The Kitchen is Always Open

There was a long, sustained silence between the two vampires after the doctor had said his piece. Howard, who up until now kept his eyes firmly away from Hannibal's gnawing own, planted his gaze firmly there with an unreadable expression. Stuck between a mild surprise and a gently rising horror, his lips were pursed taut until he was very sure he had a desperate, iron grip on every single letter that would tumble from his hoarse gullet; dry from anticipation and anxiety.

He drew a sudden, soft breath through his mouth, turned his face away, and buried it into the sharp corner of the room behind Hannibal.

"I'm already owned." No other way to describe it. "Unfortunately. So if you want me, you're going to have to borrow me, or steal me, whichever way you feel appropriate for the disproportionate trouble it would cause you."

Still rather strange to be wanted by someone, whatever Hannibal's goals were. Though from the way the corners of the doctor's lips lifted against an equally unreadable, walled expression, Howard knew there was no chance of it being anything substantially nor remotely pleasant for himself.

His eyes now fell onto the floor. Isn't it exciting, to choose the fire or the pot? This was as close to love a dog like him would be able to experience.

Slowly he descended, first on one knee, then both, ready for his execution. All he had left to do was to put his hands behind his head and pray that the bullet would shred every inch of his skull and brain clean through. He imagined his body falling onto the floor after the shock of it petered off. He'd be smiling then, he thought, when it's all over.

Instead, he sat with his legs folded before him, arms loosely propped over each knee. He held his fingers together, anxiously tracing the edges of his nails.

"We're nothing like each other." Howard swallowed; round wide eyes finding Hannibal's burrowing stare once more. "I meant this respectfully; I'm not like you, or anyone. There's nothing to me the way something is and will always be for you. I do as I'm told. You may have the capacity for that, but this isn't a choice for me, and I didn't mean our eternities when I say this."

This Howard was unlike the others. Most vampires of both younger and older ages had an ego about them. It was this ego that Hannibal had a difficult time getting past. Ego was the enemy of greatness. A measure of it allowed a person to thrive, but too much of it smothered everything else. Howard was not weak but something about him gave Hannibal pause. Whatever framework had been installed in him, whoever had done it, had left its mark.

Hannibal observed him sit on a floor in the same manner a child might. He couldn’t remember if anyone had ever exhibited that type of way of sitting in his office. “Owned?” Hannibal asked after Howard got settled. Some vampires left their signature on their fledglings in all manner of ways. Some nursed jealousies that stretched across decades, keeping those beneath them dependent, unable to exist without the one who made them. Hannibal had never created out of loneliness. He created only when someone proved themselves truly his equal. If they fell short when he drank from them, he drank until there was nothing left. He had no interest in half-measures.

Hannibal (2013 - 2015)

“Good afternoon, Doctor Lecter” simple. Polite. No excessive flattery, even if anywhere he went in town, people seemed to have at least some kind of praise to give when he asked about the only psychiatrist here. Doctors tend to be charming, with the way they hold themselves, the way the speak. Even if it's ridden in lies— the people wouldn't care. Not many enjoyed honesty or bluntness as much as they like flattery, after all. He could only hope that to a degree, this man in front of him could drop the act and be straightforward. Otherwise, he supposed he'd have to go without a doctor until he moved out.

The young man couldn't help but let his eyes observe every little thing he could pick up as he walked into the room. Curious, as always. His gaze ended up captivated by the obsidian stag. It reminded him of the creature. Perhaps they were connected connected? Was it something revered in this place? Do people worship it as he felt like he should?

He couldn't quite pin point what was about the older man that made him feel familiar either. Had he seen that face before? Or was it the scent? Too many questions. Too curious for his own good. He hid it well with his silence. If only eyes weren't windows to the soul...

“I'm Faust Maxwell,” he introduced himself while turning slightly to look at Hannibal now, not wanting to get too distracted. He could always ask about the carved stag later.

Hannibal smiled as the door clicked shut behind his guest. He wondered if he should retrieve the scalpel at the edge of his desk. He knew he should have never tempted fate and kept him alive in the woods. Though this could be far more interesting than the usual array of boring clients. Most of their therapy was getting nowhere. He suspected they would eventually go into the forest and never return. This one returned, though and what was he to do with him…

“Nice to have you here, Mr. Maxwell. I’m Dr. Hannibal Lecter…and the only psychiatrist around here,” Hannibal said with outstretched hands, a small shrug rippling on his shoulders. “Of course they’ll sing of my praises.” He gave another smile, gesturing for him to take a seat. “I welcome you to this little town settled in the pines. Have you had good experiences thus far?”

Time to do a little investigating and see how loose the tongue is on this man. He settled into his own chair, one leg folded over the other, and watched. His suit was a deep forest green, cut close at the waist and squared at the shoulder, the fabric holding its shape the way good wool does, like it had been poured over him and allowed to set. The pocket square in his lapel was silk, its folds fanning outward in a shape that recalled the spread of a peacock’s tail, threaded through with the same deep emerald as the suit itself. The room seemed to have been decorated around him, or him around it.

R☆ckstar☆ ★ ✮ ★ ☆: Lestat's eyes trail after Hannibal's hand when it departs. A proper cloth covers the wound, a mere pinch of skin. The vampire can do more damage. He could sever the insignificant skin and find the meat underneath covered in precious blood. The rockstar would have been disappointed in this monotone reaction, if not for the uncanny nature of their transactional meeting. Hannibal's complex morality keeps Lestat's destruction afloat. And so, the famous undead does not ask questions or seek further scrutiny. He flicks the tip of his tongue over his lips and leaves it at that with a beaming smiles.

"Yes," Lestat exhales dreamily and departs from the mortal's side. This is the hard stuff. The stuff that gets him wondering about life for hours while touching hands of ghosts. More often than not, Lestat chases the shadows that lead to bad trips. He crashes his vehicle, he purchases another on the fly, and seeks someone in the crowd willing to experience a mind-bending journey in the corner of his graffiti-stained tour bus. "You've got the very best. A high dose gets to me, so I have to double it up." Lestat shrugs as he turns to partake in the Doctor's decor. He has perused this office many times before while lying in limited weight. In another life, perhaps before drowning in modern fame, Lestat would have liked to sit in one of his armchairs for a long time, carding his hand through the pages of the source of Hannibal's methodology.

Oh, well!

Lestat turns to face the Doctor, keeping his arms interlocked at the small of his back.

"You are not a vampire," the rockstar remarks bluntly, tilting his head with a narrowing in his azurite eyes. "We feel each other. Those of my kind. It's like a pressure against the temples," he traces his temple with the pads of his fingers while advancing toward Hannibal again. "Insistent. Irritable. And it never leaves." Lestat drums each word sharply with a supporting gesture. He grins. "I sense nothing like that from you. No similar hunger. So," he mimics Hannibal's tilt, eyes widened by anticipation. "What does that make you?"

Lestat was one of his most erratic. He never sat for long in his armchair, despite Hannibal wanting him to. The life of a rock star does not slow; it is fast and hard and it required Hannibal to replenish his stock of prescriptions far more often than was strictly advisable. When would be the tipping point? Lestat is hardly slowing down and Hannibal’s stock had to be replenished far more than regularly now. His tongue slides across his lip; he hesitates only for a mere beat. "It sounds like your kin irritates you.” A woven smile emerges, eyebrows sligthly rose. If Lestat could bare his nature before an audience of thousands, Hannibal could afford a small unveiling of his own.

“I am what they label a cannibal. Had you attended one of my dinners, I wonder whether you could have identified the delicacies within it.” The Sanguinaccio Dolce, dark and sweet in its little ceramic cup, had been made with neither cow’s blood nor pig’s. There had been a few invitations directed to him, though they were declined. Concerts, tours, the obligations of spectacle. Hannibal took no offense. He had learned long ago not to take personally the appetites of busy men.

He did not have long fangs as Lestat did, but his own teeth were notable; sharp and slightly prominent, visible when his smile pulled wide, which it rarely did in full. He had once used them to open a man’s throat. Had the vampire done the same? From the corner of his desk he retrieved his letter opener, lining the blade to his palm. He did not slice his skin just yet, merely lifted his eyes to watch Lestat’s reaction.

Hannibal (2013 - 2015)

During the course of Hannibal's incarceration, Dove writes to him. Not daily or even weekly, but consistently, correspondence always pleasant and, to all eyes that read the contents before the doctor himself, innocent. But it's impossible to believe that anyone with good intentions would keep in touch with such a monster, even for the humanity of it, and in the aftermath of Hannibal's escape she's one of the first to be scrutinized. With her consent, there's a very tidy ransacking of her home that finds no evidence of plots, schemes, or immediate contact with the doctor since his escape, much less the man himself.

They move on to questioning and Dove is very cooperative, but with little result. She can't offer any insight as to where the doctor would go, except that he might like someplace more peaceful, or what sort of plans he might have beyond a desire to not be caught again. It's asked and answered that she has had no prior romantic or sexual involvement with Hannibal, confesses to no unrequited feelings for him, expresses no belief that he harbors such feelings for her. She doesn't claim to have been so close to him as to be allowed to glimpse the reasoning of his mind, the drive behind his actions.

Then why the letters?

This is an old question; early on it had been leaked to a paper particularly fascinated with Lecter that Dove Solomon, a risen star in the world of classical music, wrote letters to the serial killer and cannibal at whose table she had dined on occasion. There had been some fuss, small outrage in certain circles, mutters of accusation in others, and as a result she was not welcomed to play as much as she once was. There were of course many requests to interview by both gossip rags and more upstanding columns, but she always declined, and in the end many reputable sources wrote it off as her being the child of a convicted murderer, and thus having a bleeding heart for those kinds. It wasn't forgiven or necessarily forgotten, but over the years it became simply a burr in her otherwise upstanding character.

So, the letters.

Dove doesn't disagree with public opinion. She can't condone Hannibal's actions, but neither can she abide the thought of him, once so freely social and appreciative of the world's beauty, trapped in the stale dark for the rest of his life. She has no delusions about the severity of his crimes and it's not about what he deserves. It can be said as simply as this: Once you know someone it becomes a choice to abandon them, and she chose not to, even if the rest of the world did. Especially because the world did.

On paper and in person, there's nothing to suggest she's anything more than a bleeding heart—opinions are divided on whether it stems from conviction, naivety, or sheer stupidity—but that doesn't stop the FBI from keeping an eye on her. They'd be fools not to.

Hannibal had a parade of letters come to him while he was incarcerated. Banal psychiatrists and grasping second-raters. Pencil lickers, he called them. A few caught his eye, though not through flattery; he had no patience for it. The women and men who wrote of infatuation bored him. He understood exactly what they were doing. The cage made him safe to love. The bars made him possible to approach. A letter is a way of standing very close to a fire without any risk of burning.

He never replied to them but he did reply to Dove. He sent her illustrations he had sketched in his cell, a dove cradled in the arms of a headless woman. The features of the woman were quite similar to those of his recipient. The letters themselves were almost domestic in their restraint. No mention of victims. No mention of what he had eaten and enjoyed. He wrote of music, of her career, of the evening he had first encountered her before his arrest, the particular piece she had been playing. There were even musical compositions, for he had plenty of time to compose in his head.

It was exactly this that was sent to her a number of months after his escape. The sheet music looked ordinary until you tilted it toward the light. There, embossed faintly into the paper at the base of certain notes, were letters, one per note, invisible at any normal angle. Assembled in order, they named a town.

In the mornings, he would dress himself, put on his fitted hat over his altered hair, and sit at the same cafe table with the same coffee. He watched the door. He watched the street. He had worn a prosthetic nose for a time, a subtle reshaping of the profile that had appeared on wanted posters in post offices and police stations across the country. Every morning the chair across from him remained empty. He would finish his coffee, leave a precise tip, and carry on the rest of his errands with caution.