.” He said, removing his hands from your shoulders to toss the horribly burned chicken into the trash.

“I can be patient...I’m a decent learner,” You pouted; “Will you teach me?”

You were a tad hesitant to ask such a favor. Hannibal preferred doing most things solo. You weren’t sure how he’d take the idea of sharing his skills, tips, and tricks. Much to your shock, he didn’t hesitate with his answer.

“It would be my pleasure.” He replied, retrieving new pots and pans from the cabinets.

You were eager to see just how Hannibal performed his craft. You hadn’t really ever seen him prepare meals. You knew there was a reason for that, but still...you had always had a dangerous curiosity.

He walked you through the steps, taking the time to explain why he did certain things the way he did. You noticed that every little trick he did was well thought out and had a purpose. That was Hannibal in a nutshell. Calculated and efficient.

He asked you to handle the vegetables, he watched as you peeled the orange skin from the slender carrots. He didn’t stop you until you began to chop them.

“You’re holding it incorrectly.” He said referring to how you held the knife in your grasp.

You paused as he placed himself behind you, his hands resting on yours, controlling you like a puppet. He used his hands on yours to show you how to hold it.

“It’s best to keep your index finger tucked under the handle,” He instructed; “Then you can cut evenly and cleanly.”

Sure enough, you began to slice even circles of carrot. You could feel his smile from behind you. You could smell his expensive cologne that you had become so used to over the years. You knew he was taking you in. You always knew when you got that hard chill down your spine. His face was almost buried in your hair as he whispered his praises in your ears.

“Perfect. Good girl,” He purred; “I think you will have this mastered in no time.”

You shuddered at his silky voice, but managed to squeak out a sarcastic reply.

“Maybe I’ll be able to outdo you.” You teased.

He drew away from you. Amusement was written all over his face.

“I’d love to see you try.”

You went back to chopping with a grin, he returned his attention to the pan of onions that were currently caramelizing. The kitchen soon became cozy and warm, its usual feel coming back to life. You were just grateful it didn’t smell like burnt chicken anymore.

After an hour or so, you and Hannibal were able to produce a gorgeous dinner. You were proud, and felt more confident that you could perhaps not almost burn down the house every time you tried to cook. You had a lot to learn, but it was a step in the right direction.

You stood over the sink after dinner, washing the pile of cookware that had accumulated over the course of the evening. You hummed a happy little tune as you plundered in the soapy water to assure the dishes would be squeaky clean. Suddenly, Hannibal’s voice was audible in your ear once more.

“I’m proud of you. It was wonderful.” He complimented, kissing your temple.

You continued washing the plate in your hands, but smiled warmly.

“I can’t take all the credit. I had a very notable teacher.”

“Teachers are merely guides. It’s up to the student to be successful.” He pointed out.

His hands were firm on your hips, his chin resting on top of your head.

“Well, I still suppose that part of my success goes to you. I couldn’t have done it without you.” You responded.

You finally turned in his hold to face him. He looked relaxed. That was rare for him. You kissed him fully and deeply, captivated in his touch. Maybe you’d never make it to Hannibal’s level of culinary expertise.

But you’d always be grateful for his help.

#hannibal #hannibal lecter #hannibal x reader #Hannibal TV #hannibal nbc #hannibal lecter x reader #hannibal lecter imagines #hannibal lecter imagine #detectivehannibal

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michiieewrites · 4 years

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Dabi - So big, so small, so tearfuly

A/N: This fic is inspired by an ask that @league-of-villians-headcanons received a week or so ago. THIS IS THE ASK I REFER TO. Anyways, after looking up that song, I cried like a little baby and thus, this story was born. But holy damn! I did NOT expect for this fic to reach over 3.1k+ words. Enjoy, my loves!

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Well, it happened. Waiting in the waiting room with his quirk-cancelling handcuffs. Sitting on Dabi’s left side is Mr. Compress, also with those special ‘bracelets’ made for villains. Even here at the police station the tall showman is still wearing his mask and top hat. They’re both a little torn up, though. Just like all of them, to be honest.

Who knows how that crusty trash rat they call a leader is looking now. Maybe he’s just as banged up as Spinner. The scaly man was currently in the interrogation room with two officers. Most of their members were dragged away by different officers. Toga is still waiting with them. For multiple safety precautions they had restrained her like Hannibal Lector, including the muzzle. Still, that didn’t stop the girl from trying to break free from them.

Didn’t matter, though. Dabi knows that the gig is up. The heroes had all whooped their asses in this last fight. Showing the world that the ‘good guys’ would always win in the end. ‘Cause that’s what always happens, right? The bad guys lose and the good guys win. Because they’re the good guys. And Dabi was one of the bad guys.

He had to lose. That’s what bad guys do, they lose the fight. Good guys like his dad, they win. Good guys like his dad give people hope. Good guys like his dad were there to help control the chaos. Good guys like his dad are praised by the public for protecting them from bad guys like himself. Good guys like his dad always strife for perfection. Good guys like his dad would destroy their own families to save the public people. Good guys like his dad would do anything to keep the public people safe. Good guys, just like his dad.

So that’s what Dabi’s dad did. He protected the public from harm. He strived for protection, he destroyed his own family. Even if it meant nearly killing his eldest son for a second time. All because his dad is a good guy, right?

‘Should’ve burned that shitbag alive when I had the chance,’ Dabi thought to himself. ‘Instead of burning my own damn self. Just burn that fucker to a crisp.’

But no amount of ‘should have’s’ were gonna change the current situation.

Dabi tried to go up against his old man, the great flame hero Endeavor and got burned. Not that it would matter anyway. He himself did a pretty good job of that in the past. By letting his emotions get the better of him. Trying to impress Enji so he would leave his youngest brother alone. So his little brother would have a chance of a somewhat normal childhood. So that maybe, his father would be proud of him for once.

But Dabi couldn’t have been more wrong. Because of his mother’s genes his body wasn’t able to keep up his flames for a long period of time. Not long enough for Enji to matter, anyway.

The moment he pushed young Touya aside, right into the wall was the moment Touya died. His anger and hurt no longer kept under a lid.

Dabi doesn’t remember much from that moment of his past life. He knows the sky of their garden became engulfed by his blue flames. The heat unbearable and scorching away his skin, inch by inch. He looked as his father tried to reach him, only to be pushed back by the sea of blue. There are nights where Dabi can still hear his mother scream for him to stop before he could hurt himself. Echoes of her pleading for her child’s safety.

And yet here he sits, incarcerated and forgotten by his family. Well, not entirely. He had waited for the perfect moment to reveal himself to his past family again, this time as Dabi. He had to wait for years before the timing was right. But the pure look of terror on his old man’s face was worth every single day he had waited.

‘And by then you already had my chest beneath your boot, just like poor little Shouto once was,’ he snickered to himself.

Luckily for him, Shouto was only a couple of feet away from them. For it was to save Shouto that Enji had attacked Dabi. Fighting together, the two Todoroki heroes went up against the flame quirked villain. With his years of experience it was Endeavor who overpowered Dabi. And as he contained him, Dabi had looked up at him and said:

“What a way to welcome back your dead son, father.”

He had seen the way everything clicked in Endeavor’s head. Every little piece of the puzzle fell into it’s place. The weight of his sins intensifying by the second. He knew Shouto was putting the pieces together for himself too. The boy may look dense, but he certainly isn’t stupid.

But before either of them could come to their senses and ask any questions, the fight was over and Dabi was taken away. Only to be kept waiting here in this shithole of a waiting room, guarded by others, heroes and-

“Ma’am, I have to ask you to-“

“No, get out of my way, now!”

Muffled voices sounded from the other side of the door to Dabi’s right. He turned his head, interested in hearing more of the commotion. Multiple hurried footsteps are coming closer.

“Todoroki-san, you are not allowed-“ the officer outside says.

“I don’t care, I need to see him.”

Todoroki-san? He clearly hears, what he assumes is an officer refer to a female voice. But what business would a female Todoroki have at the station?

The door bursts open and a group of five people come flooding in the waiting room. The guards standing around the remaining League of Villains-members put their attention on the newly entered people. All the heads turn in their direction. His fellow villains are also startled by the commotion. Dabi’s world freezes.

He knows these people. Well, four of them, at least. Or used to know, to be precise. They were the ghosts of his past. The people he tried to desperately to forget. The people who once loved him. But why the fuck are they here? Why the fuck would they be here to look at his sorry ass?

A woman, the oldest of the two females, pushes the officer that tries to stop her out of her way. Her pewter grey eyes are overflowing with tears as she rushes over to Dabi’s recoiling form. She throws her arms around him and pulls him tightly against herself. She sinks to her knees and pulls him along down with her. Her chin rests on his shoulder as her cries grow louder by the second.

“It’s you! It’s really you, Touya. Oh my boy, it’s really you!”

Touya. She called him ‘Touya’. His old name rings in his ears. Too shocked to look at the other worried faces of his siblings, his cerulean blue eyes slowly glance over the woman holding him. The woman who has held him so many times before in his past. The woman who carried him for nine whole months with her every second of the day. The woman who blew all his scary nightmares away with a kiss on his head at night when he was a child.. The woman who had mourned for years after her husband told her their first born son had passed away.

His mother Rei is finally holding her son after all these years.

“Wh-what are you do-doing here?” he manages to get out. His breathing becoming rapid and shallow. Hyperventilation setting in as Rei refuses to let go of him.

“Shouto told me, he told me how you fought with him,” she cries, “He told me how you-… how your… he told me you were alive!”

Her tears are slowly wetting his entire shoulder. Her hands tremble as they desperately hold onto his soot covered coat. Her entire body shocking with her sobbing.

Then he finally looks back at the others. The guards are trying to hold back a tall, young man with the same show white hair and pewter grey eyes as their mother. The young man doesn’t budge a single step, a furious look on his face. Behind him a young woman, no younger than a year or two than Dabi himself. Her hair white like melting icebergs with some lava colored tips and her charcoal grey eyes. Scared, but determined she tells the officers that they all have the right to see their brother. He knows they are Fuyumi and Natsuo, the younger sister and brother Enji never bothered to care for.

A familiar mop of half white-half read hair is a little farther behind them. Shouto looks down at the floor and Dabi can’t tell if it’s because he’s angry, or hurt, or ashamed. Hell, it could be all three.

But none of the other people in the room mattered. He tunes out the questions of his comrades, the arguing of his family and the guards, the fast and heavy beating of his own heart. All he can hear now are the strangled cries of his mother.

Softly, so softly only Rei can hear, he asks: “How did he figure it out?”

Sniffing through her words, Rei says: “After they took you away, Shouto confronted your father. He demanded to tell him the truth. Eventually he told him everything; how the fire department didn’t find your body in the ashes of the fire. How he lied to all of us, saying you were too badly burned to see. How he always wondered if your ashes were among those of the garden or if you got away.”

Her grip loosened slightly. She leaned back and took a good look at him. His terrified eyes looking back into her own. He’s terrified that this is all just another nightmare. That the warmth of his mother’s embrace will be ripped away again any second.

Her hand comes up to his face. Gently wiping away one his falling tears. Tears? He doesn’t even realize they are rolling down his cheeks. Despite both their quirks, the feeling of her fingers tracing over his scarred skin are hotter than any of his flames ever felt. He can almost feel the love and sorrow in her touch. A love only a mother can give to her son.

Never in all these years he spent apart from his family would he ever dare dream of seeing her again. Because he knew what happened after his supposed ‘death’. He knew that Rei finally broke over all the neglect and abuse their family had to endure at Enji’s hands. Their family was ripped apart, torn to shreds. Even if they did stitch all those pieces back together, he had accepted the fact that he would never be a part of the Todoroki-family again.

But here they were; the members of his past family he used to love so much. They were standing here in front of him. Demanding they get to see him, Dabi or Touya, that didn’t matter. They were standing up against all these guards and officers just to see him.

His hands try to reach out and hold his mother the way she is holding him. To feel her presence in his hands again. But he’s reminded of the cuffs around his wrists. He tugs at them, trying to break out of them. But these wretched things are keeping his hands locked together. His struggles become more desperate. He just wants to hold Rei.

He whips his head to one of the guards and yells at them. “Get these fucking cuffs off of me!”

“No way, villain,” the guard curtly replies.

“JUST LET ME HOLD MY MOTHER, DAMMNIT!”

Hands cover his own and he looks back at Rei. “Ssh, ssh… It’s okay, I’m not going anywhere,” she gently coos at him.

Slowly, she lifts his hands over her head, so that he can hold her now. His body stiffens once again. This really had to be a dream, right? There was no way in Hell he’s able to hold his mother again. It couldn’t be. As far they all knew, he was dead. Todoroki Touya was dead. Dabi was just another villain. And no one would ever know the secrets he keeps locked in his heart. He knows that giving in now would mean that dream would come to an abrupt end. He didn’t want it to end.

But the look in Rei’s eyes is real and so is the rest of her. Realizing this, he immediately clings onto her. A little clumsy, but he’ll take it for now. Even if it’s just for this moment, all he wants to do is to close his eyes and his mother embracing him back. And so she does.

The air is getting hotter. Heavy footsteps are coming closer. Natsuo’s voice calling out: “What do you think you’re doing here?!”

Both Rei and Dabi are looking to see who Natsuo was talking to. The feeling of a sweet reunion quickly slips away and is replaced by a building rage. But before Dabi can make a move towards Endeavor, who’s stepping into the room, he’s held back. Back by the arms of his mother.

The tension is cold. Rei’s staring daggers at the father of her children. Natsuo moves in front of his younger siblings, also held back by Fuyumi. Shouto stands in front of Enji to block his path. Endeavor, with all his power, dares to give Rei a sympathetic look. He tries to speak before one of the guards cut him off.

“All right, that’s enough! All of you people! Out!” They move closer to the stand off between Enji and Shouto.

“Rei, listen to the guards,” Enji calmly says, “this is out of our hands. They need to handle this from now on. There is nothing we can do-“

“HOW DARE YOU! HE’S OUR SON!” Rei yells back.

Her words hit a nerve. Enji extends his hand towards his wife.

SMACK!

She smacks his hand away. A sharp intake of breath from Fuyumi follows. The scene before her eyes; her mother holding their older brother, shielding him from their father. The fury rising in Rei’s eyes hold a force so strong it scares her. Not even Enji made her feel this scared before.

“Don’t you dare touch our children again!” Rei screams out. “Keep your hands off of Touya! Haven’t you hurt us enough?! Our family is torn to shreds by your hands, Enji! MY CHILDREN TAKEN FROM ME BECAUSE OF WHAT YOU DID TO ME!”

Shouto carefully tries to calm his mother down. “Mom, please. Try to calm down.”

“No! For too long I’ve let him destroy our family, let him hurt you! He-…. Because of him…. HE MADE US BELIEVE TOUYA WAS DEAD! DEAD! HE TOLD ME WE HAD LOST OUR CHILD!”

She can’t stop. Not anymore. After all these years Rei couldn’t hold back all the pain Enji had caused her. The pain he inflicted on their children. The way his behavior broke her. It had made her hurt her youngest son too. The neglect by his hands had made it impossible for her to see her children properly grow up.

Calmer now, she continues: “Of all the things you have done to us, I don’t know which one is the worst. But I do know one thing. And that’s that you can’t keep me from my children any longer. You will no longer stand in the way of my children’s future.”

The hate she directs to Enji… It was clear to him that she didn’t want him around any of them. Maybe just for now. Maybe forever. In trying to face his past, he accepts this outcome.

His shoulders sag and he turns around to walk out of the door.

“Everyone, you need to get out-“

“I will not leave my son,” Rei interrupts the guard.

They look at her and the young man she’s holding close. They sigh and tell her that only she is allowed to stay here. All the others still need to leave the waiting room. Toga and Mr. Compress will be taken to their interrogation rooms. One guard will stand outside of the door. For now, they respect her wish to be alone with Dabi.

When the door is shut close, they both look at each other. Unsure of what to say next. The loving look Rei gives Dabi makes him feel all different kinds of emotions.

Ashamed, for becoming a villain. Vulnerable, ‘cause he feels like she can see right into his soul. Angry at himself, for not coming to visit her in the mental hospital sooner. Relieved, for only a mother can see past all the shit he’s done in his life and still love him.

“I’m sorry, I guess… For not showing up these past years,” he says as he looks down to the ground.

“Don’t be. I understand,” she says.

Her hands cup his face and pull him up to look at her face. A sad smile decorates her lips. Fresh tears forming in her eyes.

“All that matters right now is that you’re back. I missed you so much, my sweet boy. So much, you can’t even imagine.”

But he could. In his dreams he would see her, with all his siblings. Even Enji would be there, only in Dabi’s dreams he was the loving and kind father every child wants and needs. In his dreams they were a happy family. He has longed for that family for as long as he can remember. He still does. Somewhere deep inside of him there’s a part that wants nothing more than to erase all that has happened and just start all over.

He missed Rei just as much as she missed him.

Throwing his face in the crook of her neck, he lets out a forceful and loud cry. “I-I missed you t-too, mom! I missed all of you! I’m so sorry for everything, mom! Please, believe me!”

Her hands comes up to softly pet his hair. Making reassuring sounds to calm down her crying child. His body now completely on the floor with hers. Gently rocking him back and forth.

“I believe you, I do.”

“Please don’t hate me! Please, I’m so sorry! Mom… please don’t leave…”

“I’m not going anywhere. You may be all grown up now, a handsome and strong man. But you’ll always be my sweet little boy, Touya. I’ll never leave you again.”

Her words are a binding promise. A vow to Dabi, a vow for him to regain the name Todoroki Touya. Filled with love and protection. Never would she hurt her children again, any of them. Rei will fight for her family. Starting with the crying man in her arms.

They stay right there. In this world that felt too big for them, they felt so small. A small space for a mother and son to hold each other close.

She’ll always be there for her family.

Tagged: @reinawritesbnha / @mrsreina @thots4daze / @kzombi3 @aizawascumslut @hipster-merchant-of-death @strawbirb @ravenfeet222

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amusedyan · 4 years

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Little Talks

Hey folks, this one was a commission from one of you amazing people who wants to stay anonymous. Thank you!

The first time you heard the name Hannibal Lecter was after Will had a seizure in your kitchen.

Will had come over after his latest case, trying to clear the air. It was old hat for the two of you. Will would talk and you would work on your jigsaw puzzles.

Honestly it was one of the most terrifying things you’d ever seen- he’d been confused, and he’d looked like he was hot, so you’d made him sit down and were about to get him a glass of water, when suddenly his whole body had just locked up. His teeth had clenched, and the tendons in his neck had stood out against his skin. When you had tried to help him, floundering (were you supposed to put something between his teeth? What if he bit his tongue off?) and straining yourself- Will wasn’t a small man, and it seemed like he was trying to fall to the floor.

It seemed like a moment locked in time- lasting forever, far longer than it should have. And just as you were about to call 911- God, you were stupid, why hadn’t you done that yet?- his eyes rolled forward again, and he took a shuddering breath.

“Jaim’?” He slurred. His mouth sounded like slush on a winter morning. “Happen’?”

“Will, I think you had a seizure,” you said, and damn you for how your voice shook. You had to take a moment to keep it together. “I’m going to call 911, okay? You need to go to the hospital.”

A litany of illnesses ran through your head like a fucked-up song.

Epilepsybraindamagecancertumorpriondiseaseheadinjurystroke

”’M fine,” he grunted, and to your horror he tried sitting up. You fought him on it, putting your hands on his shoulders and shoving him back down.

“The hell you are!” You snapped, and then winced. He was sick, you reminded yourself. People coming out of seizures were confused, you can’t get mad at him. “Will, please, I have to call someone.”

“Hannibal.” He said, wincing. “Call ‘annibal.”

“Who?”

It took some prodding before he could tell you. But thankfully with every word he seemed to come back to himself.

‘Hannibal’, it turned out, was his off the books therapist, as ordered by Jack Crawford. Off the books, you found out later, so that Will could hide his increasing instability from the higher ups of the FBI- and so Jack Crawford could tell his conscience that he did all he could to support your boyfriend.

But if Hannibal could talk some sense into Will, you’d clench your teeth and deal with it.

Dr. Lecter, because he was a doctor, Will assured you, answered on the third ring. An accented voice answered, alert as could be, “Will, it’s late, is something wrong?” It was at least 11 o’clock at night, and the first thing you wanted to say was an apology.

Instead what came out of your mouth was an explanation. “Hello Dr. Lecter. You don’t know me, but my name is Jaime. I’m Will’s significant other. He had a seizure in my kitchen a minute ago, and I’m hoping you can help me talk him into going to a hospital to find out what’s wrong.”

Will took advantage of your distraction to sit up. At least he did it slowly. The silence dragged on for a bit, and on the other side of the phone, under the static of the speaker at least, you heard rustling.

“Jaime, can you tell me your address?” Dr. Lecter asked. “I would like to look over Will myself.”

And that struck you as seriously unprofessional.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I would like to assess his condition.” Dr. Lecter repeated.

“Just tell him,” Will grumbled. It hit you how uncomfortable he must be. Will hated attention more than anyone you had ever met. And here he was, facing being poked at in a hospital, one of the worst places in the world- at least to him.

Sympathy warred with common sense in your mind, but Will turning his puppy eyes on you settled it. Begrudgingly you gave the ‘good’ doctor your address. He would be there in an hour. Joy.

For now, he told you what to do. If there was another seizure, you shouldn’t hold him down or put something in his mouth. Take Will’s glasses and keep him away from anything sharp- despite how he might feel, walking long distances wasn’t a wise idea.

You hung up the phone and then carefully helped him to the couch. Will looked exhausted- sweaty and pale, with dark circles under his eyes. He was never one for eye contact, but you knew it was bad because he was going especially out of his way to avoid yours.

“Are you feeling alright?” You asked him, wanting to talk, to do anything to get some of this nervous energy out of the way. You had a desire to go on one of your cleaning sprees, to bake, to do something. You settle for taking care of Will. You bring him water and a couple of cookies (even though he doesn’t touch them). The minutes ticked by one by one, and you found yourself making a pot of fresh coffee 45 minutes after the phone call- no doubt the good doctor would be tired.

The headlights crawled across your wall as he pulled in. When you got up and unlocked the door, you stood and waited for him, to get a peek before you had to share Will and his illness- whatever it may be- with this strange man.

And strange he was. Perfectly poised and coiffed, as if this weren’t an emergency house call in the night, in a suit tailor made for him. When you glanced over his shoulder, you saw a Bentley in the drive. Just as pristine as the rest of him, apparently.

But Will needed him, so you got your shit together.

“Hello, you must be Dr. Lecter.” You wondered if you’re supposed to shake his hand. There’s a half second where you hesitated to let him in.

Something wasn’t right. The hair on the back of your neck stood on end, and your hindbrain, the part of you that shies from the dark and avoids cracks in the sidewalk, it pulled away from this genial, smiling man. You couldn’t put your finger on it, couldn’t see it with your human eyes- but if you had a cat’s membrane, perhaps you would’ve seen horns, or smoke, or feathers. You didn’t want him there. You wanted him to stay away from Will.

There’s a pattern in old fairy tales and the monsters they contained.

They had to be welcomed in.

If you invited him in, safety was gone.

But he was smiling now, and like a charmed snake you could only step aside to let him in.

“You must be Jaime,” he greeted, stepping in. “Thank you for calling me.” His accent is European, it had to be, and his eyes were strangely red. “You said that it was a seizure?”

“I can speak, Doctor,” Will grumbled from the sofa.

“But those who seized often can’t remember the details,” Lecter explained patiently. “Like how long the seizure lasted, what preceded it, any strange behavior after.” And then he looked at you expectantly.

Hesitatingly you filled him in, answering the questions one by one as the doctor looked Will over. He shone a light in his eyes, had him tell the date, things like that.

“We should take him to the hospital, right?” You said after a minute of quiet talk between them. “I tried to talk him into it but he doesn’t think it’s necessary.” You don’t want to drag Will’s dirty laundry up to this man- he has no right to it.

“As the seizure has passed and there hasn’t been another, I see no reason for it.” Lecter said, looking up at you. He was irritatingly calm, the bastard. “Seizures are only at their most dangerous should they last longer than five minutes,” he explained, perhaps seeing the disbelief on your face, “or if another occurs right after, or if, perhaps, an injury is sustained during. As Will has not suffered from these, I believe it might be best that he just gets some rest.”

“I’m fine, Jaime.” Will said, and you could hear the relief. What parallel universe were you in that this was happening?

“But Will doesn’t have seizures.” You protested. “There has to be a reason for them- he needs to go to the hospital.”

“You’re right,” the doctor agreed, and when Will’s head snapped to glare at him, he raised a hand to speak. “Will should go to a hospital, but it is not a pressing concern. Let him get some rest and he can go in the morning. Calling an ambulance would be a waste of resources and to go tomorrow would yield the same result as tonight.”

It was a losing argument, and they were both insistent about it.

It was with a heavy heart that you let that man leave with Will- it only made sense to stay with Hannibal, after all, since he was a doctor.

You didn’t sleep that night, instead making good use of the coffee you’d brewed that Lecter had never touched.

-x-

Will called you the next morning, highly embarrassed and apologetic over the whole thing. He was fine- Lecter’d kept an eye on him and made sure he ate that morning. But more importantly he had an appointment that night. Apparently Lecter had pulled some strings at the hospital he used to work at. “I’ll call after,” he promised. The knot in your gut unclenched just a bit when he’d explained.

It soothed you some, knowing that he was at least going to get looked at.

And he did, the day after.

And everything was apparently okay.

He’d had a CT-Scan and an MRI. There had been no lingering effects from the seizure.

“So what the hell do they think caused it?” You asked in disbelief. Something wasn’t adding up, it wasn’t right. People didn’t just have seizures like that!

“Stress,” he sounded relieved. Answers could do that, you supposed. But still, you were calling bullshit. “I’m, uh, I think it’s the cases.” He confided, and unwillingly, the fire died a little.

How scary it must be, to see all the evil little monsters in the shadows of the world. How trying it must get, to see the secrets and the lies and the petty masks we all wore.

If it were stress, you’d understand.

But it couldn’t be.

“Are you going to speak with Crawford about it?” You finally asked, leaning against the kitchen counter. You could pick your battles.

“I’m going to have to.”

You turned the conversation away from the seizures and the ‘not stress’. You could hear his gratitude in how he managed to keep talking longer than usual.

God, you loved him.

-x-

It seemed like, after that incident, you were hearing about Hannibal Lecter all the time. The floodgates had been opened, so to speak. And Will, in his typical attitude, cycled from just dropping information on you about the man or rambling without a point as a non sequitur.

Honestly, you were hating him on principal more than the sketch medical exam these days.

But, thankfully, you didn’t see him again for some weeks.

As per usual, your luck ran out when Will brought you to visit Abigail Hobbes.

Which you felt…conflicted about.

You were sympathetic to this girl, you were.

Even if Hobbes never abused her in the traditional sense, like Will claimed with vehemence, god what a nightmare.

But Hobbes brought out something ugly in Will (both of them did). It had left him sleepless and sick and lashing out because he couldn’t see. And then he had. Like Semele, he wanted to see and he was blinded.

After Minnesota, Will had come to you. He was clean in body, but not of soul. Like an exorcism, you tried to help him expunge Garrett Jacob Hobbes from his mind. He hated the pity, but you didn’t pity him.

You loved him, that was the difference.

Hannibal Lecter was there, virtually unchanged, and looking pleased as punch by the sight of Will standing there. But when his eyes slid to you, you could have sworn you smelled ozone, or saw sparks.

Inhuman, whispered the back of your mind.

“Will, Jaime,” he greeted, standing up in a smooth motion. “I didn’t expect to see you here.” His gaze flicked to the large slow cooker you were holding, and you felt the urge to flush. “Did you bring dinner?”

“Jaime did,” Will coughed, setting down the bag- bowls, cutlery, spoons, parmesan, milk, and red solo cups- on the table. “Dinner’s always appropriate for a visit.” He quoted, smiling a little.

“Dinner?” Lecter repeated. “Pasta?”

“Mostaccioli.” You said. “Pasta makes everything better.” His smile was amused, and honestly unpleasant.

Paint could quell under that gaze. Was anything good enough?

“Jaime always brings pasta.” Abigail chimed in. Was that a look that she shared with Lecter?

“And you always eat it.” You pointed out patiently, filing it away for later.

Between you and Will dinner was distributed and milk was poured.

You had a rule about your pasta- it had to be eaten on real dinnerware. Plastic ruined the flavor and the balance. Because this pasta was half a step down from medicinal as far as you were concerned. Who needed haute cuisine when there was a culinary staple made with love? Maybe, you reflected, loading up the bowls, you were being a little too personal in your attack.

You tried to calm down.

Objectively Lecter had done nothing to you.

He’d come when he’d found out Will was in trouble, had made sure that he was alright. You’d looked him up, had seen all the certifications after his name, the glowing reviews from his patients. Logically speaking, this was the man who could best help Will. A man who was on his side instead of Crawford’s, who could pin Bloom into doing something to help. And clearly Abigail, damaged, wounded Abigail, liked him.

But you didn’t like him. Not one bit, as the children’s song went.

“You alright?” Will’s quiet question pulled you out of your head, which you were glad for.

His eyes on you soothed your ruffled feathers a bit. If he was looking at you, that meant that he wasn’t looking at Lecter’s stupidly charming smile and getting lost in it, for better or worse.

“Abigail, how’s therapy been?” You asked, eager to get the shitshow over with.

Will, in his typical way, was eager to let you take the reins of conversation with her, just glad to see that she was alright. You sometimes got the uncomfortable feeling that he filtered her words through Garrett Jacob Hobbes’ ears, as if it would give him an even more personal insight. But you’d never gotten up the courage to ask if you were right or to suggest it. Abigail, in contrast, was a little thorn bush, almost aggressively eager to share with you, and by extension Will. She wielded innocence and sarcasm as if that would deter you both.

It might have turned Will away, to be fair, but luckily for him you were there to force the issue. To confront his issues.

But there was an extra tension in the room today, a three-way tie, as it were, between you and Hannibal, and, of all people, Abigail. Why on earth did she have a stake in it? And poor Will, you saw him pick up on it, like a hunting dog, looking this way and that, trying to figure out what was going on. He had that cute little line between his eyebrows, the one he got when he was thinking especially hard.

(Will had tried to explain how he did it- the pendulum swinging back and forth, wiping his identity away. It was horrific, that explanation. You wondered what Jack Crawford would say if he was told, that it wasn’t some easy transition, like putting on a pair of goggles, or a mask)

‘Luckily’ the esteemed Doctor Lecter was willing to bridge the gap, asking all sorts of questions.

“What do you do?”

“How long have you been with Will?”

“What is your opinion of his work?”

“If I seem intrusive, I apologize,” he had the good grace to say at last, just as your patience was running out. “I’ve been talking with Will for some time and he’s never mentioned a significant other.” He explained.

My my, was Dr. Lecter trying to drive a wedge between you?

“We thought it’d be best for my safety that he not share.” You admitted, nonplussed. “Not to mention, with Crawford crawling up everyone’s ass to get an opinion as a justification,” you shrugged, “I’d rather not be involved.” His comment did give you a wonderful opening though. “He hadn’t mentioned you before either, Dr. Lecter.”

Abigail’s eyes flicked back and forth like she was watching a tennis match. Not even a fly dared buzz in the room.

“Maybe we should go,” Will suggested.

No one disagreed.

-x-

“Why don’t you like him?” Will asked without preamble on the way home.

You were driving because of his burgeoning headache.

There were a lot of ways to answer that question, and you had to sort through them.

“Since I love you, I won’t bullshit you.” You announced to him softly, not taking your eyes off the road. Will snickered. “What?” You asked.

“You don’t bullshit anyone, whether you love them or not.” He countered.

“You’re so cute, thinking you know me.” You wonder if you make him smile when he thinks about you.

“So? Go on, lay it on me, Jaime.”

“I look at him and he makes me nervous.” You admitted, finally. Will’s silence is permission to go on, so you did. “There’s something about him that makes me hesitant to give him my back, let alone trust him to help you. He isn’t right.”

“I’m not right.” Will’s answer was closed off and short, defensive. You needed to tread carefully.

“Not like him. I trust your imagination, so please trust my intuition.” You countered.

“Fair enough. He’s not…awful. He’s just different.”

Like me, hung between you.

But he wasn’t like Will. Anyone with a brain could see that. Everyone but Will.

The rest of the car ride was silent, but your hand was in his, and you smiled every time his thumb brushed the back of it.

-x-

It should be no surprise that the next time you saw Doctor Lecter, it was while you were alone.

You’d gone to surprise Will at work, dropping off a lunch for him- he needed to eat more. You were less than pleased to see a familiar doctor on your way out of the building.

“Jaime,” he called out, socially backing you into a corner. You’d made eye contact now, you had to talk to him, dammit.

“Doctor Lecter,” you smiled, “how have you been?”

“I have been well. Busy, of course. I take it you came to see Will?”

“I had hopes, but he was in the middle of something, so I settled for dropping off lunch as a surprise.” You admitted.

“Will is very busy,” he agreed. “But if you were looking for company, I’ve found myself free for an hour or so.”

This felt like a trap. You didn’t like it. But again, you were backed into a corner so to speak, held hostage by social conventions you smiled and said, “that sounds lovely, Doctor Lecter.”

You were able to decline lunch at least but did have to suffer through some company in the form of a walk around campus. The campus was your suggestion, of course, because were else was safer? And the grounds were ‘so pretty’.

“To tell you the truth, Jaime,” Lecter spoke in that rumbling accent, “I am glad that I got the chance to speak with you. I would like to clear the air, privately.”

“Clear the air?” You repeated in confusion.

“Have I done something to offend you?” Lecter asked, turning those eyes on you. “If I have, I assure you, it was unintentional. But I get the feeling that you don’t care for me very much.”

What the hell was he playing at? “You haven’t done anything, Doctor Lecter.” You kicked at a pebble on the sidewalk.

“But you didn’t deny disliking me.” He pointed out. The wind picked up, and you could smell his cologne. Something dark and musky- it made you think of leaves dead and decaying after the spring thaw.

“I don’t know you well enough to dislike you,” you avoided neatly. The parking lot couldn’t come soon enough.

“I would like to understand why you feel the way you do, Jaime,” it wasn’t a plea, or a request. But it did get your attention. You felt more sympathy for Will than you ever had before, and that was saying something.

“I don’t know.” Was what you finally came up with, staring down at your feet.

“You don’t know what you feel? Or you don’t know how you feel?” The question was curious, said in that tone that made you bristle against the wind.

“I know how I feel, Doctor Lecter. I don’t like you. I don’t like how you look at Will. But to answer your question; I don’t know why I feel that way.” You gnashed your teeth and shoved your hands in your pockets.

“How I look at Will?” He repeated.

“How you look at anyone.” You corrected. God you just wanted to get this over and done with. At his confused look you went on, “like you’re looking at everyone under microscope.” Was as close as you could explain.

His chuckle was unsettling, and you gave him a side-eye.

“From an objective standpoint, it sounds like you’re being rather possessive of your partner.” He pointed out to you, finally. And that touched a nerve in the worst way.

Because what if he was right? If you were just…twitchy, because this man was getting to know the vulnerabilities that Will could never show you. Vulnerabilities that you had been fine not knowing- loving him meant accepting Will for what he was, the good and the bad. But to know he could expose himself to someone… And you could appreciate that this man was a ‘threat’. He was intelligent, he was accomplished, he had a social standing in a time that that kind of shit didn’t matter anymore. And what did you have? What could compare to the Bentley and the accent and the doctorates?

Just…just Will.

And you knew that that was what he wanted.

“I prefer protective.” You said, turning it over finally. “And I love him. Why wouldn’t I want to protect him?”

“Ah, but where is the threat? To see danger at every corner isn’t normal, Jaime.”

You knew that. Hell, you had your own worries about it, but fuck him, that wasn’t his business.

“A broken clock is right twice a day.”

“I suppose, but one in twelve is not a high success rate.”

“It’s enough for me.”

The walk had wound around the building, and you realized with dawning horror that you were out of sight of the windows. Of anyone. Your goosebumps were back, and you shivered.

“For what it’s worth, Jaime,” in the silence of the walk, Doctor Lecter’s voice was like a stick snapping, bringing you to immediate attention. “I don’t dislike you, no matter how you feel about me.”

You waited, because that couldn’t be all.

It wasn’t.

“I suggest being very careful with Will, Jaime.” He advised, gravely. “He needs a special sort of care.”

“Care I suppose you could give him,” you grumped, despite your fear.

His smile was all teeth, without exposing any to you. That had to be a gift. Or a curse?

“I could.” He agreed, shaking his head. “But even doctors make mistakes.”

The implications of that statement made you hesitate, and you fell a half step behind.

“Be sure to keep up, Jaime.” His eyes were damn near sparkling with, dare you say, amusement? “It can be dangerous to walk alone.”

The only thing that stopped you from bolting to your car was the knowledge, the certainty, that you did not want to expose your back to this man.

You could hear your heartbeat in your ears. You felt like you weren’t really moving, instead like you were a passenger in your own body. As it was, all your energy was focused on staying strong and moving, you’d forgotten about being polite, and silence, serious as a heart attack, had fallen between you.

When the parking lot came into view you could have cried at the sight of it. As it was, it was a struggle not to run- again, you’d be damned if you showed him your back. So you had to make the slow, slow walk at his side back to the lot. But you weren’t rid of him yet because Lecter was such a gentleman, he had to walk you to your car. By some miracle, you managed to stammer out a thank you or some variation of ‘have a nice day’.

You slammed the door and locked the car, sitting shivering in the driver’s seat, watching Lecter strut away.

For several minutes you just sat in your car, your heart thundering. You thought it might burst out of your chest. You gripped the steering wheel tight enough that your knuckles were straining. Your vision wavered.

Christ, were you having a heart attack?

Panic attack, you corrected yourself distantly.

One

Lecter at your door, the devil in a suit and tie

Two

Will, weak and shivering and vulnerable, alone in a car with him

Three

“Even a doctor can make mistakes”

Four

“Nothing showed up on the scans”

Five

“They think it’s stress”

Six

“Will is very delicate”

Seven

“You don’t seem to care for me. Why is that?”

Eight

“Why don’t you like him?”

Nine

“Will has never mentioned you before.”

Ten

“You look at him like he’s under a microscope.”

It…it was coming together.

There were pieces missing of course, you’d…you’d have to sort it all out, once you were safe at home.

And Lecter, Lecter in all his arrogance had just given it to you.

-x-

Your cell phone sat in front of you. Will had texted you during that nightmare walk, a short ‘thank you’. It was a testament to how long your day was that it took a few moments to remember why he’d even send that. You sat with your elbows on your thighs.

You thought about calling Will and telling him about that conversation.

But those thoughts were dismissed.

The fact was…you had nothing. You were grasping at straws and jumping to conclusions.

You’d told Will to trust your instinct like you trusted his imagination. The problem was that Will’s imagination was backed up by facts. By knowing people like he did. You had nothing to prove to him that something was wrong with Hannibal Lecter.

And a small, traitorous part of you, whispered that it was best. That you should pretend you hadn’t seen the clear distinction between mask and beast on that walk. It would be far safer to never speak of it, to never think of it.

After all, nothing did happen, did it? Said Gaslight-Gertrude. It was a walk and an awkward conversation.

He wanted to clear the air, said David-Denial. And talking about difficult subjects was uncomfortable.

Christ, maybe you were going crazy.

The memory of that…that not-smile though, made you doubt it.

Already, you were scared of forgetting the small details that terrified you. The odd stillness- the serenity- of the good doctor. Desperate, you lay back, with your arm over your eyes, trying to reconstruct the walk. The Walk. The sounds (footsteps, wind in the trees, his accent), the smells (mist and damp, evaporation on the trail, cologne) the words spoken (toomanytoomanytoomany).

You committed everything to memory. You didn’t care how long it took, how insane it made you feel. This was important, you had to remember.

Will had blinders on where Lecter was concerned. Somehow this snake had gotten to Will, had navigated through the minefields that safeguarded him. Lecter had earned some form of trust from your boyfriend, certainly for worse.

You didn’t know what he wanted with him. What there was to gain from lying about seizures, from trying to isolate him and make Will more unstable. What was he planning? Why was he doing it? You could scream those questions into the void, or beat your head against the wall until your brains rattled, and never have a clue. But it really didn’t matter. Who cared why he was doing this to your Will? The fact was, he was doing it.

Lecter had started this…game. Was it a game? If Will- for good or ill, was the goal, it sounded like a game.

Like a shark- no. No, you could see sharks coming. Their inevitability was the most frightening thing. Lecter was an alligator. He lurked in the shadows, still and waiting. You never saw him coming until he got careless.

You were lucky.

Lecter didn’t see you as a threat, or competition, and so he was playing a, well, a DLC, with you. A bonus cat-and-mouse game, to ease the wait as he sat back and enjoyed the long game with Will.

He was giving you enough rope to hang yourself.

You’d have to keep on your toes for this game, you decided, in the far away parts of your mind.

It was a high-risk match.

Finally you sat up and plucked your phone off the table, staring at your lock screen. It was a picture of you and Will, a selfie. He’d been…happy and relaxed enough to take the picture himself, even.

Hannibal wanted to take Will from you.

You’d kill him first.

#yandere reader #yandere hannibal lecter #yandere nbc hannibal

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fanficsandfluff · 4 years

Text

Hannibal: A Little Less Different

This fic can also be found on my AO3, where it was first posted, here.

As much as I adore all the art that’s out there for Hannigram, I really don’t feel comfortable writing for them. So instead I chose my other OTP, Will and Beverly! I seriously love their dynamic. So, enjoy!

Pairing: Will & Beverly (platonic)

Words: 2075

~~~~

It wasn't so much shame as it was embarrassment that Will Graham felt while sitting at FBI headquarters mere yards away from the morgue. Or was he closer than that? Yardage didn't matter. A probe was gently stuck into his right ear, bringing Will back to this present moment momentarily. It was an uncomfortable sensation. This physical reminded him of why he doesn't like doctors. Why take the physical at FBI headquarters, one might ask?

Will got hurt on their last catch. It was no one's fault, Will tried to reassure. There was a fleeting moment of uncertainty where Will experienced time-lapse, and he fell into a ditch. That was the first instance. While facing off with the killer, he was thrown into the corner of a mantle. Scathed but alive, that's what Jack called it. As much as Will demanded he be given leave to go home and heal, Jack wanted to make sure there was nothing more seriously wrong with him. It was his leg and back right behind his ribs that were the main sources of pain. Typical injuries and soreness, in Will's head. But Jack gave him that look and, well, here we are now.

"Lie down for me, please."

Beverly's calm voice resonated in Will's head as he obeyed her instruction. He'd just gone through the vitals checks, passing each with flying colors, he was sure. Will shivered when his bare back touched the icy metal table. Now he felt like he belonged in the morgue. A very corpse-like feeling encompassed him as the metal chilled his skin and likewise, he warmed the metal.

"Will."

Will's eyes focused on Beverly. She clearly had just said something to him and had gotten no response.

"I said loosen up a bit."

"The table's cold."

Beverly smirked, "I saw you shiver. Relax."

"In this position, am I wrong to have a fear that you'll start cutting into me?"

"Your only fear right now should be not listening to my instructions."

Will smiled. He was put at ease. Beverly rested her hands on Will's belly and started pressing around. Will could feel her cold hands through her latex gloves, but that wasn't his only thought as he sharply inhaled and grunted. Beverly paused and looked at Will's face. Having not worked as frequently with living subjects, she feared she was being too rough. She was checking for injury, after all, so maybe she hit a sore spot. She proceeded with slightly gentler touches. But again, Will tensed.

"You can let me know if I'm hurting you," she rested her hands on the table as she looked down upon Will's pale upper body.

"No, you're not hurting me. I'm sorry. Continue."

Beverly massaged just under Will's ribs and that one got him to shoot up from his prone position, arms coming forward to protect. Beverly stared with an agape mouth and was about to send him to the hospital for intense organ displacement when she heard a small titter.

New shivers coursed through Will's upper body and he made shy eye-contact with Beverly, "I'm ticklish," he admitted.

Beverly's look of utter alarm placated to a kind of smugness when Will came clean.

"Well, better that than injury. Lay down, I need to finish up," she let Will lay down once more before she continued. No organ swelling or odd lumps, though she did get him to giggle. When she felt just behind his right set of ribs, he winced from pain this time. Assessment with that finished, Beverly then rolled up Will Graham's pant leg and brushed her fingers around his leg. Swelling under his kneecap.

The crime scene investigator lifted Will's leg and rotated his ankle, "Does this hurt?"

Will responded, "It's uncomfortable."

Beverly finished her physical examination and peeled off her gloves after instructing Will to get dressed.

"Am I dying?"

"Not this time," she responded with her usual wit. Will liked that he could talk to Beverly like this. The jabs, the morbid humor. They bounced off each other well.

"Bruised ribs, swollen knee, and twisted ankle. Nothing a little R&R in bed can't fix," she gave her analysis to Will, "I don't know how well you're gonna adhere to my prescription."

"I'll do my best."

"I think I'm going to have to check up on you."

"Well, aren't I the special patient."

Beverly grinned, "Goodbye, Will."

"Goodbye."

~~~~

It turns out Will didn't listen very well, after all. Two days passed and he was keeping up with his day to day activities, concordant with his sleeplessness. He walked the dogs, worked on flies, thought about death and destruction and loneliness and mental illness... all of Will Graham's greatest hits.

He was rightly a little surprised when a knock came on his door on a sunny winter morning. He expected Alana, or Jack, or even Hannibal. They frequently checked on him; and it was always a worrisome house call. They'd be concerned about him or if it was Jack, he'd be picking him up to consult on the newest grisly murder. No one ever checked up just... cuz.

"Hey," it was Beverly who greeted Will when he opened his door for her.

"Oh," he sounded surprised because he truthfully was, "Hi," he looked past Beverly, thinking there was someone else with her.

"Can I come in?"

"I need house calls now?"

Beverly and Will exchanged small smiles. He stepped aside to let her in. She stepped inside and placed a hot coffee on his desk, "I didn't know how you liked it. I deduced no sugar, dash of milk."

"You would be almost correct. I like one sugar packet," he lifted up the coffee in his hand and took a sip.

Beverly groaned and snapped her finger, "Ugh! So close. I figured someone unstable might not want sugar."

"As in not want joy?"

"As in don't overanalyze coffee preferences."

Will smiled at that. Beverly walked around his home, taking a look at the bits and bobs of the place that made it home. She leaned down and pet a few of the dogs that brushed against her boots.

After Will took one more sip of the steaming, bitter coffee, "Can I ask why you're here?"

"We haven't had a new case since the last one, and no one's heard or seen from you since. I figured you needed something to think about."

"You figured I needed someone to talk to."

"That too," Beverly took a seat on the ottoman of a sofa chair. Winston came over and rested his chin on her lap.

"You're not a dog person."

"You can tell?" Beverly rested a gloved hand on Winston's head and gently pet it, "I always believed dogs gravitated towards people who they knew were uncomfortable around them."

Will smiled and he took a seat in the chair adjacent to Beverly, "To torture them?"

"To tease, or to convert."

"Is Winston converting you?"

Beverly set her coffee down on the floor carefully and removed her gloves. Once she did, she gave Winston a full petting and scratching. Will looked on.

"Thank you for the coffee."

"You're welcome," Beverly tucked some hair behind her ears after Winston trotted away from her to go to his dog bed, seeming proud and accomplished, "You haven't been relaxing very much, have you?"

"I'm doing the best I can."

"I don't want to be your nurse, I really don't... but if Jack needs you back in the field, he's gonna want Will Graham at 100%."

"That sounds like an impossibility. Will Graham has never performed at 100%."

Beverly watched how Will's eyes looked nowhere towards her. They didn't seem to focus on anything.

"Will you let me take another look at you?"

"You think you missed something?"

"No, I just want to do a little checkup. See how things are healing."

Will took another big gulp from his coffee and he walked over to his bed and sat at the edge of it. Beverly followed him and sat beside him.

"This doesn't seem like protocol."

Beverly looked at Will's face, his striking jawline. He was right. It wasn't. She cared about his wellbeing, physical and mental. If she could pay him a visit under the guise of medical work, then so be it.

She slipped her hand under Will's sweater to find the tender spot at the back of his ribs. The second her fingers made contact with the skin, Will gasped and he flinched.

"Your fingers are very cold."

Beverly grinned, "Being inside your icebox of a home isn't exactly helping," she teasingly traced her nails towards the front of Will's ribs and gave them a scratch. The consultant forced out a sputtering breath.

"I will repeat myself. This doesn't seem like protocol."

Beverly couldn't not smile now. She had Will here, in the safety of his own home, his dogs all around him, and now she was present. She needed to act on this, she may never get another opportunity to do so. Will froze, as did Beverly's hand. She kept her hand just barely touching Will's ribs, still under his thick sweater. It was just this extra pause of anticipation that bubbled up in Will's chest and he giggled sporadically when Beverly dug in. Will wiggled like a worm on a hook, unable to escape Beverly's hand.

"You're not a very good patient," Beverly teased and she introduced her other hand in the mix, all ten nails scratching and digging against Will's soft, tense skin. Will threw his head back as a louder laugh ripped through his lungs and he fell back onto the bed. It was very cute, Beverly couldn't lie.

"Beverly! B-Bev-- wahahait!" Will giggled away. He wasn't trying to shove at her attacking hands, nor really try to protect himself. It seemed all he was managing to do was wrap his arms loosely around his middle. Beverly was still able to access every curve and protrusion on Will's torso.

Beverly tried squeezing instead, and she latched onto both of Will's sides, allowing her thumbs to do most of the work digging into ticklish muscle. Will spasmed and he rolled side to side, his elbows pressing into his sides more now to try and lessen the sensation.

Will Graham's laugh was nothing like Beverly imagined. She didn't imagine it much, mind you, but she did think about it more than once. His laugh was deep and steady. Nothing she did really changed its pitch. Beverly scritched her hands to Will's belly and that's the first time Will reacted strongly to her tickling. He grabbed her wrists with his hands and tried pushing them out from under his shirt.

"Noho more, please," he giggled, face flushed red.

"You don't want a repeat physical?"

"More than anything, no."

Beverly shot her hands onto Will's belly again, even with him holding on, and she poked and clawed at anything she could. Will belted out more laughter. He snorted when Beverly scratched a nail around his bellybutton. When Will was snorting more than actually laughing, Beverly felt she betrayed him enough. She relinquished her ticklish hold on his bare skin and slipped her hands out from under his sweater. Will was panting on his bed, the tip of his nose having turned red from the fit of laughter.

"Is... Is it bad if I say I never want you as my doctor again?"

Beverly chuckled and she tucked hair that fell in her face behind her ear, "You're a pretty fun patient, I might have to recommend that we keep seeing each other."

Will smiled without provocation now and he sat up, "I really don't want to know how you're so good at that."

"Eldest child. Had a lot of practice."

Will looked at Beverly and his lips were quirked upwards. He had a friend in Beverly. It warmed his heart, almost more than the tickling warmed his body.

"Thank you for bringing me company. Just... don't tell anyone about... all of this."

Beverly smiled and she nudged Will's shoulder with her own playfully, "Wouldn't dream of it. Being ticklish definitely conflicts with your whole unstable, outsider persona."

"How so?"

Beverly considered it, "It makes you a little less different."

Will appreciated that statement. They sat in silence for a few extra seconds. One of the dogs jumped up onto the bed and made itself comfortable.

"I think I should take a look at that ankle now."

#hannibal #hannibal tv #hannibal fanfiction #hannibal fanfic #will graham #beverly katz #will graham and beverly katz #will graham & beverly katz #will and beverly #ticklish!will #ticklish!willgraham #lee!will #lee!willgraham #tickle fic #tickle fanfic #tickle fanfiction #platonic #fluff #tickles

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hellomorganus · 3 years

Text

Helen Draiz

I do not own The Phantom of the Opera. The book/musical/movies belong to their rightful owners. I only own my characters.

CHAPTER 1

“Where on Earth are your shoes?” laughed the red haired maid who was hanging up the laundry to dry. “You know Madame Bisset will have a fit once she sees your feet!”

The woman with no shoes was none other than Helen Driaz. A fellow maid at the Opera Populaire who was too free spirited for her own good. She wiggled her toes in the wet grass, smiling. “Then let her have a fit Camille! Feeling the grass against my skin reminds me of home.”

Home.

Helen hadn’t been there in years since her brother died. They had always wanted to travel the world together and just a few months before they would be, he died. Most say it was an accident, while other’s thought it was a murder attempt.

Home was in the grassy meadows of the United States of America. Home was in a secluded area that not many people knew about, and that’s what she loved most about it.

Camille shook her head, wringing out another dress from the ballerinas before hanging it up to dry. “You should go back then if you miss it so much Helen,” she chuckled.

Helen hummed in response, helping Camille lift the dress over the string, clipping it in place. “If I return home then I’m afraid I might never travel again. And we can’t have that, now can we?” she replied, bumping hips with the younger girl.

The red curls framing Camille’s face bounced as she tried to regain her balance, softly laughing. “Then you should at least write more to your family. I’m sure they’re worried sick.”

Helen smiled, shaking her head. “No they’re not. They know Henry is looking after me.” she replied, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear.

Camille sighed dreamily, leaning backwards into the brunette. “Henry,” she smirked, fanning herself.

Helen shook her head, chuckling. “Careful now, he is courting me.” she said, fanning the girl too.

Camille smiled, shaking her head as she stood straight up. “Surely he must mean to propose soon! You have been courting since you left America which was...how long ago?”

Helen smiled. “Nearing two years ago.”

“Two years!” gasped the girl, covering her mouth. “And he hasn’t even suggested it?”

The brunette rolled her eyes at the 18 year old. “Of course he has. He has suggested it a few times but it always becomes quiet afterwards.”

“He’s probably nervous Helen. All men get nervous before popping the question.”

Helen nodded. He often was nervous when he brought up the subject of marriage. The sweat that formed on his brow always proved the idea. But why would he be so nervous? They had been courting for nearly two years now and he already had her family’s blessing. So what was he waiting for?

“Mademoiselle Helen!” screeched an older woman in horror. “Where are your shoes?!”

Helen blushed, chuckling to herself. “They must have walked off Madame.”

Madame Bisset crossed her arms. “Walked off have they?” she retorted, looking around the yard. “You best find them young lady. Señora Carlotta has a tear in her dress, she would like you to fix it immediately.”

Camille hid her laughter behind her hand, shaking her head as Madame Bisset walked off cursing the brunette.

Helen curtseyed mockeringly, stifling her laughter behind her tightly closed lips. “I honestly haven’t the faintest clue on how I still work here.” she said before walking towards where she hid her shoes.

Camille chuckled, crouching down to lift the basket up. “Neither do I,” she replied, hoisting the basket up and balancing it on her hip as she walked over to Helen.

The brunette had just finished slipping on her black flats when Camille made it over to her, offering her an arm.

Helen gladly accepted the arm, walking up the stone steps to enter the Opera Populaire.

~-~-~

The needle pierced through the fabric as Carlotta yelled at the new managers. Turns out, she hadn’t just ripped her dress but her head piece as well. Helen sat on the sidelines, listening with a smirk as the managers began to grovel to the fierce redhead.

She stopped her foot in annoyance, spinning towards where Helen was situated, pouring herself a glass of water as the managers tripped over their own feet to try and keep up with her.

“Mr. Reyer!” called the shorter of the two managers. “Isn’t there a rather marvelous aria for Elisa in act three of Hannibal?”

Carlotta hummed, shaking her head no. “Yes, yes, but no! Because I have not my costume for act three because,” she turned around to face the seamstress in charge of her dress. “somebody not finish it!”

She then spun back to Helen, pointing to the headpiece. “And, I hate my hat!”

Helen chuckled, tying off the thread and finishing the sewing. She held it up in her hands, examining it. “I’ll see what I can do to fix it, sí?” Helen said, standing up and gently placing the headpiece back on her head.

Carlotta huffed, crossing her arms as she turned her attention back to the managers just in time for them to suggest she sing from the act.

Monsieur Reyer stood tall, a frown on his lips. “If my diva commands,” he said with annoyance.

Carlotta, with just as much annoyance, glared at him while she replied, “Yes! I do!”

Camille walked over to Helen and nudged her shoulder, pointing to Henry and waving to him as he set up his violin. He gave the two girls a grin, acknowledging them before Mr. Reyer began directing them.

Camille’s arms fell around Helen’s neck as she swayed with the music, Helen wrapping her hands around her friend’s arms as she watched Henry play with as much passion as the day they met.

Helen smiled, closing her eyes as she listened to the soft music and Carlotta’s, somewhat, decent voice.

She was at peace here. She never wanted to leave the opera house. This was her new home.

Screams filled the stage as a loud thud sounded throughout the auditorium. When Helen opened her eyes, she gasped, covering her mouth. The backdrop had fallen on top of Carlotta, pinning her to the ground.

She immediately stood up to help the distressed woman up from the ground. Once the backdrop was off her, Helen took a hold of her hands and helped her to her feet as the former manager yelled up to Joseph Buquet on what had happened.

“Are you alright?” she asked, flinching away when the soprano ripped her hands out of Helen’s.

“Senora, these things do happen,” a voice said, trying to soothe the diva from breaking down.

“For the past years, these things do happen! And did you stop them from happening? No!” she fumed, pointing to the former manager before spinning towards the new ones. “And you two! You are as bad as him! These things happen! Well until you stop these things from happening, this thing. Does not happen!”

She pushed past Helen and towards her own maid, storming off the stage, her husband, Piangi, following behind her.

Henry climbed onto the stage, leaving his violin behind to check on Helen. When he reached her, his hands rested on her shoulders. “Are you okay?”

Helen nodded, smiling softly at him. “Yes, I am fine. Are you okay?”

Henry nodded, a twinkle in his eyes as he hugged her. “Yes, I am fine.” he whispered, running his hands through her hair.

Helen smiled and hugged him back. He has always been so protective of her, claiming it was to keep her family sane. He hated to see even the faintest of a frown on her face, always ensuring that she was kept happy.

“-so Monsieur?” a gentle voice cut in through the argument. Madame Giry. “I have a message, sir, from the Opera Ghost.”

Henry pulled back, scoffing lightly. “This Opera Ghost is on the last of my nerves…” he grumbled to Helen, taking her hand in his and squeezing it.

Helen chuckled. “I think it’s entertaining.” she admitted, rubbing her thumb over the back of his hand.

“Christine Daae could sing it sir,” Madame Giry called to the bickering managers.

“A chorus girl?” questioned Monsieur Andre. “Don’t be silly.”

“She’s been taking lessons from a great teacher, Monsieur.”

The manager became intrigued, turning to face the chorus girl fully. “Who?”

The blonde girl lowered her blue eyes before answering. “I do not know his name, Monsieur.”

Madame Giry rested a hand on Christine’s shoulder, brushing her blonde curls back. “Let her sing for you Monsieur. She has been taught well.”

Helen led Henry away from the center of the stage as Christine walked forward, her hands shaking from nerves.

“Get back to playing,” she whispered to him, kissing his cheek and helping him lower himself back into his seat.

Henry grinned and squeezed her hand once more before returning to his instrument to begin playing.

Helen watched the blonde woman shaking her nerves out before singing. It started off very soft, almost like she was singing under her breath but as she looked around to see the comforting smiles, her confidence grew. Along with her confidence, her voice grew louder, echoing throughout the auditorium.

By the looks the managers shared with one another, everyone knew who would be taking Carlotta’s place.

Christine Daae would be the leading soprano until Carlotta decided to return.

~-~-~

The opera was filled with a standing ovation as the blonde from earlier softened her voice, distinguishing the end of the song. The curtains closed as she bowed, resting her hand gently on her bosom. The cast and some other stage hands around cheered for her as she made her way off the stage.

Helen, however, was not so lucky to give the talented girl a standing ovation. She, instead, had been fixing another one of Carlotta’s dresses, muttering to herself, wishing she could be there to congratulate the 19 year old.

A knock sounded on the doorway and a familiar redhead peeked inside the crowded room. “You’re muttering again,” she pointed out, entering the room and lifting a hat to her head.

“I don’t mutter,” replied the brunette as she gently took the hat from Camille’s head.

Camille laughed, leaning back against the table. “Yes you do,” she replied, watching Helen work. “Henry wants to take you to supper.”

Helen looked up at the mention of Henry, a small smile tugging her lips. But that smile soon vanished when she looked down at the rip in the dress. It was nowhere near finished.

“Could you tell him perhaps another time?” she asked, looking up at her best friend. “Please?”

Camille shook her head. “Helen. Tonight could be the night.” she tutted, standing upright and taking the dress from her hands. “Go have dinner. Show me that diamond when you get back.”

Helen reached for the dress, shaking her head. “Camille. Please. I have to finish that before morning.”

Camille held the dress behind her back just as Helen stood from her seat. “I’ll finish it. You go have dinner.”

Helen raised her eyebrow, frowning at the 17 year old. “You? Sew?”

Camille faked a gasp of pain. “How dare you. I can sew.” she said, fighting back Helen’s reaching hands.

Helen laughed, shaking her head as she gave up, throwing her hands into the air. “Fine! You win!” she chuckled. “I’ll have dinner.”

Camille grinned, dropping the dress on the table behind her as she hugged Helen. “Bien (Good)!”

The red haired girl then took Helen’s hand and dragged her out of the sewing room towards their shared room. “We must find you a dress! He’s proposing!” Camille laughed.

Helen shook her head, following the eccentric girl. “How can you be so sure?” she asked, lifting her skirts up so she wouldn’t trip over them.

“I just have a feeling Helen!” she laughed, tossing the girl onto her bed before flinging open their closets, looking for the perfect dress.

#PhantomoftheOpera #Phantom of the Opera #Erik Destler #Erik #ChristineDaae Christine #OC #Phantom #Phantom of the Opera fanfiction

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antlergraham · 3 years

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Summary: Hannibal finally knows Will- and he knows he's sick.

AO3: link in reblog

WC: 2.2k

It becomes a ritual for them. The night of Will’s appointments, they meet up once more in Hannibal’s home, prey already caught on the table and ready for Will’s violent outrage to tear them to pieces. The news says that the Wolf of Virginia has been active outside the kills the FBI has confirmed to be a co-authorship between the two most prolific serial killers on the west coast. It’s a lot to be killing, by Hannibal’s standards, even without Will’s extracurriculars.

“Speed often holds hands with sloppiness,” He tells Will over a meal of roasted thigh. Their victim this week is still alive, and whimpering on the dining room table while they eat on newly purchased barstools at the counter. Hannibal hates their very idea, but Will had suggested this, and had seemed so excited at what he could do to their kills if kept alive through the meal, and Hannibal is powerless to say no to him. “You should settle down before you get yourself, and by extension, me, caught because you lost your head.”

“I’m perfectly in control,” Will argues.

His voice falters, though, and the sick tinge to his scent strengthens in the air for just a moment. Sure signs he is not. Hannibal raises an eyebrow, a quiet but clear challenge, until Will lowers his chin and looks to the side.

“I don’t remember all of the kills they say I did. Not recently.”

“Do you remember any of them?”

Will pushes his food around his plate, something uncharacteristic of his usual ravenous appetite for their kills. He looks gaunt. His cheekbones appear to have sunken in more in the weeks they’ve been doing this, and his eyes- though bright- look colder. Evidently, he really is sick. Whatever it is, it’s getting worse. Will is getting worse.

“Some. Others I find out through the press, or because there’s blood under my nails.”

Finally he takes a bite, but he shudders doing it, and his lashes flutter in indecision. Hannibal worries, for a moment, that it’s his cooking, but then Will leans to the side and spits it out onto the floor. It’s rude, but it’s also Will, for whom Hannibal always makes exceptions. His first thought is not disdain for the behavior. It’s concern. As much as Will likes to flaunt norms, he wouldn’t spit something onto the floor just to see what happens, or because he doesn’t know better. In sum, this was not a chosen behavior.

“Are you alright?”

Will wrinkles his nose and draws his knees up to his chest, curling his body in the hardback chair. “It tastes like blood.”

“I thought you were fond.”

“I am. I am, it’s just-” He rummages through his mind for the words, eyes unfocused in his search. “I don’t think my mind and my body are friends anymore.”

He doesn’t touch his meal again, so Hannibal- trying to provide, to be a good Alpha- makes him a grilled cheese and replaces the decadent meal with it. Will smiles up at him, not reaching his eyes, and dutifully eats half before pushing it away and returning his gaze to the man still weakly struggling. He licks his lips.

“Do you still have taste for it raw?” Hannibal asks.

“No, but I want to watch him suffer.”

Hannibal ruffles his hair, even when Will bats away his hand. “As you wish, sweet Omega.”

The title still makes Will wrinkle his nose, but he no longer protests it as Hannibal picks up his scalpel and opens the man’s chest, ignorant of sloppy, dizzy pleas that get quieter and quieter. He harvests. Kidneys, another thigh, meat from the shoulder. He saves the lungs, calling out to be consumed, for last in order to prolong the agony and please Will. Most things he does nowadays are too that end.

What distracts him, when he turns to ensure Will is looking at him, is the blank look in his eyes suggesting he isn’t watching the show.

“One moment,” Hannibal tells the nearly-unconscious victim, and sets down his scalpel to go to Will. He discards his bloody gloves along the way.

When he kneels in front of Will, he cups his face and gently says his name, trying to get his attention. Touching him, he’s able to feel the faint tremors in Will’s face, his head moving and his cheeks twitching. It’s a seizure of some sort, he thinks, and carefully pulls Will’s chair away from the table so he doesn’t fall and hit his head on it.

There’s nothing he can really do to help Will at the moment, and yet, he can’t bring himself to leave his side. He just sits there. He holds him. He sits with him until Will’s head dips to the side a little and he blinks several times in quick succession.

“Alpha?” he manages. He sounds drunk. “I don’t…”

“It’s alright.” Hannibal strokes his hair, notes how warm his face is. “I believe you’ve had a mild seizure. You should rest.”

“Seizure,” Will repeats.

Hannibal moves to pick him up and carry him to bed. “Yes, a seizure.”

“Don’t touch me.”

He stumbles out of his seat and rubs his eyes. Will is pale and unsteady, but there is still fire in him despite his own confusion.

“I didn’t say you could touch me.”

“I was trying to help you-”

“No.”

He braces a hand on the table and looks so sick, so lost, so… small. This hardly feels like the man who put a hand on Hannibal’s throat, but even sick he is deadly. He has been killing in these postictal phases. That’s his missing memory. Right now, Will could kill him, and Hannibal-

He thinks he might let him.

Nonetheless, he holds his hands out in front of him and tilts his head to submissively bare his throat- a gesture intended to appease. Will seems somewhat alright with it, and doesn’t lunge for Hannibal, an Alpha who has become his latest prey. He doesn’t plead for his life, nor sink so low as to imply it, but simply waits for Will to decide whether or not he intends to be violent in answer.

It takes a moment, but Will sits back down and rubs his eyes again. “My head is pounding. Do you have aspirin?”

“Let me get you something stronger.”

Hannibal resists the urge to kiss Will’s forehead as he passes by, headed to his office for a stronger medication. It was easy to keep on hand, and more than adequate at helping sedate victims thrashing in pain. This will do better to ease the pain. He puts a single pill in his hand and returns, moving Will’s untouched wine glass away. Alcohol and opioids are not a good combination, especially for someone already unwell. He fetches water instead, and smiles when Will accepts both offerings without fight. His still dilated eyes fix on their victim, even though he makes no move toward him.

“He’s still alive,” Hannibal clarifies, “at least for a few minutes more. I was going to finish with his lungs.”

“Let me.”

It is impossible to resist. Hannibal steps out of the way for Will to unsteadily approach their prey, plunging his hand into the open chest cavity like one might reach into a drawer of miscellaneous items. It’s a searching touch. He pulls on something, gruesome in the tug at what Hannibal recognizes as intestines. This is not the way the Wolf of Virginia kills.

As though Will can hear Hannibal’s thoughts, he sinks his teeth into the flesh. It should not be beautiful, but it is, especially when it leads to a frenzy. With his mouth alone, Will destroys this man, eats his raw meat and spits blood on the floor. It will be a pain to clean. Hannibal won’t mind the hours on his hands and knees with bleach when it means he gets to see Will without any inhibitions. Will is not beholden to social expectations or his suppression of his own desires out of some form of social grace, even in murder. He is free. Hannibal loves him this way.

By the time he is finished, Will has decimated the corpse, and Hannibal is desperate to touch him. He knows better than to reach out without permission, however, and waits for Will to come to him, soaked and messy and with faraway eyes. As much as he is a threat, he is vulnerable right now, and it feels precious that Hannibal might see him this way.

“Will, darling Omega,” he murmurs, in his closest approximation to a purr. “You need a bath and rest.”

“Tell me where to go.”

Hannibal knows better than to offer help, though he allows himself to guide Will with a soft touch to the small of his back and give him the softest towels in the house. He turns on the water and feels its temperature on the soft skin inside his wrist. When its warm enough, he makes to leave, only for Will to take his wrist and look up at him with eyes made so much brighter by the contrast of the blood on his face.

“Stay.”

He leans against the counter and watches Will slowly strip, then lower himself into the hot bath and avoid plugging the drain. Hannibal hadn’t done so because he wanted Will to choose the scent he wanted for the bubbles, but it becomes clear Will doesn’t want to stew in his own filth. He scrubs at the blood on his body with clumsy bare hands until Hannibal offers him a washcloth, and then uses the tap to wet and rinse the cloth as he slowly bathes himself. It doesn’t take very long, but Will shivers by the time he stands up and reaches for a towel to wrap around himself.

“Can I borrow something?” he asks.

Hannibal leads him next to the bedroom, and helps him into soft briefs and silk pajama bottoms, a little large on his slim frame but comfortable based on the way Will’s eyelashes flutter and he balls the fabric in a fist.

“I don’t remember.” They sit on Hannibal’s bed together, just close enough for their knees to touch. It is chaste in comparison to all that they’ve done. “I don’t think I’ll remember this either.”

“You should see a doctor.”

He shakes his head, his drying curls bouncing slightly with the motion. “I don’t like people in my head, Dr. Lecter.”

“If you’re having seizures, I think someone ought to be.”

With a huff, Will slips into Hannibal’s lap and kisses him with fevered lips, effectively ending the conversation. He’s finally submissive, out of nowhere, letting Hannibal feel him up and claim his lips in a kiss. It feels good to control him. But it also feels wrong. He goes with it, though, happily nosing against the scent glands at Will’s jaw and enjoying the heavy aroma of his arousal, even through the fog of sick.

“Beautiful.”

Will smiles against his lips and bares his throat slightly, sighing when Hannibal peppers the vulnerable, pale skin with kisses. He could hurt Will right now, but he doesn’t want to. He wants to worship him. And as he lays Will’s pliant body out on the bed, intent on doing so, he realizes how completely wrapped around Will’s little finger he’s become.

It is a lovely position to be in.

“Alpha, your mouth…” Will doesn’t beg, but the plea is still in the words. “Now, please.”

Without a second thought, Hannibal gives him exactly what he wants, leaving kisses on his journey to pull down the freshly donned pajama pants and wrap his lips around Will’s cocklet. Evidently, by his squirming, he’s more sensitive there than Hannibal had initially believed. Of course he still puts in every ounce of effort he has in his body to make Will feel good, hooking one of Will’s long legs over his shoulder to get a better angle. Will comes with a whine in his mouth, and sighs as Hannibal swallows and wipes his mouth.

In moments, his eyes flutter shut, and his breathing evens out to sleep. While it feels like a remarkable show of trust, Hannibal is smart enough to recognize it as an addled brain seeking out comfort from a familiar Alpha. On some level, at least, it does mean that Will trusts him to take care of him when it’s too hard to take care of himself.

Hannibal leaves him to rest in bed while he cleans up. He bags up the unsalvageable remains to dispose of later, and kneels on the tile with a bucket of diluted bleach and a scrubbing brush. This is irritating, but not impossible.

He contemplates Will as he cleans the mess. Many others would be overjoyed by the sudden shift in behavior, but he misses the weight of Will’s control over him. Come tomorrow, it should return. Still, in spite of Will’s denial of wanting medical attention, Hannibal messages an old friend to pull some strings and get a brain scan for the next day. He can only hope Will sees the sense in it, while being all too aware of the unlikelihood of getting Will to do anything the Omega doesn’t crave.

#hannigram #Hannibal (TV)#hannibal lecter #will graham #hannibal X will #will x hannibal #emwrite #bmitmfic #wov!series

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gingersimasnaps · 4 years

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Every heart needs a beat (Order AU/Hannibal fanfic)

THIS IS SERIOUSLY ONE BIG MESS. Remember True colors, my Order AU fanfic? It can be found here on my blog. Well, Laura, Vera’s niece was briefly mentioned there. And because I’m my usual weird me, I had a dream about the first third of this work. So I sat down to write it. It turned into something bigger, and I’m somewhat proud of it.

So, let’s pretend Laura Stone, Vera’s niece, starts to work in Blue Rose Law Office, under Kepler’s supervision, and gets to advocate Margot Verger in Verger vs. Verger case. They fall in love, and Mason finds out. And things go bad, bad, bad way.

As I said, this is pure mess and I’m still not sure about sharing, but hey, world belongs to the brave, right? :D

Every heart needs a beat (Order AU/Hannibal) Margot Verger/Laura Stone (OC) Word count: 3563 Angst; hurt/comfort; character death

Margot sees her through the glass door. She's so fragile, so broken, so -

Some young doctor is currently trying to talk to her, but Laura just stares to nowhere, blinks occasionally, so quiet, not reacting at all, like the life is sucked out of her, and Margot just can't hold herself any longer. She all but bursts through the door and –

"Laura," she only whispers, but it's enough for the young redhead woman to lift her head. There is pure disbelief visible on her face, but in a second, she stands up and runs to her, and Margot catches her in her arms.

"Margot," sobs Laura, her voice stranded, "you're alive... Are you alive?"

"Of course I am, honey, I'm here," Margot cooes, but question after question runs through her head - why? what makes you to ask this? What did he do to you?

Laura holds tightly, tighter than ever, and her sobs soon turn into guts wrenching weeps. Her whole body is shaking and Margot wants to cover her, hide her, protect her, so no one would touch this beautiful creature, sent to her right from heavens again, especially not her masochistic brother, but she can only hold her and it looks like it can’t be enough.

"He told me you're dead," Laura cries, "he showed me - he sh - he showed me your - your dead body, a pic – cture of it, and I - I couldn't - I was thinki - and he said you’re not - and, and -"

"Baby," whispers Margot, pulls her closer, even though it looks impossible, and while Laura dugs her fingernails deep into her skin for the reassurement that it's real, that Margot is real, she fights the pure rage flooding through her veins. She could kill Mason with her bare hands now, not even batting an eye. She deals with what he did to her every day, and sometimes she even feels okay, thanks to her lover - but this is completely different, because this is Laura. It's Laura, cheeky and ironic and sassy at the first glance, but innocent, soft, tender, gorgeous inside and out when you get to know her, and it's her's Laura. No one is messing with the source of her happiness, let alone Mason.

"I'm here, love, I'm alive, we're both alive..." instead of rage, Margot fights tears now. She has broken woman in her arms. And her own blood caused it.

She knows Vera is probably crawling the walls up outside the private wing of the hospital, or maybe clawing Hamish's eyes out simply because she's worried sick and waits for Margot's call, but she can't bring herself to move. She just wants to hold the redhead as long as she can.

"I want to go home," she senses more than hears Laura whisper. Her dry lips are touching her neck and it just feels so wrong. Her lips are always soft and strawberry-like. Except now they aren't. Nothing is like it was two weeks ago.

"We are going home," Margot says, and the doctor's head snaps up.

"You can't go home. Miss Stone is staying here."

"No," Laura moans painfully. "I want to go home, Margot, please..." and another panic attack hits her and she again tightens her grip. "Please, don't leave me here alone, please, please!"

Margot looks at the doctor, eyes hard. "Laura is going home with me," she states.

"No," snaps the doctor, and her eyes darken behind her glasses. Typical bossy girl, probably resident, who thinks she owns the whole hospital.

At first, Margot wants to fully release Laura from her embrace for a moment to talk to the doctor, but then she sees Laura's face, stricken with incredible fear, pain, hazel eyes full of panic, and takes her hand.

"I'm not going anywhere. Never. Just give a moment, and then we will go home," she says and kisses Laura slightly on her forehead. Never letting go of her hand, she turns to the doctor, who looks like she's ready to call some security to stop them from leaving.

"For the last time, Miss Stone is going home with me. You and your snobbish ass have no idea what she went through and don't even tell me you read it in her file, because words can't describe a single second of the past two weeks. She was abused and tortured enough already and I'm not letting you torment her any further. And if you say another word about her staying here, God help me but you will know how the glass from your fake glasses feels in your eyes."

Laura manages to walk behind the corner when her legs finally give up, and she feels her head sway backwards, but two soft hands hold her.

"Laura, hold on for a while more. Just a few minutes. Do it for me, please, I know you can. Just keep walking. I love you," she hears and it's enough to gather all the remaining strength and walk again, Margot's arm around her waist.

It's bright, sunny day, when they exit the hospital. Just like the day when Mason killed Margot, as he told her. But Margot is right next to her, big blue eyes are saying it's real, so that means Mason didn't kill her. It also means the tiniest sparkle of hope. Laura reaches up and puts her hand on Margot's cheek.

Before she can say something, someone who smells familiar, like men's cologne Werewolf by Hermès and women's Magic by Cartier, her aunt Vera, is holding her, and Laura feels how her body stiffens. She loves Vera, but she can't feel her right now, she can't feel anyone but Margot. Yet, she keeps reminding herself to stay still, and Vera eventually pulls back.

"You have no idea how happy I am right now," says Vera and kisses her on her cheek. Laura tries to smile. It comes out as a pained face, but she's glad to see her, and such an outburn of emotions from Vera‘s side means she was really scared out of her mind.

"I missed you, Vera," she manages to say, and her aunt gives her one of her rare, genuine smiles. Hamish is there also, he's always there of course, but he's smart enough not to touch her, so he just talks to her a little, and Laura is able to answer him. She watches him intertwine his fingers with Vera's, and even though it hurts like hell to move, she spuns around fast, because what if Margot disappeared -

She's there. The most beautiful woman on Earth, and she comes to her, takes her face in hands, eyes shining with emotions.

"I'm so sorry I let him hurt you," whispers Margot with a sharp, pained end in her voice. Laura shakes her head.

"I would let him to do it again and again and again if it would guarantee me your safety."

Margot cries when she kisses her on lips. "Let's get you home."

Hamish drives. Vera sits in the passenger seat and has her hand placed over his on the stick shift, but her eyes are trained on Laura in the rearview mirror. Laura knows, feels it, but refuses to look back at her, or open her eyes at all. Margot has her arm around her, breathes softly in her hair, and Laura wants to be like this forever. But after roughly half an hour, Hamish parks in front of the apartment building.

"We're here," he says, as if it isn't obvious, and Margot moves, so Laura has to move too. They all get out of the car and if the world wouldn't be so hazy, Laura would probably be surprised to see Vera with watery eyes.

"Be safe, Laura, please, " she says, and it contains more of everything than million of words.

"You too," answers Laura, and this time, she feels ready enough to shake Hamish's hand. His touch isn't uncomfortable, and Laura thinks it's simply because it's Hamish, and she already knows him as a partner of her aunt.

Eventually they get into Margot's apartment. She was there before, but it feels different now. Margot brushes the hair from the side of her head.

"Are you hungry?"

"No," the redhead answers. "Can I... Take a shower please?"

"You don't have to ask," assures her the beautiful black haired woman, and opens the bathroom door.

"Will you go with me?" Laura hates herself for asking, but she can't be alone now. Margot wears the kindest smile and nods.

They go to the bathroom together. Margot starts to undress her. Laura‘s body is so scarred, edges jagged, it looks like someone - not someone, Mason, wanted to rip her into tiny pieces.

"Margot, stop. I'm - hideous. Don't look at me," the ginger woman whispers, and Margot stands up and circles her arms around her.

"Laura, my sweet, beautiful baby, you're the most gorgeous woman I've ever laid my eyes on. These scars are a reminder of how brave and heroic you are. Don't you ever say you're hideous, please, it's not true at all."

The redhead whimpers and Margot understands she's coming to the breaking point. She quickly undresses herself, helps her into the shower, turns water on, sits down and Laura collapses against her. Margot pulls her closer to her chest, also scarred, and kisses her hair, temples, cheeks, jawbones, everywhere she reaches, while Laura cries a river, sobs wracking her even worse than in the hospital.

"I love you," whispers Margot, and repeats it over and over, until the water is cold and Laura calmer. She picks her up from the tub and almost winces at the fact she's light as a feather.

In the bedroom, shades closed but dim light from a little lamp on, because Mason kept her in dark and Laura is scared, Margot kisses every single one of her scars and then holds her. When Laura finally falls asleep, completely exhausted, the dark haired woman remembers their first encounter, and how Laura was the strong one, assuring her that Mason Verger is going to be punished, and how she believed the young, fierce lawyer every word. How their meetings shifted from professional to personal. She can almost feel the champagne taste of their first kiss.

And here they are, a year after, and the only person punished is Laura. Because Margot loves her, and she loves Margot.

She doesn't go to sleep, and in a less than a hour, she brushes nightmare away from Laura's face with her hand, reminds her she loves her, and that she's safe now.

She's more than ready to face the difficult months that are ahead of them.

She watches in awe when Laura goes fully back to her lawyer mode only a week after, but slowly, the awe turns to worries. It's understandable she wants justice for Mason, but it eats her alive. Margot begs Vera to do something, and Vera does - she literally forbids her niece to enter the Blue Rose building. Laura understands quickly it's Margot behind it, and screams at her on top of her lungs for solid hour, before something breaks inside her and in a second, she's crying, kissing her face, begging for forgiveness. Margot simply hugs her and that's it, their first big fight is over.

The night before the trial is warm, stars are shining brightly together with almost full moon, and light breeze plays with the curtains in their bedroom. They go to sleep early, but when midnight passes, Laura sighs, throws blanket away and goes to stand on the balcony. Margot joins her after few minutes. „It’s going to be alright,“ says Laura, and Margot can’t pinpoint who she wants to assure more. „As long as we’re rogether, it is alright,“ she answers.

When morning creeps through the curtains, Laura rises from the bed and dresses herself into a white shirt and black skirt. She also puts black tights on and crowns the whole outfit with black heels. „You look like Vera,“ muses Margot. Laura smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes and it’s visible she’s totally focused on the trial.

The courtroom is full. Vera and Hamish are there, her psychologist Alana Bloom is there, even Elizabeth Kepler, that lawyer bitch who is responsible for Laura’s kidnapping and Mason’s escaping, because she left them alone and unguarded, is spotted. Vera kicked her out of the office and made sure she will never get a job as a lawyer again when she found out, and Margot is beyond satisfied with it.

Vera seated next to her almost flips over when she sees who is Mason’s lawyer, and of course it’s Edward Coventry, with a sly grin on his face, and when the actual trial starts, Margot understands he’s good, very good. He throws away evidence after evidence, and the judge seems to believe him.

„It looks like there isn’t enough evidence against Mr. Verger,“ he says after 3 excruciating hours. At that, Laura closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. Then she rises from her seat and starts to unbutton her shirt. Margot trembles at the sight, Vera crushes Hamish’s hand, and Mason’s face gets new shade of grey with every single button.

It doesn’t take long and Laura is standing in front of the judge and with her back to the whole courtroom in her underwear and thigths only. „My body is the evidence you need,“ she says, and even though Margot can’t see it, she knows there are tears streaming down her beautiful face.

„I wake up and go to sleep every day with these scars, and I will do so for the rest of my life. But I don’t care to be honest, because it’s not only me he tortured. It was his sister mainly, someone who falls asleep next to me in the evening, and I see her scars, and it hurts me way more than this mess of mine. She went through fucking hell and back several times, and if for nothing else, he has to be punished for doing this to his own blood. Is this finally enough?“

The judges is shocked and feels like he needs to vomit. His daughter is probably the same age as this young lawyer in front of him, and if someone did this to her, he would probably kill the one behind it. And from the ashened face of Mr. Verger, he really does believe it was him.

Laura wins, of course. There is no place for debate after what she showed to everyone there. As soon as the judge gives the judgment – death sentence – and releases them, Laura stands up and goes straight to Margot’s embrace, breathing out in relief.

Later, when night slowly sets above the city, Margot finds her sitting on their bed, crumpled paper with the judgment in hands. „What’s wrong?“ Margot asks. Laura slowly lifts her eyes to her. „Does – does that make me a monster too? That I’m happy he’s gonna die but at the same I know there are better ways to kill him? What’s the difference between me and him if I feel this way?“

Quick, firm „no!“ comes from Margot. She shifts so she can bring Laura closer. „No, love. You don’t want every man on Earth dead, do you? It’s only Mason, and he’s gonna get what he deserves. And we’re being gracious here, because he deserves much more than one simple, quick death.“ Silence falls between them for a while. „What better ways?“

Laura swallows. „I was… You know, I think it would be… good… if one of his fucking eels would suffocate him.“ Margot wants to laugh, because the would be one hell of a death for Mason, but when the redhead whispers „make love to me, Margot“ pleadingly, she lets her sadistic brother go, and concentrate her whole being on kissing her lover. It’s tender, slow, full of admiration, and Laura tells her milion times over how much she loves her, and that she will love her forever.

Mason Verger gets electric chair two weeks after. Margot wants to watch it, but Laura talks her out of it. „How about we let the past bet he past?“ she says, and it’s the strong, fierce, insanely beautiful lawyer in her again, the one Margot fell in love with. Mason didn’t break her at all. So during the time of his death, they go for a walk instead, scarred hand in scarred hand, sweet lips against sweet lips, both women finally free.

It’s ordinary Tuesday a few weeks after, when Laura storms through the door. She was at the court and it wasn’t nice. Images of blood and records of screams for help. The woman was torturing her husband, Laura’s client, and Laura realizes everyone can be the bad one. She also realizes how fragile is the thing called happiness, and that she doesn’t want Margot’s, hers, theirs happines be destroyed. So she pulls a little box out of her purse, kneels in front of Margot, who is cooking dinner, and asks her to marry her. Margot cries happy tears and says yes. The dinner ends up burnt but they can’t care less.

Vera and Hamish surprise them with pregnancy announcement. It’s a little hesitant, especially when they know Mason made sure to forbid Margot from having children, but she beams at them, and everything feels alright. Months go rather fast and suddenly it’s August, and Isabelle Duke meets the world. Hamish is dad for the first time and Vera is frightened she will lose Isabelle just like she lost Katharine, so they’re both scared, but thrilled over the moon, and it’s obvious the baby has the most loving parents.

Isabelle turns six months just two weeks before the wedding. Future wives picked a gift, but Margot is a little ill, so Laura goes to see her – their – family alone. Her wedding dress is already in their bedroom, next to Margot’s, and they exchange a dozen of last-before-I-go kisses, because just the thought of the wedding is making them both incredibly soft.

„I really have to go,“ the ginger eventually sighs. Margot watches her with her big blue eyes, filled with so much love it makes her breath hitch. „I know. I wish I could go with you. Kiss Isabelle from me, okay? And tell her I can’t wait to dance with her on our wedding.“ „You act like I’m gonna let you go out of my arms, baby,“ answers Laura with a smirk, and leans to get another kiss. „I love you, Margot.“ „I love you too, honey,“ says Margot, and kisses her. „I’ll be back in two hours tops,“ promises the younger girl, and finally goes.

She never comes back home.

Instead of wedding dress, Margot wears black skirt, black shirt, black coat, and holds a bouquet of white roses. Her eyes are crimson red and her throat hurts, because of all those tears and screams. She still doesn’t believe it, she doesn’t believe that life can be so cruel to take the whole world away from her when things went the good way for once. This isn’t fair. They don’t deserve it. Laura didn’t deserve it. And it’s a fucking irony the funeral is today, on their wedding day.

Vera seated next to her holds Isabelle tightly, and silently cries in Hamish’s embrace. She should probably comfort Laura’s aunt, but she has no energy for that. Even breathing hurts. Everything hurts. Mason and his torturing feels like some game against this kind of pain. For a moment, she hates Isabelle. If it wouldn’t be for her, Laura would never cross the road, and an eighteen-year-old, drunk man behind the BMW steering wheel would never kill her. But it’s not the baby girl’s fault.

It’s her own. She was a fool when she thought that she could be happy, that she could love without sacrifices, that universe is somehow repaying her for all those years bounded with Mason. Turns out Mason was only a prequel.

She goes to the open coffin. Laura is lying there, her young face is beautiful as ever, but the eyes under the soft eyelids are not loving and kind anymore. There is just blackness and nothingness, just like inside Margot. Her body is still alive, but the real Margot Verger died on the road also.

„I love you, Laura,“ she whispers brokenly. „I do. I will always do.“ She wears her wedding ring, and Laura’s is strung on one of the roses. Margot wants her to have it. Maybe it will lead her closer to Margot once they will both be at place of no return. „Wait for me, please,“ she says with one last kiss on her cold, non responding, dead lips. The fact there is no answer breaks her once again, and she wishes for some black hole to swallow her. As every single of her wishes, this one also falls on deaf ears.

That night, lying in her cold bed alone, she realizes she doesn’t feel it. Every heart needs a beat, but she doesn’t feel it. Her heartbeat was buried today under a pile of clay.

She presses her face to Laura’s pillow, breathes in her scent, and cries her dead, empty heart out.

#fanfiction #Vera Stone #OC #Hamish Duke #Margot Verger #Laura Stone #Hannibal #The Order #I'm just weird #don't mind me #but let me know your thoughts #yes this was originally a dream #and yes I'm even more weird than you think #vermish

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ma-sulevin · 4 years

Photo

Things? Are happening?

Pairing: Sharky Boshaw/Female Deputy Rating: E Warnings: Canon-typical violence, but nothing particularly explicit I don’t think Word Count: 6269, chapter six of thirteen (probably).

Read it on AO3 instead and say nice things.

—

“I got a sneakin’ suspicion,” Sharky says as they walk into the main intersection of Fall’s End to find it absolutely abandoned, “that the peggies ain’t takin’ too kindly to our escapades.”

Mattie makes a little humming noise as she looks at someone’s empty dresser at the corner. “What gives you that idea, Shark?”

He clutches his shotgun a little tighter, keeps swiveling his head back and forth to see what’s waiting for them. With the way Boomer’s trotting happily between them, though, Mattie knows there aren’t any peggies nearby.

“Just a wild guess,” he mutters, and moves in a little closer.

The only building in Fall’s End that looks like it has people inside is the church, and that’s only because John’s really fucked it up. Mattie and Sharky stand on the other side of the street and stare at everything: the bliss flowers, the arch, the crows nailed to the siding, the literal red carpet that John’s rolled out for her.

“Yeah, that’s real creepy,” Sharky says. “Told you John wants to fuck you.”

Mattie elbows him instead of responding, but she has to admit the decorations make the church look a little… matrimonial.

Finally, she draws in a deep steadying breath. “Fortunately, he’s not on my to-fuck list,” she says, and then she forces out the rest of her thought before Sharky can ask who is on the list, because that’s not really something she’s ready to think about when facing a recaptured Fall’s End and a church full of hostages. “Stay out here, stay hidden, and if you see anything weird or hear anything weird, call for backup, okay?”

“Dep, I don’t--”

“I know you don’t want to wait, but I need you to be able to call for help.” She turns to him, tugs on his sleeve a little. “Can I count on you?”

He sighs, he fidgets, he looks away, and then finally he sighs again and makes eye contact. “You can count on me. Just… just be safe, okay?”

She winks at him with levity she doesn’t feel. “Always.”

They bump fists once before she squares her shoulders and passes under the arch to get to the church. She can hear low murmuring inside, but she’s still surprised when she pulls the door open and a peggie slams the butt of his rifle into her forehead.

---

It says something about how much Hope County has changed over the last few weeks that hunting a human man across the mountain doesn’t feel wrong. Instead, she’s painfully calm, laser-focused on finding John before he can regain consciousness and run back to Joseph.

She saw him jump out of his plane just before she jumped from hers. She saw Nick make one last strafing run, aiming bullets from Carmina toward his already limp body and his parachute. She doesn’t blame Nick for that, not after what happened in the church, not after all the bad blood between John and Nick specifically, and really it means her next step should be a little easier.

When she finally finds John, the front of her tank and the remains of her flannel stained with blood from her angry WRATH tattoo, he’s still stubbornly trying to get away even though his injuries are almost overwhelming him. His coat with the little planes is torn, covered in blood and mud and who knows what else, and the sight is enough to make her pause when he looks up at her.

“It isn’t too late,” he says, trying to charm her until the end. “You can still say Yes, save yourself, come with us into Eden’s Gate.”

He coughs, and it’s bloody. He wipes at his lips and slips in the mud, landing hard on his hip as his feet slide out from under him. He groans and doesn’t try to get up, just takes deep, rasping breaths.

She holsters her pistol and walks over to kneel at his side. He blinks at her, hands in his lap, and she sighs, her Wrath warring with pity at his obvious pain.

“It’s not too late for you ,” she says, finally, not really believing the words or thinking he’ll accept them, but she makes the offer anyway. “I can take you to town, get you medical care. You’ll be under arrest, but it’ll save your life.”

He laughs at her, a full laugh, and sprays blood into the air when it fades off into another wet cough. “You say you want to save my life, but you would damn it at the same time. What if Joseph is right? Did you ever stop to think about that? Everyone thinks he’s crazy, but he’s not.”

Okay. Well. She gave him a chance.

She loses patience, that little blossom of pity finally choked out by her blooming anger, and she reaches out to grab for his key anyway. He grabs her wrist once her fingers are around it, holding on with enough strength to bruise if she pulls away too hard.

They’re at a stalemate. She won’t let go of the key; he won’t let go of her.

“Look around you. This world is on the brink. You can feel it in your bones. Look at the headlines! Look who’s in charge!” He laughs again, coughs, then somehow tightens his grip even more. “You want this key because you think you’re saving people, but they are already safe. We had a plan .”

His breath catches in his throat, his eyebrows drawing together, and even this close and with him this hurt, she can’t tell how much is him being serious and how much is him acting to draw her in. She pulls him closer with the key and puts her free hand on his cheek without thinking about it, not sure what to do when he leans into the touch.

“You don’t understand. You don’t believe! You don’t care! ” He pushes her away with both hands, and she slips in the mud and falls to a seat next to him.

The cord holding the key around his neck breaks, and the only thing holding them together is his death grip on her wrist.

She bares her teeth to him, the instinctive warning sign of her anger that she doesn’t know how to stop.

He doesn’t care. He just takes another rattling breath, and this close she can see his eyes starting to lose their focus. He’s not quite looking at her anymore; he’s almost looking through her when he says, “May God have mercy on your soul.”

His hand on her wrist goes slack; his fingers slip away and he falls to the side, breathless, lifeless, empty before her as though he never had any life in him at all.

She pushes two fingers against his still-warm skin, expertly searching for a pulse.

She doesn’t find one.

He’s gone.

She could -- she should, according to the law and her training and the gut instinct that drove her to become an EMT and then a police officer -- perform CPR, radio for help, get his heart beating, save his life, make him answer for his crimes. Her eyes prick, burn with unshed tears that she refuses to let escape. She will not cry over this man.

He doesn’t deserve her tears. He doesn’t deserve her pity or her grief.

She has the key. She needs to get Joey.

Her hands are shaking when she pulls her radio to her mouth, her voice steady as she says, “You still up there, Nick? Have time for one more run with me? Over.”

It only takes a moment for his voice to come back. “ Just tell me where. Over. ”

---

Sneaking into John’s bunker is easier than sneaking out of it. She still gets horribly turned around and dies three times, all in different spots, and it’s not until she’s made it into the bowels of the bunker where someone (she assumes John) has corpses strung up and turned into gruesome sculptures like he watched one too many episodes of the Hannibal TV series and decided that was the kind of aesthetic he needed in his bunker that she finds what she’s looking for.

Joey Hudson, Hope County native, Mattie’s supervising officer and friend… already free, moving under her own power, and trying to gut Mattie with a knife probably liberated from the first peggie who got too close to her.

If she wasn’t afraid for her life, she’d be so proud.

They struggle, Mattie simply trying to keep the knife away from her skin, not even attempting to disarm Joey in case that made her lose it even more. How long has she been down here, killing peggies one at a time as they got too close? Running on adrenaline and nothing else, praying for John to come back so she could slit his throat?

Mattie manages to gasp out Joey’s name, one more time, and that seems like enough to pull her attention back to the present, to Rook’s ruined flannel, to her face , and the fight just wilts out of her.

“Rook? It’s you? Oh, God...” Joey sits back, already starting to shake, and Mattie follows her to take the knife away. “I didn’t think you’d come back,” she says, voice shaking, and just that is enough to make exhausted tears come to Mattie’s eyes.

“Oh, Jo…” Mattie reaches out, following her instinctual need to pull Joey into her arms, but Joey flinches away.

“Something started happening ,” she says instead, bracing her hands against the metal floor like she’s going to push herself to her feet. “All the, all the fucking peggies started scrambling around, all the doors started closing and locking us inside,” she gasps for breath, the terror flooding back to her like it’s still happening and she’s not on the verge of freedom. “I thought I was gonna be down here forever…”

She gasps again and a tear slips free despite her obvious effort to hold it in, and Mattie reaches out for her again, tears of sympathy and rage and guilt welling in her own eyes. Joey allows the contact for as long as it takes her to catch her breath, just a moment before she pulls away and uses Mattie’s shoulder to push herself up to a standing position.

Mattie follows, hands out to catch Joey in case she trips, but Joey shakes off that attention too.

“It’s all because of him ,” Joey says, voice trembling but this time in rage instead of fear. She points her knife at one of the portraits -- honest to God portraits -- of Joseph that dot the bunker, this one in the lap of a dead peggie. “That fucking, that fucking piece of shit !”

Mattie has to cover her mouth to stop from crying out when Joey picks the portrait up and slams it into the floor, shattering the glass with a grunt of effort. She can’t stop the tears that come from seeing her friend so hurt, can’t stop the flinch that shakes her whole body when Joey falls to her knees by the broken frame.

“He would come down here, and he would just stand there and watch.” Joey’s voice breaks, and she shakes her head a little as if to clear it as Mattie forces herself closer, hand dropping to her side and a deep discomfort radiating from her chest. She wants to gather Joey up in her arms, but that’s not what she needs right now.

She just needs Mattie to listen.

“We were begging for mercy,” she says, glancing up at Mattie as her voice breaks again -- not into tears this time, but into laughter, “and he would just fucking watch.”

She laughs until the laughter turns into a sob, and she shoves the portrait away. Mattie tries once more to comfort, putting her hand on Joey’s shoulder, and this time… it seems to finally work. Joey takes a steadying breath, pulling her emotions back in check with the same determination that makes her such a good deputy, and starts to push herself upright.

“The others… there were other people down here with me. We’re going to get them out.”

She’s so strong, so fierce, and Mattie remembers the woman she met on her first official day with the department, the woman who had teased her and made fun of Staci and offered to take the lead on Mattie’s training since Mattie should learn from a real cop.

Mattie finds herself nodding, because she can’t say no.

---

Mattie slips away from the party as soon as she can, a little buzzed, sore all over, the memory of how far gone Joey was rattling unpleasantly in the back of her skull. The music is loud, but the cold night air dulls it as the door to the Spread Eagle swings shut behind her. She exhales sharply and rests her beer bottle on the porch railing while she pats her pockets down for a cigarette.

“I got you, chica.”

Sharky appears at her side, grim faced, a fresh pack in his outstretched hand. She swipes it from him and leans against his side as she pulls the cellophane off and waits, trusting, for his lighter to appear in front of her. Tears fill her eyes when it does, and she blinks hard to send them away.

This is a time for celebration, not for tears.

“What number you up to now?” He holds her left wrist in one hand and pushes at her long sleeve with the other, trying to expose enough of her skin to see how many black marks now mar it.

She allows the touch even though she knows he has no chance of seeing enough, enjoying his warm, dry hands on her skin. She wants to sink into the touch, let it consume her, warm her all over so she can think about something other than the shit show that is Hope County. She takes a deep drag on her cigarette instead, then turns her head to the side to exhale two lungfuls of smoke and poison.

“An even forty.”

He stops pushing at her sleeve and just holds her instead, waiting until she looks up at him. He's already staring at her, eyes boring into her soul, and she falls silent and still under his gaze.

He sighs. He doesn't like whatever he sees. “C’mon, there's a fire over here’ll warm you up.” He turns but doesn't release her as he starts to move, dragging her through the cheery streets of Falls End. Everyone is out celebrating, and here she is letting Sharky boss her around because she can't bear the happiness for another second.

True to Sharky's word, there is a small (and actually fairly well contained) fire in the backyard of an empty house. There are two chairs facing the flames, a cooler between them. Her breath catches in her throat -- he planned this.

He set this up; he started the fire, he found and moved the chairs, he filled the cooler… He found a fresh pack of cigarettes because he knew she'd be out and would want one after everything, even though she's constantly complaining about her own bad habit.

He releases her wrist and sits in one of the chairs, and she floats along behind him and sits in the other. She can't feel the cold of the night air, just the warmth of the fire and the warmth of his gaze on her face.

“You do all this for me, Boshaw?”

He ducks his head as he's digging through the cooler, embarrassed, and doesn't quite meet her eyes when he hands her a beer. “I just thought you'd like some peace’n quiet. You're, uh, you're kind of my best friend. You're doing all this for all of us, and someone has to look out for you too.”

It's too much. It's too much. She can't handle this.

“You're still gonna be my friend after all this, right? It was kinda lonely without you.”

Okay. Okay. This is enough.

She puts her unopened beer on the ground and flicks her half-smoked cigarette into the fire. Sharky lifts his brows at her, but doesn't have time to say another word before she climbs into his lap and presses her lips to his.

He gasps and grabs for her waist as his lips part, and she matches his expression by opening her lips too. She sinks into him, into his warmth and gentle caresses, so at odds with how he faces every other situation. He slides his hands up her back, tickling her spine, until he can bury his fingers in her hair.

He pulls her away, just enough to break their kiss, and she rests her forehead against his. She rests her hands on his shoulders, fingers slowly curling into the soft material of his hoodie.

“You… uh, you feelin’ okay?�� His voice is low and hoarse, and she shivers before she can repress the urge.

“Mhm…” She trails off and sits up, but she doesn’t let go of his hoodie. “I just… you’re so sweet, Sharky, and I…” She bites her lip, suddenly uncertain even though he’s still holding her just as tight as he was when she climbed in his lap. “I couldn’t not kiss you.”

He’s staring at her lips. “Oh. Uh. Yeah. Okay. Why, uh, why though?”

She licks her lips and he tightens his grip on her hair, just a bit, like he can't help it. “I wanted to.”

He blinks and looks back up at her eyes, and her breath catches in her throat when she sees the firelight dancing orange across his skin.

“You did?”

“Yeah. I mean, I do .” She releases his hoodie and slides her hands up to cup his jaw. Her fingers rasp through his days-old stubble and tilt his neck up just a little. “You're great, Sharky. You care about me so goddamn much, and I…” She barely stops herself from saying too much, from scaring him with how deep her affections are already running, how fast she’s fallen in love. “Can I kiss you more?”

He nods, fast, like he's not sure if she’s going to change her mind or not, and then she’s kissing him again and it feels so good she's not sure what to do with herself besides lean into it.

It’s everything she could have asked for, better than she ever expected it to be. His body is warm against hers, his kisses eager, his tongue almost delicate where it brushes against hers. She leans into him, settles more heavily into his lap, and he moves his hands down her back to her hips and back up, slow soothing motions that make her melt.

He's holding her like she's the most precious thing he's ever touched, even when she weaves her fingers through his hair and tugs. He moans, a quiet wounded noise into her mouth that she happily swallows, and then she pulls away just enough to slip her hands under his hoodie so she can touch his warm skin.

It feels right, being curled up around him, the heat of him against her front contrasting with the heat of the fire against her back. His goatee scratches her chin, his callouses tickle her waist as he mirrors her and slips his hands under her shirt. She moans into his mouth and he echoes her, a feedback loop of pleasure building between them until she has to tear her mouth free to catch her breath.

Sharky doesn’t let her go far, pulling her hips closer to his and moving his mouth across her jaw and down her neck. He catches her skin with his teeth, tugging with just the barest of pressure before moving on to the next spot, smiling against her when she squirms in his grip and lets out a too-loud moan.

He kisses back up to her ear, licks the spot just underneath it, tries to whisper without really lowering his voice at all, “You’re so fuckin’ hot. I’ve been thinkin’ about this for weeks.” He nips at her earlobe, tugs a little, groaning right back at her when she shivers.

“Really? Weeks?” The arms of the chair are pinching her knees, making her thighs hurt, but she moves her fingers up to tangle in his hair. She tugs, too hard, and his hips fruitlessly jerk up into hers when she pulls his face away so she can see him. Interesting. “We’ve only been hanging out for weeks .”

He shrugs and grins at her, smile lopsided and beautiful. There’s no embarrassment in his gaze. “I guess I just know what I like.” He tries to kiss her again, but she won’t let him move. He shivers and bites his lower lip, and she smiles.

She can work with that.

“And what do you like?”

He doesn’t hesitate, the truth slipping from his lips with ease. “You.”

She can’t stop herself from kissing him again, and she doesn’t want to. He wraps both his arms around her, holding her close as his tongue slides against hers, the kiss deep and wet and intimate. He holds her as tight as she’s holding him, gives as good as he gets, until she feels like she’s going to die if she doesn’t feel his skin against hers.

“Sharky, do you, mphm-- ” He kisses her again mid-sentence, cutting her off, and she laughs against his mouth, too delighted to remember anything else. “C’mon, baby. Where are you staying in town?”

He groans and nuzzles against her neck, unwilling at first to break away to answer her, but finally he sits back and takes a deep breath of the crisp night air. “There’s, uh, there’s some empty houses around the corner? I put our stuff in one of them.”

“Want to show me?”

He nods, then, and she pushes herself off of him, grunting when her legs unfold from under her weight. She picks up the cooler of beer and waits until he stands too, trying and failing to hide her smirk when he carefully shifts his weight from side to side and tucks one hand into the deep pocket of his jeans to adjust his erection.

She slips her hand into his free one before he can get embarrassed, chewing on the inside of her lip as she waits for him to lead her in the right direction. He does, but not before leaning down to grab one more kiss from her. He’s not so tall that she has to reach up on her tiptoes, but she does have to tilt her neck back to get the angle right; she’s suddenly sure, standing here in the middle of Fall’s End, that she should have started kissing him when they were still in the Henbane, back when he sat on the floor and held her hand while she cried in her sleep.

He pulls away when he remembers what he’s supposed to be doing, tightens his hold on her hand like he’s afraid she’s going to change her mind before they make it to the house he’s claimed on the edge of town. She vaguely remembers the family who used to live here, good people she hopes made it out of the county before everything went to shit, but she tries not to think about them as she leaves the cooler on their kitchen counter and lets Sharky pull her up a winding and narrow set of stairs to get to the upper floor.

The lights are already on like Sharky’s been here and left, and she has enough time to notice old sheets in the corner and fresh ones on the bed before Sharky pulls her close and tilts her face up to his with her jaw in his hand. She smiles up at him, slipping her free hand under his hoodie to press against the warmth of his stomach. He twitches under her touch, flexing a little, and her smile grows.

“Were you, uh, hoping for something here?” She’s teasing, she always teases, but he just glances over her shoulder at the bed before his cheeks flare red.

“No, uh, this was for you? I was gonna sleep down the hall. Just thought you deserved somethin’ nice after everything. You know -- a good fire, cold beer, clean sheets? A night of peace finally.”

Her breath catches in her throat and tears prick at her eyes again, just like they did when they were still outside, and she steps away before she can stop herself. She can’t handle this much affection right now; it threatens to overwhelm her, pull her good mood down into tears.

She pulls at the hem of his hoodie instead, pulling it up. “Take this off,” she says, voice rough, and he obeys without question.

By the time he’s dropping it on the floor, she’s out of her flannel and tank, standing before him in just a bra and jeans, but he stares back at her like she’s hung the moon. It makes her want to climb inside of him, to consume whatever’s making him look like that.

Instead, she shoves him backwards toward the bed, smiling when he drops on the mattress with a soft thump. She crawls over him, pushing him until he’s flat on his back with his hands on her bare waist and his mouth attached to her neck like he’s never going to let her go.

She doesn’t want him to.

She moans and arches into his touch, leaning her head back and vaguely hoping he doesn’t leave a hickey even though she doesn’t particularly care, not when his big hands are sliding down her hips and under the waist of her jeans. He’s warm against her, stoking her own fire hotter, and she reaches behind her to undo the clasp of her bra with just a flick of her wrist. She pulls it free and drops it off the side of the bed, but the movement only serves to catch Sharky’s attention.

He releases her neck -- and, yeah, she’s definitely going to have a mark there, but who does she have to look professional for these days? -- and hauls her up his body so he can kiss farther down her chest and take her right nipple in his mouth. The movement pulls at the fresh tattoo on her chest, the wounds that are just scabbed over and definitely going to scar into something ugly, but it’s like Sharky can’t even see it. She ignores the pain and closes her eyes, focusing on the good she can feel, the way he’s making her forget every fucking thing she’s been through since the helicopter crash.

He teases her with the same enthusiasm he uses for everything else, surprising a cry out of her that he eagerly returns against her skin. She threads her fingers into his hair and holds on tight enough to hurt him, holding his face against her chest like anything short of a gun to his head would make him pull away now.

He doesn’t pull away. If anything, he pushes closer, sitting up and switching from her left breast to her right, paying that nipple the same dedicated attention he had the first one. It’s overwhelming; she aches to have him inside of her, and when she settles her weight against the hardness she can feel still trapped in his jeans, he moans brokenly and moves to capture her lips with his.

This kiss is messy, rough. She bites at him and he bites at her in return, the sharp pricks of pain muddling her brain until she can’t think about anything else, but that’s just the way she wants it.

She yanks the ratty old tanktop he’s still wearing up, stretching it almost to the point of tearing, releasing it only when he finally leans back and pulls it fully off. She pushes him back down onto his back when she has room to move, scooting back to sit on his thighs so she can pry his belt open and try to shimmy his jeans down before he latches his teeth back into her skin.

He’s still wearing his boots, so he has to pull away to undress himself. Again, she takes advantage of this and shucks off her jeans and boots too, self conscious, just for a second, that she hasn’t had time to take care of her body the way she always has. She starts to blush, to cover herself, suddenly back in her head and keenly aware of how her first boyfriend had insisted she stay shaved if they were going to have sex, but Sharky…

Sharky’s eyes are dark and his cheeks are pink and his cock is standing proud and hard between his thighs. He’s hairy too, across his chest and a thin trail down his stomach that thickens at the base of his cock. He’s staring at her, one hand wrapping around himself, the other reaching out until she moves back into his space on the bed.

“Do you know how fuckin’ hot you are?” His voice is low, rough, and she shivers as his calloused fingers skim her waist. “I can’t believe you’re really here.” His hand moves steadily higher, cupping her breast as he adds, almost like he’s accidentally voicing a thought, “Is this a Bliss dream, or what?”

She answers by capturing his lips with hers, biting again, one hand steadying herself on his waist as the other wraps around his cock. He groans into her, both hands moving to cup her jaw, a heady kind of desperation in his clutching fingers.

He stops kissing her and just rests his forehead against hers as she pumps him, steady movements and a firm grip making him shudder and twitch against her.

“Please,” she rasps, “ please tell me you have a condom.”

It takes him a minute to answer, but his words are like music to her ears. “There are, uh, actually some in the bathroom. Guess they didn’t make the emergency packing list.”

Relief flows through her even as she traces the tips of her fingers over the tip of his cock, a teasing touch over silky skin and beading precome. He groans deep in his throat, holding her almost too tight against the teasing pleasure of her skin against his, and it takes him several full seconds to realize she’s trying to get him to move when she says, “Go get one, then.”

When her words sink in, he practically throws her off him and onto the mattress so he can scramble past her out into the hall. She laughs, delighted at his enthusiasm, and stretches out on the sheets with her head on the pillow. It smells of unfamiliar detergent, but it’s the cleanest thing she’s slept on in days.

She stretches out on the clean sheets, joints popping as she forces them to their limits, and then she relaxes with her hands above her head and her lower lip captured between her teeth. She can hear Sharky bumping around the bathroom, each of his movements too loud and enthusiastic to be confined indoors, and she smiles.

Under any other circumstances, she would have laughed at the idea of her and Charlemagne Boshaw spending any time together at all, much less sneaking away from a town celebration to have sex. Everything else just adds to the uniqueness she’s facing -- where would she be if she hadn’t tried to arrest Joseph in the church? Where would she be if she had stayed dead any of the times she should have stayed dead?

Sharky comes back before she can get stuck in that line of thought, snapping her back to the present moment with a wolf whistle and the shuffle of foil-wrapped condoms shuffling around in a half-empty box.

Her eyes open and she smiles at him, considering for half a second before she draws herself up on her knees to reach for him. He lets her direct him to sit against the headboard, lets her take the condoms from him, opens a package and rolls one on when she hands it to him while she leans in and bites at his neck.

She doesn’t wait one second longer than necessary before she moves over him, bracing her knees on either side of his hips and holding onto his shoulders to steady herself as she begins to lower herself down. He works with her, one hand on her waist, the other holding himself steady, and then… he’s inside of her, inching slowly deeper, stretching her and filling her and she really can’t remember what took her so long to kiss him.

“ Holy shit, Mat.” Sharky draws out the holy until he bottoms out, then the rest of his words come out of him in a rush. His fingertips dig into the flesh of her hips, holding her still. His eyes are squeezed shut, deepening the lines around them, and she brushes her fingertips over the lines until he relaxes.

He opens his eyes and meets her gaze, giving her a wide, dopey smile. Their lips meet again, gently, though she’s not sure which of them leaned forward first, then they rest their foreheads together with twin smiles.

“Good?” She clenches around him on purpose, just to make him moan when he starts to answer.

“Fuck. Yeah. Oh my God, yes.” His fingers tighten on her hips, urging her up just enough to catch her attention. “Shit. Can you, uh, can you just…”

He trails off as she starts to move, pushing herself up higher on her knees until he’s barely inside her still, then sliding back down at the same painfully slow pace as before. Sharky groans and tilts his head back against the headboard, flexing into her like he can’t help it but not doing anything to actually make her move faster. He just waits, desperate little wimpers leaving him with each slow movement of her hips.

She clutches the headboard with both hands, using it as leverage to help her move faster against him, her movements more sure. Each drag of his cock against her makes her ratchet higher, goosebumps breaking out on her skin even as sweat gathers on her scalp, behind her knees.

Sharky opens his eyes and stares up at her, that beautiful blue dark and hungry. He slides his hands up her side as she rides him, fingers seeking out her breasts once more. He squeezes as her long thrusts turn to hard twists of her hips, grinding her clit against his pelvis and sending sparks of pleasure up her spine.

She closes her eyes first this time, overwhelmed as his rough fingers press against her nipples with more gentleness than she would have expected when they first met. It’s too much and not enough all at once, and her rhythm stutters as she begins to come.

“Fuck, Sharky, I’m…” She trails off, grabbing for his head to bring his face against hers so she can kiss him, whining the rest of her cry into his mouth. He surges forward, tongue against hers and hands back on her hips to keep her moving against him even as she shakes and forgets everything except the feeling of him against her, inside her.

He breaks their kiss and presses his face to her throat instead, growling against her skin, goatee scratching over where the bruise he left behind is still darkening. She wraps her arms around his shoulders, clutching him tight, holding him against her as he shudders through his own orgasm.

He doesn’t let go of her and she doesn’t let go of him. They cling together as they catch their breath, then Sharky’s kissing up her neck and across her jaw to her lips.

She laughs against him, loose, happy. This is exactly what she needed, and she wants to tell him how much she appreciates him, how good he’s been to her, how much she needs him now.

What comes out of her mouth, still pressed against his, is, “I love you.”

Sharky laughs, a low rumble, and shakes his head. “What? Nah.”

She pulls back enough to grab his jaw, holding his face still to look in his eyes. His face is flushed, his hair mussed, his eyes bright, and this time it looks like he believes her when she repeats, “I love you. I’m in love with you.”

It takes another second, but his smile widens until it’s blinding. “Aw, hell, Mat. I love you too.”

He kisses her again, softer, reverent, and then she has to physically push him away to give herself enough freedom to climb off of him and go clean up. She hears his heavy footsteps pass by the door, then back again a minute later, and he’s stretched out in the bed with the lights off when she makes it back to him.

She climbs in next to him, shivering a little in the autumn chill, and he pulls her body flush against his. This is better than the times they’ve fallen asleep together before, because this time they’re resting skin to skin and she can feel his heartbeat quickening as she traces her fingers up and down his side. He also has his face pressed against her hair, a smile on his lips, and she thinks she hears him repeat I love you as she’s drifting off to sleep.

#sharky boshaw #sharky x deputy #far cry 5 #oc: mattie covington #my writing

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quesselfships · 4 years

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FO February day one-Reverse Self Ship

FO: Hannibal Lecter

Rating: T for some tough themes

Warnings: TW for eating disorder talk, C-PTSD, suicidal thoughts

Links to the songs (1) (2)

Word count: 1056

Summary: Dr. Hannibal Lecter (NOT a cannibal in this iteration) is recommended a book by Jack Crawford, expected to sweep the literature awards due to its frank discussion of mental illness. And Hannibal gets a little more than he bargained for.

Dinner was, as always, divine. Jack didn’t even realize he’d like Aspic, but anything Hannibal made with that magic touch of his was incredible. He sipped at the brandy the doctor had offered as they sat in what Jack could only describe as a sitting room (God, how Victorian and pretentious but it worked on Hannibal…) talking.

“How is your wife doing?” Hannibal asked. He knew she had recently started chemotherapy and had been approved for a study at Johns Hopkins. Hannibal insisted he had nothing to do with that, of course.

“Well, the study begins in two weeks, and she’s done all the intake. She actually has a book recommendation for you.” Jack took a sip of the brandy. “It’s called Black Cat on White Sheets by Dawson Schmitt. It’s going to win all the fiction awards, so they say. It’s about a young woman struggling with mental illness. Apparently, it’s well researched and the author really gets PTSD and the hardships that come with that.”

“Well, do tell Bella I will add it to my reading list.”

Once Jack had left, and Hannibal had cleaned up and changed into his comfortable, casual clothes, he sat down with his tablet, launched his e-book app, and purchased Black Cat on White Sheets.

Driving 60 km was a lot tougher when the only thing going through your head was, if you just crashed this car then you wouldn’t have to see your father. Which was, of course, ridiculous. But the thought had been crossing her mind since Saturday. It was now Friday and while she had managed to not slice open her wrists, the scabs on her upper arms proved she hadn’t managed to not squeeze at the little skin bumps that had cropped up. Her breast was covered in them too, worse than her arm. She pushed that out of her head and flipped the song she was listening to about 30 times before settling on a heavy metal cover of a Disney song:

She’s been staring at the edge of the water 'Long as she can remember, never really knowing why She wished she could be the perfect daughter But she comes back to the water, no matter how hard she tries

The song did little to soothe the thoughts, the repetitive, obsessive, I didn’t ask to be born, why is he so obsessed with money, he chose to have a child. I would have asked to not be born…he understood the risk of having a sick child.

She laughed coldly; her father didn’t think she was sick. It had been years, three or four therapists, and medication, Lea couldn’t be suffering from PTSD anymore.

Of course, this was the same man who thought she just had “symptoms of PTSD” and not actually had PTSD. And to this day Lea still didn’t understand how that had worked. Her mom had symptoms of cancer, and thus was diagnosed. His new wife has symptoms of arthritis, and was also diagnosed. That’s kind of how a diagnosis works.

He hadn’t realized how long he had been reading until his tablet flashed the low battery warning and he glanced at the clock.

Poor girl, he thought to himself. He wished he could treat her, counsel her through these awful things. He suspected she had an eating disorder as well, though the author hadn’t said it outright. It made him sad, for food was one of his biggest pleasures, and not many doctors knew how to treat atypical anorexia. In fact, Hannibal wasn’t too sure how he could treat that. She lived in a poorer area of town, mental illness having broken a second fridge in her apartment and she was terrified to get it fixed. She simply didn’t eat when she didn’t have money, which was often. Her new job was starting soon through.

Hannibal laughed at himself, talking about her like she was real. With a grin on his face, he slipped into bed. He didn’t dream of her, and woke up a little disappointed.

Between clients he searched the internet about her. The book had a small, but prolific fanbase. There were playlists on Spotify, but only one that Hannibal thought was right for Lea. It had the songs from the book, as well as other ones he felt fit her.

As he was listening to a twisted, gothic cover of American Girl, he was sketching her. Her sad eyes behind thick plastic glasses, a gorgeous tichel draping down her back. The black and purple dress she loved.

He was a grown man, mooning over a fictional girl. But he couldn’t help it.

He thought of that final scene in the old movie Secretary, carrying her to his home, placing her into the bath and lovingly washing her hair (which alone was a more intimate act, for she didn’t uncover her hair for just anyone), dressing her in soft, plush nightgowns. He would feed her three meals a day, whatever she liked best, just to get her to eat. They could slowly expand her palette. He knew she was allergic to banana, and beef didn’t agree with her, but she was less picky than her abusive mother had thought.

She would want for nothing. He certainly had the income to support her and her two cats, she wouldn’t have to work unless she wanted to. And while he wasn’t a particularly violent man, Hannibal found himself dreaming about butchering her father, feeding her cats the meat, perfectly seasoned and fortified for a housecats diet.

He found himself thinking about showering her with gifts, with fancy dinners, to the shops she loved. Once was even local to him, in Baltimore. And the fact she wasn’t there, watching TV with her legs curled up under her when he got home from work hurt. It made his heart ache unlike he had felt before. He realized how lonely it was, to cook for himself, to not have someone there every day to share it. He loved his king-sized bed but now it felt empty.

He found himself googling theories on alternative universes, on fictional worlds being real, somewhere out there. A paper written by a PhD student at CalTech, with a proposal to study them.

He sent the student a simple email: “I want to contribute funding to your research.”

#Tag: Hannibal #Tag: Hanni #fofebruary #FO #FO fic #f/o #F/O February

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ittasteslikeiron · 4 years

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Part One: Hypermnestra

Chapter 1

“Still falling

Breathless and on again

Inside today

Beside me today”

-Mazzy Star, ‘Into Dust’

The sharp, salt-scented air bit at Will’s face and cut into his lungs with cold, serrated claws. The pain was the least of his worries, however. A heavy sigh snuck passed his lips in a combination of fatigue, contentment, and guilt. He had made up his mind the moment he leaned his head against the doctor’s chest, eyes fixed on the churning waves below the cliff, reflecting the darkness hidden beneath them. His heart twisted painfully in his chest when he felt Hannibal gently move his head closer to Will’s. Will curled his fingers around Hannibal’s shirt, ignoring the damp patches even as they clung to his touch. The blood of The Dragon still plastered their skin and clothes, clouding the air with the dense smell of metal.

The profiler’s mind was repeating back Dr. Du Maurier's words without mercy. “Can’t live with him, can’t live without him,” she had mused, her expression revealing how much she believed she understood. Just the thought of her vacantly smug expression filled his stomach with lead. She thought she knew everything; everything about Hannibal, about Will. Bedelia Du Maurier would never completely comprehend the deadly dance the two killers were trapped in, but she did manage to end up right when the dances concluded.

Hannibal was infatuated with Will in a way he hadn’t been with anyone before. His actions over the many years that he and Will had known each other were more than proof of that. So why had Will been so blind? He seemed to have been drawn to Hannibal despite never deliberately taking a step down the path he now stood at the end of. Maybe he had known, at least to a degree, that his friend’s feelings towards him had been more than conventional. The crooked scar across his abdomen could tell him that. It was as if every sign and hint had been completely obscured until then… or maybe Will had purposely obscured them.

He had let Hannibal go where no one else could step foot; Hannibal was allowed to look behind the curtain, to see Will’s mind without any barriers. Did Will know then?

He realized Hannibal’s true nature while behind bars and yet his only issue was that the killer used him as a scapegoat, not that the killer had killed. Did he know then?

He dined at Hannibal’s table under the guise of the person Hannibal clearly wanted him to be. Did he know then?

Of course, these instances don’t really clue to Hannibal being in love. Will had been the one making questionable decisions in those situations. Those decisions indicated a certain… fondness on his end. This realization made Will pause, swallowing thickly. Was Will- Did he… share Hannibal’s sentiment? Part of him was saying that was obvious. Trips to Europe and certain corpses lying mere feet from him just then gave that away completely.

But of course, that made this so much harder to do. A stab of guilt pierced his heart and he bit down on his tongue to quiet his discomfort. He relaxed in the psychiatrist's arms, fighting back a sob when he felt Hannibal do the same. He took a deep breath and tipped them both off of the cliff. All it took was a gentle redistribution of his weight and they were suspended over the sea, plummeting at a concerning speed. Hannibal didn’t say anything, nor did he fight back. His arms remained wrapped around Will, as if to say that he understood. The two men just held each other tighter and Will braced himself before they hit the water.

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The gravel of the driveway crunched beneath Jack’s feet as he approached the house. The sound of it seemed to be replaced by words that had been spoken to him many years ago. Waves of conversations with Alana, Katz, Hannibal, and even Will himself were filling the empty spaces of his skull. He knew, He knew that something was off with Will when he left. There was something in the man’s eyes that gave away his guilt, but Jack had said nothing. Jack had assumed he was overthinking. He pulled Will from a happy life with a happy family only to throw him back into the viper pit that was interacting with Hannibal Lecter. Whatever he was about to find would be his own fault, wouldn’t it?

His thoughts were interrupted by an officer from the local department stepping forward to show him to the front of the house. Once he had stepped inside, an unnamed forensic called for Jimmy Price and Brian Zeller to come back inside the house. They didn’t greet Jack with their usual mild and cheery demeanors. Jimmy’s eyes hadn’t left his feet and Zeller seemed to find a spot on the wall more captivating than the task at hand.

“So,” Jack prompted, his voice leaving his throat in a rougher state than he intended. He cleared his throat before he continued, “what’s the damage?”

Jimmy grimaced and looked away, leaving Zeller to do the introductions.

“Well… it might be easier to explain if we do a walk through,” Zeller offered reluctantly, knowing Jack would take the situation hard. He headed towards a bedroom to their right with Jack and Jimmy in tow. He gestured vaguely to the on suite bathroom and the folded jumpsuit on the bed as he repeated his and Jimmy’s findings. “We can assume that Hannibal showered and changed, Will did too if you look into the guest bedroom across the hall. Then they had dinner,” he headed out into the dining room and pointed towards the kitchen, “not sure what… or who… they had just yet.” There was an uncomfortable silence after Zeller stopped talking. It was quite obvious that everyone was desperately trying not to think of the man they considered a friend eating what used to be a person with the man that killed their coworker… the man that had murdered the ever-witty Beverly Katz.

Since Jimmy could handle awkward silence the worst out of the three of them, he decided to continue where Zeller left off. “They were about to have a glass of wine,” he nodded in the direction of the shattered glass that littered the floor, “but a surprise visitor interrupted them.” He stepped through one of the broken windows and stood next to Francis Dolarhyde’s body. “There was a fight, Dolarhyde dropped here, and we don’t know where they are now.”

“Well,” Zeller interjected, “we know where they went…” He pointed to the trail of blood that led to the cliff face. “We have no way of knowing if they’re alive or not.”

Jimmy shrugged and said, “we can only guess the extent of their injuries, but there’s a chance they would have survived the fall.”

“Not a big chance,” Zeller scoffed, crossing his arms.

“It’s a sizable chance!”

“Twenty percent is not ‘sizable’...”

“Twenty-eight percent, actually, and-”

“Enough!” Jack’s booming voice echoed off of the pavement and the side of the house. “If there’s a chance they lived, there’s a chance they’ll take more lives. Tell me something that’ll actually help me find them.”

Jimmy and Zeller fell silent, their expressions both exuding a sense of overall unease. They didn’t have anything that could help find Hannibal or Will, but they did have a video camera. Once they get whatever footage was left on there, maybe something will surface. This information didn’t make Jack any happier, but it sure didn’t fill him with more dread so he took it as a positive.

He excused himself from the group, instructing them to keep working, and headed back to the front of the house. The gravel was poking up against his soles enough that he could almost feel it through his shoes. Maybe he just needed new shoes… The pair he was wearing was from back before Bella-

He stopped that thought from getting any further. It still pained him to think of Bella, and he couldn’t handle any more guilt just then. Of course, knowing who he had to call, he was sure he wasn’t escaping any of the guilt he deserved. He took a moment to psyche himself up for what would most likely be the lecture of a lifetime.

Dr. Alana Bloom was the first person, other than Jack Crawford, to know about Hannibal’s initial escape from the transport vehicle. She promptly fled to an undisclosed location, her wife and son at her side. She had a strong proclivity to wariness, especially when it came to Hannibal Lecter… and Will Graham. Dr. Bloom knew she was living on borrowed time and she wasn’t interested in returning that time at any point in the near- or far- future.

Because of this, it was perfectly understandable for her outrage to be at such a velocity as it was when Jack Crawford called. Of course, she tried to be courteous and remain calm.

“Jack,” She said once she had answered his call. Her voice was dripping with faux politeness. “Please, tell me you’ve called to let me know that my family and I fled our home for no reason and that you have Hannibal Lecter in custody.”

Jack Crawford’s silence was the first of many things to set her rage in motion. From just a second of hesitation, she already knew what Jack was about to inform her of. The man cleared his throat before finally admitting to what Alana suspected.

“No, Alana, that’s not why I’ve called. We’ve recovered Dolarhyde’s body at a cliff-side house that Hannibal owned. We don’t know where Will and Han-”

“You know for sure that Will was with him?”

“... yes, we’re certain.”

“How do you know?”

“Clothes, a meal set for two, a body with evidence of at least two attackers… I could go on,” he sighed, listing off the things he learned mere minutes ago as if he was an expert on them.

“Clothes? What do you mean clothes?”

“I mean, both Hannibal and Will changed into clothing that was stored at the house and left their old clothes behind.”

Alana fell silent, biting her tongue to keep herself from falling back into ‘I-told-you-so’s. At that moment, Morgan ran into the room, shrieking excitedly. Margot wasn’t far behind him, a large grin on her face. She scooped up the small boy in her arms, teasing him with a cheerful, “I got you!”

Crawford fell silent as well, hearing the sounds of Alana’s family interrupting. He assumed Alana wasn’t interested in discussing these topics in front of her son. For once in his life, Jack was right. Alana’s expression softened and she smiled bittersweetly in the direction of Margot and Morgan. Margot paused to give her a concerned nod and carried their son back to wherever he had escaped from. Once the noises of childhood innocence had faded into the background, she returned her attention to Jack and his disappointing news.

“Alana, I understand that you’re upset and I-”

“Upset? Jack, upset doesn’t even begin to cover it,” She snapped harshly. “From the beginning of this whole ordeal, from the first time you looped Will into your world, I told you it was a bad idea. I told you!”

“You’re the one that suggested Dr. Lecter in the first place!”

“Right, it’s completely my fault he wasn’t keen on people knowing he was a goddamn cannibal…”

“That’s not what I mean and you know it.”

“Then what do you mean, Jack? I’ll take the blame for not being a fucking psychic but you are the reason Will was able to get as close to Hannibal as he did. Hannibal wouldn’t have been given the opportunity to escape yesterday if you could have had the common sense to say no to Will’s plan, especially knowing the nature of his and Hannibal’s relationship!” Alana’s tone had fallen into a bitter exasperation. Jack didn’t see merit in replying in that moment; he didn’t know what to say. After a few moments of Alana seething silently, he finally spoke up.

“Alana, I’m sorry I-”

“Great, Jack, I’m glad you’re humble enough to apologize,” She mused sarcastically. “Call me back when you’ve actually caught them, alright?”

Before Crawford could even recollect himself, the monotonous sound of the dial tone was droning in his ear. He sighed, defeated and regretful, before pulling up the next contact on his phone. Unfortunately, his calls would never be answered and he wouldn’t see who he was trying to contact until their corpse was in front of him.

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Five hours earlier, Will’s eyelids snapped apart and he leaned over, his esophagus burning as salt water was harshly pushed out of his lungs. He coughed, gently holding his throat, and tried to get his bearings. Hannibal Lecter was kneeling at his side, having just resuscitated the previously-lifeless ex-criminal profiler. Once his coughing fit had passed, Will laid back down against the chilled sand. His gaze remained linked with Hannibal’s, only breaking once Will let his eyes fall closed as he took a deep breath.

“You tried to take my life,” Hannibal’s voice broke the silence, sounding rough and exhausted. “I believe that was… the fourth attempt?”

Will remained silent. He knew that, deep down, he hadn’t wanted Hannibal to die. The only life he meant to take was his own. But, clearly, that plan had failed.

“If I didn’t know any better,” the doctor continued, amused, “I’d suspect you don’t actually find me interesting”

A chuckle forced itself past Will’s lips, despite his best efforts, and he finally opened his eyes again. His gaze was met with the sight of Hannibal smiling gently and good-naturedly.

As he sat up he croaked a feeble assurance, “Believe me, doctor, I find nothing more interesting than I find you.”

“Not to be redundant, Will, but our soaked clothes suggest otherwise…”

“You being interesting does not mean you’re immune to attempts on your life, Hannibal,” Will replied in a lighthearted tone. “Besides, doesn’t it keep you entertained?”

Hannibal, his face reflecting Will’s sly demeanor, opened his mouth to reply but he was interrupted by approaching footsteps. His gaze snapped to the source of the noise, tensing as he did so. However, his shoulders quickly relaxed and his expression softened.

“Chiyoh,” He hummed, pleased. “I had expected you sooner.”

The woman glanced at Will, who had whipped around the second he had heard her approach as well, and coldly replied, “The car is ready.”

Will turned his attention back to Hannibal, confusion and suspicion creeping onto his features. He was looking for an explanation but his companion gave him none. Hannibal merely thanked Chiyoh and rose to his feet. She began to walk away, headed in the direction Will assumed ‘the car’ she had mentioned was in. When Will focused on Hannibal again, the doctor’s hand was extended towards Will. He took it without a second thought, groaning as Hannibal tugged him to his feet. Due to how injured the two of them were, they found it necessary to lean against one another as they followed after Chiyoh.

The gunman tugged the back door open and moved to the driver’s seat, her movements eerily fluid as usual. Will let his attention retreat into his mind and focus on his thoughts. Unfortunately, his thoughts were about as bleak as the tumbling sea Hannibal had dragged him from, only filled with a lot more regret and confusion. He regretted… well, that list was far too long to go over then. For the time being, he tried to focus on his most recent regrets. He glanced at the man sitting next to him. Hannibal seemed to be completely consumed by observing the passing pine trees outside his window.

Will turned to look outside his own window and fell back into his thoughts. He… had most definitely missed Hannibal. He missed the evening dinners preceded by pseudo-therapy sessions in the doctor’s home office. He missed the subtle jokes they had shared and the complete understanding of one another. But the realization of how much Will had missed Hannibal didn’t stop him from regretting going with him. After Europe and nearly losing his face, he had focused on healing himself; repairing his morality over the three years he hadn’t seen Hannibal. He had fallen back into old, malicious habits within just a day of being around the man again.

Will’s train of thought made its way to Molly and his jaw clenched. He loved Molly, he really did. But what he had become, especially now, wasn’t something that should be around Molly. He had a feeling she would get hurt if he continued living the way he had before the appearance of the red dragon. After all, she was currently lying in a hospital because of Will and the work he did. It would be painful to wake up every morning without her by his side. He wouldn’t be making breakfast with her in the morning or joking about their dogs’ anatomy. She wouldn’t be there to help him back into reality by drying his tears when he woke from the nightmares. His heart twinged at that realization and he closed his eyes, hoping to block out the pain.

Hannibal’s thoughts weren’t nearly as conflicted as Will’s. In fact, they were quite nearly the opposite. Hannibal had officially decided that the three years of incarceration he endured were completely worth it. He watched the elegant pine trees flicker by and he smiled to himself. Killing Francis Dolarhyde with Will was… ineffable. He started to understand why people were so entranced by religion; by their idea of God. If Will were a deity, Hannibal wouldn’t hesitate to worship him. The sight of Will, face painted in his own blood and the hands of death reflected in his eyes, was the most sacred image he had seen in his entire life. It had reminded him of the first time he had taken a life for a reason beyond vengeance; it reminded him of the power that had awakened in him. He saw that power in Will’s eyes on the day that Garrett Jacob Hobbs died in his own kitchen. He saw it when he came home to find a corpse on his table and a bloody-knuckled Will standing beside it. It was in Will at the Verger estate and it was in Will when he first visited Hannibal from behind the glass. Each time he was granted a glimpse of that look, that realization, in Will, it had grown stronger. Now it was ready to finally be set free.

Within thirty minutes, Chiyoh had pulled the car up to a secluded cabin and turned the engine off. Without a word, she stepped out of the car. Hannibal and Will moved to leave the vehicle as well, but they paused when they realized that their hands were still linked together from the moment Hannibal had helped Will to his feet on the beach. The two men stared down at their entwined fingers for a moment, Will with an expression of puzzled embarrassment and Hannibal appearing curious and pleased. Once Will and Hannibal brought their gazes up to one another, Will hastily let go of his companion’s hand and stepped out of the car. Hannibal remained inside the vehicle for a moment afterward, his gaze cast downwards and a flicker of disappointment crossing his features.

Once he had finally left the vehicle, he stood on the front deck of the cabin with Chiyoh while Will headed inside. Once he was certain Will was out of ear shot, he turned his head slowly to look at her. Her gaze remained focused on the horizon, scanning the trees with her usual melancholy expression. A songbird cried out from the treetops, catching Hannibal’s attention.

“I’ve done all I can for you, Hannibal,” Chiyoh murmured softly, still looking out at the forest around them. “This is the last time I will help you.” The gentleness of her voice held an obscure, sinister tone to it. Hannibal raised his brow and turned to her once more, a surprised smile on his face.

“Where will you go, now that you’re free?”

“I will never be free,” she sighed, shaking her head. “Memories and patterns will still dance in my head. But I can free myself in the ways Will Graham cannot.”

“You do not find solace in the power one has when they take a life. You only ever kill when you see it as absolutely necessary,” he hummed, his smile softening. “You never did change quite as much as any other, Chiyoh. You’ve stayed true to your nature; you didn’t adapt it despite your hardship.”

Chiyoh neglected to reply, choosing instead to stare at her feet. “By hardship, you mean yourself, don’t you?” She hummed, more of a correction than a question.

“I’d wish you luck on your path to freedom if I wasn’t confident you’ll be fine without it,” he chuckled. “Your resiliency is astonishingly strong.”

“Goodbye, Hannibal.” She looked at him, conflicting expressions twisting her features, for a moment longer. Hannibal nodded once and she stepped off of the porch and headed into the line of trees. Hannibal watched her silhouette disappear until she was completely obscured by the forest and it’s tangled arms. He took one last deep breath of the sharp, pine-filled air.

By the time Hannibal entered the cabin, Will had explored the first room quite thoroughly, taking note of every detail. To the left of the door was a comfortable living area, complete with a large and rustic stone fireplace nestled into the far corner. The furniture was either upholstered with a dark, nearly black, brown leather or it was composed of polished wood of the same hue. Will had walked over to the fireplace, sliding a finger across the mantle and smiling at the thin layer of dust resting there. He almost felt triumphant that for once Hannibal wasn’t perfectly maintaining something he owned.

The mantle had various framed pictures and wood carvings on it, each of which caught Will’s eye. They were pictures of lakes and carvings of wolves. His heart grew lighter when he realized why Hannibal had decorated so very out of character. Hannibal had tried to create some semblance of Will’s home within his extravagant aesthetics.

Above the fireplace, a watercolor painting of a human heart, submerged in water and suspended on a fish hook, was hung in a dark frame. It was beautiful, though morbidly so. Could Will have expected anything different from the Chesapeake Ripper? He smiled fondly, amused, and sat down on the sofa.

He turned his head to observe the right half of the room, which had been consumed by a kitchen and dining area. It was reminiscent of Hannibal’s home and for a moment it reminded Will of a time he’d prefer to forget. The scar across his stomach throbbed and he swallowed thickly. Luckily, that moment had been interrupted by Hannibal’s entrance.

The doctor stayed motionless at the door, just watching Will with seemingly no intention of moving. Will had stood up when he heard the door and was now practically a mirror image of Hannibal. They observed each other with a silent sense of contentment and awe. So much had changed in the past few hours, and the minds of the two men were still trying to catch up.

As Will’s exhaustion started to wear off, the dull throbbing of his wounds became more apparent. His discomfort must have shown because Hannibal’s brows drew together in concern. Will looked down at his bloodied hands and asked, “you don’t happen to have a first aid kit, do you?” An amused grin tugged at his lips despite the gaping wound in his cheek.

“There is a suture kit below the sink,” Hannibal replied, almost absentmindedly.

Will nodded sharply and headed to the kitchen. He opened the dark cabinet below the sink, ducking his head to look inside. He crouched down to retrieve the cabinet’s only contents, a tin box and a bottle of clear liquid that Will assumes was some form of rubbing alcohol. Hannibal had followed him into the kitchen area, washing his hands at the sink once Will had stepped away from it.

“Set those on the table, please,” he instructed with a steady and seemingly cheerful tone. Will obliged and took a seat, watching Hannibal finish washing his hands. The doctor had smiled more in the past two days than he had nearly the entire time Will had known him. It was… endearing? Will wasn’t sure why exactly, but it certainly made Will smile nearly just as often. Hannibal’s good mood seemed contagious.

The doctor walked over to the table and opened up the tin box, laying out suturing tools and supplies in an organized manner. He gestured vaguely towards the table and hummed, “if you wouldn’t mind, Will?”

“You want me to lay on the table?” Will almost laughed as a mocking expression of fake severity settled onto his face. “You aren’t going to try to eat me again, are you, because I thought we were passed that…”

Hannibal chuckled and shook his head. He grinned at the younger man and hummed, “No, it just would make tying sutures easier if you were laying on a table.”

Will nodded, a silent ‘I know, I know,’ being spoken through his expression. He sat on the edge of the table before turning and laying on his back, head just a few inches from the supplies Hannibal had set out. Hannibal gently tucked a rolled dish towel beneath Will’s skull to support it. He was closing his eyes, listening to the ambient sounds of the forest clouding the noise of Hannibal opening up the rubbing alcohol and starting to clean Will’s cheek.

The younger man sucked in a sharp breath between his now-clenched teeth. He opened his eyes again and looked up at Hannibal, watching his expressions change as his level of focus varied. The doctor then picked up a pair of tweezers and removed any foreign material from the wound, causing more irritation as the debris was pulled through damaged tissue.

He moved on, preparing the remaining tools in the kit to be able to sew up Will’s cheek. Hannibal paused before pushing the needle through Will’s flesh, first warning him of the amount of pain this would most likely cause. Of course, warning someone won’t make it hurt less so Will still flinched and hissed a few expletives.

“If you stay still, this will be much easier”

“Oh my god, you’re right,” Will said, sarcasm dripping from his tone. “Why didn’t I think of that!”

Hannibal’s movements stilled and he shot a displeased and unimpressed glare at Will before muttering, “well, there’s no need to be rude…”

“I thought you said you weren’t going to eat me,” Will joked. “Are you saying the whole laying-on-the-table thing really isn’t for making stitches easier?”

The struggle of suppressing his chuckle showed quite clearly on Hannibal’s face. He had to stop for a moment, his head turning to the side and his eyes closing, before his composure was completely regained. He finished tying Will’s sutures without another word, still trying to hide how amusing he had found his companion’s antics.

Will grinned up at Hannibal triumphantly and they remained frozen in the high of amusement and contentment for a moment longer. Will’s expression softened as he became distracted by the way the sunlight was illuminating Hannibal’s irises. His mind began to wander, studying the components of Hannibal’s eyes; from their biological makeup to why Hannibal learned to hide his emotions behind them. He didn’t realize he had spaced off until Hannibal had said his names a couple times, making him blink and shake his head back and forth.

“Sorry, I- what were you saying?”

“Your shoulder, Will,” Hannibal answered softly. “You’ll need to remove your shirt for me to be able to work freely.”

“Right, right,” Will hummed in reply and sat up, trying to remove his shirt without making the stab wound hurt too much. Why was he always getting hurt in the shoulder? A rotator cuff injury, Jack shooting him, then Chiyoh shooting him, and this time getting stabbed… at least it wasn’t just the one shoulder, though. He probably would have lost more mobility if some of the wounds hadn’t been received by his opposite shoulder.

As he pulled his shirt away from his wound, he noticed that it peeled away rather than simply sliding off of him. Will’s partially-dried blood had glued the shirt to his skin. It probably would have been more disgusting to him if his years assisting the FBI hadn’t utterly desensitized him. After seeing mushrooms growing from the skin of corpses, he wasn’t sure he’d ever find anything nearly as disgusting.

Hannibal worked considerably slower this time, his touch seemingly lingering more often than before. Will was unsure of whether it was because Hannibal’s own wounds were starting to exhaust him or if... Either way, it didn’t matter. He had never been uncomfortable with physical contact from Hannibal. Which, now that he was thinking about it, was almost odd.

Will had always felt an aversion to being touched since he was fairly young. It had always felt so overwhelming, especially when coupled with his tendency to get lost in the details of his surroundings and the intensity of his empathy.

The final suture being tied pulled him away from his train of thought and back to reality. Hannibal was sanitizing the supplies and laying them back out in the organized manner he had before.

“This will be,” Hannibal paused, trying to choose the right words to say, “challenging, but I have confidence in your abilities, Will.”

Will raised an eyebrow and an expression of confused intrigue settled onto his features. Hannibal gestured for Will to get off of the table, which Will did, before taking his place and rolling up the hem of his shirt to expose the gunshot on his stomach. Will’s face fell.

“Hannibal, I don’t think I can-“

“There’s no internal bleeding as I am still fully conscious,” Hannibal interrupted in a reassuring tone. “All that I need you to do is make sure the wound is sterilized and bandaged. It’s a relatively small wound, you will do fine.”

“But-”

Hannibal reached out and grabbed Will’s hand. He tugged him closer and rested his free hand on the uninjured side of Will’s face. Will’s words died in his throat and he merely stared at Hannibal, brows twisted into a concerned and anxious expression. Hannibal continued reassuring him, softly saying, “My dear boy, you’ve no reason to worry. If it helps, this isn’t going to be a permanent solution to our wounds.”

Will swallowed thickly and looked down at his feet, nodding slowly. Hannibal’s hands drew away after tentatively brushing a stray curl from Will’s forehead. Will rolled up his sleeves and made quick work of washing his hands. He returned to the table and gently picked up the rubbing alcohol, turning it in his hand. Will’s eyes lifted from the label to meet Hannibal’s.

“You sure you trust me to do this?”

“I trust you with my life, William.”

“Bad move on your part,” he mumbled.

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>> Chapter 2<<

#nbc hannibal #hannibal #hannibal lecter #hannigram #murder husbands #will graham #alana bloom #margot verger #jack crawford #jimmy price #brian zeller #francis dolarhyde #the red dragon #bryan fuller #fanfic

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