Chapter Text
It all went back to a single night when all the world looked different to Hannibal.
He usually hated any sense of losing control; he calculated the medians and indices of his movements through life like a gifted mathematician. Every permutation of his existence, and the interlocking existences of those around him, were the result of a predicted timeline with almost all variables accounted for. It was the reason he knew he could kill with impunity and stomp on every societal notion ever conceived of. His design was too complex; it existed in the shadows seen by madmen and poets alone, of whom there were too few to matter.
That night, however, he had let it all fly away. He'd stopped thinking and entered a grey area of his mind he'd forgotten how to inhabit.
His confrontation with the indulgent and sloppy Tobias Budge had been much as he predicted. He'd expected to be bruised and battered to a degree necessary to maintain his visage as a harmless psychiatrist and had welcomed the struggle, even letting it go on longer than it really needed to. The one thing he hadn't predicted was the strange surge of senselessness he'd felt knowing that Will Graham was very likely dead.
He'd sent his friend to the killer's lair fully cognisant of the reality that he might not return and at first it had affected him no more than any other game he'd ever played. He hadn't even really thought much about it when Tobias announced what he had done - "I've killed two men" - save to find it amusing to kill Franklyn in retaliation.
It was in the quiet moments, between staging the scene and hearing the FBI sirens approach, when he stopped and thought, really thought about it.
No more Will. His brilliant mind, his intriguing conversations, those precious rare moments when he forgot his reticence and eye contact was established, all gone. He would never again know the sweet scent of a genius' brain burning. Logically, it should have been a meaningless development; proof that Will was not worth his time, since he could not survive even the simplest of his games. Yet the idea of it left Hannibal with an odd ache inside. He didn't like it at all.
The rush of something intangible, perhaps relief, he felt when Will walked into the room was even worse. It was as if his own mind was betraying him. He couldn't even hide it from his face and it made it strangely difficult to concentrate on keeping his story straight for Jack Crawford.
That unintended show of weakness made him quiet and withdrawn after that. He also didn't like feeling as though he couldn't trust himself or his reactions.
When cleared to finally leave the crime scene, he'd struggled to stand from his chair. The thigh muscle of his right leg, punctured by a stab using his letter opener, complained severely. He'd been deeply surprised to feel a steel grip on his arm, steadying him. Will Graham never touched people; it was a facet of his condition, whatever that was. He allowed touch on occasion but he never reached out himself. It was strangely gratifying to Hannibal to graduate as the exception to the rule, even if it was probably done without thought.
"Are you going to be alright?" Will asked, under his breath, only half looking at him.
That's when the grey zone of his mind descended and all of the numbers stopped moving. Hannibal looked away from Will, frowning. He couldn't think. Everything was centered down on the hand on his arm, as if it mattered to him somehow on a level things never normally mattered to him. He shook himself out of it just enough to say, "I killed him," because he knew it would speak to Will on an emotional level: Will who had not spoken for hours after killing Garrett Jacob Hobbs and who still carried his ghost around with him.
Will nodded, once, sharply. As he let his hand slip away, and after a long moment of contemplation, he asked, "Do you like gumbo?"
Hannibal blinked a few times, not quite comprehending. It took far longer than it should have for him to understand that Will was asking him over to his place. It was a rare enough occurrence to be exceedingly curious, and ordinarily a thousand little nuances of thought would have started to whirl in his mind about it. For once, his mind went blank and all he could do was respond with a slight lean in Will's direction and a nod.
This strange madman with a notion of chasing away his demons, as if that were even possible, had a dull fire in his eyes the entire journey back to his cabin home in Wolf Trap. And once in the car, Hannibal couldn't relax. He was alarmed by the sense that he had no idea what was going to happen and couldn't focus enough to contemplate how to turn Will's slow and unplanned move towards reciprocating his professed friendship to his advantage.
It took a good hour of conversation, that familiar staple of their relationship, and some port - a gift given to Will a long time ago - for his back to slide out of a ramrod and tense position. The gumbo was only reheated leftovers, and nothing of great interest on his palette, but Hannibal enjoyed it all the same. The whiskey that came after the port helped to soothe the worst of his aches and pains and when Will decided to light a fire in the living room area, despite the way his chimney breast was still a mess of temporary patchwork bricks, Hannibal let himself slide down onto the large wheel of cushions, in amongst the dogs, and relax. It was all very novel, shutting down like that, leaving all propriety behind, and letting the calm wash over him.
Will watched him with a note of surprise at first, as though he expected Hannibal to fuss over the hairs, or the smell; to avoid his family of stray dogs altogether and find a chair in the corner. But Hannibal was only half aware of him as he was lazily scratching one of the larger dogs behind the ears. A little white mutt with a distended underbite curled up against him and Hannibal sighed, sipping at his whiskey and staring into the slowly growing fire. He saw Will's shape find a spot near his leg and settle there, between a terrier and a big yellow mutt with dopey eyes.
They quietly talked about death, in the poetic way only they could. It didn't matter that Will didn't know that Hannibal was far better acquainted with it than he knew; that he courted it. It was escapism to talk about it as if Hannibal was new to the concept of destroying another human being. And when Hannibal woke up in the early hours, he realised he had probably fallen asleep mid-sentence. He was part of a patchwork of fur and fabric, like a living mural, and the fire was diminished but not yet smothered.
He discovered Will curled against him, forehead to his hip, one arm thrown over his legs. The soreness of his injuries made him twitch and that caused two of the dogs to look up and Will to crack open an eye.
Hannibal felt too heavy to move; he hadn't drunk like that, for inebriation and keeping company than for sensory experience, for quite some time. Meanwhile Will watched him, apparently curious about what he would do. Hannibal realised his fingers were tangled in Will's curls and a note of alarm sounded through him. He extracted them, probably too quickly.
This was dangerous, in ways he hadn't anticipated once again. "I should leave," Hannibal mumbled with a scratchy voice.
"Take my bed," Will said in return, voice heavy with sleep.
Hannibal stared at him, all pretense of relaxation dissipating, tension replacing it. "It's not appropriate."
"You're not," Will said, and paused to yawn, "you're not my psychiatrist."
That wasn't it. Not at all. He continued to lay there, stiff as a board. Will's hand brushed over his hand and then curled into it unexpectedly.
"Stay." His eyes were sliding closed again.
"I'm inter." The words rumbled out of Hannibal like an earthquake. He could pinpoint the exact moment sleepy Will processed that information but didn't detect any reaction beyond a slight hitch in his breath. "Does that bother you?"
Will seemed to be drifting back to sleep already, his face shifted downwards against the cushion, eyes closed. No response was forthcoming, which came as something of a relief to Hannibal.
His head throbbing a little, Hannibal decided it would be better to leave before he made any more uncharacteristic confessions. But Will's hand squeezed his at the first hint of movement, hard and pressing, making it clear that he was not going to be leaving.
Although Hannibal had shared that particular detail on very few occasions, he knew to expect a generally negative reaction. There was a lingering perception, no matter how enlightened society had become about such variations, that the rare ability to bear children was a freakish misalignment of masculinity. Most heterosexual men shunned inters on an instinctive level.
Hannibal stared down at Will's face, beautiful and illuminated as it was in flickering light and dark by the fire, not sure what he was feeling or doing anymore.
"I could have lost you tonight," Will said, suddenly, as if he'd been struggling with the decision of whether to say it out loud or not. "I felt... lost."
"Same," Hannibal confessed, and sighed. One of the dogs started licking his cheek as if trying to comfort him. It was a genuinely strange and unprecedented situation in his life, lying there in a rough pile with seven dogs and someone he called a friend, and generally meant it.
Will shifted a little so he could rest his chin on his arm and look up at him. "Proximity is difficult for you."
Though his ultimate goal had always been to make Will understand him and embrace the killer he saw through the cracks in his sanity, it remained novel hearing Will take on his inflections and manner of speech when he was particularly focused in on him. "Not difficult. Undesirable."
Thoughts, like little jolts of thunder hitting the ground, seemed to light up Will's eyes. "You're uncomfortable."
"I find myself wondering if you would run to tell Alana Bloom if this proximity resulted in a kiss."
A bemused grin spread across Will's face. "I don't find you that attractive," he said, though the way he let his hand slip onto the soft curve of Hannibal's belly, the only discernible physical sign of his inter genetics, seemed calculated to imply otherwise.
"No longer in need of a clutch for balance?" And in that moment, as their formative conversation replayed in his mind, Hannibal saw himself in a clearer prism than ever before. He saw himself sending Will to his likely death as a consequence of their conversation; that failed attempt to kindle an affair with his protegé, Alana. There had been a spark, small but meaningful, of jealousy that he hadn't allowed himself to acknowledge at the time. Will's confrontation with Tobias Budge was a mere spillage of his crueler inclinations.
Some of the dogs perked up as their Master sat himself up and leaned on his hand. There was something in Will's eyes which was telling Hannibal to take his lead, so he also sat up and swallowed back the lightheartedness it resulted in.
Will was the initiator of the kiss that occurred next.
It was clumsy, rough with combined stubble, and tasted of state whiskey, but it did something to Hannibal's insides almost instantly. The rare sensation of a shift inside, the telltale wetness that told him that his birth canal had moved into place to redirect the use of his rear cavity and the rush of blood all over, left him stumbling for air and robbed him of what remained of his logical senses. The calculating killer took a much needed slumber and the person at the kernel of his being, a far simpler creature, drifted into control.
"This is a bad idea isn't it?" Will gasped as he too snatched for breath. He was clinging onto Hannibal's arms now.
"Unquestionably."
"Too damaged..."
"No," Hannibal was quick to stop that train of thought. "You are not damaged, you are unique. I just believe we will need to return to the boundaries of friendship tomorrow. It would be better for the both of us to maintain a professional face to the outside world."
Will frowned. "Are you sure you want th...?"
Hannibal sealed his lips back in place over Will's, preventing any further utterance of doubt, partly to purge his friend of any doubt about what he wanted, and partly because he knew that if he paused to think for too long he would not be able to continue.
The kissing was more confident the second time, Will climbing closer and letting his reticence fall away, Hannibal allowing himself to feel something, just a little.
And that was how the mistake that changed everything happened. Hannibal looked back on that night with a sort of curious detachment, as though it was someone else's memory merely lent to him. He thought about it rarely, and only in the darkest of his dark nights alone.
He recalled the way Will had taken his hand and pressed him down onto the bed that Will kept, inexplicably, in the corner of the living room rather than upstairs. The way the orange flickering glow captured everything, all of Will's angles and the sheen of his skin without clothing on it, rendered it easy to recall the scene like it was a painting.
Hannibal couldn't deny that remembering their one ill fated night of passion didn't still give him a tingling sensation, low in his belly. It was odd to remember how Will had been so curious about the way his body reacted to his touch, the gush of sweetly scented dew that flowed freely from him, his insides reacting to his desire for Will as obviously as his exterior organ; and wasn't Will just so pleased at the sight of Hannibal coming undone for him. It seemed to make him bolder than usual.
Will had waited until they were chest to chest, mouths bruised from kissing, to ask about protection and Hannibal had stupidly dismissed it as unnecessary. He'd believed he was too old to concern himself with the prospect of pregnancy and he knew there was no disease that he could catch; he could smell the purity of his blood on Will's breath. All he'd wanted in that moment was to give in to his biology, to let Will confirm to him that he was real, he was alive; to let their mental connection expand into the physical, just the once.
The experience was odd and beautiful. The sensation of being stretched out, disarmed at the most intimate level, was blinding in its simple joy. Will was sweetly careful with him, very aware of his bruises and wounds, instinctively knowing that this was not a frequent occurrence for Hannibal and that he needed to go slowly. The natural interlock of their bodies, Hannibal long and lean with muscle, Will strong and sharply built too but a little more stout, was breathtakingly poetic to Hannibal's nature. He let the room and the world fall away and centred his whole self into the pounding pleasure and the taste of Will Graham's skin, gasping and keening with complete abandon at their joining. His Inter biology allowed him to come several times without even being touched, his toes curling, his muscles tensing all over with every cresting release, each of the spermless fluidic orgasms better than the last as his body waited for the final trigger to a great explosion.
For that, he needed Will to really rut into him, forcing himself deep, into the secret well inside him that had never been claimed before. He needed the thin wall at the mouth of it to be broken. Will seemed to understand what had to happen, without even really knowing what he was doing. He strained and pushed against it and a faint sound, almost like a breathless growl, blew out of his lungs when it finally snapped and let him through. Hannibal recalled the shock of the feeling, being breached deep inside, his vestigial womb opened and then filled up with Will's release, his own full ejaculation powerful enough to make his eyes roll back into his head and his ability to breathe halted for so long he nearly passed out.
Of course, everything had had to go back to normal in the harsh light of day. Hannibal had never had much difficulty switching his emotions off when required, and by his calculations, the experience would be useful only as a means to keep Will coming back to him, again and again, as his encephalitis worsened. He had firmly planted himself in the ground beneath Will's feet as his patch of stability by letting his barriers down like that. Though it would need to be a careful game of chess, it was still a game at the end of the day, with a companion in the dance of death, a madman to call his own, the more meaningful prize than a means to scratch a physical itch.
When Hannibal thought about that night in his darker hours, he usually treaded along the floorboards of his upstairs landing, taking practiced care to avoid the noisier spots, and stood in the doorway down the way from his own. He looked in on the sleeping angel lying there in her little bed, blonde wisps of hair glinting like strands of gold in the dim glow from the nightstand, and smiled at the scent of her presence.
Hannibal had continued pushing Will into a slow descent towards madness after that night, hoping he would come around to his way of thinking eventually. He'd still killed Georgia Madchen and prepared those lures to frame Will when he'd realised that Will was getting too close to figuring out who he really was. He'd still murdered Abigail Hobbs and stuffed her ear down Will's throat, just to ensure the evidence against him would be difficult to refute. He'd still visited Will in his new prison home and gloated at his triumph, because now Will could rant and rave about his murders all he wanted without ever being believed.
He'd only realised, with absolute awe and horror, that he was pregnant long after the damage was done in that regard. And five years ago, he'd had to walk away from Will Graham and all his hopes for him because of it.
Klara had ruined everything but he had no regrets. She was a very special little girl.
One day, she was going to be a killer too. She would learn from him, the old Master, and surpass him. She would be everything he had ever wanted.
Sometimes Hannibal felt a pang of regret that Will would never meet her, or even know of her existence, locked away in the Baltimore Prison for the Criminally Insane with no chance of reprieve as he was. But mostly, he accepted it was for the best, and watched Klara sleep, content to be the sole shaping force in her life.