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When Will sat down, winded from his run through the airport terminal, someone was already in the window seat next to his. Will registered a brown tartan suit, matching waistcoat, paisley tie—snappy dresser—but he didn’t look any higher than the striped shirt collar. Eye contact was even less desirable on an airplane.He loosened his own tie and leaned against the head rest. He was pretty sure his tie didn’t go with his shirt, or even clash in an interesting way. It was a wonder he was even wearing a shirt, to be honest; the call from Jack had woken him up from the first decent sleep he’d had in months. The sleep had been courtesy of half a bottle of Jim Beam…which didn’t help the state of his head, either.‘Get to Dulles,’ Jack had said on the phone, with his customary olde-worlde charm. ‘You’re booked on a flight to London in an hour. Rathbone from Scotland Yard will meet you on the other side.’‘London?’ Will had managed to say through a mouth fuzzed with sleep and bourbon. Winston jumped up on the bed and stuck a wet nose under his chin.‘England. You’ve heard of it? I’m lending you to them for a week. They’ve got what looks like wolf attacks in London, killing Tory politicians. Don’t make the joke, I’ve heard them all already. Just get dressed and get on the plane. You’ll need a passport.’‘Jack, I’ll never get to Dulles on—‘ But Jack had already hung up. Thank God Will had been able to get hold of someone to look after the dogs.Now, he ran his hand through his hair and then rasped it on the beard stubble on his chin. Miraculously, the FBI had sprung for a first class ticket, which meant that at least he had some personal space. The man sitting next to him exuded a faint scent of cologne, or perhaps expensive soap. Will knew that he himself smelled of Beam, sweat and dog. At least there was enough room between them so that the other passenger wouldn’t be too offended.‘Would you like a mint?’ asked a cultured, accented voice. A well-manicured hand held out a small tin of sweets, nestled in tissue and powdered sugar.Will opened his mouth to refuse, and then realized his fellow passenger was probably offering out of self-defense. ‘Thanks,’ he said, not looking up, and took a mint. His eyes widened in surprise as soon as he popped it into his mouth. He’d been expecting a Tic-Tac; this was a chip of ice-pure glacier, impossibly clean and sharp-tasting. It chased away the sour taste of bourbon, aspirin and annoyance.‘Good,’ he said, almost involuntarily.‘Isn’t it?’ said his companion, a touch of humour in his voice. Again involuntarily, Will glanced at his face. He had hair carefully combed back from his face, high cheekbones, a full, sculpted mouth, and quite extraordinarily piercing eyes.Will looked away immediately, but not before those eyes had not only met his gaze, but looked straight through him and pinned him open like a specimen on a tray awaiting dissection.Desire clenched like a fist in Will’s gut, as surprising and about as welcome as a sucker punch. Will grimaced and leaned away from his companion, closing his eyes and feigning sleep. With any luck, real sleep would come soon enough, and he could sleep through the entire flight and not have to deal with any more conversation. Or with how irrationally attractive he found this stranger. What was this, anyway? He didn’t need sex to complicate things. His life was complicated enough already, with Jack Crawford calling him up at all hours and sending him off to solve what sounded like The Hound of the Baskervilles. He thought about fishing. And didn’t fall asleep as the plane taxied and took off.‘You should have a glass of champagne,’ commented the voice. ‘It’s not as horrible as you would expect from airline champagne, and it would calm your nerves.’Will realized his hands were clenched on the arm rests. ‘I’m not nervous of flying,’ he said without opening his eyes.‘No, you’re not. When you’re flying, everything is out of your control. If anything goes wrong, it won’t be your fault, and you won’t be able to do anything about it. You find flying quite relaxing, normally. No, what you’re nervous about is what awaits you when you land.’At this, Will did open his eyes. ‘Pardon me?’ he said.‘Have a glass of champagne,’ said the man, passing one to him.He took it. He tried hard not to notice the other man’s fingers briefly brushing his.‘I think it’s more pleasant to know one’s travelling companions by name,’ said the man. ‘I’m Dr Hannibal Lecter.’‘Will Graham,’ said Will, seeing no way out of it. Hannibal? Who named their kid Hannibal?He took a gulp of the champagne. It didn’t really calm his nerves.‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr Graham,’ said Dr Lecter. ‘Is it your first time flying to London?’‘ Yes. Listen, I’m not really in the mood for—’‘For conversation. Yes. No offense taken. Unless of course you’d like to talk about what you’re worried about will happen after we land.’‘Dr Lecter, I—’He held up a hand. ‘I apologise. It’s a professional hazard. When I see anxiety, it’s my instinct to try to help.’‘Please tell me you’re not a psychologist.’ ‘I’m a psychiatrist.’Will grimaced. Did they grow on trees, or did they actually follow him around? ‘Don’t psychoanalyse me. You wouldn’t like me when I’m psychoanalysed.’Dr Lecter inclined his head. ‘What do you do for a living, Will?’‘I’m a lecturer.’‘And you’re going to London to…lecture?’‘Something like that.’As soon as he finished his champagne, a flight attendant appeared to refill his glass. ‘I see why they call it first class,’ Will said. He felt much more off-balance than he should, after only one glass of champagne. Maybe the alcohol had revived the bourbon still crawling through his bloodstream.‘You don’t usually travel this way?’‘It’s usually cattle class and rented cars. I was shocked when I saw the ticket.’‘Perhaps you are more valued than you believe you are.’Will made an indistinct noise. He wasn’t sure himself what it meant. Valued? As the FBI’s tame empath, lent out to Scotland Yard like a spare bloodhound?
Looks like wolf attacks…
Jack would have sent the files to his laptop. He should have downloaded them before he’d got on board, but he’d been running for the plane. He should be thankful he couldn’t see what he was heading towards, but the thing was: imagination was always much worse. Much, much worse.Except when it wasn’t. And more and more, reality was becoming as frightening as the worst that he could imagine.
Teeth in skin, shredded and raw, the soft intimate insides of a person spread on the grey London street like an obscene secret, eyes unseeing and open in fear as something unnatural lopes away, dripping blood, into the fog…
‘Would you like some lunch?’ A pleasant female voice interrupted his thoughts, and he realized he’d been staring at his companion’s tartan-clad knee for some time now. His knee, and his thigh, long and muscular underneath the fine material.‘No thank you,’ said that companion, smoothly and cordially. ‘Neither of us would.’Will watched the flight attendant move on to the next seat. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I’m pretty hungry. I didn’t manage breakfast.’‘Good. Then you’ll appreciate this.’ Dr Lecter bent and retrieved a wicker basket from beneath the seat in front of him. ‘You brought a picnic?’‘I’m very careful about what I put into my body. Airline champagne may be just about acceptable, but I don’t trust the food.’ He opened the hamper and unpacked several white cardboard boxes, stacking them on his tray table. ‘Luckily for you, I have enough to share. Prosciutto and figs?’The scent was incredible. Despite himself, Will’s mouth watered. ‘I couldn’t possibly—’‘I insist. You seem to me like a man who could use a taste or two of luxury.’ Dr Lecter produced a linen napkin and placed a curl of pink meat on it, a soft ripe purple fig. ‘I apologise for the lack of crockery and cutlery. Security is rather sensitive about bringing sharp objects on a plane.’ His lip twitched.‘That’s…fine. Thank you.’‘It’s my pleasure, Will.’The ham was salty and tender, melting in his mouth; the fig juicy and sweet. Will didn’t protest when Hannibal replenished his napkin with more food. He was suddenly ravenous. Beside him, the other man took measured bites. He closed his eyes with each taste, savouring it, chewing slowly and thoroughly, wiping his fingers between bites on his own napkin. Once he licked his lips and Will caught himself staring at the tip of his tongue, moistening the sculpted mouth. He quickly looked back at the food on his table.‘So,’ said Hannibal eventually, ‘if you’re not lecturing, what does bring you to London?’‘I honestly have no idea.’‘And the surprise is what makes you anxious?’‘What I’m anxious about is not being surprised whatsoever. What I’m anxious about is seeing exactly what I expect to see.’‘Your imaginings must be both vivid and dark, if you have such a visceral reaction to them.’‘Visceral.’ Will let out a hollow laugh. ‘From the guts. An apt word.’Hannibal raised an eyebrow slightly, but made no comment. ‘A piece of cheese, perhaps?’‘Do you do this all the time? Feed strangers picnics on planes?’‘No. I do not.’‘Why are you doing it now then?’Hannibal passed him a slice of cheese, wrapped in a fresh green leaf: white, soft, silky.‘I find you interesting,’ he said.The weight of his gaze was almost more than Will could bear. ‘I don’t,’ said Will. ‘Find you that interesting.’‘You will. Another fig?’The fig’s velvet skin yielded like flesh between his teeth, the seeds bursting. Will felt Hannibal watching him eat it. His attention was complete, as if he were savouring him as he’d savoured the food. His gaze…burned.Was he trying to seduce Will?Will swallowed hastily. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘That was delicious. I’m really tired, so…’ He closed his eyes, folded his arms across his chest, reclined his seat. Thought about fishing. Cold water, flowing water, the bobbing of the lure, the flight of the line. Thought about fixing engines, the soporific scent of diesel. Thought about walking in the woods, twigs crunching underfoot, the dogs bounding through the snow.He still tasted Hannibal’s figs, like honey. He felt the warmth of his leg, inches from his own. He smelled the subtle scent of his cologne. What wood was it? Pine? Sandalwood? Cedar? Something similar to what he breathed in the night in Wolf Trap, but more exotic, more elusive, almost intoxicating…That gaze: intelligent, amused, penetrating. Strangely alluring. Will hadn’t had so much eye contact in months. Maybe years. That gaze was like a touch. An evocative caress. A small careful lick, from a savouring tongue.Will felt himself hardening. Don’t think about that mouth on your dick. But of course he thought of it. Damn his too-imaginative brain. He crossed his legs, trying to redirect his thoughts to shoveling up dog shit, and his foot kicked something. Cold splashed into his lap and he bolted upright to see a fellow passenger with an empty champagne glass in his hand. The contents were quickly soaking into the crotch of Will’s trousers.‘You kicked me,’ accused the passenger, a disheveled man with a comb-over, a wrinkled suit and the bleary eyes of a drunk. ‘You spilled my drink.’‘I’m sor—’ Will began but Hannibal interrupted him, addressing the other man.‘You were barely able to stand upright,’ Dr Lecter told him. ‘I’m surprised the flight attendants served you. It’s no way to behave on a flight, or indeed at all.’The drunk man gazed from Will to Hannibal and back again. ‘Need your boyfriend to stick up for you?’ he sneered at Will.‘I—’‘Pardon me sir, but I need you to return to your seat.’ A flight attendant appeared at the man’s side and smoothly diverted him. ‘Sir, I’m so sorry,’ she said over her shoulder to Will as she led the other man away. ‘I’ll have my colleague bring you a towel right away.’‘No need,’ said Will. ‘I’ll clean it up myself.’ He unbuckled his seat belt and headed for the lavatory. There was a large wet, cold stain on the front of his trousers; he tried to hold his hands in front of him discreetly. Unfortunately the spilled drink seemed to have had no effect whatsoever on his embarrassing state of arousal. In fact, if anything, the authority in Hannibal’s response, the assumption by the drunken man that Hannibal and Will were a couple, had made it even worse.Could he see it? The drunk? Could he see, somehow, the inappropriate and unwelcome thoughts that Will was having about his seatmate?In the lavatory, Will splashed cold water on his face, dampened his curly hair and pushed it back from his face. No. No one could read his thoughts. That was his own particular specialty, and he’d learned the painful way that he was pretty much unique.Because that was the reason for the bourbon self-pity party last night, wasn’t it? Loneliness, and the fact that he couldn’t stop himself from looking at horror?‘Get a grip on yourself, Graham,’ he muttered to himself.‘Alternatively,’ said a cultured voice behind him, ‘you could allow me.’Will spun around in the tight confines of the lavatory. How had Hannibal Lecter got in here without him hearing? Without him seeing, in the mirror?He heard and saw him now. All six feet of impeccably groomed, broad-shouldered, self-composed man. And felt him, in a way he hadn’t quite yet: the heat, the power of him, the control he had over his every tiny movement.‘You—can I have a little privacy?’ he stammered, feeling himself stiffen even more.‘You left the door unlocked,’ Hannibal commented. ‘I chose to take it as an invitation. Or have I misread the situation?’Will opened his mouth to deny it, but he was caught in that gaze again. ‘I…’ he said, and he swallowed, his heart pounding loudly enough to be audible in the small space. ‘No. You haven’t misread it.’Without breaking eye contact, Hannibal locked the door behind him. And then he closed the tiny distance between them and captured Will’s mouth in a savage kiss.It was brutal, that kiss. Brutal and bruising and passionate and it belied the controlled, polite creature of taste who Will had met before. Hannibal’s teeth clashed against Will’s, his tongue delved deep into Will’s mouth, and Will found himself clutching Hannibal’s arms through the material of his suit, found himself leaning into the other man and kissing him back, just as hard, just as hungrily. He tasted of figs and champagne and clean mint and that wood, that wood he couldn’t identify, something old and elemental and sexy as hell.Hannibal fisted his hand in Will’s hair and tilted his head back so he could nip at his throat. His body pressed Will backwards; the ledge of the sink dug into Will buttocks and in front, Hannibal’s hips ground against his. He was as turned on as Will was. His hard cock pressed through his clothes against Will’s crotch and Will groaned aloud, the sound shocking and guttural in the enclosed space. He reached for it, stroked it through Hannibal’s trousers, felt it hard and throbbing and Hannibal pulled back his head from Will for a moment to look into his face and smile. That smile held desire and more than a little bit of triumph.‘Do you find me interesting now?’ Hannibal asked. But before Will could answer him, he had sat on the closed toilet seat lid, and was unfastening Will’s belt with agile fingers.‘I…what are you doing?’ Will whispered.‘It’s self-evident, is it not?’ Hannibal undid Will’s trousers, unzipped his fly. Pushed his plaid boxer shorts down to draw out his erection, which was most definitely very erect. Will shuddered at the touch of Hannibal’s fingers on his heated flesh, but he withdrew as much as he could, pressing back against the sink.‘There’s a planeful of people outside,’ he protested.‘And does that not make it even more exciting, Will Graham?’ ‘I—’‘Don’t you crave for these private spaces in a crowd? These inviolable secrets of your innermost self?’How does he know this stuff? ‘I crave—’‘You crave this,’ replied Hannibal, and he took Will’s cock into his mouth. Will stifled a shout. Hannibal’s lips, oh dear Jesus, his lips and his tongue, that heat. It was hotter in his mouth than in a devil’s, and Hannibal’s mouth was skilled, sucking and licking and biting and gliding wetly over Will’s cock, touching every single nerve ending and sliding up, and then down.But the thing that got him, the thing that nearly undid him, was the sight of Hannibal savouring him. Eyes closed, eyebrows raised, face beatific, as if Will Graham’s cock was the most delicious thing in the history of delicious things.Will swallowed a ragged moan and he buried his hands in Hannibal’s hair, disheveling the perfectly-combed locks. He didn’t guide Hannibal, just held him, allowed him to do as he wanted, felt the other man’s head moving, back and forth, up and down. Hannibal made a sound of appreciation deep in his throat and it travelled up the length of Will’s dick, up his spine, making him dizzy and breathless.It didn’t last long. It lasted forever. Hannibal sucked and licked, swirling his tongue around the head of his erection, grazing his teeth along the sensitive length, cradling his balls in one hand, and Will failed to breathe. He bit his own lip hard enough to draw blood, tilted his head back, gave himself up to the sensation and lost himself in something that wasn’t about death, wasn’t about being someone else. Was instead about being himself, right now, in the present, alive.He came more violently than he had ever done in his life. Hannibal Lecter swallowed every drop.Then he released Will’s cock, lingeringly, with a small, almost tender kiss on the end. He carefully tucked him back into his shorts, refastened his trousers, as Will stood there, trembling, trying to calm himself, trying to believe what he had just allowed to happen. What he had just done.Finally Hannibal stood. Straightened his barely-ruffled clothing.‘I think that will help your anxiety,’ Hannibal said.There was something behind the doctor’s smile, something…wolfish. Something hungry. Something Will itched to understand.Will grabbed his face and kissed him again to try to comprehend it. He tasted his own come on Hannibal’s lips. It was exquisite.This was a man who understood the power of control, who found control in giving pleasure. What would he be like if he lost control? Will could see it, behind his eyelids, in the place where he imagined. In the place where he truly lived.He drew away and stared at Hannibal, astonished. Hannibal’s lips were reddened and there was a glow in his eyes. He nodded slightly, then glanced in the mirror and smoothed his hair back with his hand. He turned, unlocked the door, and was gone. Will returned to his seat several minutes later, after he’d regained some measure of his composure. He had to pass the drunken businessman on his way back, who glared at him and snorted. ‘Mile high club, huh?’ he said, too loudly. Will ignored him and kept walking.When he sat down, Hannibal was reading a hardback book, as if nothing had happened. But he had a faint flush on his cheekbones. ‘I apologise,’ he said quietly to Will. ‘I detest discourtesy. You should not have had to hear that.’‘I’ve heard worse,’ said Will. ‘Much worse.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Hannibal…’Hannibal raised his finger to his lips. ‘Relax, now. Try to sleep. We still have an hour and a half before we land.’He went back to his book, but his land lay beside Will’s on their shared arm rest. They touched only along the length of their little fingers, so slight that no one would notice. But it was warm, and exciting, and somehow comforting, and Will drifted off, into a silent dream where the forest was watching him, surrounding him with that scent of mysterious wood and time.He woke refreshed as they were touching down at Heathrow. His first thought was to glance over at Hannibal.‘I don’t recommend the coffee,’ he said. ‘Are you feeling better? Ready for what’s awaiting you?’Will thought of Rathbone. Of a wolflike being stalking London, scattering blood. Now it felt like a puzzle, not a horror. Or at least, a horror that he could solve. ‘Yes. Yes, I think I am.’‘I’m very glad.’The seatbelt sign turned off and Hannibal stood, collecting his hamper and a carefully-folded overcoat from the locker overhead. Will took down the carry-on bag he’d packed hastily and with probably not enough underwear, and the two of them walked off the plane together. Side by side through the glossy terminal, their strides matching. At passport control, they paused before they parted to go into separate queues. Will swallowed. ‘Well, Dr Lecter, it was certainly unexpected, meeting you.’‘Come see me,’ said Hannibal. ‘I’m staying at Claridge’s. We could have dinner, or go to the theatre.’‘Or do something else to relieve my anxiety?’ He could barely believe he was saying it.Hannibal smiled slightly. ‘Perhaps. Yes. Or you could do something for me. I have a suspicion you may be able to.’ He passed Will a card, heavy and textured, cream-coloured. Dr Hannibal Lecter it said, in copperplate engraving. An address in Baltimore, a mobile phone number.‘Did you get teased at school?’ Will asked, turning over the card in his fingers. ‘For your name?’‘Never more than once.’ Hannibal smiled, wider this time, and this smile was another revelation. ‘I’m free tomorrow evening. My phone will work in this country. Call me, if you like.’He said it lightly but Will didn’t miss the command beneath the seemingly casual request. Their eyes met again, and once again Will forgot how to breathe.Someone passed them in a fug of alcoholic fumes and Hannibal straightened, his nostrils flaring in distaste. It was the drunk man from the plane, his passport in hand, carry-on bag following him like an obedient pet. ‘You’ll excuse me,’ Hannibal said to Will. ‘I have some business to take care of. Au revoir.’And he was gone, following the rude man silently, his shoulders straight, his posture perfect, not a wrinkle on him.Will joined the non-EU line with his fellow sleepy countrymen and women, surrounded by American accents and barely-masked yawns. He looked for Hannibal, but he couldn’t see him.Outside customs, Rathbone had an ill-fiittng grey suit and a nose too noble for his face. ‘Graham?’ he said when Will approached, despite the fact that he was holding a placard saying GRAHAM. ‘Welcome to London. I hope you had a good flight.’Will Graham nodded. In his pocket, he turned over the rectangle of cardboard like a problem. Or a promise.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The killer wasn’t a wolf. It was something larger. Much more human. The wounds were horrific, but planned. Organised mutilation, with pleasure in each tear and puncture. Nothing was missing, and nothing had been eaten.Will Graham closed his eyes and saw nothing but the after-image of blood behind his eyelids.‘I know,’ said the Scotland Yard inspector who’d met him at the morgue—the first place DC Rathbone had taken him from Heathrow airport. ‘It’s not a pretty sight. You just got off a plane. Maybe we should have let you have a cup of tea first.’‘That’s okay,’ said Will. ‘I slept on the plane.’ And I did something else, too. Something I never expected in a million years. He slid his glasses into his breast pocket. ‘I’m not tired; it’s the way I work.’‘With your eyes closed?’ The DI looked skeptical.‘Didn’t Crawford tell you what I do?’‘I heard you had some sort of voodoo vision to get into the head of killers.’Will sighed. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.’ A lie: he’d never caught it in the first place.‘Lestrade. DI Greg Lestrade.’‘DI Lestrade, my particular voodoo consists of empathy, imagination, eidetic memory, and many years’ experience in police work in homicide and lately, for the FBI. I’m able to put myself in a killer’s shoes from examining the evidence. There’s no magic to it, but I do need peace and quiet to think.’‘Imagination? That’s different.’‘Different from what?’ said Will, making an effort to keep his voice steady. He’d got used to the space and time the FBI gave him with evidence. He’d even started taking it for granted—forgetting that this was entirely down to Jack Crawford’s orders.‘We had a fellow of our own,’ said Lestrade. ‘Unofficial, rather like you are. But he reckoned he worked entirely through logic and deduction. All facts, no imagination. Still looked like voodoo to me.’‘And why aren’t you using your unofficial fellow?’‘He jumped off the roof of St Bartholomew’s Hospital.’Genuine pain crossed DI Lestrade’s face when he said it, and Will turned away again to look at the mutilated corpse of Nigel Faralle.‘If I could have a few moments,’ Will said. ‘Alone?’‘He’s all yours,’ said Lestrade, and left the room.The victim was wearing most of his guts and his blood outside his body. He was also wearing a suit and tie. The clothes weren’t particularly cut well, unlike the victim’s flesh. He’d been white, middle-aged, with thinning sandy hair. His eyes had been recovered at the scene and were on a tray behind Will.Will took a deep breath of air flavoured with antiseptic and blood, and closed his eyes again. He waited for the light, sweeping and cleansing his mind, clearing away the present, bringing him backwards to the heart of things.
Don’t you crave for these private spaces in a crowd? These inviolable secrets of your innermost self?
It was Hannibal Lecter’s voice. The stranger he’d met on the plane. The man who’d seduced him. A psychiatrist, of all things. A psychiatrist with the most penetrating eyes, the most delicious mouth, the most startling insight into Will’s hidden feelings.‘Any luck?’ Lestrade had come back into the room. Will shook his head, giving it up. ‘Nothing yet—except for the obvious fact that this wasn’t a wolf, and that the murderer enjoyed what he did. You’re right, I’m tired. And I haven’t had time to look at the files yet.’It was an excuse. He’d worked on other cases when he was more tired, and when he had less information, and he’d been successful. The insight usually came almost instantly from this place inside him, the place where the darkness felt at home. As if it couldn’t wait to come out and play.From his pocket, he pulled out a bottle of aspirin, tipped two into his hand, and crunched them, wincing slightly at the familiar bitter taste.‘Jet lag,’ said Lestrade wisely. ‘It can get you that way. We shouldn’t have brought you directly here, but we’ve got a media uproar, you see. Three politicians in three weeks. I’ve got some paperwork for you, some photographs of the other two victims. Maybe you’d like to take it back to your hotel and have a good look, get some sleep, and we can start fresh tomorrow morning.’Will nodded.But when he was in his hotel room—clean but cheap and the size of a closet; obviously the budget had been blown on the first class air fare—he didn’t go through the files that Lestrade had given him. He left them on the flimsy desk and lay on his bed on top of the scratchy coverlet and turned a rectangle of cardboard over in his hands.Will Graham didn’t do relationships. Being a walking bundle of personality defects, he wasn’t horribly good at them. But this wasn’t a relationship. It was a liaison. It was curiosity.He picked up the hotel room phone and dialed.It wasn’t answered right away and Will reached over to disconnect, but then a cultured, accented voice said, ‘Yes?’‘Dr Lecter?’‘Will.’ There was rush of warmth in the word and Will felt something turning over in his chest. ‘I’m glad you called me.’‘I was wondering if you were free tonight.’ It came out in a rush, and there was a long enough pause so that Will had time to be embarrassed. From the other end, he heard the faint noise of traffic in the background.‘Not tonight, I’m afraid. I’m planning on calling on someone. But tomorrow night, I have a dinner reservation at Le Gavroche. Would you care to join me?’He swallowed. ‘All right.’‘Eight o’clock then.’ Hannibal hung up, and Will was left staring at the ceiling, wondering what he was doing. And why, even when given the choice, he couldn’t look away.*The killings looked like werewolf killings—if you believed in human-sized wolves who struck when the moon was full, which Will Graham didn’t. But the last two killings hadn’t been during a full moon, and besides, there were subtle differences between the wound patterns of each victim. So subtle, in fact, that Will couldn’t quite articulate how they were different. But they were.‘It’s three killers, not one,’ he said, looking up from the litter of files and photographs on the corner of Lestrade’s desk at Scotland Yard. ‘Hmm,’ said Lestrade, barely taking his eyes from his laptop screen. ‘Well, that’s good news at least. Three killers are three times more likely than one to screw up.’He hadn’t questioned Will’s assertion, even though Will had offered it without evidence. That was a good sign, Will supposed. Especially as Will had been gazing at these files all morning and a good chunk of this afternoon, and this was the first insight he’d come up with.Sleep had not come easy last night for Will. And when it had, it had been haunted by Hannibal Lecter. He’d woken in the night, drenched in sweat, aching with arousal, and when he’d grasped his own cock, he’d thought of Hannibal’s mouth. Sucking, licking, devouring, biting, swallowing.He came in seconds but it took a long time to get to sleep again. He swore he could smell Hannibal Lecter coming out of the pores of his own skin.The coffee at his hotel was watery and did nothing to wake him up in the morning, and the coffee at New Scotland Yard was, if anything, worse. And his mind kept wandering to what could happen tonight…‘Any chance it’s not political?’ asked Lestrade. ‘I hate political.’‘I can’t tell yet.’ Will stood and stretched, yawning. ‘Is the tea any better than the coffee in this place?’‘No,’ said Lestrade gloomily. ‘Have you got anything else for me?’‘Not right now. Can I see the crime scenes?’‘They were all killed in parks. They’re all public thoroughfares, and there’s nothing left there, but I’ll take you.’‘And the other victims’ bodies?’ ‘No problem.’Lestrade’s phone rang and he spoke into it tersely, listened, and then swore. ‘I’ve got to go to Westminster and talk to some frightened Members of Parliament,’ he told Will when he put down the phone. ‘That’ll take the rest of the afternoon. Why don’t you take a break? I’ll pick you up from your hotel when I’m done and we can talk about the case. I know a good place for curry and a beer.’‘I’ve got plans for dinner. I’m meeting…a friend.’‘Going anywhere nice?’‘Le Gavroche?’‘Bloody hell.’‘Is it fancy?’ Will asked with a sinking sensation. Of course it was fancy. Hannibal Lecter took gourmet picnics onto planes.‘I hope you’ve got a suit.’‘Er…’‘Come with me. I’ll drop you off on Oxford Street.’‘Is there a Penney’s there?’‘Mate, if you’re going to Le Gavroche, you’re going to want to shop at Selfridge’s at least.’*The new shirt and tie and jacket were uncomfortable. Will tugged at his collar as he walked into Le Gavroche. It was the sort of place with a Maître d’ in a penguin suit, greeting Will with effusive good taste.‘I’m meeting Dr Hannibal Lecter,’ Will told him, and was ushered through the green and red dining room towards a snowy-clothed table near the back.Hannibal Lecter was sitting there already, his combed-back hair glossy, his clothes impeccable: a blue suit this time, a patterned tie, broad tailored shoulders, slender elegant hands. Will’s heart stuttered. He stood when Will reached the table. ‘Will,’ he said. He didn’t make a move to touch Will, not to shake his hand or to kiss him. He only looked at him, his attention complete, his face inscrutable, and Will stood there, one hand on the chair that the Maître d’ had pulled out, feeling his blood rushing through his veins.‘Dr Lecter,’ he said. ‘I think we’re on a first-name basis by now, don’t you?’ Hannibal gestured for Will to sit and the Maître d’ pushed in his chair when he did. ‘I’ve taken the liberty of ordering already. I hope you don’t mind.’ A waiter appeared from nowhere and poured champagne into two flutes. ‘I…yes, great,’ said Will. He felt flustered, too hot, too stiff in these clothes. He had an unpleasant flash of when he’d had to go to a junior high prom with the daughter of the owner of the boatyard where he and his father had been living at the time. Borrowed suit, bored date, horrible music, and the weight of social expectation.He couldn’t see anything in Hannibal’s eyes but a gleam, which could be interest, or could be amusement.‘It’s the Menu Exceptionnel, the tasting menu. I always have it when I visit London. It’s nine courses. I hope you’re hungry.’ Hannibal lifted his champagne glass to toast with Will’s.‘I’m not much of a foodie.’ Will gulped the champagne. He supposed it was nice; he couldn’t tell. ‘And I’ve had a frustrating day. I might not be the best of company.’‘Are you trying to lower my expectations of you?’ Hannibal sipped champagne, closing his eyes briefly in appreciation. ‘I’ll warn you, you won’t succeed.’At the junior high prom, Will’s date had tripped him so he fell in a bush, then laughed and gone off with two other boys. ‘You’d be surprised.’‘I suspect you have the capacity to surprise me, Will, but not in the way you think. Why was your day frustrating?’‘I was trying to understand something that I couldn’t.’‘Now there, you do surprise me. You seem like a man with a great capacity for understanding.’He held Will’s eye then, and Will took refuge in the shifting sands of social chatter. ‘How was your day, Dr—Hannibal?’‘Very satisfying. I met with a former colleague at the Royal College of Surgeons, and afterwards I treated myself to a visit to the Hunterian Museum there. They have a fascinating collection of anatomical curiosities.’‘I thought you were a psychiatrist?’‘Before that, I was a surgeon. And I have an abiding interest in the human body and mind, in all their permutations.’A waiter put a plate in front of Will: a round puff of yellow, intensely savoury-smelling. ‘Cheese soufflé,’ Hannibal told him. ‘It’s one of my favourite dishes here, and shows what a skilled hand can do with fine, but simple ingredients. Please, start.’There were several forks and knives on the table, all of them gleaming. Will chose some and cut into the soufflé. It was the texture of air and it melted on his tongue. ‘You love food, don’t you?’ Will asked.‘Food is life. Life is precious. I see no point in wasting any part of it.’ Hannibal savoured his soufflé. Eyes closed. The same way he had when he was sucking Will’s dick. Jesus.‘So do you have a reason for inviting me here tonight?’ Will asked.‘I enjoy your company.’‘That’s all?’ Will knew he was pushing it. But these manners, these forks, these knives, the carefully-framed art on the walls, the snowy tablecloth and the starched napkins, the array of wine glasses, the waiters gliding noiselessly between the flower arrangements and the gently buzzing room: it all seemed so removed from the primal hunger that he and Hannibal had shared in the lavatory of that airplane.Hannibal didn’t answer right away. The waiter removed the soufflé plates, and within minutes, another waiter brought another white plate with a fan of rose-tinted thinly-sliced meat, garnished with swirls of colour. ‘Carpaccio of beef,’ said the waiter, and poured them each a glass of ruby wine, and faded away.‘As I said on the plane, I find you interesting.’ Hannibal lifted a sliver of beef to his mouth. Savoured, chewed, swallowed. ‘I don’t believe I’ve ever met anyone quite like you.’‘You don’t know the half of it.’ The beef was good, but the wine was better. It slipped down like velvet, and didn’t make him feel any more comfortable.‘Why did you agree to come here tonight?’ asked Hannibal. ‘Do you feel lonely, a stranger in a strange land?’He thought about the day he’d spent, leafing through photographs of the dead. ‘It’s not so strange to me.’Something about his reply seemed to please Hannibal; his lips twitched into a half a smile. ‘We speak in veiled truths, you and I. And yet even our evasions communicate something.’Another plate, another course, this time fish. Three down; how many to go? Six? Did people really spend this much time eating? Will drank his wine—white now—and stole covert glances at Hannibal’s hands. Bone, fine skin, sinew; the faint shadow of hair on his wrists beneath his spotless white shirt cuffs. He had long fingers, neat short nails. No rings. Gold cufflinks. He handled knife and fork and glass and napkin with precision.They did speak in veiled truths. Why couldn’t he come out and ask what he wanted to know? Are we going to have sex again? How do you know these things about me? Who are you? Why did you choose me?‘Hannib—’ he began, as the third course was replaced with the fourth, but Hannibal chose that moment to smile at him and say, ‘So are you here in London investigating a murder, Will?’Will hadn’t taken a bite of the new course yet, but he nearly choked. ‘You—how do you—’‘I told you, I find you interesting. I looked you up online after we met yesterday. There are several detailed records of your accomplishments.’‘You read TattleCrime.com,’ said Will flatly.‘It was fascinating. You’re the person who caught the Minnesota Shrike. The cannibal.’‘Garrett Jacob Hobbs.’ The words came out unwillingly.‘You caught him largely by instinct, it seems; from reading employment records.’ Hannibal leaned forward on the table, his expression sharp. ‘How did you know it was him?’Will put his napkin on the table, pushed back his heavy chair, and stood up. ‘Thank you for inviting me to dinner, Dr Lecter. I’m sorry, but I have to go. I’ll pay for my share of the meal.’ He pulled out his wallet: how much did eating in a place like this cost, anyway? He emptied all his notes onto the table in a messy pile of what looked like play money. ‘I hope you have a good time in London.’He turned and walked out of the restaurant, past the other tables of diners and the nimble waiters and the Maître d’ and out onto the street. He had to blink when he got outside, blinded by the contrast of the warm room, lit in golden light, to the dark street, shrouded in grey mist.Will walked rapidly down the street, bowing his head against the clammy fog. He didn’t know where he was going in this city; he didn’t care, really. He wanted to get away from what had just happened. He’d been about to bare himself, to ask questions that would expose his most vulnerable side, the lonely side who wanted to be liked, accepted, loved. And Hannibal Lecter had instead given him rich food, fine wines, and mere curiosity about how he had caught a killer.‘Freak show,’ he muttered to himself as he crossed a busy street into a park. Trees loomed large; the lamps were effectively doused by the fog. He smelled grass and earth and fumes from the nearby traffic. ‘Freak show to the FBI, freak show to the cadets, freak show to Freddie Lounds who wants to write about me. To Alana Bloom who can’t even be in a room with me because she wants to study me. Jack Crawford’s fucking freak show, sent to Scotland Yard for people to gawp at here, too.’And he’d thought that he’d maybe found someone who was interested in him for his own sake. Crazy Will.He should have stayed at home in Virginia with the dogs.No one else seemed to be out. Water condensed in his curly hair, making it heavy and wet against his face and neck. Wolfman—or Wolfmen, rather—had struck in parks, including this park, dragging their victims into the bushes to finish their work. They struck on nights like this one. No full moon was needed, just dim light and opportunity. They could follow their victims without being noticed, flitting between the shadows created by the trees and the fog. Sound was muted and hardly travelled. The rest of the city might as well not exist. The killers, working one by one, would perform quickly, efficiently, and if someone were to pass nearby, all they would have to do would be to keep still until the danger had passed.Tonight was the kind of night that the Wolfmen liked. If he checked the weather for the dates of the murders, he’d bet there had been fog then, too.Great, now’s the time I start to get some insight into this killer, Will thought, and quickly on the back of that: I’m glad I’m not a politician.
And also, I knew it was the goddamn Hound of the Baskervilles.
He shoved his hands into his pockets and walked more quickly. Anyway, it was a good thing that Hannibal Lecter hadn’t turned out to be truly interested in him. He needed a relationship like he needed a knife in the gut. At least now he’d be able to concentrate on what he was in London for, which was to catch some—An arm wrapped around his neck from behind, cutting off his breathing, dragging him off the path and into the bushes.Will tried to struggle free but the person was stronger than he was, and taller, so Will’s feet couldn’t get a purchase on the ground. Shit I don’t have my gun, Will thought, trying to get an elbow into his assailant’s stomach, trying with his other hand to pull the arm off his neck so he could breathe. He hadn’t heard a single thing. No footsteps coming up behind him. They had struck as quietly as the fog itself and Will didn’t care if he wasn’t a politician; he was already picturing the way the killer’s claws were going to sink into his flesh.And then the arm loosened—not much, but enough so that Will could suck in a breath—and Will smelled him. That ancient wood.‘Hannibal?’ he gasped, or tried to. It came out as ‘Aniba?’‘Some might call it rude,’ murmured that cultured voice in his ear, ‘to throw money on the table and walk out of a restaurant without your dining companion.’‘Some—some—’Hannibal relaxed his grip a tiny bit more so that Will could speak.‘Some might call it rude to look up your dining companion on the internet and then spring it on him when he’s trying to eat scallops or whatever they were.’‘Coquilles St. Jacques grillées et minestrone de palourdes.’ Hannibal released Will’s neck, but kept his grip on his shoulders. Will turned to face him, panting. ‘You’re right,’ Hannibal said. ‘We’re even.’‘Jesus, Hannibal.’ He rubbed his neck. He was very aware that he was still, technically, in Hannibal’s arms. ‘I didn’t hurt you, did I?’ Hannibal leaned forward and brushed his hand against the front of Will’s neck, where he’d put the most pressure. His fingers were cool and certain.‘Did you want to hurt me?’‘A little bit.’ Hannibal ducked his head and kissed Will where he’d just touched him. His fingers had been cool but his mouth was hot, and Will sucked in another shaky breath. ‘But only a little,’ he murmured against Will’s skin.Will grasped Hannibal’s head, messing that perfectly-groomed hair, and kissed him on the lips. Hot as the devil inside, with a tongue that was so talented it immediately brought up a full-body memory of what Hannibal had done to him on the plane. Hannibal nipped at his bottom lip, and Will nipped back at his, and whispered, ‘If we were going to do this, why couldn’t we have done this instead of going to some fancy restaurant and pretending we weren’t thinking about it?’‘Because I wanted to see you there,’ replied Hannibal. ‘I wanted to see what you would do.’‘Why?’‘Because I knew you would feel ill-at-ease. Because you become more yourself when your boundaries are pushed.’‘Is that what you were doing?’‘It’s what I’m doing now.’ He seized Will’s wrists in a steel grip and began walking him backwards, the front of his body brushing Will’s. Will knew he should probably be concerned—in a park where there’d been a recent homicide, indulging in public sexplay with a near-stranger who seemed determined to dominate him—but he couldn’t think any further than Hannibal’s proximity. His touch. He backed up against something solid. A tree. And Hannibal kept on coming, pressing himself against Will, and Will felt Hannibal’s hard erection pushing against his own.Oh God, he should be concerned. But he wasn’t. He wanted this. He tilted up his mouth for Hannibal to kiss him again.‘Turn around,’ Hannibal said instead.‘What?’‘Turn around, Will. Put your hands against the trunk of the tree.’Part of him, the sane part, told him to refuse. But he wasn’t running on his sane part right now. He was running on the dark part, the wanting part. Will turned around and grasped the tree trunk. It was rough and damp under his hands. He felt Hannibal reaching around and unfastening his belt. Through their clothes, his cock was hard against Will’s ass. ‘What are you—’ he began.‘Shh. Bend a little. That’s right.’ Hannibal pushed down Will’s trousers and his boxers. His hand brushed the side of Will’s dick and Will moaned and involuntarily thrust his hips forward. But Hannibal didn’t grasp him. Instead his hands went to Will’s ass, feeling and squeezing and kneading. His finger slipped between Will’s ass cheeks, teasing his hole, and Will gasped.‘I’m not—I mean, I’ve never—’ He looked over his shoulder at Hannibal. The other man’s face was shadowed, dark hollows under cheekbones, but Will could see the gleam of his eyes and of his mouth.‘I told you Will. I’m pushing your boundaries.’ Hannibal kissed the back of Will’s neck. ‘I want to fuck you,’ he whispered into Will’s ear. The words made Will shiver. ‘I want to feel myself inside you. To penetrate into the heart of you. Do you want it too?’Will swallowed. He nodded.‘I need to hear it, Will.’‘Yes.’ The word came out hoarse.‘Tell me you want me to fuck you.’‘I want…I want you to fuck me.’ Hannibal didn’t reply. He drew back slightly for a moment, and Will had enough time to wonder if Hannibal had only wanted the words, the capitulation. Whether a verbal surrender would be enough. But then he felt Hannibal’s fingers again at his entrance, slippery now, warm. They caressed and teased. Will gritted his teeth and rested his forehead on the tree trunk and thought about what it must be like to be Hannibal right now, standing in the fog with Will bent before him. He pictured his own backside, gleaming white in the darkness, vulnerable. The back of his own head, the curls at the nape of his neck. The submissive posture of his shoulders, his arms braced against the tree. In his mind, he could be both of them at once. That was his gift. He watched his own fingers penetrating his own body. Possessing it. Slippery with lube, stretching the muscles, getting himself ready for this new intimacy.‘What have you got on your hand?’ he gasped.‘Butter,’ replied Hannibal, sounding extraordinarily matter-of-fact. ‘I took it from the restaurant table. It’s unsalted.’Will barked out a laugh. ‘Very impressive improvisation.’‘I am nothing if not inventive.’ There was a smile in his voice and Will could feel that too, the crease of his cheek, the lift of the lips. He heard the quiet, purposeful sound of Hannibal unfastening his clothes. The whisper of cloth against flesh; the small friction of Hannibal touching himself, melting the butter on his hot skin.And then the head of Hannibal’s cock was at his ass and Will felt himself spreading for him. Opening his body, straining to hold his legs further apart, to push back onto Hannibal. Slowly, Hannibal slid inside him. He was thick, and Will burned and hurt, but the pain was melting and warm and filling, and Will closed his eyes and saw himself from behind and saw Hannibal’s cock going into him, a fraction of an inch at a time. He saw Hannibal’s expression behind his own eyelids. That savouring expression. As if the highest aim of life were pleasure.Little by little, until he was buried his full length inside Will. Hannibal kissed the back of Will’s neck again, ruffling his hair with his breath. Slowly and carefully kissed him as Will’s body adjusted to this new sensation. ‘Will?’ said Hannibal, and Will was surprised to hear and feel a trembling from him. That control was not as complete as Will had thought. Once again he pictured Hannibal undone, Hannibal at the mercy of his desires and sensations, and Will clenched himself around Hannibal and was rewarded by a low moan.‘Yes,’ gritted Will. ‘Yes, Hannibal.’And Hannibal started to move.He fucked with precision: gently at first, and by degrees faster, harder, deeper, more ruthless. At first he made no noise at all but then his breath came harder.That was when Will allowed his mind to slip again so that he was inside both of them, Hannibal fucking him and himself being fucked, hips jerking, hands grasping rough bark/smooth skin, cock straining against the night air/deep inside his own body, the same breaths coming in and out of their joined lungs, the same sounds in their joined ears, the shout from someone’s lips—perhaps his, perhaps Hannibal’s, perhaps both—as their orgasm grabbed them by the balls and they came, together, Hannibal deep inside Will and Will into the thin air.Hannibal clung to Will afterwards. Only for a moment, sagged against him, and Will let him lean there and held him upright with his body. Then Hannibal straightened and he pulled out of Will. Will fought not to make a sound of abandonment when he was gone. He held on to the tree, trying to get his breath back, and heard Hannibal zipping himself up. Then the other man knelt and helped Will pull his trousers back up. Will turned around and tried to buckle his belt, but his hands were cold and stiff from holding the tree trunk, and Hannibal did it for him.He was a shadowy presence again, moving almost silently. Will put his hand on the side of Hannibal’s face. He stroked his thumb over his lips. The two of them were already beginning to melt apart, to become separate in his mind. ‘What are you thinking?’ he asked Hannibal. Hannibal didn’t answer. He smiled under Will’s thumb and he kissed it. Then he straightened Will’s tie and brushed his damp hair back from his face. He shook his head slightly, and Will knew that was the most he was going to get.‘You ate the goddamn scallops after I’d gone, didn’t you?’ Will asked.‘Just a taste.’ He kissed Will lightly on the lips. ‘Call me tomorrow. Get a cab home now. There are predators out at night.’And then Hannibal disappeared into the darkness.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Will didn’t take a cab. His trousers were damp and wrinkled; under his boxers, his ass was slippery with butter. He felt marked, possessed, his flesh tender and his balls aching, and he couldn’t help but think that this was exactly how Hannibal had intended him to feel.Instead he walked through the shadowy park to the other side. He didn’t sense the presence of an invisible predator, despite Hannibal's warnings. Even if there was one, his mind was too full to perceive it.He found his way back to his hotel using the GPS on his mobile phone, stopping off to buy a bottle of whisky on the way. He took a slug of it before he showered, and underneath the spray he explored his own body, gingerly, feeling for any change, anything that might truly be the mark he felt on him. He chewed four aspirin with the second glass of Scotch and was asleep almost before his head hit the pillow.*The next day at the morgue, Will examined the bodies of the Wolfmen’s three victims without saying much, letting himself absorb the information. Looking at the actual bodies instead of the police photographs and files, he could see a lot that confirmed his conclusion that there had been three killers, rather than one: subtle differences in the wounds’ depth and placement and savagery. John Trumbull's killer had been taller than the others, for example.Most likely, however, they’d used the same prosthetics to inflict the damage: false teeth, and strap-on claws like something out of an X-Men movie. Forensics had already determined they were made out of stainless steel, sharpened like the knives of a professional butcher or chef, and that cause of death in each case had been a severed jugular. Most of the more horrific injuries had been inflicted post mortem.He told Lestrade his impressions and Lestrade listened and noted them down.There was something else that the bodies were telling him, though. Something so subtle, or perhaps so obvious, that he couldn’t see it. It was there, niggling at him, and yet whenever he tried to pin down his thoughts he remembered how he’d let his mind slip last night, when Hannibal was fucking him, so he’d been inside both of them at once, seeing through both of their eyes.He’d never done that during sex before. And now the knowledge that he could, the memory that he had, was haunting him so he couldn’t work.To his credit, Lestrade didn’t complain. ‘You don’t want to use a magnifying glass? Or insult me?’ he asked once, laconically, and that was it. Will knew that he was wondering why the FBI and Scotland Yard had brought him over here. He wasn’t being much help, and Lestrade had more important things to do than to babysit an American empath.Will’s head pounded. As they were leaving the morgue, he crunched more aspirin from the bottle in his pocket. Lestrade’s phone buzzed. He checked the text, and swore.‘Bad news?’ Will asked. At least he could try to be pleasant, if he couldn’t be any good. ‘We had a homicide last night. Body dismembered and displayed.’‘Not—’‘Not like these, no. It’s unrelated—victim’s not an MP, he’s an American banker over on business. He only arrived a couple of days ago. And the MO is completely different. The killer has taken the tongue. That was Forensics, confirming we have absolutely no evidence whatsoever. Square root of jack,’ Lestrade finished gloomily.‘Do you want me to come and have a look at the scene?’ Will offered. ‘I might be able to help. I’ve done some work on the Chesapeake Ripper case, for example, where the killer mutilates, displays, and takes trophies.’ ‘Thanks for offering, but you’ve got enough on your plate with this case, and I can use all the help I can get with the Wolfmen. I’ve got the proverbial hitting my head from a great height. Let’s go look at the crime scenes, and then I’ve got to love you and leave you and get back to this other homicide.’They walked the short distance together to St James’s Park, the scene of the first murder, an MP called John Trumbull. There was no trace of the savage attack, and the tourists warily skirted the two men as Lestrade talked about blood spatter and the position of the body. And the park was full of tourists, even on a cold day like this one, milling around and hoping to catch a glimpse of the Queen at nearby Buckingham Palace.‘He was coming from his offices in the Houses of Parliament,’ Lestrade told him, although Will knew all of this already from the file. ‘It was his usual route to his flat in Marylebone. From the wound pattern, the killer would have come from this direction.’ He pointed at a stand of trees and looked expectantly at Will.Will closed his eyes, allowed what was inside him to come out. Light crossed his vision and he saw the tourists disappear, the sun fade into fog; he saw the crime scene reassembling itself in his head, John Trumbull MP lying mutilated on the path. There was a lot of blood.And then he saw the body reabsorbing its entrails, sucking back in its fluids, unshredding its clothes and its flesh, falling upright, walking along the path in front of him, barely visible in the fog but loud enough, yes, definitely loud enough to track by sound alone even with non-wolfish human ears. Polished shoes making a noise on the path, coat rustling, breath huffing. Or by smell: Trumbull was smoking a cigarette, the red tip flowing with his movement. ‘I crouch, ready to strike,’ Will said. He was never quite sure whether he spoke aloud in times like this; he wasn’t quite sure whether it mattered.‘I have chosen my prey carefully. And although I have no intention of eating him, I am hungry.'He crouched, poised to run, waiting for the best moment, the perfect moment when all was quiet, all was empty. And then he sprang. Ran. Jumped on John Trumbull from behind, claws sinking into his shoulders, jaws meeting in the back of his neck.He tasted blood on his lips and John Trumbull half-turned and Will wanted him to look, yes, he did. Will wanted to see his face, hungered for that even more than the pain. Through a mask of blood and fear John Trumbull met Will’s eyes and Will’s heart thumped over in his chest with an emotion almost too large to identify.And in John Trumbull’s eyes there was shock and recognition, and something more.‘You know me,’ said Will to him, his mouth full of blood. ‘You see me.'Carefully, tenderly, he lay John Trumbull onto the ground. Helped him to fall onto his back, kept him from bruising so that his flesh would be pristine and whole for Will’s teeth and claws. He tipped up his chin so that he could look into his eyes.‘You love me,’ said Will. ‘Even as I kill you, you love me. You are consumed and eviscerated by the power of my emotion. This is my design.’And carefully and lovingly, he straddled John Trumbull and ripped out his throat.Will opened his eyes. Rain was drizzling and dripping down his jacket collar.‘This one is different,’ he said to Lestrade. Lestrade, who had been standing with his hands in his pockets, looking bored and more than a little pissed off with life, straightened. ‘You said they were different already,’ he said. ‘Three killers, not one, you said.’‘Yes, but this one is different different. We have three victims, three killers, and at least two motives. The other two were angry, but precise. They were a punishment, but they weren’t personal.’‘Don’t say they were political. Please don’t say they were political.’‘We can’t rule it out. If your country’s economy’s anything like ours, there are a lot of people right now living with the metaphorical wolf at the door. But John Trumbull isn’t even remotely political. It’s personal. Very personal. His killer loved him.’ ‘There’s genital mutilation in all three.’ ‘This isn’t merely sexual, Greg. There’s a connection here. The killer and the victim cared for each other.’‘Funny way of showing it.’‘No one makes us angrier than the people we love.’Will grimaced, pushing back childhood memories. Instead he focused on the thing that had been bothering him in the morgue.‘And there’s a different feel to the post-mortem mutilations as well. With Trumbull, they’re more…passionate. The other two are more clinical. It’s as if the first murder, committed out of love, produced a template that the other two had to follow.' ‘Copycats? Tributes?’He shook his head. ‘No, I think they’re working together, but with different motivation.’‘Okay,’ said Lestrade. ‘That’s helpful. We’ll focus especially on Trumbull’s love life. Thanks, Will.’Will nodded. He tried not to look at the trees as they walked to the next murder scene. Tried not to let himself get distracted from his work, not to remember the feeling of rough bark under his hands and Hannibal thrusting behind him.It only partly worked.*‘Nothing fancy,’ said Will down the phone to Hannibal. ‘No tasting menus, no French restaurants.’ ‘May I at least choose the wine?’ Hannibal’s voice was amused.‘Whisky,’ said Will. ‘I’ve had a pig of a day, and wine’s only going to make my headache worse. And come here to my hotel. I think we need to talk.’‘As you wish.’Hannibal turned up on the dot of nine o’clock, wearing a three-piece suit and tie. Will, fresh out of the shower, was in a t-shirt and Dockers, feet bare. Hannibal carried a gift bag tied with an elaborate ribbon. He presented it to Will, who unwrapped it to find a bottle of single malt. ‘Benedict Cumberbatch?’ said Will, glancing at the label.‘Bunnahahhain Ceòbanach,’ corrected Hannibal. ‘A small-batch whisky from Islay. It’s the best I could do at short notice.’ ‘It’ll do.’ Will resisted the urge to grab Hannibal by his flowered silk tie and pull him into the room. Instead he stood aside to let him come in, and went to fetch another tooth glass from the bathroom.Hannibal refrained from making any comment about the tiny, cheap hotel room. He sat in the flimsy armchair and crossed his legs, entirely at home, as if he were in a suite at the Savoy. Will poured them each a shot of the whisky.He’d been both looking forward to and dreading seeing Hannibal. This man was incredibly real and challenging, and yet somehow also elusive. Like smoke and mirrors. Will’s mind couldn’t quite keep hold of him, even as his body craved him. ‘How are you today, Will?’ asked Hannibal conversationally. ‘Are you sore?’‘A little,’ admitted Will, sitting gingerly on the bed. He’d sat gingerly all day. ‘But that was what you wanted, wasn’t it?’‘Yes.’‘But only a little.’ ‘Yes.’ Hannibal lifted his glass to Will’s. The whisky was potent and peaty, and Hannibal narrowed his eyes to savour it.That. It was that: that narrowed-eyed savouring. It drove him crazy but it was too fucking sexy to resist. Will put his glass on the bedside table and let himself give in to his instincts. He reached forward, grabbed Hannibal by his silk tie, and pulled him onto the bed.Hannibal didn’t offer any resistance. He allowed Will to push him down onto the scratchy coverlet and kiss him, lying beside him. He only had to kiss Hannibal and he was instantly, achingly hard. Making out with him fully clothed on the bed like a couple of horny teenagers. He ran his hand through Hannibal’s hair as they kissed, tongues exploring. Messing it up, deliberately. There was something so tempting about undoing someone who was so carefully done up. His mind flashed back to this afternoon in the park. Unseaming John Trumbull in his imagination. Out of love.Will deepened the kiss. He pushed himself so that Hannibal was on his back and he was straddling him, hip to hip. ‘All I can think of is sex,’ he told Hannibal. ‘I try to concentrate on work and I can only think about what we’ve done together.’Hannibal merely looked up at him, his hair mussed, his tie loosened, his lips wet. ‘There is nothing wrong with taking pleasure, Will,’ he said. ‘Our bodies need stimulation as well as our minds. And you and I seem to find a particular pleasure together.’‘It’s not helping me catch this killer, though.’Hannibal raised an eyebrow. ‘So you are in London working on a homicide.’Will grimaced. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. Forget I said that. Anyway, I’ve got something else on my mind right now.’ He tugged on Hannibal’s tie, loosened it, and slipped it from his neck. He hung it from the bedpost. It looked quite…satisfying there. He started on the buttons of Hannibal’s waistcoat.Hannibal watched him. ‘We have not yet been naked together, Will,’ he said. ‘It’s another new intimacy in our relationship.’ Will ignored the ‘R’ word—it was a word that he had particular expertise in ignoring—and finished unbuttoning Hannibal’s waistcoat. Hannibal raised himself slightly to help Will remove it, and his jacket too. Hannibal made a move to hang them on the bedpost as well but Will deliberately took the clothes from Hannibal’s hand and tightened his thighs around Hannibal’s hips to stop him from moving. ‘I think it’s time that I pushed a few of your boundaries, doctor,’ said Will. He dropped the clothes into a messy heap on the floor.For a moment Hannibal went utterly still—more still than Will would have believed that any human being could be. He didn’t move; Will couldn’t feel him breathing or his heart beating, but he did feel the weight of his gaze. Hannibal Lecter’s eyes were cold chips of ice, and his body was that of a cobra right before it struck. Then his lips cocked into half a smile. ‘Help yourself,’ he said.Will’s breathing had stalled too, a curl of something like fear in his stomach, but at this it started up again.He unbuttoned Hannibal’s crisp shirt and pushed it open. Hannibal’s chest was lightly furred, some of the hair grey, his nipples erect, his stomach taut. Out of habit, Will made the deductions he always made when he saw a body: Hannibal took regular exercise, probably swam, to guess from the development of his shoulders and arms. He looked after himself. Beneath Will like this, his arms spread wide on the bed, he looked more purely human, more understandable, than Will had ever seen him.Will ran his hands over the other man’s chest, over the hot skin, up the ripples of his ribs. He teased his nipples with his thumbs and Hannibal’s eyes narrowed with pleasure. He could feel Hannibal’s cock hard underneath him, against his ass, where he was tender. Will leaned forward and kissed Hannibal again, enjoying the sensation of the doctor’s naked skin under his clothed body. Hannibal made no move to touch him; he lay there passive, as if offering himself up to Will like a gift. His kiss and the rock-hard length of his erection betrayed how aroused he was, and yet the stillness of his face and the evenness of his breathing said he was calm, controlled, enjoying the situation almost with a measure of detachment. The contradiction was unbearably delicious.Will shifted himself down Hannibal’s legs and unbuttoned his trousers, found boxer shorts underneath made of fine silk, the colour of burgundy wine. Hannibal’s cock strained against the material. Will’s hands were trembling. He stripped off Hannibal’s trousers, leaving his underwear; pulled off his socks to reveal fine-boned feet. He was fully aware that he was clothed and Hannibal was nearly naked and yet Will was the one who felt as if he were vulnerable.The headache that had plagued him all day had vanished. As before with Hannibal, Will felt gloriously alive. Totally in the moment. He straddled Hannibal again, his thighs just below Hannibal’s crotch, and he stroked his hand up Hannibal’s length underneath the silk.That provoked a reaction. Hannibal hitched in a rapid breath, so Will did it again. He felt the silk slipping against Hannibal’s hard flesh, and he pulled it up so that it cradled Hannibal’s balls. Ran his knuckles against them.‘Are you hungry, Will?’Will nodded. He pulled the boxers down and exposed Hannibal’s crotch to his vision. Hannibal’s pubes were neat and threaded with silver, connected by a thin trail to the hair on his chest. The other man’s cock was long and thick, as finely-sculpted as the rest of him. The flesh was pale, the head flushed. That was inside me, Will thought, he was inside me, all of that, and he shivered.His first touch skin-on-skin was a revelation. Hannibal’s flesh was even hotter than he’d expected, even harder. His dick jumped underneath Will’s hand, as if in appreciation, and Will curled his hand around it and ran his thumb up the bottom, along the hard seam. ‘Don’t you want a taste, Will?’ coaxed Hannibal.Yes, he did. Will shifted and bent forward so that he was kneeling, his face at the level of Hannibal’s crotch. His scent here, that scent of ancient wood, was stronger, and Will was beginning to think it wasn’t cologne but instead an intrinsic part of the man. He held Hannibal’s dick upright and touched the head of it with his tongue.He tasted incredible. Will wrapped his lips around Hannibal’s shaft and experimentally swirled his tongue around the head. He felt Hannibal’s response, a twitch, a further hardening, and Will did it again, again, taking Hannibal’s cock more deeply into his mouth with every swirl. He cradled Hannibal’s balls in his hand, squeezing gently. Will was filled with a deep, insatiable desire to give this man pleasure. Hannibal Lecter was clearly a connoisseur, a lover of only the best. Will glanced up, his mouth full of cock, to look at the other man’s face. Hannibal was watching him suck, his own lips slightly parted in pleasure.But his gaze was still focused. Controlled. And Will’s desire refined itself: he wanted not only to give Hannibal pleasure, but to make Hannibal lose himself in it, if only for a moment. He redoubled his efforts. He used his fingertips and his tongue and his lips to tease Hannibal. He wet the entire length of Hannibal’s dick, from root to tip, and lightly blew on it, letting his hot breath cool the heated flesh. He rubbed the side of it against his unshaven cheek, allowed his hair to tickle Hannibal, and then took it deep, as deep as he could until he nearly gagged. He stroked with his hands, sucked and nibbled and licked Hannibal’s balls, and he kept pausing, kept looking up into Hannibal’s eyes to see if it had happened yet.But it wasn’t the eyes that told him when it happened, in the end. He wasn’t looking at Hannibal’s face when it happened; he was giving his entire concentration to Hannibal’s cock, completely forgetting his own body, the frustrations and horrors of the day, his only world the giving of pleasure, the wringing out of time. That was when Hannibal raised his hips and tangled his fingers in Will’s hair. That was when he began to thrust, and when Will, surprised, glanced up, he saw that Hannibal’s mouth was open and his eyes were closed, a line forming between his brows as if he were in pain. He heard the gasps on Hannibal’s lips; saw the trickle of sweat running down one perfect cheekbone.He pulled back, still holding onto the base of Hannibal’s cock but no longer moving or using his mouth. He had to stop, had to tease; it was too good an opportunity to pass up. Too pleasurable a boundary not to cross. He touched, just barely touched the slit on the tip, lapped up the tiny bit of fluid there with tiny, delicate butterfly strokes. And Hannibal cried out in frustration and raised his hips higher, pushing Will’s head down onto him with both hands.Will resisted. Only for a few seconds, because a few seconds was enough to see Hannibal’s desperation, to feel it in every fibre of the body beneath him. It was enough to know that if he teased and resisted any more, Hannibal would do one of two things: force him, or beg.He didn’t know which would be sexier.But he didn’t find out because right now, the sexiest thing of all was making Hannibal come.He let Hannibal guide his cock back into his mouth. He let Hannibal push his head down onto it, fast and hard and deep. He listened to Hannibal groaning, a primal groan that came from somewhere far, far inside him, and Will sucked and pumped with his hand and knew that in this moment, as powerful as this man was, as sophisticated and intelligent and urbane and insightful, it was Will Graham who had the power.And then, with a guttural shout, Hannibal came in Will’s mouth. Will gulped down the liquid.It tasted of that ancient wood. He licked Hannibal clean and then Hannibal drew him up to kiss him. Will didn’t fail to notice that Hannibal’s forehead was sheened with sweat, and that his breath was ragged. He lay beside him, fully dressed next to Hannibal’s nakedness, and Hannibal pulled him close.Hannibal’s heart was beating hard. He kissed Will and Will could feel, little by little, the other man’s control returning. The kisses were no less tender, no less passionate, but Hannibal’s heart slowed, and his eyes cleared, and half an ironic smile touched his mouth. ‘Are my clothes still on the floor?’ he whispered, and Will smiled back.‘If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought you were about to kill me when I dropped them there.’Hannibal chuckled. ‘More whisky?’Will got up, topped up their glasses, and brought them back to bed. Hannibal put his arm around him and clinked his glass with Will’s.‘To nakedness,’ he said.‘Nakedness,’ Will replied, and cast his eyes down Hannibal’s body again. The other man seemed to have no particular modesty, no awkwardness or embarrassment about being nude. His cock was still half-hard, still shining with moisture from Will’s mouth.Will’s stomach growled.Hannibal raised an eyebrow. ‘This is one down side about staying in hotels; one isn’t allowed to use their kitchens. I would love to cook for you, Will.’ ‘You’re a good cook, aren’t you?’ said Will, knowing the answer. ‘I’m a very good cook. And I’ve come across some intriguing ingredients since arriving in London.’ Hannibal took a sip of whiskey, and then swung himself out of bed and began collecting his scattered clothing, shaking out creases, folding it carefully over his arm, opening the cheap pressboard wardrobe and taking out hangers.When he thought about it later, Will wasn’t exactly sure why he did it. Seconds before, he’d been content, satisfied, pleased with the pleasure he’d given. Fascinated by the limitless, abandoned creature who'd briefly shared his bed. And then Hannibal was folding his clothes, for God’s sake. Talking about food. ‘I know,’ Will said. ‘Let’s call out for a pizza.’
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Hannibal was slipping his jacket onto a hanger, and at Will’s suggestion, he went absolutely still. Like a statue, no movement except for his eyes.‘Pizza?’ he said, his voice casual. ‘Delivery pizza?’‘Sure,’ said Will, but his heart was hammering. Hannibal looked like a predator. One hundred per cent like one of the killers who Will hunted and imagined.Then half a smile curved his lips, and Will relaxed a degree.‘This is common behaviour for you, isn’t it, Will?’ he asked.‘Calling out for pizza? More common than it probably should be.’‘I don’t mean the pizza. I mean that when you feel under threat, you flirt. And when flirting is too obvious, or not distracting enough, you attempt to provoke.’ ‘I don’t flirt.’‘No?’ ‘I can barely deal with eye contact.’‘Elusiveness is a form of flirting.’ Hannibal hung up his jacket, placed his other clothes neatly folded on the chair, and sat, naked, on the bed beside Will. ‘And you can’t deny that offering to call out for pizza is a provocation.’‘For you, maybe pizza is a provocation. For me, this is.’ Will reached for Hannibal’s groin, for his semi-hard penis, and Hannibal caught his wrist in his hand. His grip was incredibly strong.‘Will,’ he said quietly, ‘you said that you and I needed to talk.’‘I hoped that you wouldn’t remember that,’ Will admitted.‘When you know me better, you’ll know that I forget very little.’ He turned over Will’s hand and ran his thumb over the palm. ‘This room is rather stuffy. Shall we go for a walk? I don’t imagine you’ve had much time to experience London at night.’*London at night, without fog, was entirely alien to Will. The city wasn’t his natural habitat, and London was all lights and crowded streets, not wide enough for the traffic, both human and automobile. Hannibal threaded his arm through Will’s and guided him past buildings and across streets where the cars came from the wrong direction. Will had only drunk a couple of fingers of whisky, but he felt disoriented, Hannibal’s arm and body his only anchor.Or perhaps it was the prospect of conversation, rather than sex, with Hannibal, that was making him nervous.With unerring steps, Hannibal brought them to the bank of the Thames. It was a shimmering ribbon interrupted by the black shapes of boats, and Will instantly felt more at home. Here, the city widened out, became roomy. Across the river, the London Eye cast a circular filigree of lights on the water’s surface. The moon was nearly full.‘You like the view?’ Hannibal asked.‘I like the river. I’ve got an affinity to water.’‘A sailor?’‘A boater,’ Will corrected. ‘And a fisherman. Do you fish?’‘It’s not one of my hobbies. Perhaps you can educate me.’ They walked along the river, along a stone balustrade. Other couples walked here, too—mostly, Will noticed, male and female. It was almost…romantic.Was that one of the things they had to talk about? Will couldn’t quite remember why he had told Hannibal they needed to talk. Obviously they did, because something was happening between them, something that probably needed to be defined, but…Will had never found that talking about relationships was his strong point. He wasn’t sure why he’d insisted on it earlier.‘You’re from Baltimore,’ Will said.‘I live there, yes.’‘We might have some friends in common,’ said Will. ‘Do you know Dr Alana Bloom?’Hannibal smiled. ‘Yes, I know Alana Bloom very well. She’s an excellent psychiatrist, and a good friend. We’ve been colleagues for many years.’‘I’m attracted to her.’Will had no idea why he’d blurted that out. One minute he was reluctant to discuss anything with Hannibal Lecter; the next he was spilling his secrets. ‘I’m really not very good with conversations,’ he added.‘On the contrary, I think you’re very good indeed. And Alana Bloom is a very attractive woman. I congratulate you on your taste.’‘She doesn’t feel the same way. She makes a special effort never to be in the same room with me alone.’‘Knowing Alana, that may not be a sign of aversion. Quite the opposite.’ ‘I’m too…fucked up for her to be alone with. Too abnormal. If she’s alone with me, she thinks she might start analyzing me.’‘I don’t think you’re “fucked up”, Will. I think you’re extraordinary. I’d be very surprised if Alana didn’t feel the same.’ Hannibal stopped and leaned against the balustrade, gazing at the water. ‘Was there a special reason why you wanted me to know that you’re attracted to her?’Will leaned beside Hannibal. ‘I’ve always thought I might be bisexual,’ he said, looking at the water, not at the other man. ‘But I’ve never had occasion to find out. Not until…’‘Until I forced the issue,’ said Hannibal. His hands were folded together on the stone railing. Will remembered exactly how Hannibal had forced the issue: following him into the lavatory on the plane, unzipping Will’s trousers and taking Will’s cock into his mouth. ‘Yes,’ he managed to say.‘Are you glad that I did?’‘I’m…not sure,’ said Will honestly. ‘The sex is great. But to be honest, Doctor, it freaks me a out a little bit, too.’‘Good.’ Hannibal’s hand reached out and found Will’s. Didn’t take it, but touched it, little finger to little finger, as they’d touched on the plane as Will slept. ‘When we challenge ourselves, step out of our comfort zones, we feel the most alive.’‘I feel alive,’ admitted Will. ‘I also feel…out of my depth.’‘You will find your depths. You will find the bottom of them, or you will find that they are infinite. I’m looking forward to discovering how deep you can go.’ ‘How deep do you go, Dr Lecter?’Hannibal turned to Will and smiled. His features were picked out in silvery moonlight.‘I will go as deep as you want me to, Will. And perhaps, for my own satisfaction, a tiny bit deeper.’‘Are you gay? Or…?’‘I don’t believe in labels. Human experience is vast and varied. I like to taste all that I can. And in any case, it isn’t the gender that attracts me. It’s what’s inside a person.’‘And what do you see inside me?’‘I see vulnerability. And also the strength and power that brought you here. I told you, from the moment I met you on the airplane, I found you interesting. And everything I’ve discovered about you since has only heightened my interest.’‘Like what you read on Tattlecrime.com?’ said Will, with a trace of bitterness.‘Freddie Lounds has a…unique way of putting things. But if one reads between the lines, one can learn quite a bit. Is it true that you can put yourself in the shoes of a killer? Feel everything that he feels, think everything that he thinks?’‘It’s an empathy disorder.’‘A very useful one in the service of the FBI, I should imagine.’‘I really am mostly a lecturer. I’ve only started working in the field again recently.’‘On the case of Garrett Jacob Hobbs. How did you feel when you caught him?’Will clenched his fists on the stone. ‘I should feel good. He was a killer.’‘But…?’Will sighed. ‘I’m not used to it. I was working alone when I had the hunch—going through paperwork. I went to his house to interview him. He was cooking for his family. He had a daughter. Her name’s Abigail. It was…he was killing girls who looked like her, because he didn’t want to kill her. As soon as she opened the door to me, and I saw what she looked like, I knew I’d caught him.’Will’s eyes, gazing at the Thames, saw instead the Hobbs’ house. Abigail Hobbs, smiling and open and friendly, had paused as soon as she’d seen Will on her doorstep. He could only assume that his sudden knowledge had shown in his face.She had been plunged from a normal day into a world of utter horror. The look of fear in that young girl’s eyes would stay with him for a very long time.‘His family had been eating human flesh for months without knowing it. He was cooking sausage made from one of his victims when I arrived. The cushions in their house were stuffed with human hair.’‘Do you feel guilty about this, Will?’‘I feel… She didn’t want to let me in. She tried to shut the door on me, but I pushed in. I was so sure that I’d caught him, I didn’t want to leave without him. I thought…I thought his wife and daughter might be at risk if I did.’ He sucked in a shaky breath. ‘I drew my gun, but I didn’t have to use it. Hobbs must have heard the commotion. By the time I got to the kitchen, Hobbs had slit his wife’s throat and then his own.’All the blood, shocking dark red pools of it, on the slippery yellow floor. Abigail Hobbs’ voice, screaming What have you done, what have you done, what have you done?He still didn’t know who she’d been addressing: her father, or himself.‘Everything in her life was destroyed,’ Will said. ‘Just like that.’‘Would you rather have not caught him? So as to preserve a young girl’s innocence, and her mother’s life?’‘No, because other young girls were getting killed. But…’ He shook his head. ‘I’m stuck in his head, you know. And I’m stuck in hers, too. It feels like the only person who won was Jack Crawford.’‘And the killer you came here to catch? Are you stuck in his head as well?’Will barked a humourless laugh. ‘Their heads. And no, not in any way that’s useful in catching them. Not yet.’‘I have faith in you, Will.’He closed his eyes and saw himself biting and clawing John Trumbull to death. Every wound inflicted with love.‘How could you kill someone that you loved?’ he muttered. ‘Love and death go hand in hand,’ said Hannibal. ‘Every kiss has the seeds of betrayal in it. There is a good reason that Judas kissed Christ.’ Through his visions of blood and shredded flesh, Will felt a hand on his back. ‘Will? Are you all right? You’re shaking.’‘Kindness,’ he said, not sure of what he was saying. ‘It was kinder to kill him this way. Kinder than letting him be ripped apart by strangers.’‘I’ll find a cab,’ said Hannibal, and he disappeared.Blood. On the green grass in the park, on the yellow linoleum in Garrett Jacob Hobbs’ house. You kill those closest to you. Because you can’t bear for anyone else to take them from you. You can’t bear to live without them, and you can’t bear for them to live without you. You love them, and you kill them, because love and death go hand in hand…‘Here, Will.’ Hannibal was back. He put his arm around Will and guided him gently away from the riverbank, to a waiting cab. In the back, Will leaned on Hannibal. He tried to steer his thoughts away from blood and death to the heartbeat under the woolen jacket. To the living flesh that was holding him.Behind his eyelids, everything was red.‘We’re here,’ said Hannibal in his ear. Will opened his eyes to a confusion of lights. Hannibal helped him out of the cab, through a door, into a space of white and black, too big, smelling of flowers. Through the sliding doors of an elevator.He clung to Hannibal’s strong arm. ‘Blood,’ he told him.Blood ran down the walls of the elevator. It pooled around their feet.Ten minutes ago, he had been fine. He’d been talking with Hannibal, looking at the river of water, no blood in sight. Hadn’t he?Hannibal helped him down a corridor, unlocked a door. ‘This isn’t my hotel,’ said Will.‘It's mine. You’ll sleep better here,’ said Hannibal. He flicked on a light and Will stood, blinking. Everything was clear again, suddenly. The walls were cream, the furniture glossy, expensive, and Art Deco. There was a bouquet of white roses on a glass table, exuding soft scent.Hannibal laid his cool hand on Will’s forehead. ‘You have a bit of a fever. Lie down on the bed and I’ll get you some water and tablets.’‘I have aspirin in my pocket,’ Will said, but Hannibal had already gone into the bathroom. Through the door, Will glimpsed mirrors and marble. He toed off his shoes and lay down on the perfectly-made bed. Hannibal returned almost immediately with a heavy tumbler of cool water and some pills. Will swallowed them without asking what they were.‘You’re not my doctor,’ Will said. ‘I’m your friend.’ Hannibal stroked back the hair from Will’s forehead. ‘If I were your doctor, I wouldn’t be doing this.’He lay down on the bed beside Will and began to unbutton his shirt.Will let Hannibal undress him, piece by piece of clothing. He wasn’t hallucinating blood any more, but he felt dreamy, apart from himself, and thankful for Hannibal’s certain hands. When he was naked, he allowed Hannibal to tuck him under the heavy blankets. He heard Hannibal undressing himself, and felt him climb into bed beside him.Will moved towards his warmth. He reached his hand out and wrapped it around Hannibal’s cock. It immediately began to stiffen under his touch.‘You need to sleep,’ said Hannibal. ‘I need this,’ said Will. ‘I need something to chase out the sight of blood.’‘Then I’ll keep the lights on,’ said Hannibal. He pushed back the blankets so that Will could see his body, naked and splendid. His own hand went to Will’s cock, wrapping around it in an imitation of what Will was doing. With his other hand he grasped Will’s hip and pulled him closer. Hannibal was taller, slightly broader than Will. His dick was a little longer, though Will’s was thicker. His hair was lighter, both on his body and at his crotch. Will pressed close, into his warmth and his scent, and pushed his crotch into Hannibal’s. Their cocks lying side by side, jutting upwards at full tilt now, Hannibal’s hand around his erection, his around Hannibal’s. It only took a minor adjustment so that their fingers were intertwined, surrounding both of their dicks.Hannibal kissed him, briefly, and then whispered ‘Watch.’In their joined hands, their cocks were pressed together. From this angle, he could see their heads, both engorged and aroused. His was darker than Hannibal’s. Together, they began to move. It was a cross between masturbating and fucking. Hannibal’s hand around his cock was tight, and he could feel the silken skin, the hard core, of Hannibal’s cock against his own. The taut pouches of their balls together. It wasn’t subtle, but Will didn’t want subtle. He wanted distracting, and raw, and mutual. He didn’t want to feel alone.He and Hannibal pumped together, and squeezed together, fast and then faster, and when he came he buried his face in Hannibal’s neck and pressed his mouth, hard, against Hannibal’s pulse. Lips and teeth against skin. Nothing broken.He came and came, and he felt Hannibal’s length jerk against his, felt the shudder in Hannibal’s body and the hot splash of Hannibal’s come against his hand and his belly.Hannibal kissed him on the forehead. He got up, briefly, from the bed and returned with a warm, wet, fragrant cloth to clean them both. And then he gathered Will to him and he drew the blankets up over the two of them.‘Sleep,’ he whispered. ‘Sleep well and forget what you don’t want to see. Only keep the things that make you powerful, Will.’'Don't analyse me,' Will said. 'Don't pin me like a butterfly. Just…let me be. Okay?''Yes,' said Hannibal. 'Yes. I'll let you be who you truly are.'And almost as if he couldn’t resist, Will let his eyes close and he drifted into sleep. Pressed against Hannibal’s side, legs entwined, sheltered within his arms.He had no dreams at all, powerful or otherwise.*Hannibal watched Will. Awake, his face was mobile, his eyes darting, always reflecting his thoughts in an intoxicating sequence. In sleep, his face relaxed. It was the face of a New Testament saint in a fresco: a soft beginning of a beard, features framed by dark curls, mouth wide and childlike. Will’s eyes moved briefly under their lids and then stilled. He made a sound, half a sigh.In Hannibal’s arms, he was warm and firm and soft. A body of will and sleeping empathy. A vessel of absolute understanding, and infinite suffering.Hannibal waited until Will was quiet and motionless. Then he disengaged himself, making sure Will’s limbs were arranged comfortably and his head was settled on the pillow. He went, naked, to the glossy Art Deco desk, and opened up his sleek laptop.He didn’t need to read the email again; he recalled every word perfectly. But he wanted to see it. It was dated two days ago, the morning of his arrival in London.
Dear Hannibal,
I know you’re busy in London, but I wonder if you would do a favor for me when you get back. Jack Crawford at the FBI has a field worker, a profiler who I’ve worked with in the past. Jack seems to think that he’s okay out in the field. I’m not so sure. I’ve struck a deal with Jack, that he’ll have Will assessed and monitored, at least.
I’ve referred Jack to you for this, not because you have any spare time at all, but because you’d be good at it. His name is Will Graham. If you agree, Jack will probably want to have a meeting with the two of you.
Will’s a friend of mine, Hannibal. I’m worried about him. He’s got a sort of genius for getting into the minds of killers, but I don’t think he’s stable enough to be doing what he’s doing. He absolutely will not want to be analysed. But I’m afraid that without an anchor, he’ll lose himself. And you’re the most solid anchor I know.
So yes, it’s a personal favor. I don’t ask many of them. Do you think you might be able to help?
Alana x
Hannibal read every word, hearing Alana’s voice speaking them. Then he shut the laptop and climbed back into bed with Will.He tucked Will’s head against his chest. He buried his face in Will’s hair, and breathed deep of his scent. He stayed there for several moments.Then he got up again, dressed carefully, took a leather bag from the wardrobe, and left the hotel room, shutting the door softly behind him.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
When Will awoke, he wasn’t sure for a moment where he was. The bed was big and luxurious, with plump pillows and ironed sheets, spotlessly white. He felt relaxed, rested, his limbs pleasantly heavy, his head clear and without pain. He had a raging morning hard-on. And he was alone.He heard a shower going, and then turning off, and a moment later Hannibal Lecter walked into the bedroom with a white towel around his waist. His hair was damp and falling over his forehead. Will felt his dick twitch in response.‘Good morning,’ Hannibal said, smiling.‘What time is it?’‘Just after six. You slept well.’‘I slept great. I don’t remember the last time I felt this good.’‘I’m pleased.’Will reached out his hand to invite Hannibal back into bed with him, anticipating the clean scent of his skin, the dampness clinging to his body. But at that moment there was a knock on the door. Hannibal reached inside a mirrored wardrobe for a wide-lapelled dressing gown, and pulled it on before answering the door.‘Breakfast,’ he announced, wheeling in a room service trolley. There were several plates covered with silver domes, and a silver pot of what smelled like coffee.‘Breakfast in bed?’ Will said hopefully.‘It would be a crime not to.’ Hannibal wheeled the trolley to the side of the bed, and Will moved over to make room for him, plumping up the pillows. Hannibal handed him a steaming plate of eggs, bacon, sausages and a grilled tomato. He buttered Will a slice of toast and poured him a cup of coffee.Will balanced the plate on his knees. As soon as he took the first bite he was ravenous and he didn’t stop eating until his plate was cleared. He even ate the weird grilled tomato, which he assumed was a British thing. Hannibal, who had taken about four decorous bites, buttered him some more toast and spread marmalade on it. ‘I like it when you have an appetite,’ he commented. ‘What are your plans for today, Will?’Will finished the toast and covered his mouth to suppress a burp. ‘Wolfman murders,’ he said. ‘More staring at the crime scene photos trying to get an insight. I’ll need to have another look at the bodies as well.’‘Are these the murders of the politicians? I’ve read about it in the news.’‘Ripped to pieces in parks, by someone imitating a wolf.’ Will took a deep drink of his coffee. It was by far the best coffee he’d had since coming to this country. ‘I probably shouldn’t be telling you this.’‘Am I a suspect?’‘No. I know what you’ve been doing in parks.’ He exchanged a glance with Hannibal. God, this was banter. Morning-after banter, with breakfast in bed. They were practically in a romantic comedy.He felt great.Hannibal said, ‘As a psychiatrist, I often have an insight into human nature, especially the pathological and abnormal. I’d love to try to help you with this case if you’ll allow me.’Will reached for another slice of toast. ‘Three victims, three killers. The first victim was killed out of love, the other two out of…something else. Honour, revenge. Possibly thoroughness.’‘Cleaning up the rubbish?’‘Covering their tracks.’ He stopped, mid-bite. ‘Actually, there’s something to that. The killers left no evidence at all at the scene. Nothing except for the corpses. And those were left prominently. Prominent bodies, left prominently.’‘It’s theatre.’‘It’s a message. A message to whom, is the question. Lestrade—he’s the detective in charge of the case—thinks it’s political.’‘You don’t?’‘I think the manner of the killing is more important than the people who were killed. Except for the first one. The first one—you said something last night that rang true. That love and betrayal were the same thing.’‘The Judas kiss.’Will nodded. ‘Speaking of which…’The line was incredibly cheesy but he didn’t care. He leaned over, crumb-strewn plate still on his knees, to kiss Hannibal.Instead, he caught a glimpse of the newspaper on the room service trolley, and stopped. ‘Wait,’ he said, reaching for it. ‘Isn’t that—’Hannibal picked up the newspaper and unfolded it so that they could both see the entire photograph. ‘That man,’ he said. ‘I think it is.’Will took it from him. BANKER MURDERED IN CITY IDENTIFIED was the headline, above a photograph of the drunk man from the plane. The one who’d spilled his drink on Will, and made lewd jokes about him and Hannibal.He scanned the article. ‘This is the murder that Lestrade was talking about yesterday. His tongue was missing.’ The article didn’t say that; it just said he’d been mutilated and left in the lobby of the merchant bank where he worked. His name was David Flowers. Married, no kids.‘Horrible,’ commented Hannibal. ‘He was rude, but I would not wish something like that on anyone.’‘So strange to think we saw him in the airport, and then the next day…’ The photograph was of Flowers smiling, in a suit, holding a glass of champagne. It looked as if it had been at an event; he had his arm around someone else, though the other person had been cut out of the photo. Will leaned back on the pillows. ‘I deal with murder all the time, but it’s usually complete strangers.’‘He was a stranger,’ said Hannibal. ‘Our lives touched only for a moment or two. Are you sorry he’s dead?’Will chewed his lip, gazing at the photo. ‘It’s like you said. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.’‘And yet we all die. This is only a reminder.’‘He saw it, though. That we were attracted to each other. He saw it before I even really understood it.’‘Perhaps the best tribute we could make to him—’ Hannibal took the newspaper from Will’s hand, and the plate from his knees, and placed them both on the bedside table— ‘is to act on our attraction. Before you have to go to work.’That was nearly a line from a romantic comedy, too. A dark romantic comedy. Hannibal was right, though; Will was close to death all the time—too close, so close that it exerted a strange fascination as well as horror—but this particular brush with mortality didn’t horrify him. It made him want to prove he was alive. Right now, hard and fast and urgent. He met Hannibal’s kiss with an open, hungry mouth, grabbing his head and pulling him close. He tasted coffee and Hannibal, that taste Hannibal had of his own which was distinctively delicious, and he sucked Hannibal’s tongue into his mouth and bit down on it, almost hard enough to hurt. It was only when Hannibal groaned that he realized what he’d done. David Flowers…tongue…He paused for a second, taken aback with himself, but Hannibal had taken control now, kissing him back, sucking on his tongue, biting it with sharp teeth nearly to the point of pain. And it was ironic and probably inappropriate but God, it was erotic.It was maybe something that would happen in a romantic comedy. A dark one, where you could joke about death and pain and find something life-affirming in it.Will pulled Hannibal down to lie beside him and pushed his dressing gown off his shoulders. His skin was warm and clean and fragrant, still a little damp from his shower. Will couldn’t get enough of it. He kissed Hannibal’s skin and licked it, pushed his face into the hair on his chest to smell it, kissed a trail down Hannibal’s belly, dipped his tongue into his navel. It was as if despite the huge breakfast he’d eaten, he was still starving. He bit the skin over Hannibal’s hipbone, and it tasted so good he did it again, hard enough to leave a mark. It was somehow satisfying to see the imprint of his teeth, the redness in Hannibal’s flesh.‘Come here and let me taste you,’ murmured Hannibal. Will responded to his words and hands by shifting himself around, top to tail. Hannibal nipped at Will’s belly, sharp enough to make Will wince, and then he was licking around the head of Will’s erect cock and Will couldn’t wait any more. He took Hannibal’s cock into his mouth and sucked as hard as he could. And Will closed his eyes and let his mind expand and be the two of them at once, both sucking and licking, two bodies and minds as one. Urgent and desperate and wanting to please and be pleased. And hurt. Just a little.He let his teeth drag against the side of Hannibal’s cock/Hannibal dragged his teeth against the side of his cock and they both grasped the base with their hands, a little too firmly, forcing blood up to the head, squeezing their balls with their other hand, sucking so tight, and he could smell himself as Hannibal smelled him, sweat and salt and arousal, and hear his own breathing in quick pants, thrusting his hips down into Hannibal’s mouth and up into his own, and Hannibal’s finger found his asshole and pushed into it at the same time that his pushed into Hannibal’s, tight and dry without any lubrication, and it burned and penetrated and felt so damn good and deep, though it hurt a little bit it was so damn good it was like a romantic comedy and he came. They both came together.He swallowed it down and felt Hannibal swallowing his come too. He felt him savouring it. Then he lay there for a moment, getting his breath back. And Hannibal gathered him up, turned him round, kissed him with his hot, reddened mouth.‘I’ll need another shower,’ said Hannibal.‘I’ll join you,’ said Will.The shower was more than big enough for two. Hannibal lathered soap onto Will’s body and Will was surprised to see that there were quite a few red marks on Hannibal’s skin: his belly, his hips, his thighs. He didn’t remember biting quite so much.There were corresponding marks on his own body. They throbbed pleasurably when the hot water hit them. Hannibal turned Will around and put shampoo in his hair. He rubbed it in, and Will closed his eyes, tilting his head back, feeling Hannibal’s fingers massaging his scalp. He let the shampoo rinse out of his hair and he felt a smile touching his lips.‘Do you feel alive, Will?’‘Yes,’ said Will. ‘Yes, I do.’‘Then it was a good tribute to David Flowers,’ said Hannibal, running his fingers through Will’s curls to separate them. ‘We’ve put him to rest.’
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
When Will pulled on his trousers, his hair and chest still damp from the shower, he took his phone out of his pocket to check the time. It was turned off. Frowning, he turned it on and immediately seventeen messages appeared.They were all from Lestrade. ‘We’ve got another body,’ said the first message, left at five o’clock this morning, nearly three hours ago. ‘Get down to Hyde Park as quickly as you can. You’ll know where we are.’Hyde Park was the scene of the third murder: St James’s Park, Green Park, Hyde Park, three parks close together in a string, each one with a dead politician. Looked like Hyde Park had just got another.Will swore and reached for his shirt (like his trousers, hung up carefully in the wardrobe by Hannibal the evening before, next to an impressive collection of suits, shirts and ties).‘What is it?’ asked Hannibal from the bathroom where he was brushing his teeth.‘There’s been another wolfmen attack.’Hannibal appeared in the doorway, in trousers and a shirt not yet buttoned all the way up, his eyebrows raised.‘Lestrade’s been calling me for hours. I must have shut off my phone last night by mistake. I’ve got to go.’ Will tugged on the rest of his clothes. ‘Thanks for breakfast. And…everything else.’‘Good luck,’ said Hannibal, but Will was already halfway out the door.*It was raining. Hyde Park was only a few minutes’ hurried walk from Claridge’s, Hannibal’s hotel. Will followed the flashing lights and the police tape until he found Rathbone, standing under an umbrella, his expression dour. Rathbone wordlessly took him to Lestrade.‘Where have you been?’ Lestrade demanded immediately.‘My phone was turned off by mistake. I’m sorry.’Lestrade narrowed his eyes at Will. ‘You look happy. What’s wrong with you?’‘I’ve had a good night’s sleep,’ said Will. ‘It makes a world of difference.’‘Tell me about it. I haven’t had more than four hours since this bloody werewolf started decimating the Tory party. Even if I turned off my phone and buried it in the back garden, I could still hear it ringing in my dreams.’ Lestrade ran his hand through his short, slightly greying hair. ‘You want to sell me whatever it is that made you sleep?’‘No,’ said Will, smiling despite their grim surroundings. ‘I want to keep it for myself.’Lestrade grunted. He started walking, Will beside him. They were actually quite close to the tree where Hannibal had first fucked Will. He suppressed a very inappropriate smile.‘The victim is Alaistair Grigson,’ said Lestrade. ‘He was Minister for Culture and Sport. He was discovered at about 4.30 by a member of the public taking his dog for a walk. Which, by the way, why would anyone walk their dog at 4.30 in the morning?’‘Sometimes that’s when dogs need a walk,’ said Will, simply. ‘Right. Whatever you say. I had a budgie once. It flew out the window at the first opportunity. So, this is what we found.’Alaistair Grigson was spread out over the path and on the grass on either side. Parts of him were in the flower bed. Entrails were looped over a low branch of a nearby tree.‘You identified him by his fingerprints?’ Will said, gazing at what little was left of Grigson’s face.‘Also his ID badge, still in his pocket. Though to be fair, pretty soon there will be so few Tories left we’ll be able to identify them without badges, fingerprints or faces, just by process of elimination.’ Lestrade stuck his hands in the pockets of his raincoat. ‘The shit is going to hit the fan on this one. The other three were backbenchers. This one’s Cabinet. At least he’s wildly unpopular. In his time in office, he cut arts funding and shut libraries willy-nilly. Snatching books from the hands of children, single-handedly killing off public museums. They called him the Culture Vulture.’Will hardly heard what Lestrade was saying. He was taking in the scene. It was the first of these murders that he’d seen fresh, but…‘This is wrong,’ he said.‘I don’t think it can by any stretch of the imagination be called right,’ began Lestrade, then caught Will’s expression. ‘What do you mean?’‘This isn’t like the other ones. For one thing, it wasn’t foggy last night. It was clear.’ He remembered standing on the bank of the Thames with Hannibal, looking out at the moon reflected in the water.‘So the murderer didn’t want to wait for the weather.’‘There’s no anger in it, Lestrade.’ He pointed to the intestines hanging on the tree. The foot, planted carefully in the flower bed. ‘This isn’t revenge. This is a game.’‘You said that the other ones were all done by different people.’‘Yes, but they had a method to them. They were done according to…a procedure. There was a sequence. This murder, on the other hand, is witty, playful almost. It’s not part of the pattern.’He trailed off. Something wanted to click, something was on the verge of coming together in his head.He looked at Alaistair Grigson’s scalp, placed at a rakish angle back onto his head.‘This,’ he said, ‘is like a…like a negative of the other murders, throwing them into sharper focus.’‘So who did this one? Someone else?’‘Someone not connected. The other three weren’t done by the same person, but by the same group. People in the same organization, playing by the same rules. This is…someone else.’‘Great,’ said Lestrade, throwing his hands in the air. ‘So now not only do I have the entire government breathing down my neck, but I also have four killers to catch.’‘Two,’ said Will, without thinking, but knowing as soon as he said it that it was true.‘Two?’‘And you won’t catch this one, the one who who killed Grigson.’ Will gestured at the human mess before them. ‘Or not for this murder, anyway. This is a practiced killer, and he has never killed like this before. He won’t kill like this again. This is a one-off…a tribute.’‘You said there were three killers. Aside from this one. Which makes four. Or am I doing my maths wrong?’ Lestrade’s voice was dripping with sarcasm.‘You’re adding instead of subtracting.’‘Pardon me?’Will pulled up the collar of his jacket against the increasing drizzle. ‘Can I see the three original victims one more time? I need to be sure.’‘Sure. Why not? It’s not like I’m going back to bed anytime soon.’*Lestrade phoned the morgue while they were on their way and by the time they got there the three victims were laid out side by side, as Will had requested. They were familiar enough now, but he looked them over anyway. John Trumbull, killed out of love; Ian Silkie-Jones and Nigel Farelle, killed out of duty. ‘We looked into Trumbull’s love life, as you suggested,’ said Lestrade. ‘He had a girlfriend, though he’d only been seeing her for a month or so. Her name’s Tara Winters.’‘What’s she like?’‘Rich. Stinking, filthy rich. Daddy’s in oil and horses. She has an alibi for the night of the murder: she was at a charity ball. Seen by oh, at least a hundred people and photographed for Tatler.’‘She’s not the killer.’‘No shit, Sherlock.’ Lestrade made a face. ‘Sorry. Forgot for a minute. No shit, Graham.’Will ignored the remark. He pointed to the ravaged body of Ian Silkie-Jones.‘He’s the killer,’ he said.‘What?’‘Victim number two killed victim number one. And victim number three killed victim number two. We only have one killer left alive—the one who killed last.’Lestrade took his hands out of his pockets. He walked up to the slabs and frowned at the three victims, and then Will. ‘Okay,’ Lestrade said. ‘How do you know this?’Jack Crawford never asked him this question. Jack Crawford always accepted Will's insight. Will felt a fleeing stab of homesickness, though feeling homesick for Jack Crawford when he was on a case was like feeling homesick for getting your fingers caught in a outboard propeller.‘I know it,’ Will said. ‘This morning’s murder made me see what I couldn’t see before. It showed me what I hadn’t been looking for. It’s not addition; it’s subtraction. They’re removing something unwanted. The killer isn’t a particular person. It’s a role that each person adopts, in turn.’‘They’re executioners? But why?’Will pointed to John Trumbull’s body. ‘Here’s my guess. All three of these men belonged to some sort of secret society. A brotherhood. Trumbull got a new girlfriend. A rich one. And Ian Silkie-Jones saw this as betrayal, for thirty pieces of silver.’‘Silkie-Jones loved Trumbull? He was jealous that Trumbull had a girlfriend?’‘Yes.’‘But Trumbull was straight.’‘How do you know?’Lestrade shrugged. ‘Good point. Okay, let’s suppose that happened: Silkie-Jones killed Trumbull in a jealous rage. Then what?’‘Someone didn’t like it. Whatever secret society they’re in, killing out of jealousy isn’t going to be covered by their code. Passion causes mistakes. A passion killing puts all of them at risk. Silkie-Jones had to be punished for his mistake—killed by someone who didn’t let passion come into it.’‘Nigel Farelle?’‘He was next in line for the job. I don’t think he really had a choice.’‘And why was he killed?’‘He probably felt remorse. There was a risk he’d confess to someone.’Lestrade gazed at the bodies, frowning. ‘So…two killers,’ Lestrade said. ‘Whoever killed Nigel Farelle, and whoever killed Alaistair Grigson. Except you say that Grigson’s killer was only doing this for a lark, and Farelle’s killer, if you’re right, is not going to want to mess up. Or else he’s next.’‘They’ll have picked a better executioner. Someone who can cover his tracks.’Lestrade nodded. ‘All right. So now we’ve got to find secret societies. Conspiracy in government circles. Great.’‘I just deliver the bad news. I don’t make it.’ Will gave Lestrade a wry smile.
Except when I do make the bad news, by frightening a young girl at the door of her own home so that her parents both die. In twin pools of blood, on the yellow linoleum.
His smile turned into a grimace. ‘What?’ said Lestrade.‘Have you…have you ever killed anyone? In the line of duty?’‘Detectives don’t carry guns in this country,’ said Lestrade, but it was gentle. ‘There are ways of killing people without guns,’ said Will, and he closed his eyes. For a moment he saw it again. The blood running down the walls. Pooling, flooding, hot and red. Pumping in waves from a dying heart.‘I’ve failed,’ said Lestrade quietly. ‘And people have died as a result. For example, a friend of mine pitched himself off a roof because I didn’t help him, I didn’t believe him enough. And yes, that’s what I see late at night when I close my eyes.’Will opened his eyes. They were in the morgue, tiled walls and stainless steel gurneys. No blood except for what still remained on the victims’ skin.‘Okay,’ he said.Lestrade rubbed his forehead. He sighed. ‘Don’t mind me. I’m a miserable bastard sometimes. What you’ve said gives us several new lines of enquiry, Graham. I appreciate it.’Will nodded. He saw the shadow on Lestrade’s face, the dark shadows beneath his eyes. The detective was too young to have all that grey hair.‘Can I get you a cup of coffee?’ he asked Lestrade.*He’d never seen anyone down double espressos as quickly as Greg Lestrade. Not even Jack Crawford.‘Do you sleep at all?’ he asked Lestrade, genuinely curious.‘Not much, not these days. It’ll get better.’‘Stress?’Lestrade laughed. ‘Recently, we had a master criminal robbing the Tower of London and the Bank of England. Et cetera. Until he wasn’t a master criminal; he was an actor hired by the great detective Sherlock Holmes, who was a master criminal himself. And then they both killed themselves. Before that, we had a Russian roulette taxi driver, hallucinatory dogs, and innocent people being strapped into explosives. So no, it’s not been short of drama. You?’‘We seem to have more than our share of serial killers in the area.’‘I hear you,’ said Lestrade. ‘Sometimes it feels like it would be easier to join them than to beat them. I never said that, by the way.’They were in The Regency Café, a 50s-style caff with Formica tables, gingham curtains and tiled walls hung with signed photos of boxers and football players. Lestrade had a bacon sandwich in front of him, made from two great slabs of homemade white bread. Second espresso finished, he squirted brown sauce from a plastic bottle into his sandwich and got started on it.Will was still full from his breakfast in bed with Hannibal. He toyed with a mug of so-strong-it-was-orange tea, with milk. The woman behind the counter hadn’t asked him before she’d added milk; apparently in England tea came with milk by default.‘That other murder that you had,’ Will said. ‘The banker? David Flowers?’‘Mm? Yes.’‘I knew him.’Lestrade’s head snapped up.‘Not knew,’ Will corrected quickly. ‘I met him. He was on the same flight as me from Dulles. He…spilled a glass of champagne on me.’Lestrade took a large bite of bacon sandwich, unconcerned again. ‘You didn’t kill him for that, did you?’‘No.’But he thought of himself and Hannibal in that big bed this morning, and afterwards in the shower, putting David Flowers to rest. His face heated, and he sensed Lestrade watching him, chewing on his bacon sandwich.‘I’d be happy to have a look at the Flowers case,’ Will offered. ‘Especially as I’ve met the man.’‘Maybe later,’ said Lestrade. ‘I thought about what you said about the Chesapeake Ripper, and the displaying and trophy-taking. Turns out this killer didn’t take a trophy. We found the tongue in a bin on The Strand.’‘He couldn’t use it. He just took it as a lesson to Flowers.’Lestrade grunted. ‘What’s it like, being able to put yourself into the brains of these sickos?’‘Not particularly pleasant.’‘And yet you’re a happy man.’Will turned his mug of tea in his hands, thinking of the scent of old wood. The way he’d curled around Hannibal in bed.‘Today I’m happy,’ he said. ‘Unexpectedly.’‘It’s hard to sustain,’ said Lestrade. ‘I always thought I was pretty matter-of-fact, but you bring the bad stuff home with you. You try not to, but you do. It’s put paid to more than one relationship.’‘Your budgie?’‘Among others.’ Lestrade finished up his sandwich. ‘I just think it’s hard when one person sees the darkness, and the other doesn’t. And then if you both see the bad things…it’s no better.’ *Later, in his hotel room, he changed his clothes and wrote his reports. He emailed Jack with an update and he called Chuck, his neighbor in Wolf Trap whose teenager was looking after his dogs. He read an email from Alana. Don’t forget to have some fun while you’re over there, she wrote. He smiled. It was a breezy, friendly email, but it was like her to be concerned about him.Unbelievably, I’m getting a little R&R, he wrote back to her. But he didn’t say what kind of R&R, or with whom. That would be another conversation. Or maybe not, if this thing with Hannibal was only for the duration of their stay in London.He called Hannibal.‘Hello, Will,’ Hannibal answered, and the warmth in his voice did something to Will’s insides that he didn’t want to analyse. ‘How has your day been?’‘I’ve been on fire. That crime scene this morning was practically gift-wrapped. I almost owe whoever did it a favour.’‘You’ve seen your killers’ faces?’‘I’ve seen two of them, at least. Which narrows the field considerably.’‘I’m glad.’ ‘Listen, do you want to get together?’ ‘I’m busy tonight,’ said Hannibal. ‘Oh.’ He waited for an explanation, an expression of regret, but neither came. He could hear the faint noise of classical music from Hannibal’s end of the phone.Of course Hannibal Lecter didn’t have to explain his movements to him. There had been no promises made. Hannibal Lecter owed him nothing. If anyone was in debt, it was Will.‘All right,’ said Will. ‘Have a good time.’‘I will. I’m sincerely pleased that you’ve had a breakthrough on your case.’‘Thank you. I’ll…goodbye, Hannibal.’‘Goodbye, Will.’Will put down the phone, not sure what had just happened.He went to Chinatown and had a bowl of noodles and a beer for his supper. Then, not tired enough to return to his room, he walked the streets of the West End for a while. The bars of Soho, music pumping onto the street between young men in tight shirts and smart suits; the sex shops; the theatres with their hyperbolic posters; the souvenir shops selling t-shirts and toy London buses and photographs of the royal family; tourists pushing past each other in Leicester Square; tube stations with their passengers spilling out onto the sidewalks like Alaistair Grigson’s blood.He found an open book shop on Charing Cross Road and browsed the titles there. He leafed through an illustrated guide to angling, but couldn’t focus. He picked up a heavy book of Renaissance engravings, thought of Hannibal Lecter.He didn’t know if Hannibal Lecter liked Renaissance engravings. He knew very little about Hannibal Lecter aside from his tidiness, and his liking for fine things, and the cut of his suits, and his insight. And the taste of his cock, and the smell of his skin, and how he had felt buried deep inside Will’s body, and how he had washed Will’s hair with tender care.And that one moment, in his hotel room bed, when Hannibal Lecter had lost control.Will put down the book of engravings and left the book shop, walking back out into the London night, with its darkness, its blaring lights, its relentless rhythms, its writhing figures in doorways, its appetites and excesses and temptations. This was the other side of the blood and death he’d seen today; a foil to the cool good taste of Mayfair and Hannibal Lecter’s hotel. This was life and hunger. This was desire.He walked for a long time, trying to exorcise his own desire, and failing.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Late at night, or maybe early in the morning. He was in the woods with the dogs, because sometimes that was when dogs needed to be walked. Twigs crunched underfoot and above, leaves whispered. The full moon peeked out through the fog for a moment, dazzling his night vision, and then was gone, leaving him in near-blackness.The dogs were panting and paw fall, indistinct shapes, though he could identify them from the way they moved, the brush of their tails against his hands, or a flank against his leg. In a sudden shaft of moonlight, Buster was a streak of silver running away. ‘Stay close, Buster!’ he called, and his voice was swallowed by the night. He hurried after the little dog, the others tagging along beside him, following him as they always followed the leader of the pack. ‘Buster!’ he called again, and then broke into a run as he heard a squeal and a whine from the shadows ahead.Winston shot ahead. The other dogs scattered.Running now, branches whipping at his face, boots catching on fallen wood. A howl—not dog, no—but similar, deeper and wilder. Another squeal, a scream of an animal in pain.‘Buster! Winston!’ He stumbled into a clearing and at the same time, the fog broke again and the moonlight streamed down.Buster and Winston lay on the forest floor on the yellow litter of leaves. Both of their throats had been ripped open. Their jaws gaped and their eyes stared sightlessly ahead. Blood pooled and shone, a dark echo of the moonlight.The dogs were in exactly the same position as Garrett Jacob Hobbs and his wife had been. Lying on the yellow floor. Their eyes open and their mouths gaping and their lives flowing onto the linoleum. Limbs limp. Hands twitching with a semblance of life. The scent of food and blood.Over them stood the wolves.There were four. Their jaws were bloodied and Will could see the gleam of their teeth. Three stood together; the fourth was taller and stood apart, in the shadows, only discernible by the shine of its eyes. They were like the dogs, but stronger and faster and more savage, with murder in their stance.Winston took a shuddering breath, and was still.Will reached for a branch, a stone, anything. He drew himself taller, tried to make himself look bigger. The leader of the pack. One of the wolves, maybe all of them, were growling, hackles up. Their eyes tracked his movements. His hand closed on nothing but air.Something warm and wet fell on his face, and then another drop and another, on his hands and shoulders. In the moonlight the rainfall was black and shiny and when he raised his hand, it was covered in blood. Raining blood from the sky. It spotted Buster and Winston’s coats. It slicked the fur of the wolves and covered the leafy floor of the forest.It flowed down the trunks of the trees. It dripped into Will’s mouth, warm and salty and coppery-tasting on his lips. With his first taste of blood, the wolves struck.They went for his throat first; Will threw his arms up to stop them but their jaws closed on his forearms. He heard bones snap.Hot breath in his face, scented with blood and flesh. Teeth like knives, parting his throat, and the gush of his own blood spraying into his face, hot like the devil, tasting like an old friend. The pounding of his heart working to fountain blood out of his body, out of the sanctuary of his body, into the moonlit air to mingle with the rain.The tearing and the pounding of his heart.The pounding.Will awoke with a gasp. Sweat covered him, soaked through the t-shirt he’d worn to bed. He sat up, breathing hard and shivering. His heart thudded.Thudded.On the door of his hotel room. Will wiped perspiration from his forehead. He swung himself out of bed, turned on the bedside light, pulled his sopping t-shirt over his head and flung it into the corner. Dressed only in boxer shorts, he turned the knob of his hotel room door, and as he opened the door, still half in his dream, he saw the wolf waiting outside. The wolf that had been in the shadows, half-human, its fur slicked with blood, its breath tainted with meat.Then he blinked and it was Hannibal Lecter in a tuxedo.‘Hannibal?’ he rasped.‘Will,’ said Hannibal. ‘Sorry. I…may I come in?’Will opened the door and Hannibal entered. He stumbled slightly on the carpet.‘Are you drunk?’ asked Will incredulously.Hannibal rubbed his forehead. His suit, shirt and tie were immaculate: tailored to his body, black as night, white as snow. His shoes were shiny, his hair hardly ruffled, his cheeks flushed. When he looked into Will’s face, his eyes were unfocused.‘I had a glass of champagne too many,’ he admitted. ‘Perhaps two. It was a tedious reception, the music was awful…’Despite the vestiges of his dream that still clung to him, Will felt a smile grow on his face. ‘You were bored and you got hammered.’‘So eloquently put.’ Hannibal aimed for the sole chair in the room, bumped against the chest of drawers, and faltered. Will looped his arm around him to stop him from falling over. He thought it had been quite a bit more than one or two glasses of champagne.‘I’ve got you,’ he said, and guided Hannibal to his bed. The other man sat heavily on the rumpled blankets, and let out a sharp breath.‘I never drink to excess,’ said Hannibal. ‘I don’t like…’‘Feeling out of control?’ He shook his head. ‘I’m not out of control, just a little bit…’‘Adorable.’ Will sat beside him and kissed him. Tasted the champagne, chasing away the dream flavor of blood.‘I’m sorry,’ said Hannibal, when they were finished. ‘I had to come here. I was worried that if I were alone…I would do something that I would regret.’‘That’s all right. It’s good to see you.’‘You were sleeping.’‘Not well.’‘I thought you…you said you were on fire today.’‘That doesn’t always guarantee a decent night’s sleep. With my job and the way I work, it usually guarantees the opposite.’Hannibal put his hand on the side of Will’s face. His palm was cool. ‘I’m sorry.’Will laughed gently. ‘Stop apologizing. That’s the drink talking.’‘I meant for being rude, earlier. For not telling you where I was going. I wish you’d come. It would have been much more fun.’‘It doesn’t sound like my sort of party, anyway.’‘We seemed to be getting too close, too quickly. I was deliberately elusive.’ Hannibal stroked his thumb against Will’s cheek, and frowned. ‘You’re very warm. Do you have a fever again?’‘I’ve had a nightmare. It’s okay.’‘Nightmares whisper and scream about the fears we turn away from in daylight. What was it about?’‘I’m missing my dogs.’‘I missed you,’ sighed Hannibal. ‘I missed you, and this is something I would never say if I hadn’t had too much to drink.’ He smiled, an almost goofy smile that Will had never seen before. ‘Did you miss me?’Will snorted a laugh. ‘Hannibal, you are wrecked.’‘I know.’ Hannibal tugged at his tie and pulled it from his shirt collar. ‘And this is a horrible hotel room. Horrible. I’m almost ashamed to ask you to fuck me in it.’‘Do you think maybe you—’‘I said I was worried about doing something I’d regret. I would never regret sharing pleasure with you.’ Hannibal unbuttoned his waistcoat, began unfastening his shirt. Stopped halfway to shrug out of his jacket and toss it onto the end of the bed, where it lay crumpled.Will gazed at the discarded jacket, and then at Hannibal, half-undressed. ‘Doctor Hannibal Lecter,’ he said, ‘is this a drunk booty call?’‘Yes. Yes, I think that’s the term.’ Hannibal stood up, unsteadily, to shed the rest of his clothes. He dropped his waistcoat, shirt and tie on the floor and leaned on the head of the bed to kick off his shoes. One went flying and hit the desk with a thud. Then he started on his trousers. He seemed to be having some trouble with the button.‘Let me,’ said Will. He scooted over on the bed and unfastened the button and unzipped Hannibal’s flies. Hannibal’s silk shorts were a lavish paisley pattern. His erection was starkly outlined in them. Will brushed his palm over it and Hannibal moaned.‘Wait, wait,’ he said, and bent and retrieved something from the pocket of his trousers: a small glass bottle and a couple of gold-wrapped condoms, which he put on the bedside table.‘You came prepared,’ remarked Will. ‘No butter this time.’ Hannibal let out a little laugh. Almost a giggle. He fell back on the bed, his legs dangling over the side, trousers around his ankles. Will untangled them and removed them, and also Hannibal’s socks. ‘Come here,’ Hannibal said, holding out his arms.Will climbed onto the bed with him, lying on top of Hannibal, naked chest to naked chest. Hannibal wrapped his arms around him and they kissed. It was a little bit sloppier than the kisses he’d shared with Hannibal before, but it was urgent, tender. Sweet. Sexy. Hannibal’s cock strained against his through the layers of their underwear.Hannibal took Will’s head in his hands and parted their lips. Still close enough to kiss, close enough so that his words made warm puffs of air on Will’s face, he said ‘I trust you, Will. Do you trust me?’Will met Hannibal’s gaze. When had it become so easy to look at him, and be looked at in turn?His eyes, in the light of the bedside lamp, were dark, almost the colour of wine. His lips wet from Will’s kisses, the skin over his cheekbones flushed.He looked entirely serious. In that moment, not drunk at all.‘Yes,’ said Will. ‘I trust you.’Then Hannibal was kissing him again. They kissed for a long time, and somewhere during that time, the last traces of Will’s bloody nightmare seeped away, banished by the heat and urgency of their bodies. Hannibal’s hands roamed over him, strong fingers stroking down his spine, over his ribs. Gripped his ass through his underwear and squeezed him, slipped under the waistband of his boxers and parted his buttocks to tease his hole with one long finger. Will remembered the sensation of Hannibal’s cock there and he groaned into Hannibal’s mouth and ground into his crotch.Hannibal pushed Will’s shorts down, pulling down his own with his other hand. ‘Fuck me,’ he muttered. ‘It’s your turn. I want to feel you inside me.’‘I’ve never—’‘I know. I find that unbelievably arousing.’ He reached for the small bottle and a condom and handed them both to Will. Will knelt between Hannibal’s spread legs, his own cock jutting up towards his belly. He unscrewed the top of the bottle and poured a little of the clear fluid onto his palm. It smelled of warm spices, cinnamon maybe, and something else exotic and enticing. Of course Hannibal would have his own signature scented lubricant, extra-specially delicious.Watching Will’s face the whole time, Hannibal drew his legs up, exposing everything to Will. His thick cock, the tight pouch of his balls, the vulnerable expanse of his perineum. His puckered asshole, more intimate than anything Will had yet seen of Hannibal. Spread bare for him here.It was a blatantly sexual gesture, but also such a display of trust that Will had to take a few seconds, understanding it. Letting it sink in, as his lover watched him.‘Hannibal,’ he said softly, and leaning forward, he dribbled a thin stream of the lubricant onto Hannibal’s groin. His cock twitched as the liquid hit it; Will watched it trail down Hannibal’s length, drip down his balls. He rubbed it over him, smoothing it over his dick, circling the sensitive head with his palm and fingers, and then running his hand down to cup and massage the lube over his balls. Then using two fingers, he smoothed it up and down his perineum.‘Prepare me for you,’ Hannibal told him. Will circled slick fingers around Hannibal’s hole, round and round, feeling him relaxing and clenching. The softness of his skin there, the tenderness. He slipped a finger in, up to the first knuckle, and he let out a shaky breath. Hannibal was so hot, so hot and tight. And watching him.‘Keep going,’ said Hannibal.‘How drunk are you?’ Will asked. ‘Are you going to remember this tomorrow? I don’t want to do anything you’ll forget.’‘I forget nothing,’ said Hannibal. ‘Please, Will.’He worked his finger in further, and then a second one. He had no idea, frankly, what he was doing. But he poured more lube, the spices assailing his nostrils. He knew that smell would be forever linked with this act in his mind, this intimate learning and plundering, this stroking of silken tissues inside of Hannibal’s body.Blood, he thought, out of nowhere, and his dick throbbed. He looked up, startled.‘I’m ready,’ said Hannibal. ‘Now.’Will unwrapped the condom, rolled it down his length. Had Hannibal worn one, before, in the park? He’d been too stunned and overwhelmed to ask. But he supposed he had, Hannibal being a doctor, and so fastidious, and…‘Fuck me, Will.’He positioned himself, the head of his cock at Hannibal’s entrance, and he searched Hannibal’s face for any trace of reluctance, of being too drunk to know what he was asking for. But Hannibal was steady, watching him. He nodded slightly, and Will pushed forward.And inside. So hot, so tight. He clenched his teeth and thrust in and in, like being squeezed to his core. Inside Hannibal. Deep inside. Deeper.Hannibal pulled his head down and kissed him. ‘Yes,’ he murmured against Will’s lips.Will felt Hannibal’s dick burning against his belly. He took it in his hand and pumped it, slowly as he pumped in and out of Hannibal. Getting used to the friction and tightness, the sensation of a hot male body underneath his, Hannibal’s thighs brushing his rib cage.Hannibal’s breaths came in short bursts. He was more vocal than he’d been during sex between them before, making little moans deep in his throat as Will fucked him. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back on the bed, exposing his throat for Will to kiss. His mouth curled in that savouring expression, two fine lines of concentration between his eyebrows.Will felt his mind start to slip and he resisted it. Because right now he wanted only to be himself. He didn’t want to be both of them; he wanted to be fucking Hannibal, on top of him and deep inside him, forcing those sounds of pleasure from Hannibal’s mouth. He wanted to feel Hannibal’s dick in his hands, slippery and fragrant with lube, all the bumps of crown and veins and foreskin perfectly delineated. Faster now, every stroke a new satisfaction, those lines in Hannibal’s forehead deepening, his face getting tighter with pleasure till he was gasping aloud, his mouth open, his head flung back and twisting back and forth, hands grabbing at the sheets. Hannibal Lecter beneath him, losing all control, and Will let out a shout and pumped harder and came, jerking inside Hannibal’s ass.Hannibal came too, with a guttural groan, his semen jumping from his cock onto his own belly.Will collapsed on top of him, panting, and Hannibal kissed his neck. His ear. The side of his mouth. Sweat and spunk sticky between them, the scent of sex mixing with spices.‘That was what I wanted,’ Hannibal whispered to Will. ‘That was what I came here for.’Will could barely scrape up the strength to reply. Languor and repleteness weighed him down. He pulled himself out of Hannibal, removed the condom and staggered to the bathroom to dispose of it and clean himself off. When he returned, Hannibal was still sprawled in the same position. His own come on his belly, his lips reddened, hair damp. Bruises on his thighs from where Will had bit him the day before.He looked gloriously debauched: a drunken hedonist exhausted by his revels. Will kissed him on his forehead.‘Are you all right?’‘Mm?’ Hannibal seemed to rouse himself. ‘Oh, yes. Yes, very.’With an evident effort, he sat up and brushed his hair from his forehead. Will watched as he walked, none too steadily, to the bathroom and shut the door behind him. He smiled to himself; if he wasn’t mistaken, Hannibal Lecter was going to have a killer hangover tomorrow.Will smoothed the sheets the best he could, fluffed the pillows, and rearranged the blankets. He couldn’t match the spacious bed and elegant décor of Claridge’s, but he had a feeling that the two of them would sleep well tonight anyway.*Hannibal Lecter shut the door behind him. Once it was closed, he straightened. In the mirror, he was entirely focused and entirely sober.He studied his own face for a few moments before he did anything else. The veil was stripped away, the bones beneath his face stark and harsh, his eyes wine-dark, his lips kissed till the blood stood out red.‘I trust you,’ he mouthed in the mirror to his own image.Then he closed his eyes and allowed himself to replay the past hour in every detail: sense and emotion, intellect and instinct. Will’s amusement, his arousal, his trembling possession, the growing certainty of his movements. How Will had enjoyed Hannibal’s abandon and acquiescence, how Will had relished the power, soaring like a bird of prey on a thermal.Will had been entirely himself, he thought, and he took a moment to turn over that delicious knowledge, too.When he was finished (and it took some time; Hannibal Lecter had a remarkable memory for detail) he opened his eyes again and washed himself with a flannel and warm water. He wouldn’t mind a shower, but Will would start to wonder, unless he was asleep already. Best to continue to play the part.And the scent of Will Graham on his skin was intoxicating. He would enjoy wearing it.On his way back to bed he took care to make his steps unsteady, to balance himself on the wall and chest of drawers. Will looked nearly asleep. His dark hair made a halo on the pillowcase. His body singing with well-earned pleasure, Hannibal climbed in beside him. He curled into Will, wrapping his arm around his waist and tucking his knees into the back of Will’s. Will made a soft noise of contentment and cuddled back against him.Tonight, he would stay here all night. He closed his eyes and luxuriated in the thought of it. Hannibal tilted his head to Will’s. He breathed in Will’s unique scent: sex, sweat, hair, shampoo, washing powder, dog, water. The remnants of his nightmares—exquisite revelations not yet explored. And laid over it all, delicate as tracing paper, the sharp sweet smell of infection, like cider apples past their time.He closed his eyes and let himself recall and savour it all again before he submitted himself to the guiltless hands of sleep.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
When Will woke up, Hannibal was still asleep beside him. Will lay there gazing at him. His hair fell over his forehead, and his face in sleep was softer: the mouth relaxed, the skin smooth under eyes and over cheekbones. He had smile lines around his mouth, crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes, slight threads of silver in his hair. His chin was rough with stubble, something Will hadn’t seen before—yesterday Hannibal had woken before him and shaved before Will had the chance to get out of bed. He looked less severe, more fallible, less unknowable.Hannibal opened his eyes. A smile touched his lips. ‘You don’t often look people in the face, Will.’‘It’s…easier when people are asleep,’ Will admitted. ‘They make fewer demands.’He moved closer, both to kiss Hannibal and to break eye contact, but Hannibal put his hand on the side of his face to stop him. He looked steadily into Will’s face for a long moment, and Will had to look into his.He remembered last night, when Hannibal had looked like this into his eyes and asked Will if he trusted him. It had been remarkably easy.‘You can always look at me, Will,’ said Hannibal. ‘I think you and I might be able to understand each other.’This was a little intense for first thing in the morning. Will changed the subject. ‘How are you feeling today?’Hannibal’s lips twisted ruefully. ‘I’ve felt better. Usually I appreciate wine, rather than guzzling it.’‘You don’t regret coming here last night?’‘Not in the slightest. In fact, I think it was the best thing I could have possibly done.’ Hannibal stretched, and sat up. ‘Although I suspect that I’m about to be disappointed with your shower.’‘You’re not wrong.’‘I would like it better with company.’ Hannibal held out his hand in invitation, and Will took it.**Later, they were huddled over a cracked table in a very insalubrious-looking hole of a Vietnamese restaurant. Will had been surprised when Hannibal had taken them straight here from his hotel. The restaurant only had five or six tables, and a counter wreathed in steam. ‘I’ve come to associate you with the finer things,’ Will said, gazing at an electric picture of a moving waterfall that graced one of the grubby plaster walls.‘And you would be right,’ said Hannibal. He was still wearing his tuxedo from the night before; it was wrinkled from its time on Will’s floor. His waistcoat was buttoned up, but his shirt was open at the top and his bow tie hung untied from his collar. His hair was still damp from Will’s shower, and his chin was rough with silvery stubble.Will had to admit he liked this unbuttoned version of Hannibal: the usually-impeccable man with a rougher edge. It made him itch to mess the doctor up even more. And it brought memories of them in his bed last night, on top of Hannibal, thrusting into his ass. In the shower this morning, less than half an hour ago, when Hannibal had soaped them both up, rinsed them, and then had sunk onto his knees in the cramped bathtub and taken Will’s dick into his exquisite mouth. Sucking to make hollows of his cheeks. This powerful, perfect man, kneeling before him with water running down his body, hair plastered to his skull, focusing all his attention on pleasuring Will. Drawing him to the slowest, most maddening, most satisfying climax.The thought made him start to harden again. He tried to distract himself by sipping the iced coffee with condensed milk that Hannibal had ordered for each of them, calling it by its name, cà phê sữa đá. It was strong and sweet enough to make his eyes water.‘So why are we here?’ he asked. ‘The Vietnamese make the best hangover remedy known to man. Aside from the one we already tried this morning.’ He shot Will a look which Will could only describe as naughty. So much for Will trying to avoid thinking about sex…The waiter arrived with two steaming bowls, which he set down in front of them along with an enormous dish of bean sprouts, chilis, herbs and lime. Thinly-sliced raw meat, still bloody in the centre, lay on top of the fragrant broth. It was already beginning to cook in the heat.Hannibal plucked out a slice delicately with his chopsticks and ate it. ‘Phở bò,’ he said. ‘Beef noodle soup. The recipe for the stock is carefully guarded by generations of families. I have quite a good recipe for it myself, although the ingredients take some time to collect.’ He began shredding fresh herbs into his soup. ‘By the time we have reached the bottom of these bowls, we will feel ten years younger.’‘Now that’s a lot for a bowl of soup to deliver.’ But when he tried it, it was delicious: fragrant, spicy, complex in flavor. He’d had pho before—he stopped in for a bowl sometimes after work at a local noodle house in DC—but this was the best he’d had.They ate for a few moments in silence, Hannibal sipping slowly, appreciating the flavor. Then he touched his lips with his paper napkin and said, ‘Tell me, Will. When did you realise that you had a special ability to see inside killers’ heads?’Will grimaced. ‘It was the death of a child. We found her by the side of the highway. I was a rookie in Homicide; it was the first time I’d seen a murder. I closed my eyes, and…I saw it all. Just as it happened.’ He shook his head. ‘My sergeant didn’t know whether to promote me or commit me.’‘You have a unique insight into these murderers,’ said Hannibal, squeezing just a drop or two of lime juice into his soup. ‘Tell me, Will. When you’re in their heads, does it feel good to kill?’‘It’s hard to tell. It’s their emotions. At least I think they are. Not mine.’‘And do they take pleasure in it? These people who are not you?’‘They all feel differently. They’re different killers. Some are reverent, some are angry, some are aroused.’‘Is there anything in common? Any one emotion?’Will had stopped twirling noodles around his chopsticks. He wasn’t very hungry any more. ‘It’s…’ His voice lowered. ‘It feels powerful. Their design. Every time, it feels powerful.’‘And have you ever killed anyone yourself, Will?’‘No. I’m not much good with a gun. Beverly, at the FBI, tells me I flinch. But…’‘But what?’‘But I feel responsible for deaths. Abigail Hobbs’s parents, for example.’‘Do you think that feels different from killing someone with your hands?’Will put down his chopsticks. ‘You don’t sound very hungover, Dr Lecter.’Hannibal smiled. ‘I told you, this soup is a miracle worker. Please.’ He gestured for Will to resume eating, and waited until Will had taken a sip of the broth before he spoke again. ‘I’m pushing you, I know. I won’t apologise for it, although it makes you uncomfortable. I want to understand you.’‘It sounds,’ said Will, ‘like you’re trying to understand a murderer.’Hannibal inclined his head. ‘Last night, Will, did we speak about trust?’Will remembered: in bed, nearly naked, their skin pressed together. Hannibal’s face, his darkened eyes, his scent of old wood, ancient and rich.
I trust you, Will. Do you trust me?
And he’d replied Yes. I trust you. And Hannibal had offered up his body to him, and Will had felt…Powerful.‘We spoke about trust,’ Will said. ‘Yes.’‘Friendship isn’t given lightly; nor is trust. I want you to trust me, Will, as I trust you. But if I am to earn your confidence, I must be honest with you.’Will felt a niggle of alarm. He’d thought he was having an apparently more or less functional and enjoyable relationship? With another human being?He should have known it was too good to last. ‘Honest about what?’ he asked slowly.‘It may be the reason I had too much to drink last night. It has been worrying me. I’ve known I should tell you, but I haven’t known how to go about it.’‘Is there something wrong?’ ‘There was a time to tell you, and I let it go by. And for that, Will, I apologise. My actions have been…inexcusable.’‘Hannibal,’ said Will. ‘Tell me.’In the pause that followed, Hannibal’s face was impassive. Will thought of a dozen things it could be, from the ridiculous, to the bone-hurting truth.
I never saw this as lasting more than a day or two.I’m married.I’ve decided you’re not good enough.You’re too freakish.I’m straight.I’ve been fucking you out of pity.It’s not me, it’s you.You don’t deserve to be happy.
‘Tell me,’ said Will again, gritting his teeth. Knowing this should not be hurting him. Knowing he should not care, not after less than five days, not after what was essentially a hook-up in a strange city with a stranger, no promises made, no emotions expressed.‘When we spoke of Alana Bloom,’ Hannibal began. ‘I misled you as to the true nature of my relationship with her.’‘You’re seeing Alana Bloom?’ Will asked, his stomach sinking. Great. Just great. The two people he was most attracted to, involved with each other. Which meant that he’d assisted Hannibal Lecter with cheating on Alana Bloom, which was a level of betrayal and disillusionment he didn’t even want to think about being part of.‘No,’ said Hannibal. ‘Alana and I are colleagues, and friends. What I did not tell you is that sometimes, Alana sends me referrals. Particularly patients whom she does not feel comfortable treating herself.’Will stared at Hannibal.‘Alana referred me to you as a patient?’‘Not precisely. She said that she believed you needed some extra support if you were going to return to work in the field. She mentioned my name to Jack Crawford as someone she could recommend.’‘She referred me to you as a patient. Via Jack Crawford.’Hannibal sighed.Anger churned inside him. ‘So is that what we’ve been doing, Dr Lecter? Satisfying your professional curiosity?’‘No.’‘Because what we’ve been doing, you and I, it hasn’t exactly been professional.’His voice had got louder, loud enough so that the other customers in the tiny restaurant were watching them. He lowered it, leaned over the table and their abandoned breakfast.‘Or is this your own brand of therapy?’ he hissed.‘I am not treating you,’ said Hannibal. ‘You are not my patient.’He was wholly calm, which only served to make Will more angry.‘You’ve refused her?’‘I…not yet. Not precisely. I was waiting to speak with you about it. She would naturally ask for a reason, and I wasn’t certain which reason you would want me to give her.’‘When did she ask you? Before we met? Did you know, from the moment I sat next to you on the plane, that I was…unstable?’ Something occurred to him. ‘Oh God. That first class ticket, the kind the FBI never buys—that wasn’t in aid of my therapy, was it? Did they seat us together on purpose?’‘I’m in London to deliver a professional paper, and to meet with colleagues,’ said Hannibal. ‘I received the email request from Alana after we had landed here. When we met on the plane, I didn’t know who you were.’‘But you saw that I was unstable anyway, didn’t you? Isn’t that what you said: that you found me interesting? That you were trying to help my anxiety?’ Will laughed without humour. ‘And then you got an email from your psychiatrist friend—my psychiatrist friend, our mutual psychiatrist friend—and you knew you’d been right.’‘Will,’ said Hannibal, so calmly, so damn calmly, ‘I’ve said I regret not telling you about Alana’s request straight away. I didn’t know how to broach the subject. I don’t regret meeting you, or anything we have done together.’‘So what are you going to tell Alana? “Sorry, I fucked him by mistake before I knew he was crazy…you’d better find another shrink”?’‘Will.’Will stood up. ‘You know what? Forget it. Let’s forget any of this ever happened. You can tell Alana that I’ve refused treatment. And then the two of you can get together and talk about how…interesting I am.’‘You’re not angry at me. You’re angry at this perception of yourself, as vulnerable and different.’‘No,’ said Will, ‘I’m angry at you, Hannibal. I’m angry at you for keeping the truth from me and then asking me to trust you. I’m angry at you for making me feel normal for once and then reminding me that I’m not.’ For the second time this week, he pulled out random money from his wallet and dropped it on the table to pay for a meal he hadn’t finished. And then he left.*Hannibal Lecter walked for some time around the streets of London. He had a destination, but he circled it, enjoying the weak sunshine on his shoulders and face, the million different sights and odours of the city. And he wasn’t in a hurry. He had done what he needed to do this morning. He had one more task, now; and then it was this evening that the real work would be done.This evening, or tomorrow evening. Though he rather thought it would be sooner than later.Eventually, he strolled across Lincoln’s Inn Fields and into one of the tall buildings lining the square. His nostrils flared slightly at the scent of old books and plaster, polish and stone and linseed. Hannibal nodded and exchanged a few courtesies with the attendant at the door, slipped a generous donation into the box, and walked into the heart of Sir John Soane’s Museum.He had been here many times, but he had never yet found a fitting use for the rooms here. He had one in mind—a room on the ground floor, a few feet from the entrance—and yet, in the same way he had circled the museum during his walk, he circled his destination now. In turn he visited the other cramped rooms of the museum, the life work of architect Sir John Soane, his vast and eclectic collections housed in the deceptive building he had designed. He gazed at the assorted objects, each catalogued and displayed, juxtaposed into surprising combinations.Some objects he mentally lifted from their stands and shelves and took with him, carrying them in his memory.From the Study, a collection of marble animal paws. From the towering Dome, a specimen of brain coral. Slave shackles from the Crypt, simple and elegant in their brutality; a pair of Chinese guardian lion-dogs from near the Monk’s Parlour. After some consideration, a Roman cinerary vase of alabaster, emptied of the human remains it had once housed.Hannibal passed through these rooms and past these objects, never touching, his face slightly dreamy, like that of one who listens to elaborate and beautiful music. He climbed narrow stairs and emerged, at last, into the Breakfast Parlour.The room’s domestic name disguised its extreme beauty. Sandwiched between the houses that Soane had knocked together to create his home, it should have been dark and cramped. And yet the domed ceiling, inset with convex mirrors, and the ingenious clerestories and windows into the courtyard provided unexpected shafts of light. It was a room of surprising insight and clarity, a room that was hardly predictable.Hannibal Lecter stood in the middle of it and he concluded that yes, this would be the ideal room in his Memory Palace in which to hold Will Graham.Slowly, he pivoted in the centre of the room. The actual room was less important than the one he was constructing in his Memory Palace to house Will. He placed the slave shackles with care above the fireplace. The lion-dogs to guard the door. The brain coral askew on the gleaming table, tilted onto its side to expose the delicate rot beginning to infest its centre.Hannibal brought other things here, too, to populate his room. The scent of orchids—the flower that had sat by his left hand when he had first read about Will Graham on Tattlecrime.com, nearly a month ago now. When he had first begun to suspect that an investigator with the power of pure empathy was not only moderately dangerous to his freedom, but immeasurably interesting in his own right. When he had first begun to hope that a person such as Will Graham might, unlike any other person he had met, have a chance of understanding him.He brought a silver bangle, woven with a thread of crimson silk, last seen on Alana Bloom’s delicate wrist. It was dangerous, placing suggestions in the minds of a colleague. There was always the chance they would be detected. But he and Alana had been friends for so long; he had guided her thoughts for many years, as a mentor. In the end, he was convinced that Alana believed it was entirely her own idea to ask Hannibal to look after Will. Fondly, with a reminiscing smile, he tucked two first-class airline tickets into the frame of the large mirror, one purchased by the FBI but upgraded by himself, with a seat reservation at special request. He lay a tongue beside it. A waste, that tongue. Next time he came to London, instead of staying in a hotel, he would have to rent a flat with a kitchen. Likewise Grigson’s kidney, excised and then left behind regretfully on the path of Green Park.He indulged himself by stocking the room with Will Graham himself. The soft curls of his hair, the vulnerable line of his throat. The silken heat inside his mouth and his anus. The shudder of his climax and the taste of his mouth, the eyes which looked away but missed nothing. The pink of his nipples and his lips. The rhythm of his sleep and the wonder of his waking. The grimace when he spoke, the rare smiles, the more frequent flashes of understanding. Will Graham’s dreams. Oh yes, his dreams. His fevers. The way he and Will had talked to each other through blood and murder. The connections between them, the acquiescence and the power and the yearning and the fragile gossamer of trust.In the corner of his room, Hannibal placed a small bronze statue of a wolf. Its gleaming muzzle was smeared with bright blood.Only when Hannibal had thoroughly filled the room in his mind with Will Graham, did he close his eyes to fix it in his memory.Then he opened his eyes again and he was in the great neo-classical architect’s finest creation. He inclined his head in respect to Sir John Soane, and left the museum.He had to prepare for tonight.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
After storming out of breakfast, Will went straight to Scotland Yard. He wasn’t really sure where else to go, to be honest. He was too angry to think straight.He wasn’t sure he’d been thinking straight at all for the past five days. Not since he’d met Hannibal Lecter.Reporters clustered outside of New Scotland Yard. One, with a microphone, was telling a camera that although there had been no new breakthroughs in the politician murders, that Scotland Yard were pursuing new inquiries. Only a few feet away, another reporter told another camera that Parliament were considering a recess to keep politicians safe.Will pushed past them all, not caring that he jostled the arm of one of the people holding a camera. He went into the building, through security, and to the office where he’d been given some space on a shared desk. There was half a plastic cup of cold tea on it; he dropped it straight into the wastebasket.He’d delivered his profile; there were no more insights to be had. His main job now was admin—writing up his report, making sure everything was filed. He logged on to his borrowed laptop and stared at the screen and failed to get anything productive done.Now that he wasn’t with Hannibal, the anger had subsided into what it really was: shame. The same shame he’d felt all his life, for being different and weird, for not having the boundaries that other people had, or for having too many of them. For being someone who people put labels on. Someone that people wanted either to avoid or to understand.
Hannibal said that we could understand each other, he thought. Not that he could understand me. Each other.
There was something niggling in that. Something significant, maybe, if he could get hold of it.He shook his head and tried to turn his attention back to his report.‘Bloody hell,’ said Lestrade, coming into the room. ‘Really? That quick?’Will looked up. ‘Pardon?’Lestrade looked slightly embarrassed. ‘You’ve been chucked, haven’t you? I recognize the symptoms.’‘What are the symptoms?’ Will asked slowly.‘You were so chipper yesterday morning, and now you look like a wet Wednesday.’Will rubbed his forehead, which was hot and a bit damp. ‘I’m coming down with a virus.’ He dug in his pocket for more aspirin.‘And…well, I hope you don’t think I’m intruding, but you’ve got a love bite on your neck.’‘Oh.’ Will touched the spot. He could remember Hannibal nipping him there, in bed last night, in between kisses.‘Listen, it’s none of my business. It’s probably just as well anyway. We were talking about it yesterday; this job’s no good for relationships. And you’re heading back to the States in a couple of days, aren’t you?’‘Yeah,’ said Will, though that wasn’t going to make any difference. Hannibal was in Baltimore. He knew Alana Bloom and Jack Crawford. It would only be a matter of time before they met again. Maybe Hannibal Lecter would be called in to consult on a case; Jack Crawford certainly tried to make use of everyone he could when there was a murder to be solved.He pictured them in Jack’s office, sitting in those two chairs in front of Jack’s desk. Jack introducing them, and Will trying not to look in Hannibal’s eyes, or at his face, or at any part of his body or his clothes or even the air surrounding him because if he did he would start remembering the things they’d done together and how they felt.‘Oh yes,’ Hannibal would say, in that calm, cultured voice, the accent that Will had already begun to associate with pure sex. ‘We have met, some time ago. Hello, Will.’Will swallowed. It was going to be torture.Lestrade patted him on the shoulder. ‘Stick with murder, mate. It’s easier on the heart.’*When he returned to his hotel, the receptionist called to him. ‘Mr Graham? You’ve got a package here.’Will detoured to the desk, where the receptionist gave him a sleek black gift bag, tied with a burgundy silk ribbon. Even if it hadn’t carried the faint aroma of ancient wood, Will would have known it was from Hannibal Lecter, both from the careful, costly wrappings and from the lurch his stomach made when he saw it.He carried the gift bag up to his bedroom and put it on the made bed, which was flat and smooth and didn’t look as if two men had been having frantic sex in it the night before. Then he stood back, folding his arms, and looked at the bag as if he were afraid it was going to explode. He wasn’t angry at Hannibal any more; Hannibal had kept something from him, but his motivations had been reasonable enough. He’d faced a professional conflict, and it was an awkward thing to express. And he’d probably suspected that Will would fly off the handle about it. He’d certainly known that Will would be angry with himself, that it would make Will feel vulnerable and examined, like an anatomical specimen sprawled out and fixed with a pin.He was just full of shame, and dread, and the awful sinking feeling of having made a mistake. It was a feeling that was all too familiar. And he didn’t see how this gift, whatever it was, could make him feel any better. Because as long as he knew Hannibal Lecter, as long as he had those perceptive eyes turned on him, he was going to be reminded of his own inadequacies. His freakishness.He was strongly tempted to open the window and throw it out onto the street. It would be better just to draw a line, wouldn’t it? Finish up his part in this case and go back to Wolf Trap and wait and dread the day when he and Dr Lecter crossed paths again.Will sighed. He knew he wouldn’t throw the gift out on the street. He was too curious, for one thing. He never could keep himself from looking.It would also, from Hannibal’s perspective, be rude. Crazy how easily he could assume Hannibal Lecter’s viewpoint. He picked up the gift. The ribbon was tied in an elaborate double bow. He loosened it and looked inside the bag.Blood. Blood in a shining clotting pool, and the fat loops of entrails, glossy and obscene. A white thread of sinew and the wormlike shapes of veins.Will gasped and dropped the bag, backing up to the wall. His heart pounding, he stared at the gift, this horror, the very thing he could never stop himself looking at.When blood didn’t leak out of the open bag—when nothing leaked out of the open bag at all—he took a shuddering breath and approached the gift again. He nudged it with his foot.A bit of pink tissue paper spilled out of the top.‘Fuck,’ whispered Will and kneeled beside it on the hotel carpet. He picked it up gingerly and looked inside it once more.Pink tissue paper wrapped around some object, and a white card in an envelope.Will swore and he drew out the envelope, which had his name on it. Hannibal’s handwriting was a flawless italic cursive, written with a fountain pen on heavy paper stock. He put it aside, not quite ready to read explanations, and opened the gift instead. It was heavy, in a midnight blue box lined with white silk.At first he thought it was a dog, but it wasn’t. It was a bronze statue of a wolf, small enough to sit on the spread of Will’s open palm. The statue was exquisitely detailed, gleaming in the light. Will ran his fingers over its noble head, its finely-shaped muzzle, open slightly to reveal the teeth. Over its hard smooth metal flank. Even in bronze there was no mistaking the power of the animal, or the savage grace in its eyes.It was deadly and beautiful.Carefully, Will placed the wolf on the hotel room dresser, where it stood, a miniature warrior. Then he opened the envelope and read the note it contained.
My dear Will,
Every part of you is glorious.
HL
*He called Hannibal, of course. He wasn’t strong enough not to. And made the arrangement to meet, in this building at the end of a white terrace of large-windowed Edwardian houses in Marylebone. It didn’t even have a discreet plaque near the door to declare it a private members’ club, but that was clearly what it was. A woman in a severe suit met Will as soon as he walked through the glossy black door.‘I’m meeting Dr Lecter,’ he said. Although he’d suspected Hannibal would choose somewhere upmarket to meet, he hadn’t dressed up, still wore his chambray shirt and Dockers. He half-expected her to tell him to leave for not wearing the correct clothing. But instead she inclined her head and led him into a room full of comfortable armchairs pushed into intimate groups, with men and women talking quietly to each other. Hannibal sat with his back to them, on a small sofa, but as soon as they approached he stood and turned.He was impeccable again, not a trace of this morning’s hangover, in a brown three-piece suit, a blue tie. ‘Will,’ he said, smiling, and the suited woman melted away. The room melted away. Will’s body reacted instantly, heart leaping, fingers tingling, eyes dilating, balls tightening—those instincts of desire which were almost indistinguishable from fear—and he knew in that moment that he had never really had any choice whether he saw Hannibal Lecter again.He would always choose to see him. Hannibal touched his hand. Dry fingers, the lightest of touches, palm curled round the back of Will’s hand as he’d curled his body around Will’s in bed.‘You forgave me,’ Hannibal said. ‘Thank you.’‘There’s nothing to forgive.’ His voice was unsteady. ‘You were right; I was angry at myself. Not at you.’‘Thank you, nevertheless.’ He gestured for Will to sit on the sofa. There was a low table in front of it, with two cut-glass cognac glasses and a decanter of amber liquid. Hannibal sat beside him, not quite touching, the warmth of his body pressing against Will’s side. The sofa faced a window out onto a courtyard garden. It was dusk. Will could see their reflections in the glass: two men, sitting side by side. He was leaning slightly towards Hannibal.He straightened up.‘What is this place?’ he asked as Hannibal leaned forward and poured a measure of spirits into each of the glasses. ‘A private club?’‘An extremely exclusive one, known to very few people.’ He handed a glass to Will. The shape of the glass concentrated the fumes of the brandy so that a single sniff was enough to make him feel slightly drunk.‘Are you a member?’‘No. I am here on personal recommendation, from a patient. He had to…pull considerable strings for me to be allowed in.’Will glanced around. The surroundings were tasteful, but they didn’t seem opulent. They could be in a reasonably well-appointed hotel lobby. None of the men and women he’d seen as he walked across the room seemed remarkable in any way. In fact most of them were quietly dressed. Business types, rather than celebrities.‘The members have very particular things in common,’ said Hannibal. ‘But perhaps we’ll explore that later. Right now I’d prefer to enjoy this moment.’ He held up his glass, and Will touched it with his in a toast. ‘I am very glad to see you.’‘I’m not really sure it’s a good idea,’ said Will honestly. ‘Ideas are not good or bad, in themselves. Nor are relationships. It is the effects we allow them to have on our lives, that matter.’ He sipped the cognac, closing his eyes for a second in appreciation. Will sipped too. It was strong, smoky, woody, and warmed him all the way down.‘What is this we’re doing?’ he asked Hannibal. ‘Is it a hook up? Is it a—’ he grimaced slightly— ‘relationship? An affair? I’m going back to America soon.’‘As am I.’‘Well, what do we do when we get there? We know people in common, Hannibal. What are you going to tell Alana?’‘I think that depends a great deal on you.’ Hannibal sipped his cognac again. ‘Our relationship has been secret so far, and I cannot deny that gives it a certain frisson. And being away from home often allows us to act in ways that we would never consider in a more familiar place. We have come very far together in a very short time, Will.’‘Yes,’ said Will. ‘We have.’‘And there are still boundaries to be pushed. Still walls between us. I am curious to know whether they can be breached.’ Hannibal shifted slightly so that his knee brushed Will’s.‘Is your gift how you see me?’ Will asked quietly. ‘That wolf?’Hannibal inclined his head. ‘You think you are vulnerable. But you are a predator, Will, as much as that wolf is. You have extraordinary senses, and abilities beyond the grasp of most humans. It is your difference that makes you all the more precious.’‘A wolf is a killer,’ said Will. ‘So is a human impersonating a wolf. That’s why I’m here. I’m not a killer.’‘No,’ said Hannibal. ‘But you have an intimate relationship with death—much more intimate than other people do. You don’t like looking people in the face. But you look the dead in the face, Will. You see their secrets and their truths. You understand the importance of the act that took their lives from them.’‘And you’re attracted to that?’‘Life and death are inextricably entwined.’ His leg was closer now, pressing nearly the length of Will’s. ‘I am attracted to your understanding, even though that understanding causes you fear.’‘You want to fix me.’‘On the contrary. I don’t believe you’re broken. I told you that you were glorious, every part of you. When I am with you, I feel that I am closer to life.’He put his hand on Will’s thigh. Will saw him do it, in the reflection in the window. Outside, the sky was darkening. Nearly fully dark.‘How do you feel when you’re with me?’ Hannibal murmured. He ran the tip of a finger lightly over the inseam of Will’s trousers.‘I feel…surprised,’ Will admitted. ‘Challenged. Sometimes I feel as if I have control, and at other times, I feel…a subject. I feel like I’m on the edge of something, and it makes me curious.’‘You feel alive.’Teasing, that finger. Up Will’s leg to his crotch. Will glanced around to see if anyone was watching as Hannibal’s touch feathered over the fabric covering his balls.‘You feel desire,’ said Hannibal. ‘And desire is life. Appetite, and taste. It’s how we assert ourselves against the darkness. It is how we take the darkness into us.’‘Hannibal,’ he whispered. ‘This isn’t the place—’‘Believe me, when it comes to being caught, this is safer than in the airplane. Or in the park. And you like it, Will. You enjoy flirting with danger. Fear and arousal, hand in hand.’He flattened his hand and pressed it hard, for a moment, over Will’s crotch. Will hissed, feeling himself hardening. Straining against his trousers. Hannibal lightened his touch. He shifted away, slightly, so that none of his body touched Will except for his hand.‘Watch,’ he whispered, and Will watched in the mirror of the window as Hannibal lovingly caressed his balls through his trousers, then ran his thumb up the length of the hard ridge outlined through his clothes. He nearly jumped when Hannibal touched the sensitive head.He circled it with his thumb and Will groaned, softly. He heard hushed conversations going on around them. It was dark enough outside now that someone could be in the garden, watching them, and he wouldn’t be able to see. Maybe people behind them could see their reflection. Maybe people around them could hear his shaky breathing or hear the low sexy rumble in Hannibal’s voice, as he stroked Will.These private spaces in a crowd, Hannibal had said that first time they’d had sex, in that airplane lavatory, and that was partly right. But only partly. The truth was—‘You want people to see you,’ whispered Hannibal. ‘You dread it, and yet you crave it.’Will saw Hannibal staring into the reflection of them in the window. He met Will’s gaze there—looked steadily into his eyes, person to reflection to person. The gaze was somehow more intimate than if he had been looking directly into his face.Will parted his legs slightly. He pushed his hips forward, feeling his clothing rubbing against his exquisitely sensitive skin. Hannibal squeezed him unhurriedly. Used his whole hand, now, to rub slowly up and down Will’s shaft. ‘I love it when you climax,’ said Hannibal, nearly at normal conversational volume. ‘Your face contorts in the most beautiful way. It would be easy to mistake your expression for pain.’ He squeezed lightly, now, on Will’s glans. ‘We speak of the ecstasy of suffering, as well as the ecstasy of pleasure.’‘Little death,’ said Will hoarsely. Not caring, at this point, whether he could be heard or not. It was taking all of his will not to arch his hips upward into Hannibal’s hand, not to seize his arm and grind his hand down onto his cock. ‘Le petit mort,’ said Hannibal. ‘The French is correct. Orgasm is close to death. At the moment of climax, our bodies are utterly out of our control. Our minds taste oblivion. Our breathing stops. Our hearts sometimes stutter. It is against all reason. And yet we hurtle toward it.’Will was hurtling towards his own climax. He could barely breathe; his heartbeat thundered in his ears as Hannibal deftly caressed him. Right here, on a sofa in a private club, surrounded by people. He was going to come in his pants like a teenager. He struggled to stave off his orgasm. He could grab Hannibal’s hand and remove it; he could get up and walk away. His raging erection outlined in his trousers would be less obvious than the stain of his semen. He could tell Hannibal to stop, to wait until later, when he could come in Hannibal’s mouth or in his hand or in his ass, somewhere private where no one would see them, where no one would know, where he could shout out, grip the pillows and thrash his head, and not have to stay quiet and still.He could stop this. Hannibal would stop. Will was not being forced, not precisely.But it felt so good. So exciting, to see Hannibal sitting demurely beside him, the only movement his hand on Will’s crotch. To see his own face, flushed and punch-drunk.And he wanted to come. He wanted that oblivion of pleasure. ‘What do I look like when I climax?’ Hannibal asked him. ‘I know you’ve been watching.’‘The veneer drops away.’ Will gasped it. ‘It’s as if the outer you falls to one side. I can see someone else, nearly. Someone who’s been there all along.’Hannibal’s eyes narrowed slightly. His hand, which had been moving in maddeningly slow strokes up and down Will’s length, nearly stopped. Not quite, but nearly. Enough to keep Will on the very verge of his climax.‘You see me,’ he muttered. ‘I think you do. Do you trust me, Will?’‘You’ve asked this before,’ said Will, moving his hips a bit, trying to catch that last little bit of friction that would finish him off. ‘I need you to trust me. I need you to do just as I say.’‘Hannibal, I want to come.’ ‘Yes. You can. But not yet.’ He clamped his hand over Will’s cock and Will nearly yelped. ‘Hannibal—’‘Trust me.’ Hannibal was leaning into him now, holding his gaze, whispering, close and hot. He gripped Will’s dick tightly through his clothes, to the point of pain. ‘If you trust me, Will, I can help you find extraordinary things. Things you have been looking for. But you have to trust me. You have to follow my lead. You have to let me assume control.’The pain was almost pleasurable, almost enough to make him orgasm. ‘I…’ Will panted, hardly able to think, hardly able to breathe. ‘Say yes. Say you’ll do what I tell you. Trust me.’The pressure, and the pleasure, and the weight of Hannibal’s brown eyes staring into his. There was something more there, something Hannibal was trying to tell him, a hidden message, and Will couldn’t figure it out because his body was clamouring for release.‘Yes,’ he managed to say. ‘Yes. I will.’Hannibal’s eyes gleamed. He released Will, and Will nearly cried aloud with the withdrawal of sensation.Hannibal stood. He held out his hand for Will’s.Will breathed hard, fighting for control. After a moment, he stood. His crotch was throbbing, his balls tight and sore, his legs unsteady. He felt as if a single brush of a finger, a single tiny bit of friction, would tumble him over the edge.Hannibal took his hand and gave him a kind smile. Then he picked up Will’s glass.‘Drink this. Drink it down. It will make you feel better.’Will gulped at it, dizzy, the cognac a fire in his mouth and throat. Hannibal poured him another large measure, and he drank that too, as if it were water. It made the pressure in his groin abate somewhat. Though not much.‘Good,’ Hannibal said. ‘Well done. Now, come with me. I have something rather interesting to show you.’
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Hannibal held Will’s hand as they walked across the room, past other people chatting quietly in groups of armchairs. It was the only time Hannibal had shown overt affection in public, but Will was dizzy, his throat was on fire from the two large measures of brandy he’d just downed, and his dick was rock-hard from Hannibal’s teasing, to the extent that he was having trouble walking comfortably.He was slightly too distracted to analyse the significance of holding hands.Hannibal approached a woman in a severe grey suit who was standing near a flower arrangement. Will wasn’t quite sure whether she was the same woman in a severe grey suit who’d greeted him at the door when he’d arrived.‘Good evening,’ Hannibal said to her. ‘My companion and I would like to go through, if we may.’She smiled pleasantly enough, but Will had the distinct impression that she was assessing them. ‘Dr Lecter, is it?’‘Yes. Here on glowing recommendation from Benjamin Raspail.’‘Mr Raspail, yes. He is well known to us. And your friend?’Will opened his mouth to give his name but Hannibal interrupted smoothly. ‘William Bonney. I can vouch for him.’The woman looked briefly into Will’s eyes, and then her gaze dropped to his crotch. Will glanced down and saw that his erection was starkly outlined against his Dockers. There was a small spot of wetness where a drop of pre-come had soaked through.He reddened, and was just stepping back, shielding himself with his hand, when the woman said, ‘Yes, I see. That should be fine. Follow me.’She opened a plain white door and went through it. Will and Hannibal followed, into a long corridor like that of a hotel, with doors lining it on either side.‘William Bonney?’ whispered Will to Hannibal. ‘Isn’t that Billy the Kid? Why did you—’Hannibal raised his finger to his lips just as the woman opened one of the doors and ushered the two of them inside.‘You should find everything you need in here, Dr Lecter,’ she said. ‘We hope you enjoy your evening.’‘I am certain that we shall,’ said Hannibal. ‘Thank you.’ The room looked like a perfectly normal hotel room, with a king-sized bed and more fresh flowers in a vase on a table. The woman smiled at them discreetly, and left, shutting the door behind her.‘What’s going on?’ Will asked as soon as they were alone. ‘If this is a hotel, why all the scrutiny and the fals—’Hannibal pulled Will close and buried his fingers in his hair. ‘Be careful,’ he murmured, under cover of nuzzling Will’s neck. ‘I cannot be certain that we aren’t being listened to. In fact, I think it’s highly probable that we are.’‘Listened to?’‘And watched. We were certainly watched while we were on the sofa. Didn’t you see the camera in the courtyard?’Will shook his head, beginning to go cold with horror despite the kisses Hannibal was lavishing on his neck and ear. Despite the fact that his erection, which had subsided somewhat on their walk down the corridor, was at full flag again.‘We were…putting on a show?’ he whispered.‘We have been putting on a show since we arrived in this building. And we will continue to put on a show.’ ‘I don’t understand.’Hannibal pulled back slightly to look in Will’s face. ‘You said you would trust me, Will. You said you would do as I instructed. If you can’t do that, we will have to leave, right now.’‘I just want to know—’‘Boundaries,’ said Hannibal, patiently. ‘The walls between us that are still to be breached. Aren’t you curious? Don’t you want to see?’‘But this place. What is it?’‘This is the place where you will find what you’ve been looking for,’ said Hannibal, looking him full in the eyes, as if the words he said had special significance. ‘I think it is. I believe we will find it together.’Will felt a pinprick in his arm. He looked down to see a small syringe disappearing into Hannibal’s hand, being slipped into Hannibal’s jacket pocket.‘What—’‘A mild hallucinogenic. It will enhance your experience.’‘Hannibal, you can’t drug me.’But Hannibal had. And the drug was quick, especially combined with the brandy he’d had before. Will staggered to the bed and sat on it. Almost immediately the room began to tilt.Hannibal knelt in front of him. ‘You are safe,’ he told Will, stroking his curls back from his face. ‘I will keep you safe, as long as you obey me. Do you believe me, Will?’Oh God, Hannibal was so fucking beautiful. So flawless. He had the face of an angel.‘I’m your Billy the Kid,’ Will said, and he heard himself giggle.‘You are entirely glorious,’ Hannibal said. He kissed Will softly on the lips. ‘Entirely glorious, and you have only started to discover what you can become.’Tenderly, he unbuttoned Will’s shirt. He helped him take it off, folded it and placed it on the end of the bed. Will watched it settle, like a swan’s wing.‘You always fold everything so perfectly,’ said Will. ‘If this psychiatrist thing doesn’t work out, you could get a job at The Gap.’Hannibal touched Will’s lips. ‘It’s probably wiser if you don’t speak.’‘Okay. Okay, but can I just ask, because I’ve been dying to know, why are you called Hannibal? Are you very good at herding elephants?’‘I am the eighth Hannibal Lecter. I was named before I was born, after an ancestor. And no, I have never herded an elephant. Hush now, William.’ He knelt again and unlaced Will’s shoes. He placed them by the side of the bed, a sock rolled in each one. ‘Stand up, please, so I can remove your trousers.’‘Does anyone ever call you Hanni? Or Han? Or Nibbles?’‘No.’‘Can I?’‘No. Step out of these, please.’Will stepped out of his trousers and his shorts. He observed that his penis was still erect, jutting up towards his belly. He regarded it with interest. His cock was quite a fascinating shape and colour, when you really considered it. The head was flushed and there were veins running down its length. He touched himself, experimentally, to appreciate the textures: the soft skin, the stiff core, the heat, the slick drop of pre-come on the slit which he rubbed with his thumb.‘Guess these drugs don’t affect potency,’ he commented.‘Fortunately not,’ Hannibal replied. He seemed to be amused. ‘Don’t make yourself orgasm, please, Will. It would be…counter-productive.’Will obediently took his hand away from his dick. ‘Aren’t you getting naked too?’‘No. I am not. And you may not remain so for long.’ Hannibal strode to the large built-in mirrored wardrobe that took up most of one wall. ‘Ah,’ he said, as he opened it. ‘I suspected as much.’Will’s mouth fell open. The wardrobe was absolutely full of bondage gear. Hangers held things made of leather, things made of straps and buckles, things with no shape until they were tightened around human flesh. A rack held an assortment of whips and cuffs; beside it was a shelf upon which had been carefully placed a selection of butt plugs and dildoes, arranged according to size. Some of them had attachments.There was something made of canvas and metal that looked like a straightjacket. A plastic mask hanging from a peg. Blindfolds and gags and sleek garments of rubber.To Will, some of them seemed to be moving. He heard the sensuous rustle of leather, the musical clink of steel. There were eyes peering from between the straps and buckles: animal eyes. Human eyes.‘Holy shit,’ Will heard himself say.Hannibal stood before this array, considering. At last he selected several items, and brought them to Will. The first was a dog collar: black and studded with silver. It was attached to a lead.‘I’ve got one a little bit like that,’ said Will. ‘At home. For one of my dogs.’‘This one is for you. Lift your chin, please.’ Hannibal placed the collar around Will’s neck. Will felt him buckle it in place. It pressed against his Adam’s apple, not hard enough to restrict his breathing, but snug enough so that he could feel it when he swallowed. His mind told him it was a snake. Dry, pliant, strong, its head resting on Will’s jugular. The thought was not alarming at all. It was rather exciting. Will had always liked animals more than people.‘Do you have any pets?’ Will asked Hannibal as he attached the lead to the collar, and slipped the loop at the end over his wrist.‘No.’‘You should get some. Dogs are great. They’re really, really great. I really love dogs. I have seven. Is this a snake around my neck?’‘It is a collar, Will. It will not harm you.’Will nodded. He touched the snake around his neck and it felt like a snake.‘Listen, Hannibal,’ he said, suddenly struck, ‘I’ve been curious about this. What do you do if you’re out and you get hungry all of a sudden? Do you ever just say fuck it, and go to McDonald’s?’Hannibal gave the lead a short tug. Will choked and his hands flew to his throat, but the pressure had already eased.‘I think,’ said Hannibal, ‘that it’s best if you’re not able to speak at all. Open your mouth.’He opened his mouth and Hannibal put a ball gag in it. A rubber ball, smooth and pliant and large enough to force his tongue back and stop him from talking. Reflexively, he backed away from it, trying to spit it out, but Hannibal fastened the gag quickly behind his head.Will shook his head, making noises, reaching for the buckle in the back to free himself. Before he could get a purchase on it, Hannibal had grabbed both his wrists in his powerful hands and Will heard the clink of handcuffs. One of the cuffs circled his right wrist.He was too shocked to struggle; Hannibal was incredibly strong. Hannibal brought both his hands round and down so they were in the small of his back and Will felt his left wrist being cuffed, too.Fear rose in Will and he stumbled away from Hannibal. There would be a key somewhere, in the wardrobe maybe, the wardrobe full of eyes and leather and rustling shadows, but how could he pick it up, with his hands behind his back? Could he dislocate his thumb, bend and stretch his body like rubber, slip out of the cuffs, run naked—‘Will,’ Hannibal said behind him, and his voice was calm. Soothing. It had the scent of ancient wood, the colour of teak and burgundy, the taste of smoky whisky, and Will instantly felt the fear ebb. He turned to look at his lover, this man who had brought him here and bound him.Hannibal was surrounded by a soft white glow. Yellow fire shot from his heart. He opened his arms and Will stepped into them, his naked skin against Hannibal’s fully-clothed body. He could feel the glow, the fire, as a tingling. Hannibal held him, stroking his back and his hair, running his hand down the side of Will’s face over the strap of the gag, whispering ‘Shhh.’ Will felt his heart slow, his breathing subside. Felt his body making accommodations to his bonds.‘Listen, Will,’ murmured Hannibal, his words warm in Will’s ear. ‘This is very important. You must do as I say, and you will not be in danger.’He pulled back and held Will’s head so he could look directly into his face. ‘There may be some pain,’ Hannibal said, ‘but I will not let it become more than you can bear. I promise you, Will. Put yourself entirely in my hands, and you will be safe. Do you understand me?Hannibal’s eyes were fathoms deep. In each one of his pupils there was a warm light dancing. It was the dancing light of the fire when you came home from fishing, tired and cold and happy, the dancing fire you curled up next to in a blanket to sleep, still in your damp clothes, trusting the fire to warm and dry you, knowing that when you awake, the fire will still be burning in its embers, dancing under ash, and all will be well. Will nodded. Even drugged, he knew there were layers to his consent, knew that he would not have chosen to do this if asked. But he was curious. He could not stop looking. Even through the fear and the shame. And Hannibal Lecter understood this about him.And he could understand Hannibal. He could let his mind reach out and be Hannibal, fully clothed next to Will’s nakedness, the end of the lead attached to Will’s collar in his hand.He slipped, and he was looking at himself. Naked with a leather collar around his neck (through Hannibal’s eyes it was a collar, not a snake). His hands bound behind him, biceps pushed out by the position, shoulders back. Hair wild and dark, face unshaven, eyes large and blue, pupils dilated, the eyes of a suffering saint above the travesty of the gag. He saw the vulnerable strength of his belly, the bones of his hips, the soft dark line of hair from his navel to his groin. His cock, semi-hard now. The columns of his legs and his bare feet. Drugged, stripped, bound, gagged, collared, helpless.Through Hannibal’s eyes, he looked beautiful.He looked glorious.He nodded again, and Hannibal smiled. Will felt him smiling though his own lips were stretched around the gag.Hannibal kissed Will’s forehead, like a benediction. Then he knelt in front of him—fully dressed, end of the lead in his hand—and Will saw through Hannibal’s eyes how powerful he was in his helplessness. Hannibal kissed each of his thighs, softly and reverently, and then he kissed the tip of his cock before taking it in his mouth.Will groaned against the gag. Hannibal sucked, delicately, carefully, licking with slow strokes on the underside of Will’s shaft until he was fully hard again, until Will was swaying towards him, feeling his body growing, hardening, becoming full of light.Then Hannibal pulled away, Will’s cock emerging from his mouth with an audible pop. His saliva cooled on Will’s skin. Hannibal stood. He held up the end of Will’s lead.‘Now you’re ready,’ he said. ‘Shall we go?’
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Hannibal opened a door Will hadn’t noticed before, or if he had, he’d assumed it was to the bathroom or to an adjoining bedroom. The end of the lead in his hand, attached to the collar around Will’s neck, he paused.‘Trust me,’ he said. ‘Don’t forget, Will. It’s the only way to stay out of danger.’Then he led Will into the room beyond.It was full of blood.Will baulked at the threshold, his eyes overwhelmed by red.
That room, the kitchen at the Hobbs’ house, pooled with blood, sprayed with blood, the two people lying on the floor, one guilty one innocent, and the young girl beside him, her hands over her mouth and screaming through her fingers…
Hannibal laid his hand on Will’s bare shoulder. ‘For a moment, see only what is there,’ he said softly, and Will’s eyes focused themselves at his command, resisting the drug, and he saw a large room, papered in dark red flock wallpaper in patterns of swirls and flowers. Swirls and flowers, not spatter and smear. The floor was grey marble tiles, and the furniture upholstered in dark red velvet. A crystal chandelier dripped from the ceiling, holding dozens of flickering candles; more candles danced on tables and in sconces. The candles caused the moving shadows, like blood flowing. The people—there were thirty, maybe more—wore black and red, except for those who were naked. Will saw a beautiful dark-skinned girl reclining on a chaise longue, stroking her own breasts while a group of men and women looked on. He saw another woman, a redhead, tethered to iron loops set into the far wall, body spread out in an X. Tattoos curled their way around her ivory skin, along with redder, crueller marks. As he looked at her, his vision slipped again and he saw the marks crawling along her body like worms.It was some sort of sex club that Hannibal had brought him to. A torture room. Like something out of that film he hadn’t bothered to see. He turned to Hannibal, shaking his head, speechless because of the gag, meeting his eyes and trying to tell him This isn’t really my scene, sex clubs, no, sorry, can we just go now?Hannibal lifted a finger to his lips. He shook his head, once. Don’t forget, he mouthed.‘What have we got here?’ asked a voice, and Will turned his attention to the man who had just approached them. He wore a black suit, not as well-cut as Hannibal’s, and he had slightly thinning hair, greying at the temples. His nose was long and thin, like a rat’s; his eyes dark and avid. ‘Is it a new pet to play with?’ he asked. The man tugged lightly at Will’s collar and ran his forefinger down Will’s chest, lingering at his nipple.Another man appeared, and another, and a woman too. The woman curled her palm around one of Will’s buttocks. He felt her nails, dry and papery and sharp.‘He is my pet,’ said Hannibal clearly.Rat-man drew back his lips in surprise, revealing sharp rat-teeth. He tweaked Will’s nipple, hard enough to make him yelp against the gag.‘That’s not how things work here,’ Rat-man told Hannibal. ‘Fresh meat should be shared.’‘Shared and shared alike,’ agreed the woman, who had hair feathered back from her face and a curved nose like a hawk’s. Tawny eyes. She slapped Will’s buttock hard enough to make it sting. The sound of flesh on flesh rang out. The shock of being touched had loosened Will’s grip on his mind, let the drug take hold again, and the room was flowing with blood once more, running down the walls in swirls and florid flowers. The woman had fine pinfeathers growing from around her eyes. More people, shapes twisted and tall and looming, gathered around them.‘I am not aware of all of the rules of this place,’ said Hannibal, ‘but I consider taking without asking to be rude.’‘What’s rude is keeping it all to yourself,’ said Rat-man. ‘A pretty little thing like this pet should be appreciated.’ He reached for Will’s crotch with his other hand, which appeared to be covered in fine grey fur, and Will backed away from him, up against Hannibal. He felt Hannibal tensing, every muscle on alert.‘Do not touch him,’ Hannibal said, and his voice was low and one of the most dangerous-sounding things Will had ever heard. He turned his head to look at Hannibal and he saw his eyes alight with a cold red fire. His lips drew back to reveal sharp canines.Will, who had been pressed up against Hannibal, recoiled from him, too. His drugged, suggestible mind pictured Hannibal’s lips soaked with blood. Hannibal’s teeth stained with it, his hands gloved with shiny red. Holding the heart of the Rat-man. Will’s own heart hammered in his chest with fear and he tried to retreat but the lead stopped him, choking him and cutting off his breath.‘See here,’ began Hawk-woman, but she was interrupted by a smooth female voice. ‘Is there some trouble, my darlings?’The voice was calm; it felt like a cool splash of water to Will. It came from a slim, tall woman in skin-tight leather trousers, towering stilettos, a billowing cream silk shirt, buttoned up to her throat. Her hair was pulled back in a severe ponytail; her face was starkly beautiful, with dark eyes and red lips. There was a silvery scar high up on one cheekbone, underneath her eye and nearly touching it. The scar added to her beauty, rather than detracting from it. She regarded Will and Hannibal with a smile playing at her mouth.‘No trouble,’ Hannibal answered her. ‘I am merely expressing my preference to keep my pet for myself.’‘He won’t share,’ said Hawk-woman, sounding petulant. ‘He’s greedy.’‘Are you greedy,’ the woman asked Hannibal, ‘or merely possessive?’‘I am particular,’ said Hannibal. The dangerous edge had gone from his voice, but Will still smelled blood on his breath. ‘And I value good manners. I do not appreciate people playing with my things without permission.’‘Playing with your things without permission,’ repeated the woman. To Will’s eyes, she was growing taller, her lips redder, her eyes more commanding even though they were narrowed slightly with amusement. Her scar glowed with pale fire. She turned to the others. ‘Let him have his sub to himself, for tonight. Perhaps another time you’ll get your turn.’The others grumbled, and Will felt it in his stomach as a faint clawing.‘But you’ll have to make it up to us,’ added the woman, to Hannibal. ‘We will expect a show.’‘That is why we are here,’ said Hannibal pleasantly. ‘Then please follow me.’She strode off. Will exchanged a look with Hannibal, whose mouth was no longer bloody. You were dangerous, thought Will at Hannibal, trying to communicate with his eyes. You were dangerous in my defense and I was afraid but I am not certain that I wasn’t glad.He glanced down at his crotch and he was still hard.Hannibal tugged at his lead and he followed him across the room, to a raised dais in the centre, underneath the dripping waterfall of a chandelier. He felt his cock bobbing with every step he took and as he felt the attention of the other people in the room like scratches on his skin, the part of his rational mind that was left wondered how long he’d had a hard-on for, now. An hour? Two? For obvious reasons, time wasn’t exactly his strong suit, but it had been a while.Maybe Hannibal had put a sexual stimulant as well as a hallucinogenic in that syringe, he thought, and grimaced around the ball in his mouth. Hannibal had certainly been doing a lot of preparing, hadn’t he?For what?He stepped up onto the dais, which was floored in thick blood-coloured carpet, soft and warm under his bare feet after the cold marble floor. The centre of the room was taken up by a metal structure, of which Will had no trouble imagining the purpose. Beside it were two stands with an array of implements on them. Whips, crops, canes, paddles, a whole shelf of gleaming knives of various shapes and sizes.Will blinked and they became a mass of teeming spiders. He could hear the clicking sound of their feet as they crawled over each other.‘Here, Will,’ said Hannibal quietly, guiding him to the centre. Will went, unable to take his gaze from the spiders. There was blood dripping from them, too: the blood of the other people who had been tethered to this structure on this dais, the blood of the other people who had put on a show. It dripped from the spiders’ mandibles.Tenderly, carefully, Hannibal unfastened his left wrist from the handcuffs. He rubbed the mark the metal had made on Will's skin, the place where Will had felt it bite, and then he gently bent Will over a cushioned bar on the rack, bent him at a ninety degree angle with his arms stretched in front of him, his chin resting on another cushioned pad that forced his head up. The bar pressed into his stomach and his cock hung below. Hannibal brought Will’s wrist to the leather clamp that was waiting for it. He did the same to the other wrist. Then he bent and fastened Will’s ankles to more waiting clamps. Will felt Hannibal's breath on his calves, his hands on his ankles, persuading his legs to spread. His touch was tender but efficient.I can only escape if Hannibal lets me, thought Will, and he heard the spiders teeming.The other people in the room gathered round. Immobile as he was, Will couldn’t see all of them but he could see some of them: Rat-man, standing practically on his tiptoes, leaning forward in anticipation. Hawk-woman, still and watching in the manner of a predator. The beautiful naked woman from the chaise longue, sitting now and turning her attention to what was happening on the dais, with one of her female appreciators sitting beside her, fully dressed, and caressing her thigh. The woman pinioned to the far wall was watching, too. Her eyes met Will’s and Will saw only curiosity. No relief that the focus had shifted from her torture; no fellow-feeling for another human being on the rack.Curiosity and hunger. It burned at him from everyone in the room, hot enough to make his skin crawl.And the people were transforming before his eyes. Growing hair or feathers or scales, shrinking or growing or becoming twisted and hunched. The bloody walls grew branches and horns, vast antlers like ancient trees, candles snagged in their joints.Somewhere on the edge of the crowd, in the shadows unlit by the candles, stalked a figure. Will couldn’t see him clearly—stretched as he was on the rack, he couldn’t turn his head. He only glimpsed him in his peripheral vision. But there was something familiar about him.Something that reminded him of a moonlit night in the woods and the sounds of dogs screaming.All at once he went cold. From head to toe, as if he had been dipped in ice water.‘What will you use on him?’ asked Silver Scar woman. She stood behind Will, next to Hannibal from the sound of it. ‘He’s very pretty. Nice and unmarked.’Hannibal didn’t answer. But Will heard the rustle of his clothes, the shift of his body. He heard Hannibal deliberating. He took his time.There may be some pain, Hannibal had said, but I will not let it become more than you can bear. I promise you, Will. The stalking figure had passed out of his vision. Will bit down hard on the gag and clenched his fists in their bonds. ‘Good choice,’ said Silver Scar. ‘Now: hurt him.’
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Hannibal considered the cane he held in his hand. It was about seventy centimetres long, flexible, the thickness of his index finger. It was pale in colour—he had chosen it partly for the way it would contrast with Will’s skin once it had been marked. White and red, blood and bone.Will Graham was pinioned, stretched before Hannibal on the stage, his hands secured in front of him and his ankles tethered so that his naked back and buttocks were presented to Hannibal. His skin was the colour of raw porcelain. He appeared both desperately vulnerable and incredibly strong: the ridges of his spine, the muscles of his back and shoulders and buttocks. Michelangelo’s David, stretched on a rack.Hannibal could tell by the rhythm of Will’s breathing that he was afraid.Will Graham was often afraid. It was part of his understanding, and it was delicious, like a fine wine to be sipped and savoured.But Will’s understanding was more delicious. That was, after all, the entire purpose of this evening’s work.‘Good,’ said the woman standing next to him. ‘Now: hurt him.’Hannibal ran the length of the cane against his palm. He knew that anticipation of pain was more powerful than the pain itself—and his audience knew it too, of course, which was one reason why he deliberated. They held their collective breath, waiting for the release of the first blow.And yet there were other reasons to pause. The cane deserved proper contemplation. If one was to strike effectively, one needed to fully understand the weapon’s capacity: its weight, its length, its flexibility and the way it fit into one’s hand.And of course, he’d seen a cane much like this before: in the orphanage that had once been Lecter Castle.He had never wielded it himself, but it had been used upon him.Once only.Hannibal closed his eyes and allowed himself to feel the memory. It was not a memory he liked to revisit. The bite of the cane on bare flesh. He recalled every nuance of pain and humiliation. His face had been pushed into rough burlap, smelling of hay and donkey shit. The cane had licked like fire across the top of his buttocks. He had taken the beating entirely in silence, which had made his tormentor beat him harder.The pain had been almost pure in comparison with his surroundings. It had been a primal language, easy to understand and store away to re-inflict on his tormentor, later.He opened his eyes and delivered his first stroke with surgical precision. It struck Will across the top of his buttocks, below the Dimples of Venus which marked his sacroiliac joints.Will jerked in his bonds and through the gag, he let out a cry. His flesh underneath the stroke went white, and then almost immediately red in a long line as blood rushed to the point of impact.The true pain only came with time, Hannibal recalled. It took some moments for the brain to catch up with the sensations.The breath of the audience came out in a collective ‘Ahhh.’He delivered a second stroke before Will could comprehend the first, laying a second perfectly parallel line of fire. Then a third. He wondered, clinically, what effect the hallucinogenic drug would have on Will’s experience of the blows.‘You’re being too careful, Dr Lecter,’ said the woman next to him.He turned to her, cane in hand. ‘You have the advantage of me,’ he said.When she smiled, the scar on her cheekbone curved upwards, nearer her eye. Whatever had caused the wound long ago, had it been a centimetre or two higher, she would have been in danger of losing her vision.‘My name is Mischa,’ she said.Hannibal’s hand tightened almost imperceptibly on the cane.Almost immediately, his rational mind dismissed the thought. She was too young; the bone structure was unfamiliar; and Mischa Lecter had been blonde, with blue eyes.And yet his Mischa, too, had she lived, would understand the application of pain.‘When I say hurt him,’ she said, ‘I don’t mean make pretty marks. I don’t mean tickle him with the end of the cane. I mean hurt him. We want a show, Dr Lecter.’ She stretched out her red-nailed hand. ‘Would you like me to show you?’‘No,’ said Hannibal. ‘He is mine.’‘Then show us that you own him,’ she said. ‘Or I will take over.’In front of him, Will had relaxed his body, finding his way of coping with the pain. Hannibal could tell that Will’s fear had nearly left him, with the necessity of dealing with the blows: the caning had begun to be cathartic. And, of course, the stimulant Hannibal had delivered earlier with the psychotropic drug would ensure that Will associated this experience with pleasure.And Will trusted Hannibal.Hannibal had not intended, at this time, to inflict any more than the most symbolic of damage upon Will Graham. He had planned judicious violence, and no more. But this Mischa, although she was not his sister, had a darkness in her eyes that he recognised.He was going to have to revise his plans.He gripped the cane more firmly in his hand and brought it down with force upon Will’s back.Will took it without a sound. Hannibal hit him again, and then again, raising welts. Will didn’t flinch nor gasp. Only the slight trembling of his limbs betrayed him.Remarkable boy, thought Hannibal in admiration. Courageous and refined. Well done, Will.And yet he understood the brutal heart of the person who had wielded the cane on him all those years ago and met only silence. How, for a certain sort of sadist, silence invited the application of torture, how lack of response forced more painful blows.The people standing around him, watching, were brutes such as that. Beasts in human form.And it was his indignity to beg for his own and Will’s life, by performing for them.Anger bloomed in him and he welcomed it as useful.He laid two stripes across the cleft of Will’s buttocks, marring the perfect flesh. He raised his hand again and again. There was beauty in it. Rubens’ Flagellation of Christ.White and red, like blood in snow.
Mischa crying beside him as the wolves dug in the snow outside the hunting lodge, tearing at the frozen flesh of what they found. Blood on their muzzles, blood on their teeth. The laughter of the brutes, their stink of sweat and filth, their dirty hands over what had been pure and clean.
His breath came in pants. His arm ached. Hannibal paused and his vision cleared and he saw that one of his blows had broken Will’s skin. Blood flowed in a trickle down the side of his rib cage.Hannibal dropped the cane. He knelt beside Will and pressed his fingers to the wound. Blood coated his fingers immediately, hot and intoxicating in its aroma.He brought his fingers to his lips and tasted Will Graham’s blood. Closed his eyes, briefly, to savour it. Its complexity and bouquet. Infinitely precious.‘Oh Will,’ he whispered.Will sagged in his bonds. His cock was still semi-erect but his eyes were squeezed tight shut. A single tear had slipped from his eye.Hannibal wiped it away. His finger left a smear of blood on Will’s cheek.It was time to finish this.Rapidly, he stood and strode to the stand of torture implements. He had already catalogued and assessed the collection of knives with a glance: determined which were best for throwing, which for close work, which for precision, which for defense. The room, which had grown noisy with conversation, fell into a hush.Mischa stood less than a metre from him, cool calculation on her face. He could kill her with a single movement, could kill several others too, but what would his chances be in the end? Tactics, at the moment, were more imperative than mere satisfaction.He selected a curved knife, the shape of a pointed canine tooth, and with it he approached Will’s body once more. He heard a murmuration, the brutes approving his actions.But he was beyond that now.He ran the smooth, flat side of the blade over the unscarred parts of Will’s body. He began between Will’s legs, along his perineum and over his scrotum. Up the length of his penis, careful not to knick the skin with the keen edge. Always careful. To the unmarked softness of his belly.This knife had been honed and sharpened. This knife could gut a man in less time than it would take to think of it.He continued, along Will’s flank, over the ripple of his ribs. Up over his shoulder, to the back of his neck under his curly hair.Will would not be able to see this was a knife, though he would probably be able to understand it from the sensation. In his mind Hannibal saw the muscles underneath Will’s skin, red and raw with their own elegance. The knobs of his cervical vertebrae, as they would look exposed.He traced the knife up the side of Will’s neck, following the line of his jugular. At his jawline, Hannibal paused.He saw how it would be, if he were to slit Will’s throat. The beautiful stream of blood, all that intoxicating blood. The intimacy between them. The final gaze into each other’s eyes; that total understanding.And he was hungry, Hannibal. He had been hungry for what seemed like a very long time.But the brutes were hungry too.‘Will,’ he whispered. ‘I need you with me.’Will’s eyes fluttered open. They were unfocused, at first, seeing whatever visions had been elaborated in his brain. Then they saw Hannibal and they became sharp.Hannibal held the knife in front of Will’s face like an offering.‘See?’ he whispered to his lover. ‘See?’Illustration by @LeWendigogo
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
After the beating, Will felt the silvery touch of the knife travelling over his body and he tried to summon the will to actually care. Hannibal had been true to his word. He had not hurt Will more than Will could bear. But the pain and the drug had created their own geography and he had closed his eyes and relaxed himself into it. To accept, not to fight. He had felt Hannibal’s body and mind behind every stroke of the cane. He’d recognized his rhythm and his touch from when they had made love. The precise ministrations at first, measured and controlled…and the exact moment when Hannibal had lost control.He had half-smiled at that, even as he felt tears gather in his eyes. The pain had its own geography, and its own pleasure, too. Maybe it was its similarity to the way Hannibal had fucked him that first time, in the park, with Will’s hands gripping the rough bark of the tree. Maybe it was the tenderness he detected beneath the violence. Maybe it was an unexpected kink…something related to Will’s attraction to death, his constant undercurrent of shame.It was that last possibility—the attraction to death and shame—that undid him, sent his mind reeling back into its furthest recesses. Behind his closed eyelids he saw a flowing stream, with himself standing waist-deep in it. Casting a silvery line, casting into the current, the water flowing always away from him. Always away.The knife was just another movement of the current.‘Will,’ came Hannibal’s voice over the liquid sound of the river. ‘I need you with me.’He gathered himself, waded out of the river, and opened his eyes. Hannibal was close. That golden fire was still in his eyes. He was holding something up in front of Will’s face: the knife.‘See?’ he whispered. ‘See?’And Will focused his eyes on the silvery blade and all at once, he did see.Engraved on the blade was a picture of a wolf.Understanding came to him all at once. He snapped his head up as far as his bonds would allow him and he stared into Hannibal’s eyes, knowledge passing between them like electricity.‘Boring,’ intoned Silver Scar woman—what had she called herself, when Will had been lost within his own reality? Mischa? ‘All this lingering eye contact might be thrilling within your relationship, Dr Lecter, but here, we appreciate action.’Hannibal gave Will half a nearly-imperceptible nod, and he stood. Will’s restraints meant he couldn’t look up, and could only see Hannibal’s hip and crotch in his tartan suit. He did see the woman approaching Hannibal, and saw her red-nailed hand slip inside his jacket pocket.Hannibal will find that rude, he thought with the sliver of his consciousness that wasn’t running through the ramifications of what he’d just discovered. Though rudeness was bound to be the least of their worries in the situation they were in.Mischa pulled two objects from Hannibal’s pocket: Hannibal’s small phial of lube, and an empty syringe, tipped with plastic. She turned the syringe around in her fingers. ‘Was this little treat for you, or was it for your pet, Dr Lecter?’‘We find that a mild hallucinogen enhances William’s pleasure,’ said Hannibal, smoothly.Mischa tsked. ‘Very naughty, Dr Lecter. Very naughty indeed.’‘If you don’t approve, perhaps it is time for us to make our departure.’She laughed. ‘Oh no. Not at all. You’ve teased us, the two of you. We can’t possibly let you leave until we’ve witnessed the climax.’Mischa bent down so that she was face-to-face with Will. ‘Isn’t that right, William?’Her eyes were the amber colour of a wolf’s, her nose lengthened into a muzzle. Her lips parted to reveal white teeth, pointed canines, and when she breathed, she breathed carrion.I know you, thought Will. I have seen your face drawn in blood.She straightened up abruptly. ‘Normally, I would take the privilege of breaking in a new toy for myself. But you have proved strangely…resistant to sharing. I’m well within my rights to punish you for bringing drugs into my establishment, but I’m minded to be lenient with you tonight. Another time, however…’She made a gesture that Will couldn’t see but he could imagine it. A casual threat made by a predator. ‘So I will let you do the honours, Dr Lecter,’ she said. ‘But I will make certain adjustments.’‘As you wish,’ replied Hannibal, and he was so courteous that Will thought probably only he could hear the edge in his tone.Mischa began walking around the contraption Will was attached to. ‘We’ll move his torso up a little,’ she mused, pressing an unseen button which made Will’s wrist restraints began to rise, drawing him slowly more upright. ‘It will display those lovely stripes on his back better. You’re a few inches taller than he is, so his height should be raised. And his legs should be wider…so. Will this be comfortable for you, Doctor?’‘You are very accommodating.’‘And this.’ Will felt hands at the back of his head, unbuckling the gag he wore. ‘I felt it was a pity that your toy was so quiet earlier. Perhaps with this removed, he could be encouraged to talk.’ Mischa pulled the ball gag from Will’s mouth. He gasped and swallowed properly for the first time since it had been put on. He licked his dry lips and flexed his sore jaw.‘How are you, William?’ she asked, sweetly. She peered into his face. She smelt of fresh blood and carrion.‘I’m fine,’ said Will hoarsely. ‘How are you?’She raised her eyebrows. ‘Cheeky, isn’t he? Here you are, William. I’m going to put this on you instead. It will keep you from doing anything nasty, but it will leave you free to speak. And to moan. And to cry.’Mischa showed him what was in her hands. It was a mask—a transparent mask made of thick, sturdy plastic, made to cover the lower half of a man’s face. It had small breathing holes over the nostrils, and a circle of holes over where the mouth should be.Will had seen something very much like it once, on one of his trips to visit an inmate at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. It was meant to be dehumanizing, he knew. But to his mind, it looked more human than Mischa’s face did.Mischa buckled it on him. She caught some of his hair in the strap but he didn’t flinch. ‘There,’ she said when she was done. She brushed her hand through his curls, as if he were truly an animal. ‘Now, speak up, William. Don’t be afraid to tell us how you feel, or what you see, or anything that you know.’Will’s mouth, so recently free, went dry. The drug that Hannibal had injected was, among other things, a disinhibitor. He remembered certain comments he’d made about The Gap and McDonald’s, before Hannibal had put the gag in his mouth. At the time, he’d thought Hannibal was playing a kinky game, or acting out of annoyance at his questions.Now he knew better. The gag had been necessary. Because if Will spoke aloud what he knew, what he had discovered and seen here, the connections he had made…They would both most likely be dead before they could reach the door.‘We’ll be dea—’ he began as he thought it, and then he bit his lip. He swallowed, hard. ‘Would you like me to recite some poetry?’ he asked her. If he kept talking nonsense, maybe he could resist saying anything of consequence.‘Baa baa black sheep, have you any wo—’
Wolves.
‘That won’t be necessary, thank you,’ Mischa interrupted. ‘Just tell us how you feel, William. Tell us how you feel now.’‘I feel afraid,’ said Will, honestly. ‘I feel very afraid.’‘Good. We like fear, here. We appreciate it for the beautiful thing it is.’ She ruffled his hair again. ‘Remember to stay afraid, William, and you will do very well with us. Very well indeed. It’s your move, Dr Lecter.’She moved out of the line of his vision and Will was able to see the rest of the room again. To his mind, the spectators were still in the form of animals, but they had grown, become twisted, the illustrations from a book designed to frighten children. Giant rats, feral cats, venomous snakes. They cast distorted shadows on the walls that were flowing with blood.He smelled the distinct aroma of Hannibal’s signature lubricant and felt Hannibal’s gentle, capable fingers touching him. He scrupulously avoided the welts he’d caused, parting Will’s buttocks and anointing his anus, his perineum and his balls with the oil. It felt warm and soothing, and Hannibal knew how to give him pleasure.‘Pleasure is dangerous,’ Will said. ‘Pleasure can make you do anything. Oh Hannibal, please be careful.’‘I am always extremely careful,’ Hannibal replied, behind him. Will felt his hand curling around his dick, stroking lubricant up its length. He groaned, feeling blood rushing to his groin, feeling that sensation again of teetering on the edge.
Play along. Make this about sex, not about murder.
‘I want to come,’ Will said, in a plaintive tone. ‘I’ve been waiting for hours.’‘Soon, Will. You’ve been very good. Very patient. And you’ll get your reward.’ Hannibal’s talented fingers caressed his dick, and then went back to his anus, slipping inside, preparing him.‘You’ve already shown me my reward,’ Will replied, and then he bit his lip. Sex, not murder. Not murder. ‘I want your cock. I want you to fuck me. Hannibal, please fuck me.’The low murmur that went through the room told him he’d said something right. But it also made him look outward again, at the spectators, those nightmare animals. They were grotesque, but they weren’t all killers. That wasn’t how the game worked. But even if they didn’t perform the murders themselves, they lusted for blood and pain. They wouldn’t stop murder if it happened in front of them.They all knew what had happened in the parks. They had all approved of it.‘You’ve all got blood on your hands,’ he said to them and winced. ‘Your hands,’ he quickly said to Hannibal. ‘Your hands aren’t enough.’He heard the shifting of Hannibal’s clothing and he felt the hot blunt tip of his cock at his hole, beginning to stretch him. ‘Now, yes, please,’ Will said. ‘Quickly please. Fuck me fast and hard before they—’Hannibal slid inside him with a single hard thrust and the words he was going to say were knocked out of him by the sensation.His mind flew forward, loosed from his body by pleasure and the hallucinogen. Flew forward, touched on others’ minds as Hannibal fucked him quickly and ruthlessly and with a certain anger. Empathy was not mind-reading but he heard the half-formed thoughts of others, felt them like creatures scuttling through his brain.
what I wouldn’t like to do to that twink, I could
the papers, the office, the constituency
should have hurt him more, I
fucking, yes
she’ll find out what I’ve done and then
the brand, the brand next time, the smell of sizzling
have to get back by midnight or
ripping apart, the splash of blood, the fog, the warm slippery entrails in my claws
The last wasn’t in words, it was a full-body picture of scents and sensations and it came from the shadowy figure he had glimpsed before, the one he had recognized. It was a tall figure, broad-shouldered, covered with the rough grey hair of a wolf. Will saw a gleam of teeth and eyes and he heard the sound of flesh tearing.He choked back a scream, knowing that if he started he would not be able to stop.‘Stay with me, Will,’ said Hannibal, quietly. ‘Stay with me. Feel me inside you.’And yes, that was what he needed to do, he needed to let his mind reach out to Hannibal while Hannibal possessed his body. Like he had before, except this time it was for safety. So he was Hannibal looking down at Will, who was naked and in restraints, his back and buttocks striped with inflamed welts, the left side of his rib cage coated in rivulets of drying blood. His hair was damp with sweat. He, Hannibal, was still fully dressed, with only his flies open so that he could penetrate Will. The front of his trousers brushed against Will’s backside with every thrust.‘Will is helpless,’ gasped Will against the mask. ‘He is tied up and hurt and drugged and crazy. He is scared and he sees things that aren’t there and he thinks he sees—’
Back to me, Will.
‘And he feels hot,’ Will said, in Hannibal’s thoughts again, ‘so hot and tight inside, so good to fuck, I’m the only one who’s done this, who’s been here, he’s mine and everything I’ve done, I’ve done to make him mine. I’ve done it to make him belong to me, and no one else. This is my—’Hannibal leaned forward, his body still elegantly thrusting, on just the right spot to hit Will’s prostate, and he wrapped his hand tightly around Will’s straining, desperate dick.It only took the single stroke of Hannibal’s hand, for Will to topple over that edge he’d been balancing on for so long. He climaxed with a jerking of his balls that was more anguished than pleasurable, a hot rush of semen that burned him as it escaped him, a release that left him still wanting more.‘This is my design,’ he panted.And he felt Hannibal jerk inside him, felt Hannibal coming with a last, hard, possessive thrust. Felt Hannibal shaken, moved, unsteady.‘It’s all right,’ Will whispered. He wished he could move his hands so that he could hold Hannibal. ‘Can I go free now?’A slow hand clap. Mischa, who had stepped back to observe, strode to them. ‘A fair show,’ she said. ‘Not bad for your first time.’ She turned her back on them. ‘You may go.’Hannibal pulled slowly out of Will. He unfastened Will’s restraints—wrists first, so Will could straighten up, wincing, then his ankles. Will’s muscles protested and his back screamed with pain. He felt a trickle of fluid running down his thigh as Hannibal took off the plastic mask and the dog collar and dropped them both onto the shelf. ‘Quickly,’ Hannibal whispered into Will’s ear, his arm around his shoulders, and helped him, staggering, down the steps to the dais and across the marble-tiled floor, through the crowd who had already turned their attention to another arrival. Once in the bedroom they’d come from, Hannibal shut the door firmly behind them and he embraced Will. ‘You did marvellously,’ he whispered. ‘I could not have hoped for better.’‘Let’s go,’ said Will, leaning against Hannibal, his face in his neck. ‘Let’s go now.’Hannibal had to dress him. His limbs were tingling and half-dead and he couldn’t make his hands work. He gasped and winced at the fabric of his boxer shorts against his raw bottom, but once they were on, his trousers were okay. Hannibal left the top button undone and rolled Will’s belt into his own pocket. The shirt had to go on very carefully, in stages. He limped down the corridor on pins and needles, trying very hard not to speak. They could be listening. They were listening. He and Hannibal were not out of danger. He knew that the things in the vases were flowers, but to him they looked like monsters with heads made of thousands of teeth. Someone laughed, in the club room beyond the door they passed, and he flinched as if they had struck him. ‘Goodnight, Dr Lecter,’ said the woman in the sharp grey suit, and they went out the door onto the London street, the air cooler and perfumed with asphalt. ‘Woves,’ Will whispered, and he covered his mouth with his hand.Hannibal shrugged off his jacket and put it around Will’s shoulders before he hailed a cab.In the back seat, he held Will close, careful not to exacerbate the pain he had caused.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Hannibal helped Will from the cab and into Claridge’s. The doorman didn’t bat an eyelid at the way Will was limping and leaning on Hannibal’s arm; to Will the doorman looked like a dog, something friendly and floppy, like an old English sheep dog.‘The animals are getting better-looking,’ he said to Hannibal, who merely nodded and steered him gently to the lift. ‘Are we safe?’ he asked Hannibal as soon as they were in it. ‘They can’t still hear us, can they? Not here?’Hannibal put his fingers on Will’s lips. They still smelled of the lube he’d used to fuck Will. He remembered the blood-red room and the wolf in the shadows and Will shuddered. He felt hot, feverish, sore, his back on fire, his balls aching, his muscles still stiff.They didn’t speak again until they were in Hannibal’s room. ‘Let me take care of you,’ Hannibal murmured, and Will stood there, shivering slightly as Hannibal removed his jacket from his shoulders and carefully eased the shirt from his body. His trousers hurt more coming off then they had going on. The walls were moving, not with blood but with snow. He felt cold now. Hannibal led him to the bed and laid him down on his front, arranging the pillows so he was comfortable. ‘I’ll be right back,’ he said to Will, kissing him on his hair before going into the bathroom. Will heard the water running and he closed his eyes to escape the sight of the snow.He was safe. He was away. The snow wasn’t real. He had to hang on to what was real. But he felt the flakes landing on his raw flesh, settling on his body in drifts.By the time Hannibal returned, he was shaking badly. Hannibal felt his forehead.‘You’ve got a fever again,’ Hannibal said, drawing a blanket over his legs, and finding another to drape around his shoulders, leaving his back exposed. ‘Sleep and fluids are the best things for you, but I need to treat your injuries first. Do you think you can bear it, Will?’Will grabbed Hannibal’s arm. ‘Don’t make me go back there.’‘No. No, Will, I won’t. You’re safe now.’ Hannibal sat beside him on the bed, and began to bathe Will’s back with warm water and a soft cloth. The water contained something fragrant, and though it stung when it first touched him, it soothed his skin as Hannibal gently swabbed him with it. Will kept his eyes closed, trying to keep himself from trembling. Trying to stop from seeing anything else tonight.Dark tendrils curled around his mind. Dark tendrils, tinged with scarlet blood, drawing him in. Teeth of wolves. His dogs lying dead on the leaves.‘Stop it!’ he cried out, his voice anguished.‘Will, I am so sorry,’ Hannibal said to him, as he tended to his back. ‘I did not want to hurt you any more than was necessary to keep us both safe.’‘She would have hurt me worse,’ Will said, his teeth chattering. ‘They all would have. They would have killed me.’‘Yes. But that does not excuse me for my part in these wounds.’ He stroked the cloth over Will’s skin, so softly. ‘You were magnificent, Will. So strong. You were everything I hoped you would be.’The water was blood, bathing his back. The bed was filling up with blood and snow.‘I can’t tell what’s real, Hannibal. I can’t see what’s really here. Is there snow? Is there blood?’‘There is no snow, only cool sheets. There is blood, but not very much of it and it is nearly gone.’ ‘They can hear us, can’t they? They can see us? The wolves?’‘No one can see us. I can see you, and you can see me. That is all.’‘I saw you.’ Will clenched his fists in the bedclothes, trying to stop from shaking. ‘I saw you at the end, I saw what you wanted of me, what you’ve wanted all along, but I can’t think of that now Hannibal, I can’t think about that place. We’re going back, aren’t we? The claws are pulling us back?’‘No. Hush, Will. Be quiet, and still, and calm. You are safe.’‘I’m never safe. Never.’ He tried to curl himself up into a ball, as small as he could be, but the skin on his back was tight and Hannibal stopped him with gentle hands. ‘Let me finish.’ He dipped the cloth in the bowl, then wrung it out and dabbed it over Will’s back again. His touch was soothing, but Will’s brain was full of blood and claws. ‘Stay with me, Will. Like you did before. Listen to the sound of my voice. Keeping you here, in this room, safe, far from the people who would hurt you.’‘You hurt me.’‘Let me take care of you now. Some music may help.’ He reached over and touched something, and soft piano music flowed into the air. Will had heard it before. Bach. ‘Try to follow the notes. Try to be the music, Will. Not the fear.’Will kept seeing things behind his eyelids so he opened his eyes and stared at the pillow. White. Cotton. Blank. The notes danced on it, tiny spots of light. He bit his lip hard enough to make it bleed, watching, focusing everything on the light and the music and the calm, tender, expert hands ministering to his wounds.There was more, much more, some of it about this man who was tending him right now, but he had to shut it out or it would tangle him in doubt and drag him into a hole and he would never escape.He followed the music and the light and gradually, slowly, his body relaxed. Hannibal finished bathing his back and gently washed his buttocks and anus and between his legs. ‘Can you sit up?’ he murmured, and Will did, keeping his gaze on the bedclothes. Whiteness, blankness. The music.Hannibal brought two bottles of water and sat beside Will while he drank them both. The water felt cleansing. He fetched another cloth and wiped Will’s face and neck with it, took Will’s hands in his and wiped each finger in turn, as if Will were the most precious porcelain. Then he dressed Will in a loose white shirt of finest cotton, soft as silk. He buttoned it for him and pulled back the sheets, plumped the pillows. Will lay down on his side. The music climbed and fell, from simple to elaborate, lively to sad, taking Will with it. Hannibal got into the bed next to him, naked, and put a careful arm around him, drawing his head to rest on his chest.Will heard Hannibal’s heart beating. He heard Hannibal breathing. He heard the music, and he told himself he was safe, over and over and over again, until he nearly believed it. Until he finally fell asleep.*When he woke, his fever had broken and the drugs had worn off and he knew he was in a bed, in Claridge’s Hotel, in London, with Dr Hannibal Lecter, eighth of his name, still asleep beside him.He was thirsty. He slipped out of Hannibal’s embrace and got out of bed, wincing as all his muscles protested. He limped to the bathroom without turning on the lights and scooped cold water with his hand straight from the tap into his mouth. He drank and drank, ignoring the pain and his own thoughts, until he’d had enough and then deliberately, he turned off the tap and turned on the lights.In the mirror, he looked like a spectre. His skin was pale, shockingly so against his dark hair and beard stubble. His eyes were hooded, with shadows like bruises underneath them. His cheeks were hollow and his bottom lip was crusted with blood. Will unbuttoned the shirt Hannibal had dressed him in. There was a bruise blooming on his neck where the collar had bit. He had two rings of raw skin around his wrists. The shirt was stuck to him in several places on his back but he peeled it off and dropped it on the floor and turned so he could look at himself in the mirror.He made himself look for a long time. The livid marks, beginning to bruise. The cuts. The way the lines started out parallel but then crisscrossed wildly in a frenzy of pain, from buttocks to shoulders, hardly leaving any skin untouched.‘It looks worse than it is,’ Hannibal said.Hannibal was standing, naked, in the doorway, his face full of compassion. Will had not heard him approach.He didn’t hesitate or think. He lashed his arm forward and punched Hannibal in the mouth.Hannibal reeled backwards and Will followed. He punched Hannibal in the gut, and when Hannibal doubled over, he gave him a left in the eye.Hannibal made no sound. He didn’t defend himself. He straightened up and stood, naked, in front of Will, his hands by his sides.Will was breathing hard. They were in the bedroom now, morning light filtering through the edges of the curtains.‘You took me to that place,’ he said to Hannibal. ‘You knew what kind of place it was, but you didn’t tell me. You took me there, in ignorance, and you drugged me and then you put cuffs on me and gagged me. You put my life at risk and you didn’t give me a choice about it.’‘No,’ said Hannibal. His right eye was already beginning to swell shut, and blood trickled from his lip. ‘I did not give you a choice.’‘You beat me with a cane and you fucked me in front of an audience without my consent.’‘Yes.’‘The entire time we were there we were this close to being murdered. I could have said anything under the influence of those drugs. And you knew that, and you gave them to me anyway.’‘I did.’Hannibal agreeing with him was making Will even more furious.‘And I work for the fucking FBI, Hannibal. You’ve put my life and my job and my sanity at risk, and why? So you could be theatrical? So you could make a point about how clever you are?’‘I wanted to help you.’Will pushed Hannibal in the chest, hard enough to force air out of Hannibal’s lungs, so that he flew backwards and landed on the bed. Will went after him, straddled him, pinning him to the bed with his hands on Hannibal’s wrists, his whole strength and anger leaning on Hannibal to keep him there. But Hannibal didn’t struggle.‘You wanted to help me?’ Will gritted.‘You said you trusted me.’‘I didn’t say I trusted you to do what you did!’‘I understand why you are angry,’ Hannibal said. There was blood from his split lip on his teeth. ‘Do what you want to me, Will. Do what you have to do, to make yourself feel better.’There was a gleam in his eye as he said it. A gleam of pleasure. Hannibal licked the blood from his lip and just for a split second, Will saw him savour it. As he had savoured the fresh figs that first time they had met. As he’d savoured Will’s cock and his semen.Oh God, and the sight made him instantly, achingly, hard.Rage rose in him, huge and towering, and he roughly shoved Hannibal to turn him onto his front. He snaked his arm around Hannibal’s waist and pulled him up; Hannibal went willingly onto his knees, leaning on his elbows, his forehead on the bed, a submissive position. Not unlike the position Will had been chained into as Hannibal beat him, the position that ached in his shoulders and his hips from being forced to keep it for so long.Will didn’t think. His pulse was roaring in his ears as he positioned himself between Hannibal’s thighs. He spat into his hand and rubbed it into Hannibal’s ass, feeling his hole clench around his finger. He wanted it, dear lord Hannibal wanted it, and that should be enough to make Will sick of it, angry as he was with Hannibal, but there was a score to even out, somehow, before Will could let it go.He spat again and rubbed the wetness on his dick and then he grabbed Hannibal’s hips and pushed into him, hard.It hurt. It hurt Will, with Hannibal’s ass being unprepared and still mostly dry, and it had to hurt Hannibal more, but Will hurt so much everywhere that more pain didn’t make any difference, and Hannibal didn’t move or flinch or cry out or even alter his breathing. He stayed still, impassive, waiting for what Will would dole out to him. And that made Will want to hurt him more. To slam into him, to violate him, possess him like Will had been violated and possessed on that stage when he thought he was standing next to a rack full of spiders, to fuck him over body and mind and make him see things he’d never forget, feel things he’d never forget, things he couldn’t look away from.He thrust into Hannibal, burying his entire length, his balls slapping against Hannibal’s ass. And then out, fast, and in again. His nails dug into the skin at Hannibal’s hips. His breath came in short pants, every muscle straining to get deeper into Hannibal, further into that heat, get right inside and make him see, make him know, make him feel how Will had felt. To force empathy upon him. To infect him with Will’s bad dreams.He leaned forward and held Hannibal’s head down on the mattress with a hand on the back of his neck. He drove into him hard, pushing Hannibal’s body forward with every thrust, pushing his head down more firmly, not caring if Hannibal could breathe. I trusted you. The words echoed in his head with his relentless rhythm. He didn’t know if he was saying them aloud or not.
I trusted you.
I trusted you.
I trust—
He roared as he came, slammed one more time deep into Hannibal’s body and his orgasm twisted his guts, squeezed his balls, felt more like a shock than a relief or a pleasure.Will fell back, panting, away from Hannibal. Hannibal didn’t move. Will saw that his ass was red and there were white fingerprints squeezed into the skin over his hips and on the back of his neck.Disgust swept over him, stronger than the rage. He pushed himself off the bed and Hannibal gingerly brought himself up to all fours, and then knelt, facing Will.‘Do you feel better?’ Hannibal asked him. His words were distorted because of his swollen lip. His hair was messed up, there was blood smeared on his cheek, and his right eye was nearly reduced to a slit.‘No,’ said Will. ‘I feel a hell of a lot worse.’Hannibal swung his legs round and sat on the edge of the bed. Will noticed him wincing slightly. The sight gave him no satisfaction.‘I wanted you to do that,’ Hannibal said.‘I know. That’s one reason why I feel worse. Where are my clothes?’He went to the wardrobe without waiting for Hannibal’s answer. His clothes were hung up next to Hannibal’s. Will ripped his trousers off a hanger and began putting them on.‘Where are you going, Will?’‘I’m going to Scotland Yard, to tell Lestrade that I know who killed those politicians.’‘Are you certain that’s a good idea?’Will rounded on him. ‘No, of course I’m not! You made damn sure that I visited that club under the most compromising circumstances possible. If you wanted to help me find the murderers, why didn’t you just tell me?’‘I didn’t know for certain,’ said Hannibal. ‘I suspected, from what I had been told.’ ‘Who told you?’‘My patient, Benjamin Raspail. He’s quite indiscreet; he’s travelled widely, and he likes to brag about the outré and disturbing things that he has done. I put the pieces together from what you’d said and from what I’d read about the case in the papers. But I couldn’t betray doctor-patient confidentiality on a whim, and I couldn’t know for certain until we had been there ourselves.’‘Until we’d participated,’ said Will. ‘Jesus.’ He ran his hand through his hair. His hair was damp, and his hand was shaking.‘Will Lestrade believe you?’‘I don’t know. I have no idea how I’m going to get through this situation and still have a job after it.’ He fastened his trousers, ignoring the pain. ‘But I don’t have a choice. These people are killers. They need to be stopped.’‘You always have a choice, Will.’Will laughed without humour. ‘You say that, Doctor. But every single move you have made since I’ve met you has been designed to eradicate my power of choosing. Everything you have done has served to bind me closer to you. To make me more intrigued, more entangled, more trusting.’ He spat the word out. ‘When you called me your pet, you weren’t lying.’‘You’re extraordinary,’ said Hannibal, quietly.‘Shut up!’ Will screamed it, and then he checked himself. He grabbed his shirt, rattling the wooden hangers.‘You can’t wear that shir—‘‘I’ll wear whatever the hell I want.’ He pulled it on so roughly that it ripped off new-formed scabs. ‘You’ve manipulated me too much, and I’m through with it.’He shoved on his shoes and headed for the door, shirt still untucked, not knowing or caring where his watch was, his wallet, his phone, his hotel room key.‘Will,’ said Hannibal, and his voice held enough entreaty that yesterday, Will would have paused. But not today.‘I shouldn’t have met with you last night,’ Will said. ‘I should have stayed away, once I found out you’d lied to me. I should have listened the little voice inside me that I listen to about everything else. But I was a fool, and I trusted you.’His voice broke on the last words, and he hated that show of weakness almost as much as he hated the show of strength he’d just enacted with Hannibal on the bed. He wrenched the hotel room door open.‘Goodbye, Hannibal,’ he said. ‘I won’t be coming back.’ He walked away. Quietly, behind him, he heard Hannibal saying, ‘Good luck.’
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
In his hotel room, Hannibal tended to the sheets. He had long practice of removing bloodstains. Although he knew, also from experience, that hotel staff would be accustomed to seeing much, much worse, there was no reason to call undue attention to himself.He quite enjoyed the sight of blood on his face, however—the blood that Will had drawn from him, in retaliation for the blood and terror that he had drawn from Will. He was habitually neat in appearance, but this didn’t mean that he couldn’t appreciate the elegance of chaos. He left the blood to dry on his mouth and cheek, and once or twice paused to admire his blooming bruises in the mirror.The injuries were marks of possession and emotion, and as such, they were precious to him. Will Graham was not a man who used violence lightly—not at present, at least. Will Graham was too aware of the consequences of violence. He had seen enough of them.Hannibal wondered if Will had ever used his fists in passion before. He had hit well, with an accuracy and lack of hesitation that promised interesting developments in the future.He knew that Will had never had sex in anger before. The look of disgust and self-loathing on his face when he had pulled out of Hannibal was quite, quite delicious. And yet, like the punches, Will had been so very good at it. The thought filled him with unmitigated lust, so much so that he had to pause to compose himself.Once Hannibal had carefully dried the bedclothes with a hair dryer and replaced them on the bed in a suitably rumpled state, he took a long, hot, scented shower. He was glad to wash away the odour of the sex club, which had smelled of leather, sweat, blood and alcohol—less glad to remove the traces of Will’s scent that lingered on his skin.As he tended to the wounds on his face, he wondered how Will was faring with Scotland Yard.
***
‘Let me get this straight,’ said Lestrade. ‘You’re telling me that all three werewolf murders were committed by people from some sort of high-class sex club in Marylebone?’Will didn’t have to be an empath to know that Lestrade didn’t believe him. ‘Yes,’ he said. Lestrade sank into his chair. ‘You’d better talk me through it. Have a seat.’Will shook his head. He didn’t think he’d be sitting down today, and possibly not tomorrow, either. The welts that Hannibal had inflicted on his ass and his back throbbed and screamed every time his clothing brushed against them.‘It’s not just a sex club,’ he said to Lestrade. ‘It’s a secret society. These people have very particular sexual tastes. They like to hurt people.’‘If you say a single word about someone named Grey I will have to hurt you myself.’Will ignored the quip. ‘It’s a club full of influential people who are in the public eye. Invitation is only by personal recommendation. If one person is found out, they all will be. There are a lot of careers and lives to be ruined, if this society is exposed. So they’ve developed a deterrent: murder. If someone breaks confidence, they’re killed in a way that is distinctive enough so that every member of the club knows about it. The killings are a lesson.’Lestrade rubbed his chin. ‘When you first mentioned the idea of a secret society, I did think a sex thing. It would certainly be a big risk for politicians. People are fine with BDSM in their fiction; in their rulers it’s different.’‘The threat of murder has been enough up till now. They had a designated enforcer—someone to act as the wolf. It was his job to track down anyone who betrayed them, and rip them to pieces. But then something went wrong.’‘Ian Silkie-Jones was the enforcer, but he went a bit crazy and killed John Trumbull out of jealousy when Trumbull got a new girlfriend.’‘Love isn’t part of their plan,’ said Will. His voice caught a bit as he said it. He remembered Hannibal bathing his wounds in bed last night: the tenderness of his hands. He remembered how eager Hannibal had been to accept punishment for what he had done.He remembered that first morning at Claridge’s, when Hannibal had fed him breakfast in bed and he had felt light and happy. For the first time in years, he’d felt simply himself.‘And then according to your theory,’ continued Lestrade, ‘Silkie-Jones had risked the society by acting out of passion, so they appointed a new enforcer, Nigel Farelle, to kill Silkie-Jones.’‘But Farelle couldn’t take it,’ Will said. ‘He wasn’t a killer. So they found someone who was.’ That shadowy figure, lurking at the periphery of Will’s vision when he had been tied up in that bloody room. Whoever he was, he was a killer. He enjoyed it. He wanted to kill again.‘It won’t be the last murder,’ Will said. ‘The threat may have worked for a long time—years, maybe—but they have a taste for it now. It’s part of their game. It’s part of their kink.’Lestrade considered Will. Will was, to be honest, surprised at how well the Detective Inspector taken this so far. But the questions were bound to come. He wasn’t sure how to deal with those questions. He’d thought about it as he’d walked from Claridge’s to Scotland Yard, but to be honest, he was too angry with Hannibal to be able to formulate any clear plan. And to his surprise he’d discovered it was afternoon already—he must have slept away the morning, with Hannibal at his side, embracing him. Holding him to his chest as if to protect him.He put it out of his mind.‘The person in charge is called Mischa,’ he said. ‘I don’t know her last name.’‘Give me the address,’ said Lestrade. ‘I’ll get it checked out as a matter of urgency.’‘Discreetly,’ said Will. ‘These people are dangerous, and they’re all about discretion. At the slightest sign, they’ll bolt.’‘Don’t worry. My team is good. Meanwhile, I’ll buy you a pint.’
***
London, Hannibal mused, particularly the moneyed oasis of Mayfair, had a distinct advantage over many other places in the world. British manners and natural diffidence meant that Hannibal’s blackened eye and split lip attracted no comment whatsoever. Not even a raised eyebrow as he walked through Mayfair and across Hyde Park to Knightsbridge, where he had booked a table at Zuma for lunch.The reservation had been for two. Possibly he had been over-optimistic. ‘Would you like to wait for your companion before ordering drinks?’ the maître d’ enquired as she took Hannibal’s light overcoat, barely glancing at his prize-fighter face.‘I’m dining alone,’ he told her, and ordered a Daiginjo sake.When the food arrived, he took a moment to admire its impeccable presentation: a poetry of balance and colour. But when he raised the first morsel of suzuki no sashimi to his lips, he was disappointed. The paper-thin sea bass was sparkling fresh, the truffle oil and yuzu exquisite…but somehow it tasted flat.He couldn’t help glancing at the empty leather seat across from him.From habit and necessity, Hannibal Lecter spent a great deal of time alone. A man of many resources, he rarely found his own company uncongenial. Indeed, although he enjoyed playing host, it was often better to dine alone; without distractions, one could concentrate better on the pleasures of the table.But that seat appeared so very empty. And Will was a fisherman, and an expert in the art of presentation. He had a mind talented in deciphering the skill and significance of symbols, which could as fruitfully be applied to the culinary arts as it could to a crime scene.He had booked this restaurant with Will Graham in mind.The restaurant was busy. The table next to his, at a discreet distance, was occupied by a man and a woman, clearly in the early stages of their romantic relationship. They murmured to each other and engaged in small, secret touches under the table. The man lifted a piece of maguro no tataki to his companion’s lips and she took it into her mouth with a gentle smile.Normally, Hannibal enjoyed watching and observing this dance. It was essentially the same each time, laced with enough individuality to make it interesting. He studied the expression of human emotion in the same way he studied the anatomy of the human body. The better one knew anatomy, or emotion, the more instinctively one could work, in surgery or in psychiatry. And of course the knowledge was part of what Dr du Maurier sometimes called his ‘person suit’. It was useful to be able to employ the gestures and phrases, the ever-changing nuances of eye contact and physical touch, confidences and confessions. Love was a game of power and submission, always in flux.Today the game being played so close to him grated on his nerves. He felt himself gritting his teeth; felt his fingers tighten, to the point of pain, on his chopsticks. Found himself slipping into a fantasy of the lovers stretched, bound, upon an double operating table, abdominal cavities meticulously pinned open whilst Hannibal took pleasure in selecting his evening’s repast.Hannibal put down his chopsticks and dabbed carefully at his injured lips with the linen napkin. The waiter, who had displayed no curiosity at Hannibal’s face, looked dismayed at the remnants of wagyu no sumibiyaki on his plate.‘Was it not to your taste, sir?’‘It was excellent, as always,’ Hannibal assured him. ‘My appetite is not as keen as I thought.’
***
The pub wasn’t exactly Olde Worlde—the music was too loud, the décor too clean—but it was the first pub Will had been in so far, and the pint was what he’d expected: amber, flat, and only slightly cooler than room temperature. The first sip reminded him of Alana Bloom. She liked craft beers. Alana had also asked Hannibal Lecter to look after him, because he was unstable. Lestrade started for a table in the corner but Will asked, ‘Can we stand at the bar?’Lestrade raised his eyebrows slightly but said nothing. He stood with Will, at the end of the bar away from the chatting bar maids.‘How do you really know about the club?’ he asked Will.‘I can’t tell you,’ said Will. Lestrade took a draught of his pint and then put it on the bar. ‘Graham, mate—I hope you don’t mind my saying this, but I’m a bit worried about you.’‘Join the club. Everyone seems to be worried about me. I wish they’d take a break, to be honest.’‘You seem to be in pain.’‘It’ll pass.’ He reached for his aspirin before he remembered that his pockets were empty. Hannibal had evidently removed Will’s belongings before he’d hung up Will’s trousers to preserve the crease. No doubt his phone, wallet, hotel room key, aspirin, were currently arranged perfectly straight and according to size on a glossy surface. Goddamn fucking Hannibal Lecter.‘Can you describe the person who killed Farelle?’ asked Lestrade.A wolf in the shadows, distorted and dreaming of blood. ‘Not with any degree of accuracy.’‘But you’ve seen him.’Will took a long swallow of beer . ‘Greg, if you want to arrest me, you can. Or you can bring me in for questioning. But you won’t get anything more. I’m giving you everything I’m able to.’Lestrade shook his head, though he didn’t look convinced. ‘Do you have any leads on who killed Grigson? The copycat?’‘I only know what I told you before: it was done by someone else. It was done for fun, for play. There wasn’t any motive to it, not like we’d understand motive; the killer was jealous that our attention was focused on the wolf killings, so he poked us. He was saying Here I am. Notice me.’‘You don’t think they were part of the club.’‘If he was, he’d be splattered across a park by now.’Lestrade’s phone went. ‘Talk to me,’ he said into it. He listened for several minutes and then said ‘Do it,’ and hung up.‘I’ve got to go,’ he told Will. ‘But listen to me. I want you to stay here and have another pint, at least. Have two more. Get something to eat; the food here isn’t bad. Then I want you to go back to your hotel room and sit tight.’‘You’re going to bring me in?’‘Not if I can help it. I’d rather say the tip came from an anonymous source. But if I need to, I will, and I’d like to know where you are.’‘Great.’‘I’d also like to know that you’re safe.’‘I can look after myself.’Lestrade pointed to Will’s hand, holding his pint; the knuckles were bruised. Will hadn’t even noticed. It must have happened when he’d punched Hannibal in the face.‘I can see that,’ Lestrade said. ‘I don’t want to worry about how you got those, but I can’t help it.’Will flexed his hand. ‘It didn’t have anything to do with what we’re talking about.’Lestrade looked hard at Will. Will forced himself to gaze back.‘Okay,’ Lestrade said at last. He finished his pint. ‘Like I said. Have two more of these, and get some lunch. That’s an order. I’ll call you when I know anything.’‘Call the hotel. I’ve lost my phone somewhere.’‘Do you know where?’‘No.’Lestrade sighed. ‘Did you lose anything else?’‘If you want me to follow your orders, I’ll need the price of the beer and the burger.’Lestrade sighed, took out his wallet, and handed Will two twenty-pound notes.‘And you say you don’t want me to worry about you.’‘I don’t. I’ll pay you back.’‘You know that bloke I was telling you about? The one who was a bit like you? Seemed to have a sixth sense for solving crime? His name was Sherlock Holmes. He got too involved in his case. He made it personal; operated outside the law. I bent the rules for him. And he ended up jumping off a roof.’‘I’m not going to jump off a roof.’‘There are other paths to self-destruction.’Will put the money in his pocket. ‘Thanks for lunch,’ he said.‘Take a cab to the hotel.’Lestrade hesitated before he left.‘This has been quite a trip for you, hasn’t it?’ he said. ‘You fell in love, you fell out of love, you visited some strange places, and now you’ve been in a fight. It’s not exactly your typical tourist visit.’‘I didn’t fall in love,’ said Will.
***
Shopping at Penhaligon’s was not its usual pleasure for Hannibal, either. Walking in, as always, was a feast to his refined sense of smell, and the proprietor greeted him as a valued customer. But when he began attempting to decide which products to purchase, nothing felt quite right. Hannibal found himself searching for an elusive scent, something that had not been captured in the bottles and demijohns.He gave up when he realized it was Will’s essence of wet dog.The assistant packaged up the order of cologne and balms he had placed earlier in the week, made to his bespoke specifications. In addition, Hannibal chose a bottle of Esprit du Roi, and hesitated briefly before also selecting Hammam Bouquet. Its lavender and cedarwood would suit Will’s skin much better that atrocious aftershave. He had it gift-wrapped in purple and gold and added it to his bag alongside the antique book on fly fishing he had already bought.Emerging into the light-filled space of Burlington Arcade, he checked his watch and then his phone. There was no message from Will, no missed call. But the wheels would have been put in motion at Scotland Yard. He did not know how quickly they would move, given the dubious nature of Will’s testimony, but he judged that enough time had elapsed for him to make the phone call. If he chose to. He placed his shopping bags on the tiled floor and found a fifty-pence coin in his pocket. He flipped it up into the air, watching it turn as it rose and fell.Heads, he would ring Mischa to warn her. To tell her that they knew.Tails, he would not.He caught the coin in his hand and weighed it, fingers closed around it, before looking. He thought of Mischa, the dominatrix, the leader of the pack. She had been rude to him—almost unforgiveably rude—invading his pockets, ordering him to violate Will. Goading him on to break what was precious to him.However, she had her own magnificence. She was, of course, beautiful, despite or perhaps because of her facial scarring. He admired her masterfulness, and her desire to inflict artistic pain. He respected the savagery she could instill in others.And there was her name. She was not his sister: his sister was gone, shattered into pieces like a teacup. And yet, carefully cultivated, she could perhaps stand in the place he had reserved for his Mischa. Not a copy or a replacement, but a consolation.She would be wasted behind bars. She would be no use to him.He opened his hand. The coin was heads side up.
***
The burger wasn’t very good, compared to what you could get in America, but the beer slipped down just fine. Will arranged the coins he’d received in change from Lestrade’s twenty on the bar in front of him: a tower of Babel. Broad polygonal fifty pence coin at the bottom, then a column of thick gold pound coins, topped by three twenty pence coins, and two five pence coins, each of them a little bit thicker than a dime. He flicked it over with his finger and watched them roll down the bar. Heads or tails. Utter chance, the lottery of a seat number on an aeroplane.‘Another?’ asked the bar maid, pointing to his empty pint glass, but he shook his head. The buzz of conversation in the pub and the musical dissonance of the fruit machines and television were distractions, of a sort, from the buzz and dissonance in his own head; but if he drank much more he’d be drunk, and there might be work to do.And drunk, he would be even less in control of his actions and emotions.It was darkening into near-twilight by the time he left the pub, and it was considerably colder than it had been when he’d walked from Claridge’s to Scotland Yard. A good night for fog, he thought, and shuddered slightly.He hailed a cab. The beer gave him enough of a numbing cushion that he could bear to sit down in the back of it.Driving through the streets of London, he tried not to wonder what Hannibal Lecter was doing.
***
Hannibal gazed at the fifty-pence coin in his hand. He knew the number. It was not saved on his phone, but nor were many of the numbers he needed. All it would take were two words: ‘They know.’ And Mischa would have a chance to save herself, and perhaps her tame wolf as well. The coin had chosen that path.And yet…Will.Hannibal returned the coin to his pocket. He slipped his phone into his jacket. He strolled to Covent Garden to see if he could obtain tickets at the Opera House for tonight. He would buy two.Just in case.
***
On the one hand, British television had fewer ads than American TV. On the other hand, all the shows were about home improvement and gardening. Will left it on for noise as he took a long, cool shower. Drying himself off, he wished he had some of that stuff Hannibal had used on his back. His skin felt tight. The soothing touch of whatever balm that had been on his wounds was his only good memory of last night.And how Hannibal had played him music and held him while he slept.Will shook his head, scattering drops of water. He was a sucker for tenderness. Had been, ever since he was a boy, and had hungered for it from his father, who never offered. He tried to fight his hunger, because he didn’t like how weak it made him. It was easier to accept affection from dogs, because the dogs depended on him. Hannibal had drawn violence from him. He had also drawn out a craving for love. Of the two, Will was less frightened of the violence.How fucked up was that?He put on a t-shirt and boxers worn into softness, wincing. Then he checked his emails for messages from Jack. There weren’t any, and none from Alana either, which was just as well as he wouldn’t know how to answer her. There was a reminder from the airline: he flew back to Washington tomorrow.That was good. His case was finished. He had nothing more to do here.He Skyped his neighbor Chuck and his son Joey, to see how the dogs were doing. They were fine; eating fine; exercising fine; chasing sticks. Winston seemed a little under the weather. Joey thought that he missed Will. It had probably been too soon to leave him for so long.‘…But what Jack Crawford wants, Jack Crawford gets,’ muttered Will, shutting the laptop. He eyed the bottle of whisky that Hannibal had brought, what seemed like a long time ago. It sat next to the TV. Single-malt, small distillery, connoisseur stuff. It was called something that sounded like the name of an actor known for playing geniuses and photobombing.He should empty it down the drain, but it had been nice. He poured himself a slug in the tooth glass from the bathroom, and drank it down in one.It reminded him of that night that Hannibal had come here to see him. The first time Hannibal had allowed him to touch him. The first time Hannibal had been naked with him. When Will had made him lose control, and Will had seen him relaxed, loose, vulnerable.Could that have been an act? Hannibal couldn’t act while he was actually having an orgasm? Could he?Or had Will seen the true Hannibal Lecter in that moment, with the taste of whisky and Hannibal’s semen in his mouth?He looked at the bottle, and then he rinsed out his glass and drank water instead.He was just about to give the television another try when the hotel room phone rang. He stared at it. Hannibal? To apologise? Or Lestrade, with news of the case?‘It’s me,’ said Lestrade. Will didn’t want to analyse the sinking feeling he got in his stomach, learning it wasn’t Hannibal.‘What’s happening?’ he asked.‘We’re going in. The shop across the road has CCTV footage that captured Silkie-Jones and Farelle going into the address.’‘Not Trumbull?’‘They don’t have continuous records. Apparently this shop owner’s cameras have been vandalized several times. That was after they have been asked politely but forcefully to remove them, apparently by a striking-looking woman, with a ponytail and a scar below her eye.’‘That’s Mischa.’‘It’s not much to go on. I’m out on a limb, Will. I’m relying on your information.’‘You’ll find the evidence. Look at the knives.’ He shuddered involuntarily. ‘And arrest her, Greg. Don’t let her go. She’s dangerous.’‘Do you think she killed Farelle with her own hands?’‘No—those wounds were inflicted by a man. She’s not tall enough. But she…commands them. She commanded all of them, except for Silkie-Jones.’ He reached for his trousers. ‘Where do you want me to meet you?’‘I don’t. You’re not coming. You’re too vulnerable, and you don’t have jurisdiction.’‘Lestrade—’‘You owe me forty quid. I don’t want you dead. I’ll let you know what happens.’ Lestrade hung up, and Will swore.
***
Fog gathered around the lamp posts, shrouded the tourists and revelers with grey. The neon signs and lit windows of shops and bars made coloured halos in the mist. Hannibal Lecter was in his dinner jacket, walking through Soho, planning on stopping in Kettner’s for a glass of champagne before La Traviata at the Royal Opera House. He had been aware of a growing hunger all day that had nothing to do with food, nor a craving for murder. It was a feeling of disquiet. A gnawing...worry that things might not turn out in the way he had carefully planned.He had never felt quite like this before.He was on the corner of Dean Street and Romilly Street when his phone buzzed with a message. He stopped abruptly and pulled it out of his pocket.Hannibal was not prepared for the depth of the pleasure that rushed through him when he saw that the message was from Will Graham. Nor was he prepared for the way that his hand was infinitesimally unsteady as he opened it to read.
Hannibal
Meet me at our tree.
I forgive you.
W
Hannibal Lecter immediately turned around and began walking rapidly towards Hyde Park.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Will called to leave a message with Reception at Claridge’s, asking Hannibal to send over his belongings—his phone, his wallet—to his hotel. Any decent person would do that anyway, especially one as fastidious and polite as Hannibal seemed to be, but the insight he’d had into Hannibal last night made him not so sure. The psychiatrist was a master manipulator, and he’d been doing everything in his power to ensnare Will. Will wouldn’t put it past him to use the phone and the wallet as an excuse for them to see each other again.And Will didn’t want to see him again. He didn’t trust Hannibal, and he didn’t trust himself.Because he wanted to see Hannibal. To touch him and feel Hannibal’s hands on him.He’d just put down the hotel room phone when it rang and he snatched it back up, expecting Lestrade with an update with the raid on the murderous sex club. Or Hannibal, calling to arrange a meeting.‘Is that Graham?’ said a voice on the other end. It wasn’t Lestrade, and it definitely wasn’t Hannibal, but it sounded familiar.‘Who’s this?’‘DS Rathbone, from the Yard. We’ve had new evidence in the Grigson case. Can you meet me to have a look at it?’The copycat murder, the one that had looked similar enough to the wolf killings so that Scotland Yard thought they were the same, and yet different enough so that Will could understand aspects of the original killings that he hadn’t seen before. Will had said it was the work of an experienced killer—one who wouldn’t kill again in this way, and one whom they were unlikely to catch. But with new evidence, perhaps they could. This was something he could do, anyway, instead of waiting around. Will stood up.‘I’ll come down to Scotland Yard.’‘No, it’s at the crime scene.’‘In Hyde Park?’ ‘Yes. Can you meet me?’Will opened the curtains to his hotel room and glanced out. It was full dark, and foggy, but he’d examined crime scenes in worse circumstances. Presumably the evidence wasn’t something that could be easily moved—something in the soil, maybe, or carved into a tree. ‘I’ll be there in ten minutes,’ he said, and put down the phone.*Hannibal walked quickly through the fog, towards the tree where he and Will had had their second sexual encounter: the second time that Will had surrendered his body to Hannibal and to pleasure. He breathed deeply of the night air, searching for the scent of his lover. Eager for it, if he were truthful. His heart, nearly always calm, beat harder. His hands, always sure, were damp.The scent he caught was of leather and musk. Not Will. Not Will at all, but someone else he recognized.He slowed his footsteps, but only slightly, hardly enough to be perceptible. When Mischa appeared in front of him out of the fog, she was wearing a leather jacket. She had her hands in her pockets. Hannibal halted and regarded her, his face betraying no emotion.‘You evaded Scotland Yard, then,’ he commented. ‘I contemplated calling you and warning you.’‘Why didn’t you, Dr Lecter?’ The scar on her face was covered by makeup, but it was still perceptible, especially if you knew it was there. ‘I thought you could take care of yourself.’She took her right hand out of her jacket pocket. Almost casually, she held a gun which she pointed at Hannibal’s chest. ‘Is that also why you brought an FBI agent to my club?’‘You have people from all walks of life in your club,’ Hannibal answered blandly. ‘Out of interest, how did you know he was from the FBI? I removed all his identification from his wallet.’‘We need to know a great deal about the people who frequent our establishment. For our own protection, you understand.’‘And yet you didn’t kill him while he was there, under your power.’‘It is useful to have members from all walks of life,’ replied Mischa. ‘We have police in our ranks already. The indications were that William Graham was not as law-abiding as one would hope. There’s his association with you, for a start.’Hannibal let that pass, for the moment.‘From your message, I assume you took the trouble to clone Will’s phone,’ he said. ‘Unless you stole it from my hotel room safe?’‘We cloned it. We take that precaution whenever possible.’‘In order to lure me into a trap. Have you lured Will, as well?’He was aware of an edge to his voice as he asked it. Surreptitiously, he fingered the object in his own pocket.‘This is our park,’ said Mischa, instead of answering his question. ‘This park, and Green Park, and St James’. We are masters of it. We know every tree and every path. We know everything that happens within these parks.’‘Do you?’ Hannibal asked, curious. ‘Everything?’Mischa took a step closer. ‘You have certainly been an object of interest to us, Dr Lecter. This tree, for instance. How you took William against it. How you fucked him.’ She seemed to relish the word. ‘That was the first thing that attracted our attention. We had no idea at that point of who he was, by the way, nor exactly how dangerous a game you were playing.’‘And how dangerous a game have I been playing, Mischa?’‘I came very close to killing you the night you murdered Grigson.’Hannibal raised an eyebrow. ‘Why didn’t you try?’‘It was a violation. A blatant fraud, a theft of our methods of punishment. It should have been inexcusably rude. We watched you, Dr Lecter, from a spot very close to this one.’‘Grigson didn’t die quickly. I had my hands full. I was easy prey—and rude, in addition. Why didn’t you strike?’‘Because you understand murder, Dr Lecter. You understand the infliction and uses of pain. You understand it much better than any of my wolves have, with the exception of my current wolf, Ivan. And you perform with such…flair. Grigson’s death was beautiful.’ She lowered her gun slightly, though still keeping it trained on him. ‘I would sooner destroy a stained glass window than an artist such as yourself. I have a proposal for you.’Hannibal only half-heard her final sentence, because he had caught a familiar scent, the scent he had been seeking since he entered the park. Will, said something deep inside him, deeper than he had expected, and he started forward, mindless of the gun that Mischa still pointed at him, his hand tightening around the instrument in his pocket.He heard quick footsteps and smelled an acrid odour he had not detected before here in the park, though he had smelled it in the club, lurking in the corner, underneath various other scents of lust and perfume, alcohol and covetousness: the scent of sweat and metal and blood and hunger. ‘Will!’ he cried. ‘It’s a trap!’And then he sprang forward with all the focused strength of a predator, at the same time he heard a shot.*Will was expecting floodlights, crime scene tape, and the dour-faced DS Rathbone. Instead, the park was quiet and empty; obviously the murders had made Londoners nervous of being out at night, for fear of being the wolfman’s next victim.Whereas the truth is, he thought, if you’re not into being flogged and tied up naked, you’re probably perfectly safe.He stopped on the spot where Grigson’s body had lain. There was no trace of it the body itself; the police had removed it, photographed and bagged the evidence, and now the path was unmarked. Flowers had been left on the scene, though: flowers still wrapped in plastic. And a few teddy bears. It was, Will knew, the instinctive reaction of the public to an incomprehensible death which had touched them, however distantly. It was an outpouring of sympathy and a symbolic plea that this tragedy was over, that it would not claim another victim…or at least that the next victim wouldn’t be a person who had left flowers.He had never quite understood the teddy bears, though.He could see the crime scene quite clearly in his own head, if he were to close his eyes and imagine it. Perhaps, knowing that he was missing something, he could pinpoint what it was from the information he had already collected. But it would be easier just to find Rathbone.Will was about to call out for the Detective Sergeant when he heard footsteps behind him. And something else: the shrill of metal on metal.Something he had heard in his imagination.He turned, and at that moment he heard Hannibal’s voice shouting, ‘Will! It’s a trap!’And he heard a gunshot, at the same time he saw the man from the shadows, the man he had sensed and dreamed about and felt inside his mind. Metal claws were strapped over his hands; metal teeth protruded from his mouth. His eyes were red with hunger. Will staggered backwards, far enough so that the claws’ first strike ripped through his shirt and cut his skin, but didn’t penetrate his chest. But then the wolf was on him. He knocked Will down and fell on top of him, pinning him to the path, his teeth seeking Will’s throat.*Hannibal felt the bullet pierce his right arm just below the shoulder. His hand went instantly numb and he dropped the straight razor he held, but it barely caused any pain; just a sensation of heat spreading through his arm. The wolf man—Ivan, dressed in borrowed metal teeth and claws—had pinned Will down. With his left hand, Hannibal grabbed him around his throat from behind, trying to use his leverage to pull him off Will. ‘He isn’t yours,’ he growled.Another shot rang out and Hannibal felt this one in his thigh. This one did hurt, but he ignored it. Mischa wasn’t shooting to kill. She merely wanted to protect her investment.He dug his fingers into Ivan’s trachea, pulling his head away from Will’s throat. The prosthetic teeth could sever a man’s jugular in less than a second. Will lay sprawled below the two men, his eyes wide with terror.Hannibal’s blood splashed onto Will’s face, and Hannibal squeezed harder, trying to cut off Ivan’s air. Ivan made a strangled sound and lashed out at Hannibal with his claws, shredding his dinner jacket and scoring deep into the flesh of his functioning left arm.Hannibal fell back without a cry, and the wolf man turned away from Will to loom over Hannibal. His claws were red with Hannibal’s blood, and there was a light in his eyes which Hannibal knew very well.‘If you kill Will Graham,’ said Hannibal, sprawled on his back on the path, blood running hotly from both his arms and his leg, but looking steadily into the insane eyes of the assassin, ‘I will hunt you down and I will kill you. So you had better kill me, first.’Ivan couldn’t speak—his mouth was full of prosthetic teeth—but he growled and crouched to spring. Hannibal calculated that, injured and unarmed as he was, he had very little chance of survival. But he intended to inflict as much damage as he could, while he still breathed.‘Also,’ Hannibal added, ‘you’ve ruined my second-favourite dinner jacket.’The wolf man leapt onto him, teeth flashing.*It took a split second for Will to understand what was happening: the wolf man had attacked him, but Hannibal had jumped on him and pulled him off, and was now at his mercy. He scrambled to his feet, wiping warm blood—Hannibal’s?—from his eye.‘If you kill Will Graham,’ said Hannibal, and his voice sounded wholly calm and courteous, ‘I will hunt you down and I will kill you. So you had better kill me, first.’Hannibal. Hannibal of the strong hands and the scent of ancient wood, of the tenderness in the dark and the questions in the light, Hannibal who had given him pleasure and pain in equal measure, who looked at him with such understanding that it made Will’s throat close with unwanted emotion. You are entirely glorious, Hannibal had said to him. Entirely glorious, and you have only started to discover what you can become.Hannibal, whose blood he could taste. Who had just saved his life. Who he had started to love. Will lurched forward, arms outstretched to strike the wolf man, wishing for his gun, a knife, anything. His foot struck something metallic on the path. It glinted: a straight razor.Without thinking he scooped it up and ran at the wolf man. Who crouched over Hannibal’s prone bleeding body, claws raised, teeth poised to cut and shred. The wolf lunged forward towards Hannibal’s jugular.And Will slashed with the razor, straight across the assassin’s throat.Blood spurted in a dark fountain, drenching Hannibal’s face and hair. The wolf man paused, frozen, for a long moment, and then he collapsed, choking and gasping for air that would never come again.Will pushed him off of Hannibal. The assassin’s limbs were already twitching in the death throes. Will did not care. In that moment, the other human being was nothing but garbage to be pushed aside so that Will could reach the person who really mattered.‘Hannibal,’ he rasped, using both his blood-soaked hands to push blood out of Hannibal’s face. ‘Hannibal. Have you been shot? How badly have you been hurt?’Hannibal smiled. His teeth were white in his reddened face; his eyes glittering darkness. His jacket was in shreds and his shirt was soaked with blood.‘You’re safe,’ he said to Will. ‘My glorious, wonderful boy, you’re safe and well.’And Will kissed him, tasting Hannibal’s blood and the blood of his victim, who lay dead on the path beside them.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Dr. Hannibal Lecter had a private room in the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. Will had, briefly, contemplated flowers. Wasn’t that what you were supposed to bring to your lover? To someone who had saved your life?Hannibal would know the etiquette. He would choose a bouquet of exquisite beauty, each blossom a symbol, fragrant with significance.But flowers put Will too much in mind of those cellophane-wrapped bouquets at the murder scene. And they seemed too…romantic.Whatever he and Hannibal Lecter shared, it wasn’t romance. Or not in any normal definition of the word. Not since Hannibal had drugged him, bound him, gagged him, beaten him, and fucked him in front of a roomful of murderous strangers.That tended to kill off the romance.Still: Will was here.He’d asked Lestrade what you brought to people in the hospital. Lestrade suggested grapes. In the hospital shop, the grapes were in plastic punnets, wrapped in cellophane. They looked pretty pallid and tasteless. Will paused over the selection of magazines, wondering if any of them would appeal to Hannibal: GQ? Food Monthly? The People’s Friend?In the end, he didn’t buy anything. He put his hands in his pockets so he wouldn’t have to think about what to do with them. He hadn’t seen Hannibal for two days. Not since that night in the park. Since Will had slit the throat of a man.Slit his throat, just like Garrett Jacob Hobbs had slit his wife’s throat and his own, in that kitchen.Hannibal was reading a book when Will walked in. He looked up immediately and a smile spread on his face like brightness itself. He closed the book.‘Will,’ he said.Will had to stop in the doorway. He saw blood, the blood of the man he’d killed on Hannibal’s face. Hannibal’s own blood, spreading on the gravel path beneath him.The hospital room was grey and green. There was no blood there at all. Only the echo of emotion in Will’s name spoken by Hannibal.
‘If you kill Will Graham, I will hunt you down and I will kill you. So you had better kill me, first.’
That was what Hannibal Lecter had said in the park, a bullet in his arm and in his leg, lying on the ground at the mercy of a killer.‘Hannibal,’ said Will. He remembered the last time he’d spoken this name, as well. In the moments where he had realized how he really felt. When he’d pushed aside the corpse of the man he’d killed, just so that he could touch Hannibal, kiss him, feel his warmth and be so very glad that he was still alive.‘I’m glad you didn’t bring grapes,’ Hannibal said.‘The grapes looked terrible.’‘I’m also glad you’re not in jail for murder.’‘It was self-defense. I’m not being charged. Ivan Popov was wanted for homicide, and the prosthetic teeth and claws he was wearing have been matched to the wounds in three killings.’‘Three? Not four?’‘Grigson’s murder wasn’t done by anyone in the club. It was someone else, someone…inspired by the wolf killings.’ Will came further into the room. Not close enough to touch Hannibal, or to have Hannibal touch him. But close enough to see how Hannibal’s arm was bandaged, and how he was hooked up to an IV. Close enough to see how his eye and mouth were still bruised from where Will had punched him. The wounds made him look no less attractive.‘How are you?’ Will asked.‘I’ll be fine. I lost a great deal of blood, but my injuries will heal. How are you?’They had not allowed Will to ride in the ambulance with Hannibal. He’d gone with the police, to be questioned. It had been hours until Lestrade had come. He’d been feverish by then: rubbing his hands over and over again, trying to get rid of the blood that he’d washed off hours before. Unable to stop talking about wolves.‘They gave me some antibiotics. I’ve got the flu or something.’Hannibal’s nostrils flared slightly. ‘And are you feeling better?’‘Better from the flu? Or better from the wounds you inflicted upon me in that club?’‘We are inflicting wounds upon each other all the time. It is our curse, for being human.’ Hannibal put his book on the table near his bed. ‘Or our privilege.’‘Mischa shot you,’ said Will. ‘She shot you twice. Why didn’t she kill you?’‘Bad shot,’ said Hannibal mildly. ‘Have Scotland Yard caught her yet?’Will shook his head.‘They won’t,’ said Hannibal.‘She can’t shoot to kill at close range, but she can evade the police no problem?’‘She’s evaded them her whole life so far. Somehow I doubt that this is her first foray into murder or crime.’‘She didn’t want to kill you. Why didn’t she? Why didn’t she want to kill me?’‘I think she finds us interesting.’‘I don’t want to be interesting,’ said Will bitterly. ‘I want to be normal. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.’‘No,’ said Hannibal Lecter. ‘You don’t want to be normal. You want to be loved.’Will swallowed. Shut up, he wanted to say. Shut up, you don’t get to crawl inside my head any more. Not after you crawled inside without my permission.Instead, he said, ‘The straight razor I used to kill him. It was yours, wasn’t it?’‘Did you tell the police it was mine?’‘No. I told them I’d found it on the ground, which is true. Why were you carrying it?’‘I had a text from your phone asking to meet me in the park. But I knew your phone was in my hotel room safe. I didn’t want to walk into a trap unarmed.’‘Why didn’t you call the police?’Hannibal’s voice was quiet. ‘Because I thought you might have been lured there too. And if your life was in danger, I didn’t want the police to intervene. I wanted to kill whoever would harm you myself.’‘That’s funny,’ said Will. ‘Because it occurred to me that you may have brought the razor and dropped it deliberately because you wanted me to kill Ivan.’It had occurred to him last night, during the questioning. After the time he’d begun to shake, and before he’d started to scrub imaginary blood off his hands.‘What makes you think that?’ Hannibal asked.‘You created a situation where I knew who the killer was, but the way I got my knowledge was so inadmissible that there was very little chance of Scotland Yard accepting it: an insight during a drug trip, in a sex club. If Lestrade hadn’t believed me, the only way I could have stopped Ivan from killing someone else was to kill him.’‘But they did believe you. And you didn’t kill Ivan to stop him from killing someone else. You killed him to stop him killing me.’Will looked down at the tiled floor.‘You saved my life, Will. I owe you a great deal.’Will thought of the revelation he’d had as he killed Ivan: that he loved Hannibal. He thought about how the love was more frightening than the killing.‘I don’t want you to owe me anything,’ Will said. ‘I don’t like to think of how you would repay me. You tried to help me with my case and it nearly got us both killed.’‘Then I will stay in your debt.’‘No. It’s wiped clean between us.’‘As you wish.’ But Hannibal Lecter’s eyes said otherwise, and Will remembered what he had said, once. I forget nothing.‘You were meant to be leaving London today,’ said Hannibal.‘I’ve been told not to leave the country until they have a chance to ask more questions. And I’d like to stay on to help with the investigation, if I can.’‘I’ve also been asked to stay. I’ll have to walk with a cane for several weeks, they tell me. I’ll be out of the hospital tomorrow; I’m moving to a ground floor suite at Claridge’s.’ Hannibal brushed imaginary lint off his pyjama sleeve. ‘You could join me, instead of enduring your hotel room for another week or two.’Will stared at him. ‘Hannibal—I don’t know what you think is going on here, but this isn’t some sort of honeymoon.’‘You asked what we were doing. Whether this was an affair, or a relationship. I was making a step towards answering your question.’Hannibal glanced at him as he said it, and if Will didn’t know better, he’d think that the man looked…shy.‘That was before everything that happened in that sex club,’ said Will. ‘Before I knew that you were not only psychoanalyzing me, though I asked you not to, but manipulating me. Before I knew that you’d rather subject me to torture and public humiliation and risk both our lives, than tell me straight out who you thought was killing people in a park. Before you goaded me into committing an act of violence that sickened me.’‘You should not feel sickened by killing Ivan Popov. You had no choice, if you wanted us both to live.’‘I was referring to hitting you, and having sex with you in anger.’Hannibal closed his mouth, and inclined his head. Even in a hospital bed, the blankets were neat, the bandages pristine, his pyjamas ironed. But he had a black eye, a split lip, and he hadn’t shaved in a day or two. His hair was unstyled and it flopped over his forehead.Will remembered him, drunk and uninhibited in Will’s bed. Hungover and happy the next morning. In the park, soaked with his own blood and the blood of Will’s victim.How he’d looked in the club, even as he’d drugged and manipulated and fucked Will without his consent: like an angel, doused in light.It had been a week since they’d met on a plane. A week.‘You killed for me,’ said Hannibal. ‘I would have killed for you. I can think of nothing more intimate. Is that not a type of forgiveness?’‘No, Hannibal.’ Will’s hands had been in his pockets this whole time, but he took them out and crossed his arms on his chest now. ‘Killing is not forgiveness. Killing is killing. That’s why we’re both being questioned by the police.’‘So you don’t want to join me at Claridge’s.’The two of them, in that big white bed, sharing breakfast. In the shower, sharing soap and pleasure. How Hannibal had held him and played music for him. No one had ever done that for him before.He wanted it all right. So badly that it terrified him.‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I came here to say goodbye.’He hadn’t been certain he’d be able to say it until he heard the words coming out of his mouth. He hadn’t even been certain he wanted to say it.
‘I see,’ said Hannibal. He was calm. Not a trace of emotion on his face. Will could not read him at all. Not that he wanted to. It didn’t matter to him what Hannibal Lecter was feeling.‘Once you’re back in your hotel, you can send me my phone and my wallet care of Scotland Yard,’ Will said. ‘We’ll meet in the States, I know. Jack Crawford is going to want to hear this story from each of us, for a start. He might want us to tell it together. Maybe even with Alana there, for moral support.’ He voice broke on the last two words; he cleared his throat and continued. ‘When that happens…I would appreciate it if you would follow my lead. If you want to owe me something, you can owe me that.’‘I promise,’ said Hannibal.Will nodded. ‘All right. Goodbye, then. I’d say it’s been nice, but…’‘I understand.’He gazed at Hannibal for a moment. After all this intensity, Hannibal’s acceptance seemed so…anticlimactic. What was the use of an empathy disorder if he couldn’t tell what Hannibal was feeling?But it was easier this way. Better.‘So long, then,’ said Will. He turned and left the hospital room, closing the door behind him.***Alone, in the quiet of his private room, door closed, blinds drawn, invisible and silent, Hannibal Lecter tilted his head back onto his pillow. He closed his eyes.A tear welled out from underneath each of his eyelids and rolled down his cheeks. He made no movement to wipe them off. Even as more fell.He was not in this sterile place, this place where he was a patient, not a doctor.He was dwelling in his memory palace, in the room he had made for Will Graham. They were dwelling there together.
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The call came on his hotel room phone; Will still didn’t have his own phone or his wallet. He promised himself that if he heard Hannibal’s voice on the other end, he would hang up immediately.Yes, he would.‘Will?’‘Alana.’ He sat on the edge of his bed, wrapping the phone cord around his fingers.‘I heard what happened. Are you all right?’‘I’m fine. I wasn’t hurt.’ Not in the park, anyway.‘I’m more concerned about your psychological state. You killed someone.’‘I had to do it. I had no choice.’‘That doesn’t mean it wasn’t traumatic.’‘He was a very bad man.’In his head, he heard Hannibal Lecter finishing the sentence for him. And killing a bad man…feels good.‘You don’t have to worry about my psychological state,’ he added quickly. ‘You’ve worried about it quite enough.’‘You know that I asked Dr Lecter to see you on a professional basis,’ said Alana. ‘He told you. I apologise that I referred you without your permission or knowledge. I had no idea that you would meet in London. I was concerned about you, Will, after what happened with Garrett Jacob Hobbs.’‘I don’t need psychoanalysis.’‘All right. But you could do with a friend.’‘Hannibal Lecter isn’t my friend.’‘Why were you both being targeted by a killer?’‘Because I was investigating a case, and he happened to be with me.’There was a pause.‘Will,’ Alana said, in her considering voice, and Will could picture that little crease between her eyebrows as she said it. ‘You and Hannibal have been through a shared trauma. You have a lot to offer each other right now.’‘We have nothing to offer each other. Shared trauma doesn’t make us besties.’‘You didn’t like him?’‘Liking…has nothing to do with it.’‘Maybe not. But when it comes to this one thing, Hannibal will understand you better than anyone else. Because he was there.’ He heard her shifting on the other end of the line; it sounded as if she were walking around the room. ‘Hannibal is a fantastic therapist. But more than that, he’s an incredible human being. He has more insight than anyone I’ve ever known.’‘Great. I’ll be sure to join the Dr Hannibal Lecter fan club when I get back to the States.’Alana sighed. ‘I understand. But there’s no need to resent him. Resent me, if you need to. I’m the one who tried to push you together.’‘Have you spoken to him?’‘No.’‘Have you tried to?’‘I left a message. A couple of messages, actually. It’s not like Hannibal not to return calls.’At least Hannibal was honouring his promise to let Will take the lead in choosing how much to reveal about their relationship.‘I’m sure he’ll call you back,’ said Will. ‘He’s not one to leave well enough alone.’When he put down the phone, something niggled at him. It took him a couple of hours to realise what it was.All the time he was talking with Alana about Hannibal Lecter, he hadn’t thought about how he was attracted to her at all.Not once.***He didn’t have anything to do at Scotland Yard; he’d given all his statements and it was unlikely that Lestrade was going to give him any more crimes to solve since the last one had ended up with Will engaging in some highly suspect sex play and slashing a man’s throat in the park.But what was he supposed to do: go sightseeing?He knew when Hannibal had been released from hospital, because a heavy cream envelope was waiting for him at Scotland Yard reception, with his name written on it in a perfect copperplate hand. He opened it with a certain amount of dread, but all that fell out were his wallet and his phone. His phone had even been charged up. He checked through his wallet, but there was nothing new hidden in it. Not a message, not a hotel room key, not even a condom.He couldn’t ignore the disappointment he felt as he put his wallet and phone in their accustomed pockets. He’d expected…something.He didn’t know what. He had no desire for any more gifts from Hannibal Lecter.But…something.He was nearly to Lestrade’s office, his mind still on his wallet, when he heard raised voices. Or rather, one raised voice: Lestrade’s. He was yelling something about someone being dead (surprise surprise, this was homicide), and then a calm voice interrupted him, speaking inaudibly. Then a thud. Like something heavy being thrown against a wall.Lestrade’s office door opened and a tall, thin man strode out. He wore a black wool overcoat, collar turned up, and a scarf knotted around his neck. His dark hair was curly and his eyes were an almost shocking pale blue.He stopped midway down the corridor, his eyes fixed on Will. ‘You,’ he said.‘Hello?’ said Will.‘Are you that Graham fellow?’‘…Yes?’The man’s nose wrinkled in disgust.Lestrade banged out of his office behind him. He glared at the man, and then glanced at Will. ‘Will,’ he said, ‘this is Sherlock Holmes.’‘I thought he was dead,’ said Will.‘So did I,’ said Lestrade. ‘He’s much less annoying dead than he is alive.’ With a final glare at Holmes, Lestrade strode off.‘I should have known that Scotland Yard would go to seed as soon as I was gone and couldn’t shame them into proper investigative techniques,’ said Sherlock Holmes. ‘And here you are: Exhibit A. They’ve brought in someone who works on instinct, and intuition.’ He said it as if they were dirty words. ‘Instead of logic, and deduction.’‘Actually, ‘said Will, ‘my instinct and intuition are based on a highly logical knowledge of criminal behaviour and an eidetic memory for being able to reconstruct crime scenes through inference, deduction and experience.’‘An empath,’ said Sherlock. ‘As if feelings had anything to do with crime.’ He looked Will up and down. ‘How do you do it? Does it come to you in a flash? A sweeping band of light, and the crime recreates itself in front of your eyes?’‘I’m in it,’ Will said. ‘I’m in the crime. I’m committing it. But otherwise, yes. It’s a lot like that.’A flash of something crossed Sherlock’s face—was he impressed? Or disgusted?—but then it was gone.‘Well,’ he said, ‘Lestrade tells me your empathy hasn’t stopped you from tearing out a man’s throat.’‘And what else has Lestrade told you?’‘Nothing,’ said Sherlock. ‘I can see for myself. You’ve been living on borrowed money, you have a near obsession for collecting dogs and, from the evidence of your left trouser cuff, you’re in love.’Will opened his mouth. He closed it again. He squinted, then he asked, ‘How can you tell that I’m in love from my left trouser cuff?’Sherlock shook his head. ‘I’m not going to explain it to you. Whenever I explain it to John, he thinks it’s ridiculously simple and conveniently forgets that three minutes before it was the most miraculous thing he’d ever heard.’ He shoved his hands in the pockets of his overcoat. ‘Well, I’d better be going. Actual criminals to catch, with actual logic. I've been gone too long.’He strode off.Will called after him, ‘I’m not in love!’Sherlock made a dismissive and really quite rude gesture. ‘Some empath you are,’ he said, contemptuously. ‘Can’t even understand your own emotions.’Will looked down at his left trouser cuff. It looked normal.‘I’m not in love,’ he said to the empty corridor.
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Hannibal Lecter sat in Will Graham’s hotel room, gazing at his own reflection in the mirror, awaiting Will’s return.Will had been sightseeing. There were several printed leaflets for London attractions on his hotel desk: London Eye, London Aquarium, London IMAX, Madame Tussauds. Hannibal paused over that one; Madame Tussaud was first famous for her waxwork death masks of aristocrats beheaded in the French Revolution. Now her namesake attraction featured replicas of the Queen and James Bond.London was new life layered over death. Homes and offices built over plague pits. A bagel shop at the address where Jack the Ripper claimed his victim. With every step you took in London, you were treading on the ashes of the dead and over stains of blood, long since washed away.Hannibal breathed deeply. The room had been cleaned today, but it smelled of Will. The soft scent of his hair, the unsubtle tang of his antiperspirant, the arousing essence of his skin. Underpinning it all, like the plague pits under London, there was the fragrance of infection.In the hospital, Will had said he’d been given antibiotics. As he was as yet uncured, clearly they were the wrong antibiotics, which meant that his encephalitis still remained undiagnosed. Simmering, for now, under the surface.The scent was strong enough that when Hannibal closed his eyes, he could almost believe that Will was standing in front of him.He was not quite sure what he had come here to do. He had not yet decided. Although his injured leg was painful, he had walked here so as to avoid the witness of a cab driver, and avoided being seen as he entered the hotel and opened the door to Will’s room with a pick. The soft leather bag at his feet held a change of clothes, and his plastic murder suit.These precautions may have been necessary; they may have not. It was difficult to know.He knew that life had seemed lackluster, lately, since Will had said such a comprehensive goodbye. Food didn’t have the same flavor; wine had lost its bouquet. He’d hardly bothered to eat.In the hospital, when he’d asked to see his own X-rays, the doctor, an orthopaedics registrar, had replied, ‘There’s no need for you to check up on me, I’d hardly have missed a bullet’ and Hannibal had opened his mouth to ask for the doctor’s business card.And then he’d closed his mouth again. The idea of hunting down this rude doctor and making him into a brochette was just…boring.But when he thought of Will, the world became sharper. His heart beat more vehemently; his lungs savoured the air. When he had packed Will’s phone and wallet to send back to him, he had stood for some moments with the two items in his hands. He had caressed the leather of Will’s wallet, soft and moulded into a curve from being in Will’s pocket, and as he did he had recalled the texture of Will’s skin—particularly that tender part at the top of his thigh, the crease where his leg joined his body, where the skin was thin and the femoral artery beat beneath.On the back of his desire came anger.He had not shown Will Graham everything about himself. No: not yet. But he had shown him more than he had perhaps shown anyone else who had been allowed to live.And everything he had put Will through, as difficult as it may have been, was for his own good. To help him to catch a killer…and to help him start to realise his own nature. Recognise it, and nurture it, and understand it, even as it reached an apotheosis in the moment when Will had slashed the murderer Ivan’s throat in the park.And Will…had said goodbye.Hannibal Lecter usually chose each of his actions carefully. But he was not certain what he was supposed to do about this yearning. About this anger.For now, he opened his eyes again and gazed at himself in the mirror. Wondered which path he would choose.A great deal depended upon how Will would react when he walked into his room and saw Hannibal waiting for him. *** The hotel room door opened. Will Graham walked in, tucking his key into his pocket. He had another tourist leaflet in his hand, for the Natural History Museum.He immediately stopped and stared at Hannibal.‘Hannibal?’ he said. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’‘Waiting for you,’ Hannibal replied, calmly.‘Get out,’ said Will. ‘I don’t want to ever see you again.’Hannibal hardly knew the knife had slipped from his sleeve into his hand until he stood and strode towards Will. He stood a mere foot away, gazing into Will’s blue eyes.‘Not after everything we shared? The boundaries we crossed? All the gifts of trust and blood we gave each other?’Will ground his teeth together. ‘Get. Out.’The knife slid into Will’s belly, quick and keen as thought. Right up to the hilt.Hannibal saw the exact moment when Will felt the penetration—a second or two after it happened. His eyes widened, pupils constricted, mouth opened, breath sucked in shock. The blood, though, was nearly instantaneous: it flooded hot over Hannibal’s hand and pattered on the hotel room carpet between their feet.Will grabbed Hannibal’s shoulder in a bid to stay upright. ‘What—what have you—’‘I haven’t killed you,’ said Hannibal. ‘This isn’t a fatal wound. Not yet.’‘Why—’‘I’ve killed for you, however. Just as you killed for me, in the park. I killed Alaistair Grigson, the victim who didn’t fit the pattern.’‘Why—Grigson—’‘Because I wanted to help you. I wanted my murder to throw into relief all the things you were not seeing about the wolfman’s murder.’Will’s breath was coming in short pants. His face was contorted in pain. It was beautiful.With the hand that was not holding the knife inside Will’s body, Hannibal stroked Will’s face.‘And why—did you kill—David Flowers?’‘Because he was rude.’ Hannibal leaned forward and gently kissed Will’s lips. ‘Because he saw the beauty of your emotion, and mocked it. I killed him as a gift for you.’ He whispered tenderly, ‘I wanted us to eat his tongue together.’Will gasped, and staggered. Hannibal caught him and half-carried him to the bed, laying him down on his back. The blood instantly pooled on the cheap coverlet, staining it deep red.Hannibal knelt beside Will and pulled out the knife—an act which apparently caused as much pain as the stabbing itself, if not more.‘But—you’re not—killing me,’ gasped Will.‘Not yet. No.’ He gazed down at Will’s face. Perspiration stood out on it like jewels. ‘Didn’t I say once to you, that love and death go hand in hand?’‘And do—you love—me?’‘I should kill you. Since I met you, I have done nothing but give you gifts. I gave you pleasure. I gave you the murderer you sought. I pushed your boundaries of body and mind, and showed you the person you could become. And in return…’ He kissed Will’s forehead. ‘You rejected me.’‘But—do—you—love—me?’Will’s voice was weaker. He was bleeding out, in this terrible hotel room, on this bed where the two of them had shared other intimacies.‘Yes,’ said Hannibal. ‘Yes, I do. I love you, Will.’‘Then kill me,’ gritted Will. He had started to shake. ‘Because…I will never…ever…love you.’Anger lifted Hannibal’s hand. It raised the knife and plunged it, hard and fast. Deep into Will’s chest. Between his ribs, skewering his heart.Will stiffened. His eyes, looking into Hannibal’s, showed perfect understanding.And then he was gone. His hand fell away from Hannibal to lie limp on the bloodstained bed.All that was left to do was to eat him. *** Hannibal Lecter gazed into the mirror. He was alone in Will Graham’s hotel room, knife in his pocket, murder suit at his feet, awaiting Will’s return.The door opened. Will Graham walked in, tucking his key into his pocket. He had a tourist leaflet in his hand, for the Natural History Museum.He immediately stopped and stared at Hannibal.‘Hannibal?’ he said. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’‘Waiting for you,’ Hannibal replied, calmly.‘You broke into my hotel room?’Hannibal stood. ‘I didn’t think you would talk to me otherwise.’Will put down the leaflet next to the other ones on the desk. He stepped up to Hannibal, close enough nearly to touch, and gazed straight into his eyes.‘You don’t break into a man’s hotel room to talk, Dr Lecter.’Hannibal thought about the knife, unused, in his pocket. His heart gave a thump.‘Why else would I break into a man’s hotel room?’ he asked.Will slid his fingers underneath the lapels of Hannibal’s jacket. He grasped them and tugged.‘To fuck him,’ he said, and he kissed Hannibal hard on the lips.He felt as if he had not kissed Will in a very long time. His mouth was hot and wet and hungry. Devouring. Will pushed his tongue into Hannibal’s mouth and Hannibal bit it and Will groaned.Will pushed Hannibal’s jacket off his shoulders and down his arms, trapping them by his sides. He stripped off his tie with a single tug, kissing him all the time, so hard that it felt as if their lips were bruising each other. Their teeth clashed together and Hannibal tasted blood, though he did not know whose it was.Will yanked at Hannibal’s shirt and he heard a tearing sound, a patter of buttons on the hotel room carpet between their feet. He felt Will’s hands on his chest, digging into his flesh.‘Or,’ muttered Will against Hannibal’s lips, ‘you might have broken in so that I could fuck you.’He shoved Hannibal backwards onto the bed and Hannibal fell, willingly, onto the cheap coverlet. Will was instantly there, on top of him. With his arms trapped by his jacket and now his shirt as well, Hannibal could do little but kiss him, and arch his pelvis up to grind into Will’s. He could feel Will’s erection and he shuddered in anticipation.Will’s hands were eager but sure as he unbuckled Hannibal’s belt and pushed his trousers and underwear down, and Hannibal remembered the park, after their first aborted dinner, when Hannibal had pushed Will up against a tree and told him to turn around. Bend over. How Will had been surprised, astonished, almost trembling with desire and the shock of something new.He was not like that now. He had found his tastes and knew how to satisfy them.Hannibal had done that to him. For him.Will reached for lube. He pushed Hannibal’s knees up to expose him. His finger slid, exciting and insistent, into Hannibal. Probed, and stretched. Hannibal’s penis, rock-hard and desperate, jumped on his belly.‘I killed for you,’ Will said. His blue eyes burning into Hannibal’s. With his left hand, he unbuckled his belt. Released himself, and anointed.‘Yes.’ Hannibal had to catch his breath as he felt the tip of Will’s arousal at his anus. That exquisite moment just before possessing, or being possessed, when the anticipation was as pleasurable as the act. A body hungry to join itself to another’s.His body hungry to join itself to Will’s.‘Do you want to know how it felt to kill?’ Will said. He paused, there, and Hannibal nearly groaned with need.‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Tell me.’Will braced himself on the bed above Hannibal. He was still dressed, though the top few buttons of his shirt were undone. His hair was too long, his face unshaven, his glasses askew. In his eyes was a strange, beautiful light.‘It felt good,’ he said, and he thrust into Hannibal with one long, powerful movement, right up to the hilt.Hannibal wanted to close his eyes to savour the feeling of fullness and invasion. He wanted to tilt his head back and abandon himself to sensation. He did not. He kept his gaze steady on Will’s, though he burned and hungered. He let Will see that he felt the penetration.‘How good?’ he asked, his voice hoarse.‘It was the best thing I’ve ever felt,’ said Will. He withdrew, only to thrust immediately in again. He pumped in and out of Hannibal, fast and nearly brutal, hard and thrilling. ‘The best thing,’ Will said, his teeth gritted and eyes narrowed with pleasure, perspiration on his face like jewels, ‘except for you.’And he pounded harder, faster, his balls slapping against Hannibal’s buttocks. His breath came in harsh gasps.‘Do—you—’ The words were forced out of Hannibal by the movement of Will’s body into his. His arms were trapped, his legs drawn up, his mouth tasting of blood, his scent and vision Will. The growing heat, the building ecstasy. Only Will.‘Do—you—love—me?’ Hannibal asked, each word on a breath.‘Yes,’ gritted Will. ‘Yes, I do.’And Will jerked and cried out, a wordless cry of surrender and exaltation, as he came deep inside Hannibal. The sensation triggered Hannibal’s own orgasm. He moaned loudly as his semen spilled onto his belly, splashing his shirt tail.Will collapsed on top of him, breathing hard. He kissed Hannibal, again and again and again.His eyes, looking into Hannibal’s, showed perfect understanding.Will paused. ‘So what is there left to do now?’ he asked.Hannibal smiled. He craned his neck up for another kiss, another taste of Will’s mouth. He could taste it forever, and never grow weary.‘Live happily ever after,’ he said. *** Hannibal Lecter gazed at his reflection in Will Graham’s hotel room mirror.It was late. Will was not coming back. He was out: tasting London, living without Hannibal. His brain was slowly, organically, building fever, going mad.And meanwhile, Hannibal was chasing reflections.Will Graham was not here. They would not meet again, to kiss or to die. Hannibal was waiting for nothing.He stood. He bent and picked up his soft leather bag.With his knife in his pocket, innocent—for now—of blood, he walked out into the night.
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The National Gallery was a study in contrasts. Rich paintings, framed in gilt, lined the high walls, standing still while the tourists and visitors swarmed around them, bunched and flowed.Will was killing time. He was waiting for Lestrade to give him permission to fly back home. Any day now. He’d been to Buckingham Palace, seen the changing of the guard, he’d walked around Trafalgar Square. Everywhere he looked there were couples: holding hands, whispering together, taking selfies in front of the man dressed up as a floating Yoda.His headache was nearly constant and his limbs ached as if he had flu. He’d finished the course of antibiotics so he assumed he’d picked up a bug somewhere. When he was tired, the edges of his vision wavered, as if shimmering in intangible heat.And at night he dreamed. So vividly that he invariably woke up disoriented, confused to find himself in his cheap hotel room. Last night he had dreamed about flying back to America. He’d dreamed the plane journey (in cattle class this time), dreamed about watching Dr Strange on the screen in the back of the seat in front of him. The whole film felt like déjà vu, populated with people he knew. Dreamed about landing in Dulles, getting his car from long term parking, swearing at the cost of his ticket, driving home to Wolf Trap listening to the oldies station he always had his car radio tuned to. He listened to Duran Duran singing ‘Hungry Like the Wolf’ and in his dream, he shuddered, remembering that red room full of wolves, himself bound and gagged and bruised and violated, and he turned the radio to a hip-hop station.He pulled up outside his little house, and as he got out of his car, he thought about how quiet it was here without his dogs to greet him. He’d have to go and pick them up from Chuck tomorrow. He’d listened to his own footsteps on the lawn, fumbled around a bit in his pockets before he found his keys, unlocked the door and walked into a house that smelled stale with disuse. Every detail realistic, in real time, boring.And then he’d walked into his kitchen and there they all were. Garret Jacob Hobbs and his wife Maria, their fronts covered with aprons of blood. David Flowers, missing his tongue. Alaistair Grigson, holding in his guts with both hands. Ivan Popov, wearing his metal teeth and claws, his throat a fountain of blood.All the people who were dead because of him.He woke up screaming. The person in the room next to his pounded on the wall.In the sunlight, his dream seemed silly. Flowers and Grigson weren’t his fault. They had died since he’d come here, but not because of him. But that didn’t lessen the horror of all their dead eyes on him.At the changing of the guard earlier he’d thought he’d seen Garret Jacob Hobb’s face. Will pushed through the crowd, but Hobbs was gone.Dreams and hallucinations. It was the price of his imagination, like the fear he felt nearly all the time. He wished he could stop paying it.Hannibal would say…He didn’t care what Hannibal would say.He paused in front of a huge painting of two bearded men standing in front of a brocade curtain. One wore a fur-lined coat with enormous puffed sleeves, a red satin shirt, and gazed straight out from the picture, at ease; the other was more plainly dressed in black and looked down and to the side, as if he were avoiding eye contact.Various objects surrounded them: a globe, a lute, books rugs, and between them on the mosaic floor was an abstract slash of black and white and grey, something that made no sense in the painting. It looked almost like it had been vandalised.The slash made Will feel uncomfortable. It was unreal. He couldn’t work out whether he was really seeing it or not, or if this was Garrett Jacob Hobbs in a crowd, the dead man impossibly present.Keeping his eyes on the painting, he moved away.As he moved, the slash resolved itself into a skull. Hyper-real, as real as Hobbs’ face had been, and grinning. Death between the feet of two men.‘Wow.’The voice was nearly in his ear. He glanced over to see a teenage girl, who was staring at the painting with an enormous smile on her face.‘That is completely amazing,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it incredible?’‘You see that?’ Will asked her in disbelief. ‘You see it too? The skull?’‘Duh,’ said the girl, laughing. ‘It’s huge.’‘It’s supposed to be there?’‘Yeah, it’s The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein, it’s like completely famous painting with a big slanted freaky skull in it that you can only see from one angle. Look.’ The girl, who was about half his size, pushed him to one side and the skull elongated itself again into a distorted half-smear.‘Here, it makes no sense,’ she said. ‘There, it makes total sense. It’s all about perspective.’But Will was staring at the painting again, at what he’d thought was a ghost and was actually there, and didn’t hear her. The girl shrugged, and moved away.Perspective. Step to the right, it’s a smear. Step to the left…He blinked.Will crouched down and looked at the left cuff of his trousers. He only had four pairs with him on this trip, and one pair had been ruined by Popov’s blood. These were his blue Dockers, the ones he meant to replace but hadn’t yet because they were too comfortable, the ones that were beginning to fray at the pockets and and that he’d caught on a thorn when he was out walking the dogs in Wolf Trap a few days before he’d come here, ripped the……Left cuff. Which had been sewn up, carefully and perfectly, with fine, even stitches. He hadn’t noticed before.Something that could only have been done by Hannibal Lecter, as Will slept.Sherlock Holmes’s voice, in Will’s head: You’ve been living on borrowed money, you don’t let the maids in your hotel room change your towels half enough and, from the evidence of your left trouser cuff, you’re in love.‘How does this mean I’m in love?’ he said aloud. ‘He’s the one who sewed up my cuff.’Did this mean…that Hannibal Lecter was in love with him?Will straightened. He walked off, not noticing the direction nor the people staring at him for talking aloud about being in love in the middle of the National Gallery. Deep in thought, he wandered from room to room, oblivious to the art.He was not surprised at all when he saw the back of Hannibal Lecter’s head.Hannibal sat on a bench set in the middle of a room, facing away from him and toward a painting, framed in gold, on the blue-papered wall. He held a sketchbook propped up on his lap. A cane leaned on the bench beside him.He didn’t look up as Will approached and sat beside him. Will knew that he knew he was there.They sat in silence for a moment: Hannibal looking at the painting. Will looking at Hannibal. His eye was still bruised, though his lip was better.‘It always makes me feel a little melancholy,’ Hannibal said at last. ‘The grand old warship, being ignominiously hauled away for scrap. The inevitability of time, don’t you think?’Will looked at the picture. It was blue and grey and yellow and orange. Water and clouds and masts and hull.‘What do you see?’ asked Hannibal.‘A bloody big ship.’Hannibal smiled.‘It’s good to see you, Will.’‘Why did you sew up the hem of my Dockers?’ Will blurted.‘You ask that as if you’re surprised.’‘They’re about to fall apart. You’re so fastidious about your clothes. I’d have thought you’d throw them in the garbage, if you had a chance. But you sewed them up. Why?’‘Because you like them. They make you comfortable.’‘But you said you wanted to make me uncomfortable. When I first met you. You said you wanted to push me. You said it made me become more myself.’‘Doesn’t it?’‘On the plane. In the park, against the tree. In that club. When I killed Popov. Were those…was I myself?’‘Those were the times when your desire and knowledge were most acute.’ Hannibal closed his sketchbook. ‘But in my bed, sharing breakfast. Or in yours, sharing trust. You were yourself then, too. When you were comfortable.’‘And you sewed up my Dockers because…?’‘Because you were sleeping, and I was awake, and I wanted to do something for you.’How long, since someone had shown him such tenderness and caring? Done something so simple yet so profound as to mend his favourite item of clothing for him, as he slept?And right at that moment Will understood why Sherlock Holmes would deduce, from his sewn-up trouser cuff, that Will was in love. Because Sherlock saw that Will was so starved of love, so afraid of connection yet so desperate for it, that all it would take for him to fall in love with someone was for them to care about him.If someone cared about him enough, all would be forgiven.‘Do you love me?’ asked Will.Something passed across Hannibal’s face. A kind of surprise, and familiarity. The way people looked when they were experiencing déjà vu.‘Have I asked you that question before?’ Will asked. He knew he wouldn’t when he was awake and in charge of himself…but when he was asleep, or drugged, or half-dreaming? When he was in the grip of an orgasm?Hannibal paused.‘No,’ he said at last. ‘No, you’ve never asked me that. I’ve wondered myself.’‘Are you?’Will’s heart was pounding. There were people all around them, but he couldn’t see them as anything but shadows. The same way he’d seen Ivan Popov, his victim, when Hannibal was lying hurt beneath him. Irrelevant.‘I’ve never been in love,’ said Hannibal. ‘I’m not precisely certain what that would mean, for someone like me.’‘Someone like you?’He inclined his head. ‘For me. I don’t know what love would mean, for me. But I am very conscious of wanting your forgiveness.’‘And if I forgive you?’‘Then…I think I will be vulnerable to you in a way I have never been before.’ He raised his eyes to Will’s. ‘Is that love?’The way he looked at Will. As if he were precious. Worth everything. Will swallowed.‘You’re asking me?’ said Will. ‘I can’t even tell what that painting is about.’He stood. He held out his hand to help Hannibal up.‘I’ll forgive you,’ he said. ‘I'm not saying I'll resume our relationship. I'm just saying I'll forgive you. On one condition.’Hannibal clasped his hand. It felt……it felt so good. That simple touch.‘Two conditions,’ he amended.‘What are they?’ Hannibal stood, and took up his cane. He didn’t drop Will’s hand.‘One: you promise never, ever to do that again. Drug me and make me do things I don’t want to do.’He could see Hannibal thinking about it for a second. Really? He had to think about it?‘I promise,’ he said.‘And two: right now, this minute, we are going to walk out of this museum, and go to McDonald’s.’‘What.’‘You heard me.’
And that’s for having to think about whether or not you’ll drug me again, you asshole.
Hannibal took much longer to think about this.‘Anyway,’ said Will, ‘I have a lot more art to see, so…’‘All right,’ said Hannibal. ‘If that’s what it takes for you to forgive me.’Will let Hannibal's hand go.‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is. For now.’
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
They walked out of the National Gallery side by side. Hannibal walked with a limp; it was slight, but he had to use his cane to get down the long flight of stone steps outside the museum. Will resisted the impulse to give him his arm to help him.He found this man incredibly, damnably attractive. That was what killed it. All his good intentions, up in smoke. How long had it taken him in that gallery to refrain from forgiving Hannibal? About ten seconds?This was one of the many ways where empathy really didn’t serve him well. Whatever emotions Hannibal had for him, they were genuine. Genuine enough to carefully hem up Will’s left trouser cuff, even as he was planning to drug him up and make him perform unwillingly in a sex show for murderers.And even then, Hannibal thought he was being helpful to Will. He genuinely believed it.Real emotion, even this twisted, was impossible for Will to resist, even though Hannibal had been such a thorough, unrepentant asshole.‘I’m not sleeping with you again,’ he said when they’d reached the bottom, and were walking across Trafalgar Square, scattering pigeons. ‘This is about forgiveness, not about sex.’‘All right,’ said Hannibal.‘And it’s sure as hell not about…’ He glanced down at his left trouser cuff before exhaling, hard, and punching the pedestrian crossing button. ‘Anyway. There’s a McDonald’s down here.’The Strand was full of people, pushing up and down the sidewalks. Homeless people, huddled in doorways among heaps of blankets. Buses hissing to a stop, taxis rattling, music blaring from a shop front, an electronic voice as a tourist wearing a LONDON t-shirt walked by them, holding up his phone as it gave him directions.The noise, in Will’s head, should be incredible. All his life, he’d chosen not to live in cities and yet here he was, in one of the busiest, noisiest cities of them all. All the emotions pushing in on him from other people: it made it difficult to work out what his own were. Even more difficult than usual.And yet he’d been here for weeks, and this weight of humanity, this weight of emotion, hadn’t pressed him down. It had, but not unbearably. There had been a buffer.There had been Hannibal, and Hannibal’s own emotions. When he was with Hannibal, everything else was quieter.Did that mean that when he was with Hannibal, everything Will felt was real?They passed Charing Cross Station and, a little way up, Will pushed open the door of a McDonald’s. He dared to glance at Hannibal, then, and saw the slow wince that crossed his face involuntarily as they walked into the fast food joint.Good.The restaurant was all noise and light and crowds and pop music and the scent of burgers and fries. Every table was occupied with people eating food with their hands out of paper and cardboard wrappers. It was a normal everyday scene, families and friends sharing a quick meal, but it made Will’s head throb.Will saw it as Hannibal would: human beings reduced to the level of animals, eating junk for mere fuel, sucking sugared water through straws, littering the tables with discarded rubbish.‘You’re such a snob,’ he told Hannibal as they walked through the restaurant together to the back.‘I didn’t say anything.’‘Empath. Remember? I can feel your contempt like a heat ray radiating out of you. But these are regular people, Hannibal. Just because you’re more sophisticated in some regards doesn’t make you better than they are.’A heavy man in a tracksuit bumped his tray of burgers and fries against Hannibal’s arm and used it to push him out of the way. He walked past without apologising.Hannibal narrowed his maroon eyes.‘Just relax,’ said Will.‘Really, Will, is this necessa—’‘You must do as I say, and you will not be in danger,’ said Will, copying word-for-word what Hannibal had said to him in the sex club. Just after he’d gagged him. ‘There may be some pain, but I will not let it become more than you can bear. I promise you. Put yourself entirely in my hands, and you will be safe. Do you understand me?’He could see in Hannibal’s face that he knew his own words were being used against him. That this was his penance for what he’d done…and he was getting off lightly. Very lightly.‘I understand,’ he said.They were in the line to order now, and Hannibal looked up, scanning the lit-up menu on the wall.‘What on earth is a Happy Meal?’ Hannibal asked. ‘Food that enjoys being eaten?’‘You can’t have it. It’s a child meal.’‘They serve children here? That seems barbaric.’‘What can I get you?’ said the woman behind the counter, before Will could answer.‘Good afternoon,’ said Hannibal. ‘I would like…’ He perused the menu as if he were in a fine French restaurant. ‘A side salad and a bottled water, please.’‘No you won’t,’ said Will. He turned to the woman. ‘He’ll have a Big Mac, fries and a Coke.’‘Large fries and Coke?’‘No,’ said Hannibal.‘Yes,’ said Will. ‘And I’ll have the same.’He wasn’t particularly hungry. He hadn’t had much appetite lately anyway. But he knew that Hannibal would be nearly as pained watching Will eat this food, as being forced to eat it himself.As they waited for their food, he saw Hannibal gazing over the counter into the kitchen area. Will could only imagine what he was thinking of the deep fat friers, the assembly-line of sandwich making, the burgers lined up side by side in the warmers waiting to be ordered and eaten. It was industrial food, made identically all over the world by poorly-paid workers with no expertise and no passion, for very little money.Actually, he could imagine quite well what Hannibal was thinking. At least the kitchen looked very clean.Their food arrived, both meals on one tray. Will took it to a table in the corner of the restaurant, pausing to pick up napkins, ketchup and straws. At least the table was clean, and they didn’t have to share with someone else. Hannibal was looking positively murderous.He saw Hannibal checking the seat carefully before he sat down. Then he perched, gingerly, leaning his cane on the side of the table.‘How much longer will you need that?’ Will asked him, parcelling out the food. Big Mac, fries, Coke. He punched a straw into each of their drinks.‘I should be able to get rid of it by the end of the week. The orthopaedics registrar thought otherwise, but I’m more able than he considered I was.’ Hannibal made no move to unwrap his food.Will was busy unwrapping his own. Spreading out the paper around his burger, dumping his fries in a pile and squeezing the ketchup out of its little paper container on top of them.‘Controversial, I know,’ he said. ‘Putting the ketchup on top of the fries instead of dipping the fries in the ketchup. But it’s what we always did when I was a kid. Made it easier to eat in the back of the car. What’s your opinion?’‘I can’t say that I have one. I shall have to look up Escoffier’s position on the subject.’‘Come on, then.’ Will stuck a fry into his mouth, and spoke through it, chewing. ‘Open ‘em up. Get eating.’With obvious reluctance, and only the index finger and thumb of his right hand, Hannibal plucked open the paper around his burger. It emerged: two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onion on a sesame-seed bun. The man’s nostrils flared as the scent assaulted them.‘Thank God,’ he said. ‘It’s smaller than it looked in the photograph.’‘But twice as tasty.’ Will picked up his in both hands and opened his mouth wide. Keeping eye contact with Hannibal the whole time, he bit into his Big Mac. The top patty slipped, and some of the special sauce dripped out onto Will’s hand. He licked it off, still holding the burger. ‘Yum yum. Nobody knows what’s in the sauce, you know. It’s a secret.’Hannibal touched a finger to the sauce that dribbled out of the side of his own burger, and put it, with reluctance, into his mouth. ‘It’s mayonnaise, mostly, and sugar, with some sub-standard pickle relish and onion.’‘Eat up, fancy boy.’‘And then…you’ll forgive me.’‘Yes.’‘Do I have to eat it all?’‘Yes.’‘With my hands.’‘I’ll get you a knife and fork if you want one, but they’ll be plastic.’Hannibal shook his head, and surveyed the tray in front of him. ‘I don’t know if I can promise to keep it down.’Will shrugged. ‘No skin off my back if you want to taste it twice.’Hannibal’s wince, this time, was not slow. But he picked up the Big Mac and brought it to his mouth. Bit into it.His face was stoic as he chewed and swallowed, but Will was an empath. He could feel the disgust and chagrin radiating from the other man.‘See?’ Will said. ‘Not that bad, is it?’Hannibal did not deign to answer. He ate the burger, methodically, bite by bite. Will had to give him credit: he didn’t try to stuff it down without tasting it, and he didn’t cheat by shoving any fries off the table ‘accidentally’ with his elbow. He ate it in the manner of someone performing a necessary but unpleasant task, like cleaning the toilet or wiping puke off the sidewalk. He touched his paper napkin to his lips between bites to wipe away the grease and the special sauce and the occasional sesame seed.After he put the last bite into his mouth, he wiped his hands on another paper napkin, folded the paper wrapper neatly, and started, without enthusiasm, on the fries.Will realised he’d been too busy watching Hannibal eat, to eat himself. He picked up his Big Mac again and ate it. It should have been even better than usual, flavoured with a sort of revenge. But maybe it was Hannibal’s emotions rubbing off on him, maybe it was the mere fact that Hannibal had pointed out the truth that this was not good food…but Will couldn’t enjoy it as he should.He couldn’t quite help but feel like this was akin to the way he’d fucked Hannibal in anger the morning after the sex club. Dry, without lube, enjoying the pain he brought to Hannibal’s face. Every moment angry.Still. Hannibal had enjoyed that violation—enjoyed and deliberately engineered it, if Will wasn’t mistaken—and he wasn’t enjoying this. So there was some satisfaction in that.He tried not to think about what it meant that he could only offer forgiveness with conditions attached. And that one of those conditions was humiliation.Hannibal dipped each fry precisely in ketchup and then ate it, either in two or three bites. When he was through with them, he held up the little cup of ketchup, which still had some on the bottom.‘Do I have to eat all this?’ he asked. Will, who’d entirely lost his appetite and was toying with his own fries, shook his head.Hannibal picked up the waxed paper cup of Coke and sucked on the straw. The movement pursed his precisely curved lips, hollowed out his cheeks so that his cheekbones were even more prominent. Will had a sudden, searing memory of that plane bathroom, the first time they’d met, when Hannibal had knelt and taken his dick in his mouth. The hot, wet perfection of it.Will quickly looked down and began eating his ketchup-drenched fries.A gurgle of straw at the bottom of cup signalled the end of Hannibal’s large Coke. He put down the cup, replaced empty wrapper and cardboard sleeve for fries on the plastic tray, along with his small nearly-empty cup of ketchup. Brushed salt off the table with one hand, into his other hand, and tipped that onto the tray as well, wiping his palms together. Then he pushed the tray across the table to Will.‘To the victor go the spoils,’ Hannibal said. ‘May we please leave now?’Will nodded. He put his own uneaten food onto the tray along with his mostly-full Coke, and dumped it in a garbage bin on their way out of the restaurant. On the sidewalk, on the busy Strand again, Hannibal paused, leaning on his cane.‘So,’ he said.He looked very pale. Almost green. Maybe he hadn’t been joking about not being able to keep the food down.This trip to London had changed Will, in lots of ways. He had loved, and suffered, and killed, and taken revenge. He didn’t like it. But he was changed now, whatever he felt…and all of those changes had been caused by the man standing in front of him. Dr Hannibal Lecter.Who maybe loved him. And whom he maybe loved in return.But that was way too much to understand right now.‘I forgive you,’ said Will.‘And are we…friends?’‘Yes. Friends.’ He looked down at the sidewalk. It was cracked and dotted with dried black spots of chewing gum. ‘I do…like you, Hannibal.’‘I like you too. Very much.’He nodded once, quickly. ‘So. I guess you’ll want to rush back to your hotel room to be sick and then brush your teeth seven times.’‘Maybe eight.’ Hannibal’s wince could be heard in his voice.‘Well,’ Will said. ‘I guess I’ll see you around.’‘Do you want to—’‘No.’ He looked back up at Hannibal. ‘No, I don’t. Maybe when we get back to the States I’ll call you. Or you’ll call me. But we need a little break to get used to this truce. Or I do, anyway.’ He paused, waiting for a group of teenage girls to go into the McDonald’s. ‘I killed someone, Hannibal. And I could say that I did it because he was a killer, or in self-defense. But I didn’t. I killed him because he was going to kill you. And I liked it. And that… I’m going to have to get used to that.’‘Among other things.’‘Among other things. I need to know who this new me is.’Hannibal nodded. ‘Transformation is difficult.’‘Probably more difficult than eating a Big Mac and large fries.’Hannibal closed his eyes for a moment. His lips tilted upwards, in what was nearly the beginning of a smile. But he still looked distinctly green.‘Maybe not,’ he said. He leaned forward quickly and kissed Will on the cheek.Then he lifted up his hand that wasn’t holding on to the cane, and a glossy black cab immediately pulled to the curb beside them. ‘Claridge’s,’ Hannibal told the driver, and, his hand on the cab door, turned to Will.‘Until next time,’ he said, and climbed into the cab, shut the door, and was gone.Watching the black cab merge with all the other cabs, Will wondered when that next time would be.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
‘You’ve got a flight from Heathrow at one this afternoon,’ said Jack Crawford on the phone. ‘There’ll be a car waiting for you at Dulles. I’ll probably be the one driving it.’Will frowned into his phone. ‘Has Lestrade said it’s okay for me to leave the country?’‘I don’t give a damn what Lestrade says. Kids found nine corpses growing mushrooms in Elk Neck State Park. I need you here yesterday.’‘I killed someone, Jack.’Did he expect Jack to be sympathetic to his feelings? Had Jack ever been sympathetic? When he’d caught Garret Jacob Hobbs—when Hobbs had killed himself because Will had caught him—Jack Crawford had clapped him on the back and Will’s students at the Academy had applauded. While Will couldn’t see anything but two human beings slumped in that kitchen. The last slurred words that escaped Hobbs’ lips before he died, which Will heard even above the shouting of Hobbs’ daughter Abigail.See? See?He rubbed his aching head and popped two aspirin into his mouth.‘You killed a bad guy. And anyway, my nine corpses trump your one,’ said Jack. ‘The guy is using dead people as a fungus farm. Just be at the airport. I’ll email you the files.’The line went dead.‘Goodbye,’ said Will to the unresponsive phone. He put it down and looked around his hotel room. He felt as if he’d been living in it forever. He was almost used to constant sound of traffic, the rattle of the housekeepers’ trolleys in the morning, the voices of the other guests through the thin hotel walls.The sounds a drunken Hannibal Lecter had made on the bed as Will fucked him, ruthlessly and with tenderness.Will exhaled audibly and pulled his suitcase out from underneath the bed so he could pack his few belongings. It was eight in the morning—three a.m. in Washington. Jack was pulling an all-nighter.By the time he’d packed his stuff and checked out (‘Yes, that’s right, Scotland Yard is paying for it. Yes, that Scotland Yard’), he still had an hour to kill before he got the train from Paddington to Heathrow.He called Lestrade to say goodbye, but Lestrade had other ideas.‘Meet me in Baker Street,’ said Lestrade. ‘Number 221B, next to Speedy’s Café. Take a cab.’221B Baker Street was an unprepossessing black door on a busy road. ‘No offense, mate,’ said the cab driver, ‘but I’ve driven some weird ones here.’‘No offense taken,’ said Will. He paid the cabbie and dragged his case up the steps to the door. Several people were loitering outside, some with cameras. Will instantly recognised the oleaginous manner of reporters. He walked past them, ignoring them, and rapped with the brass knocker.A brisk woman with greying hair opened the door.‘I’m Will Graham,’ he said. ‘Inspector Lestrade asked me to meet him here?’‘They’re upstairs, dear,’ she said, and then squinted at Will. ‘Are you quite well? You’re all sweaty, like you’re sick.’‘I’m fine.’ He felt queasy and his head was pounding, but he was used to it by now.‘I’ll make you a nice cup of tea. Go on up, I’ll take it up to you. You can leave your case here by the door. I’ll warn you, though: they’re arguing again.’He deposited the case under a coat hook holding a heavy black overcoat and a rather silly hat, and went up the narrow stairs.Upstairs, in a cluttered room with wallpaper patterned enough to make his head ache again, stood Lestrade, and Sherlock Holmes, and a smaller man who was holding the hand of a short-haired blonde woman. There was an unopened bottle of champagne on the table, and several flutes.‘Oh,’ Will said. ‘Have I interrupted a celebration?’‘John Watson,’ said the other man, holding out his hand to give Will’s a brisk shake. ‘I’ve just asked Mary to marry me. Eventually, when Sherlock stopped interrupting us.’‘Also, we stopped Parliament from getting blown up,’ added Sherlock.‘Not before a bit of emotional blackmail, though,’ said John, with more than a hint of bitterness. ‘Making me think I was going to die in a huge fiery explosion. Et cetera.’‘Oh shut up. You forgave me.’‘They’re always bickering,’ explained the woman, Mary.Sherlock turned to Will. ‘Love is in the air, it seems. How’s your trouser cuff?’‘It had been sewn up,’ said Will. ‘I get it.’‘Surgeon, are they?’‘Psychiatrist.’‘Former surgeon, then.’Lestrade was watching this exchange with huge interest. Will was glad when the woman who’d answered the door appeared, bearing a cup and saucer.‘Get that down you, dear,’ she said. ‘Nothing a good cup of tea can’t cure.’‘I asked Sherlock to have a look at the werewolf case,’ said Lestrade.‘The case is finished,’ said Will, taking a sip of his hot tea. ‘And there weren’t any werewolves.’‘Mischa’s got links with James Moriarty,’ said Sherlock.‘The criminal mastermind?’ It sounded so old-fashioned when Will said it. So much like something he’d read on Tattlecrime: melodramatic.‘The dead criminal mastermind,’ Sherlock corrected. ‘She’s a known associate. Not known to Scotland Yard; known to me.’ He tossed Lestrade a contemptuous glance and Lestrade bore it without rolling his eyes.Holmes and Lestrade were a fine double-act, thought Will. Drama queen and straight man. John wasn’t part of the act; he bought into it all a bit too much. He was in awe of Sherlock, though he was angry at him. Maybe he was a bit in love with him, despite the fiancée standing next to him.He looked at John Watson’s trouser cufffs and shirt sleeves, for physical evidence of this hunch, but he couldn’t find it. Maybe it was empathy; maybe it was just that he had love on his mind.Still. He thought he was right. John Watson had somewhat more than a crush on Sherlock Holmes.He took another sip of his tea. It was sweet and milky, with sugar.‘Makes you feel better, doesn’t it, dear?’ asked the sweet lady. He nodded, surprised to find that actually, it did.‘Mischa will have fled out of the country,’ continued Sherlock. ‘She will have had several identities ready and waiting for her. The only way the law will catch her alive is to beat the several international criminals and persons of power who will also be chasing her with the intention of killing her for her lapse in effectiveness.’ He turned to the window, as if he had better things to think about. ‘Frankly, it’s not worth chasing her. Her corpse will turn up sooner or later.’‘I’d rather catch her alive, if it’s all the same to you,’ said Lestrade.‘Boring,’ said Sherlock. ‘I’d rather talk about David Flowers, that murdered banker. Why take his tongue? Who had he offended? You said you’d met him, didn’t you, Graham?’‘Briefly, on the plane over here. To be honest, he was obnoxious. Rude.’‘Rude,’ repeated Sherlock. ‘So was your dead politician, wasn’t he, Lestrade? Closing libraries, looting museums, stealing education out from the noses of generations of children? The “Culture Vulture.” The Guardian called him “The rudest man in Britain.”’ His lips twitched. ‘Not after he was dead, of course.’‘You think there’s a link between them?’ said Lestrade.‘They both needed shutting up,’ said Will. ‘And both of the murders were…playful.’ He recalled Grigson’s scalp set back on his head, like a bloody toupée. ‘They could have been done by the same person. I haven’t seen the photos of Flowers’ body. But…it feels that way.’Sherlock’s ice-blue eyes narrowed at him. Then the detective nodded once, curtly.‘There,’ he said. ‘The feelings have spoken. Well done.’ He flicked his fingers at Will. ‘Off you go. Your flight’s soon.’‘I didn’t tell you he was flying toda—’ said Lestrade, before realising it was useless.Will drank the rest of his tea. His headache was nearly gone.‘That said,’ added Sherlock, ‘you’ve got an interesting ongoing case there, in Maryland. The Chesapeake Ripper. I might look into that, one day.’ He pursed his lips. ‘And I think I would quite like to meet this ex-surgeon of yours. There’s something about his…stitches.’He turned his back, deep in thought, and Lestrade motioned for Will to leave the flat with him.‘I’m sorry to see you go,’ said Lestrade at the bottom of the stairs. ‘You’ve got a talent.’‘A talent I don’t particularly want to have, to be honest.’‘And you’re easier to get along with than He Who Must Be Obeyed, upstairs.’ Lestrade grimaced and Will realised that he actually liked the inspector. He could be a friend, in other circumstances.But what other circumstances were there ever going to be?‘Well…get Jack to send me over here again, maybe,’ Will said. ‘Only next time I’d like a better hotel.’‘Deal,’ said Lestrade, and he shook Will’s hand. It was a firm handshake, no-nonsense. Not unlike Jack Crawford’s.‘I hope you catch Flowers’ and Grigson’s killer,’ said Will. He was in no doubt now that it was the same person. Maybe that was what his dream had been trying to tell him, when he’d seen Hobbs and Flowers and Grigson and Popov all together in his kitchen in Wolf Trap. ‘And I hope you track down Mischa before someone else does.’‘And I hope it all works out with you and your doctor,’ said Lestrade. ‘Dr Lecter, was it? The man who you saved? I know I was all cynical about relationships; but trial by fire isn’t such a bad thing, sometimes. And you looked sort of sweet when you were all loved up.’He nodded at Will, and went back up the stairs before he had a chance to protest. Will realised he was still holding the teacup.‘I’ll take that, dear,’ said the older woman, appearing at his elbow. ‘Though I’m his landlady, not his housekeeper. Yes, you look much better. I always say: a nice cup of tea. And what’s this I hear about a handsome doctor?’‘Nothing,’ said Will. ‘There’s nothing about a handsome doctor. He’s just…a friend.’‘That’s what Sherlock always says.’ She nodded wisely. ‘You take care, now. And don’t say a word to those nuisance reporters.’She stood on tiptoe to give him a kiss on the cheek. That made him feel better, too.***At the check-in desk at Heathrow—a vast empty space between white glossy floor and white shining ceiling, in which human beings wandered like disoriented insects—the associate in the smart uniform took his passport and his booking reference and said, ‘Very good, Mr Graham. Seat 5A.’Again? ‘Is this first class?’‘Yes, of course, Mr Graham. Have a good flight.’ She passed him his documents.Fucking Doctor fucking Hannibal fucking Lecter fucking fuck, he thought all through security, taking off his shoes and putting his laptop all by itself into a grey tray and walking through the metal detector that failed to detect his hands as lethal weapons.But Hannibal wasn’t in the departure lounge. There was no sign of him as Will boarded the plane, ahead of everyone else waiting, found his seat, and accepted a glass of champagne from the flight attendant.He leaned back, closed his eyes, and thought about being reunited with his dogs. It really hadn’t been a good time to leave Winston, when he was still settling in. But the reunion would be worth it. He pictured himself at the centre of a furry ball of creatures with wagging tails and licking tongues. So much uncomplicated happiness.It would be so much easier to be a dog. Sleeping and rutting wherever and whenever a possiblity presented itself. Delighted with a run and a ball. No impulses to follow except for those of the stomach and the nose.Will’s nostrils flared. If he didn’t know better, he could smell—He opened his eyes. Hannibal Lecter, in a blue tartan suit, paisley tie, red pocket handkerchief. Holding a familiar wicker picnic basket.‘Of course you’re here,’ Will said in a tone of weariness. But his heart thumped and his stomach turned over with…what? Relief? Pleasure?And in his pants, his cock stiffened. Because last time they had been on a plane together, Hannibal had given him the best blow job he’d ever had in his life.Hannibal slipped into the seat next to his and stowed the basket under the seat in front of him. It was almost as if they’d never left this plane. Except for all the memories in between.All the memories, and all the emotion.‘I looked up the orthopaedic registrar after our last meeting, and paid him a visit,’ said Hannibal. ‘He cleared me for travel after all.’‘How surprising,’ said Will, with heavy irony.‘I’m very persuasive. Also, Special Agent Crawford called me.’That made Will sit up. ‘Jack called you?’‘First, he wanted me to evaluate you for fitness to return to the field.’‘I hope you said no.’‘I said no. Whereupon he asked me for my help profiling this person who is using human bodies as mushroom fertilizer.’ Hannibal looked at him steadily. ‘I haven’t said yes. I’ve only said maybe. I won’t intrude on your job without your permission, Will.’‘Because that job is so precious to me?’ Will said it bitterly. ‘With all its blood and nightmares and fear? Help yourself, Dr Lecter. A mushroom farm sounds right up your street.’‘You don’t have to go back,’ said Hannibal.‘What choice do I have?’‘You could return to teaching. You could repair boat engines in Louisiana.’ He paused. ‘You and I could disembark this plane and catch another to Paris.’‘If I did any of those instead of catching murderers, more people would die.’‘Nevertheless,’ said Hannibal. ‘You always have a choice of what to do, or not to do. Both of us have.’The announcement to fasten seatbelts came, and Will closed his eyes again. He kept his eyes closed during takeoff, and during the safety announcement, and while a flight attendant came by another time to refill their champagne glasses now that they were safely in the air.
You always have a choice of what to do, or not to do.
The voices in his head were louder than usual. More resonant. But he didn’t feel bad: not feverish or headachy or sick. He actually had an appetite. Sherlock’s landlady must have slipped something into that tea. Beneath her twin set and pearls, there was something about her that made him think she was the type who’d have a secret stash of marijuana in a tea caddy.I hope it all works out with you and your doctor, Lestrade had said. And: Trial by fire isn’t such a bad thing, sometimes.Trial by fire. Was that the part about slitting a killer’s throat? Or was it the part about receiving oral sex in an airplane restroom?‘Would you like some lunch?’ asked the flight attendant, and Will opened his eyes to say ‘yes’ but before he could, Hannibal said ‘No, thank you.’‘Let me guess,’ said Will. ‘You brought a picnic.’‘Of course. I charmed a chef at Claridge’s to allow me to use her kitchen. May I share my lunch with you?’‘What the hell, why not.’He watched as Hannibal took out the wicker basket, opened it, and began to unpack the cardboard containers in it.‘The wine was a problem,’ he said. ‘One isn’t allowed to take liquids through security, and all of the decent bottles in Duty Free required a corkscrew to open…which you’re also not allowed to carry. So I got bourbon.’ He pulled out a half-litre of Maker’s Mark and two short glasses, pouring a finger of amber liquor into each. ‘I think its smoky flavour will compliment something like hamburgers.’‘You made hamburgers?’‘Technically, they’re sliders.’ Hannibal opened a container to reveal several tiny perfect burgers on shiny brioche buns. Each was held together with a toothpick topped with a single shiny-red cherry tomato.Will reached into the box and picked one out. ‘You made these after I took you to McDonald’s?’‘With my own special sauce,’ Hannibal said, smiling.‘Special sauce.’For a moment, Will had the crazy thought that Hannibal Lecter might be trying to get revenge for having forced him to eat fast food, by substituting his own semen for mayonnaise.Hannibal raised his eyebrow. ‘It isn’t poison. I wouldn’t do that to the food.’Still, Will took a big swig of his glass of bourbon before he bit into his mini-burger.It was gorgeous. It was incredible. It was juicy and smoky and meaty and savoury and tangy and fresh and gorgeous. It was everything that you ever wanted a burger to be, but it so rarely was.He ate it in two bites.‘How’d you make it so good?’ he asked.‘Part of it is the quality of the meat. It’s very fresh, and especially chosen.’‘You are totally infuriating, do you know that?’Hannibal said nothing. He merely passed Will another mini-burger.They ate lunch in silence as they flew from London back to Washington. Away from this place which had been so intense, so beautiful and terrifying, so life-affirming and full of death. Their wordlessness, sitting side by side, felt intimate.Finally, Will said, ‘That was supposed to be a Happy Meal, wasn’t it?’‘I was happy to share it with you.’ Hannibal smiled at Will, gently and a little bit sadly. ‘I’d like you to know that whatever happened in London, stays in London. As far as that’s possible, given the police reports. I’ll let you set the tone for our meetings again in the US, as I promised.’‘Agreed.’‘Good.’ Hannibal poured them each another slug of bourbon, and stood up without touching his drink. ‘You’ll excuse me for a moment.’Will didn’t watch him go. He didn’t need to: Hannibal Lecter’s body was emblazoned on the back of his eyelids. The breadth of his shoulders, the length of his legs, the tightness of his ass. The way he walked slightly hips-forward, like a dancer. His corded wrists and the veins in his hands. His skin glowing, slightly, as he had when Will had been drugged.His voice, loud in Will’s ears. You crave this, he had said in that plane bathroom, as he’d taken Will’s cock in his mouth and given him the most spectacular blow job he’d ever had.
I will go as deep as you want me to, Will. And perhaps, for my own satisfaction, a tiny bit deeper.
His voice was so realistic, though Will knew he wasn’t sitting there. These were words he’d said to Will on the bank of the Thames, looking out over the water. The deep, rich rumble of his voice; that elision of the letter ‘s’ that might be his accent, or might be a lisp.In the end, Will didn’t even need to make a conscious decision. His actions were directed by something bigger than himself. Fever, or gravity. Destiny.It was like toppling over a cliff. Like plunging into deep, deep water with uncontrollable currents.He unbuckled his seat belt, got up, and went to the front of the cabin, to the first-class restrooms. The door was unlocked. He pushed it so it folded open, and stepped inside. Hannibal was waiting for him: standing up, leaning back against the sink, facing him. In the same position Will had taken on their first flight.Will locked the door behind him. The cubicle was very small and close.‘Have I misread the situation?’ he asked.‘You haven’t,’ said Hannibal. But he made no move toward Will. Merely waited.Will closed the small distance between them. He wanted to kiss Hannibal: press his mouth to those curved and hungry lips. But that seemed too…romantic, somehow. Even though they’d kissed many, many times before.Instead, without preamble, he tugged at Hannibal’s belt. He looked straight into Hannibal’s eyes as if into a mirror as he unfastened it, pulled open his flies, slipped his hand into the waistband of Hannibal’s fine-cotton underwear, and pulled out his dick. It was hard already. With the strange, almost hallucinatory clarity Will had, he could see it even as he was staring into Hannibal’s eyes: the other man’s erection, straining and thick, the dusky tip.Then Will crouched down, as Hannibal had done, sitting on the closed toilet seat lid and taking Hannibal’s dick in his mouth with one swoop: so fast and so deep that the end of it nudged the back of his throat.Hannibal let out a muffled groan. He pushed his hips forward, his cock going deeper still, so deep that Will nearly gagged. But he wanted to take it all. Every inch of that beautiful dick disappearing inside him. He pushed forward. Deeper. Deeper.His eyes were open and he could see: Hannibal’s blue plaid trouser front, the edge of his underwear, a glimpse of silvering pubes. But overlaid on that he had a vision as if on a movie screen, as if he were an observer hidden in the shadows, of Hannibal Lecter fucking him against that tree in the park. Pushing his cock into Will’s virgin hole as far as he could go. To the root, as Will gasped in pain and pleasure and discovery.Hannibal’s groan was louder this time and Will suddenly remembered where they were. He’d better hurry, unless they wanted to be caught. If you worked for the FBI, murdering a human being in self-defense was less problematic than having sex in public.He pulled his mouth back off Hannibal, swirling his tongue around the crown of his penis, puckering his lips around the tip before sucking it all back in again, hard. Quick, and fast, and efficient. In, deep, out. A small liquid sucking sound at the top of each stroke; an intake of Hannibal’s breath.Hannibal tangled both his hands in Will’s hair, gently, tenderly, and Will looked up at him. He was gazing down, his eyes focused and intent, and Will felt a sudden, overwhelming urge to consume, to possess, to mark, to plunder. Whose urge was it—his or Hannibal’s? Or both?He didn’t know. He couldn’t tell.He paused in his rhythm to push Hannibal’s trousers and underwear down to his knees. Letting his dick go with another soft pop of lips, he slid the middle finger of his right hand into his mouth, wetting it thoroughly with his saliva as the side of Hannibal’s erection nudged his cheekbone. He felt Hannibal watching him as he reached around the other man’s hip, nudged his finger into the cleft of his buttocks. He took Hannibal’s cock into his mouth at the same time that he slid his finger into his ass.Hannibal’s gasp must have been audible through the door. Will had to work quickly, though that suited him: he wanted that moment of climax, when Hannibal would be pliant and unguarded. Will curled his finger up so that he nudged the small swell of Hannibal’s prostate and he sucked, hard and fast and frantic, bringing up his left hand to pump at the base of Hannibal’s shaft.He felt and tasted when Hannibal was going to climax: his muscles tensed, his balls drew up, his dick grew even harder, his ass tightened around Will’s finger, there was a slight musky taste of pre-come. But he would have known without any of these signs, because he could see the flashes of colour behind his eyes: orange and gold with shooting tendrils of silver, beginning and ending, fire and water and air.Hannibal made a low choking noise. He bit back his cry and thrust hard into Will’s mouth and came. That ancient wood. Will swallowed down his semen, sucked harder to draw all of it out, the whole time looking up at Hannibal’s face.
I own you.
I love you.
You’re mine.
Who thought it?Did it even matter?Hannibal pulled him up and Will kissed him, now, letting him taste himself.The last time Will had kissed him, Hannibal’s lips had been covered with blood. His own, and Ivan Popov’s. They had tasted…‘Delicious.’Who whispered it? Will pulled away and gazed at Hannibal, blue eyes to maroon ones. Together again.Like looking in a mirror.***Will hadn’t been lying when he’d told Hannibal wasn’t afraid of flying—there was a certain relief in your life being entirely out of your hands—but as they made their descent into Dulles, they hit turbulence, the fasten seatbelt sign came on, an overhead locker burst open and someone’s briefcase fell out, and somehow, without him knowing how it happened, he and Hannibal were holding hands. Palm to palm, fingers entwined. Will suspected his was sweating. But Hannibal’s touch made him feel steady.The plane stopped bouncing around within seconds, but they held hands until the plane landed: not looking at each other, not speaking. They only separated when it was time to stand up and disembark. But Will slowed his usual strictly-business airport stride so that Hannibal, who was still limping slightly from the bullet wound in his leg, could keep up.At Passport Control, Hannibal joined the same line as him, and Will frowned. ‘I thought you had an EU passport,’ he said.‘No, I’m a US citizen. I’ve lived in Baltimore for most of my life.’‘But when we were in Heathrow, you joined a different line than me.’‘Ah.’ He smiled. ‘I may have been attempting to make a dramatic exit. All the lines and the heaving of suitcases off a moving belt make for an anticlimax.’But Will didn’t find it anticlimactic. He found it easy, to be in this borderland state with Hannibal, not having to talk, not having to do anything. He’d not fully realised how lonely he’d been, these last few days in London, until he wasn’t lonely any more.It felt as if they’d seen the worst of each other, and now they could relax.He hoped they’d seen the worst of each other.His headache returned the minute they stepped into the Arrivals hall—Will with a duffel bag, and Hannibal with two hard-sided suitcases on wheels—and saw Jack Crawford waiting for them. Massive-shouldered in his good coat, tapping his foot, eyes two dark stones.‘Will,’ he said, almost reprovingly, as if the plane should have hurried the hell up. ‘Let’s go. We need to get to Elk Neck by—’ He’d been turning away, but he stopped. ‘Is this— are you Dr Lecter?’‘Yes,’ said Hannibal. ‘I am.’Jack’s face immediately transformed from stone to sweet honey. ‘Dr Lecter,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Special Agent Jack Crawford. I didn’t know you’d be on the same plane as Will.’‘A fortunate coincidence,’ said Hannibal, shaking his hand. ‘It’s nice to meet you, Special Agent Crawford.’‘Your reputation precedes you,’ said Jack. ‘Dr Bloom referred me to your paper— “Evolutionary Origins of Social Exclusion”? Very interesting. Very interesting. Even for a layman.’‘A layman,’ said Hannibal. He glanced at Will, who could see that he was amused. ‘So many learned fellows going about in the halls of Behavioural Science of the FBI…and you consider yourself a layman?’‘I do when I’m in your company, Doctor.’Will didn’t bother to hide his eye roll.‘Don’t we need to go?’ he said. ‘Nine corpses? Mushrooms?’‘I asked Dr Lecter to help us with a psychological profile of this killer,’ said Jack. ‘He hasn’t told me whether he’s willing.’Hannibal paused. He looked from Jack, to Will.Will remembered the touch of their hands in the plane. How comfortable he’d felt, right up until the minute they saw Jack Crawford.He inclined his head slightly.‘I’m willing,’ said Hannibal.‘Then let’s go. The car’s outside.’Jack took one of Hannibal’s suitcases and turned to walk toward the exit. And Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham followed him, in step with each other, carrying their suitcases and the memory of all they had done together in London.
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"See? See?"Chapter 12 illustration by @LeWendigogo