#quitehumane

kisses. | selectively accepting

( ❤️ for a romantic kiss )

He looks at Hannibal in his dark coat, his hair longer than Will remembers, the cuts on his face and the knowing smile that actually reaches his eyes, all of it immortalized, no matter what happens. The last time they were this close there was a knife in his stomach, and he’s prepared himself over and over for this, for seeing Hannibal again, but it’s different than he could have imagined, more than he’d ever thought it could be–

He’s flooded with some unspeakable emotion, sitting here, hit with the realization of eight months of loneliness and resentment and most of all longing. It’s only fitting, he supposes, that it’s coming to a head here—here with Hannibal in front of the Primavera with his knife heavy as God in his pocket.

There’s a tightness swelling in his chest, an ache where Hannibal’s blade had sliced through his abdomen and an awful twisting want, and god, after everything, why shouldn’t he take what’s been his?

It won’t feel like killing me, Hannibal says, and Will’s eyes don’t leave Clark Ingram when he responds, with a quiet, unassailable sort of determination, that it doesn’t have to. It’s not about Hannibal at all, not anymore. It’s about justice, the sort of justice without loophole or leniency, the sort you can’t wriggle your way out of no matter how many friends you have in high places. it’s about Sarah Craber’s dead stare and Ingram’s smirking face and Peter Bernadone sobbing over the horse he loved, in spite of everything--

Ingram’s not smirking now, he’s on his knees covered in blood and mucus and stammering something about mercy, mercy, the sort he’d never show to Peter or any of his victims, and that disgusts Will as much as anything. In the back of his mind he knows that there’s no evidence to convict Ingram, that if he lets him go Peter will take the fall for everything, that Ingram will kill again--

He barely hears Hannibal’s warning, just his heart pounding like a war drum in his chest and when he pulls the trigger he’s not thinking of any of that at all, just Ingram’s dead-eyed smile and the hard plastic of Chilton’s mask digging into his face, just hatred and powerlessness and never, never again--

Warm blood spatters across his face, Ingram collapses, and the gun slides from his hand like an afterthought. He finally turns his eyes to Hannibal with a calm he doesn’t feel. His hands are shaking, but only just. 

The guard is surprised. Will’s all but spelled out his plans--spelled them out to Jack and Alana, too, but apparently he wasn’t the only one to be deceived by his true nature--and still the man is still too slow on the draw. Will drops him with a well-timed blow to the temple, all too aware of the hungry way Hannibal’s watching through his cage. It’s easy to wrest the keys away from him, easy to kick his gun away--it’s almost too easy. 

He might be rusty, but he’s done this before, alone, sick and shackled. This time his hands are free. This time they think he’s their ally. 

The guard might even still be surprised when Will manages to unlock the back doors and tosses him bodily from the vehicle. From behind the mask, he knows without looking that Hannibal’s eyes are dark and entirely too pleased, as if the past three years of resentment and solitude meant nothing at all. Will unlaces the straitjacket, leaves him to do the rest himself. 

The ambulance screeches to a halt, throwing him shoulder-first into the metal barricade. He finally favors Hannibal with his full attention, half-smiles as he regains his feet.

i wanted to give you something more | @quitehumane​

“--so you did.” It’s breathless, confessional; for once he doesn’t care that there’s something tremulous in his voice, for once he makes no effort to hide it--and he could; even without tapping into his powers Will has always been masterful at hiding. He doesn’t care that there’s blood still spitting slowly from the hole in his cheek, or that this will give all of them the final justification that mutants can’t be trusted, final proof of their savagery, of his savagery. Let them stampede.

None of that matters, not when blood unfurls from Dolarhyde’s body like wings at their feet, not when Hannibal’s standing close enough to touch and Will knows without having to look that he wants to--

So he does, fingers gathering in the blood-soaked material of Hannibal’s sweater. He lets his mental barriers fall and, for the first time in more than three years, lets their minds again become one. Hannibal can hear his thoughts, clear and unfiltered, and he could speak the words aloud but it’s better this way, more intimate, some astral plane or a cathedral where only they exist. 

     Will’s heart rate and breathing have long since returned to normal, but anyone with a sense for these things could feel the power radiating from him now, electric and prickling in his veins, behind his eyes, where the skin has been scraped from his knuckles. And yet his chest feels awful and empty, like something slipping away, like a hunger that can never be satisfied. His fingers flex almost of their own accord. 

     “You got what you wanted,” he says flatly, his eyes fixed on the table in front of them. It had been nothing more than instinct, at first, but he’d been warned as soon as he’d caught those waves of murderous intention creeping towards him in the darkness. I could have changed his mind. I could have made him surrender. It hadn’t been morality that stopped him this time, nor fear. He doesn’t say it. He doesn’t even think it. Hannibal already knows.

     You gave me what I wanted. The thought comes almost unbidden, floated out between them like an extended hand. Will raises his eyes, looks at Hannibal directly for the first time this evening, feeling distinctly like they’ve passed a point of no returning. He finds that he doesn’t mind the gentle, reverent, pitiless way Hannibal tends to his injuries, finds himself almost missing the intimacy of it when it’s gone. 

     Will circles restlessly around Hannibal’s desk, midway through regaling him with stories from this morning’s discovery. He’s animated, unable to sit still; his glass of wine remains untouched beside the empty armchair. Keeping his appointment in the interest of authenticity, of course, he’d told Jack Crawford--how suspicious would it be if he just happened to skip out the day a new victim was discovered?

    “Jack’s convinced it’s the Ripper, even though methodology and victimology don’t fit his pattern. Apparently he’s taken to smiting evildoers.” This is sly, conspiratorial, a momentary pause in venting. “Difficult to fully appreciate it, though, with Jack breathing down my neck the whole time. He wouldn’t let me process the scene without supervision.” Petulance and frustration give way to something deeper, the dam of control threatening to break. His eyes seek Hannibal’s, deliberate, emotional.

     Will knows he’s overthinking again. They’re back downstairs, things come full circle, and he has a hundred questions and a hundred things he still wants to say, so much that still begs acknowledgment, but he doesn’t have a proper handle on his thoughts yet so he circles restlessly, a counterpoint to Hannibal’s stillness.

     He’s certainly not worried about pity anymore, he’s not even so worried about his values finally, finally catching up to his instincts. He can see himself outside Hannibal’s office in his car, missing him as soon as they’re apart, and he can picture himself shaking, raking his nails down his face, barely suppressing a scream he knows won’t stop but he can also see himself sitting there, calm and almost wistful, and he isn’t sure anymore which scenario is more likely. He’s surprised himself more than once in the past six or seven hours, but the greatest surprise was how easy, all things considered, it had been, how quickly they’d fallen into intimacy ( its every implication ). Like fate, or destiny, grand concepts he’d never put much stock into. Like slipping into a warm bath.  

     Most of the tension has bled from his body, but all the same he feels somehow empty, like something’s missing or something is going to be, and he can see the sun just starting to creep over the horizon and with it the inevitable return to the way things were. The dull pretense at normalcy, fielding questions and suspicions, the bright lights and tepid coffee of the FBI--but things won’t ever be the way they were and maybe things will never be like this again either—

     “Your first appointment is at ten?” Will finally stops pacing, stands with his back to the table. It’s soft, heavy, brimming with emotions he can’t name and weighted with a significance that seems out of place with how light and superficial of a question it is. It’s hard to find words for wanting to share the same heart, the same skin, to share blood in the moonlight. His eyes are almost beseeching. 

     It is a long stretch, a slow crawl of moments before Will Graham speaks. Suspended between them, his words twist in the air like fish on hooks. “It was…a biblical experience.” He can still feel blood like ink between his fingers. Can feel also, acute and unchecked, the intimate sort of guilt that gnaws, sucks marrow from your bones like absolution.

     Perhaps the need for atonement is also biblical, seeps in at the roots of such inclinations.

     He looks up: quiet, searching, unmoored. For once his brain is still, as if frozen in awe. In horror. He has no one else who could possibly understand. His lips roll, twitching into a smile that doesn’t reach the deep pools of his eyes.