Chapter Text
For Will, fly-fishing was the only immersive experience that made his imagination go quiet. The groans of the dead were drown out by the occasional chirps of tiny birds hidden in the trees, the river babbling its morning song. He could feel its water pressed against his galoshes, the tide swirling along his thighs. The river always moved forward no matter what blocked it. There had to be something to learn in that perseverance.
He carefully lifted his fishing rod, waiting for the junction to come above the water.
“Pull back at a forty-five degree angle,” he murmured to himself, the motion so familiar that it had become a chant. The fishing line arched above him, the lure only dancing on top of the river before Will snapped the line back again.
“Bit of an unfair advantage when you’re up against an entomologist.” He let the false fly hob across the river’s surface, feathers bright against the blue. No algae—one of the reasons Will liked the place. The reel clicked as he reached into his vest and drew out his flask. Coffee. Tepid. A half-hearted splash of whiskey. The taste was awful but he paused at the burn at the back of his throat. Drunk, after a single sip?
He lifted the flask, squinting. A small note was tied to it, the instruction neat and unmistakable:
“Drink me.”
He had seen the calligraphy before.
Will pouted, considering the chances of there being a Wonderland.
He took another drink, this time tasting black cherry and raisins. He savored the Amarone’s “particular sweetness” before he closed his eyes, pinched his nose, and let himself fall back. From there, the river took him.
The rush of water collapsed into a single vibration, a low, resonant note that climbed his bones and into his ears. Will felt it rearranging his weight, his balance, as if the it were taking measurements. His hair would even float, curls hovering around his face.
The riverbed gave way beneath his boots. Silt bloomed around his ankles and calves in a cloud as the bottom sloped and dipped. Without thinking, Will knew where to place his feet and began to walk, limbs slower as the pressure fought against him. When he turned his head, the motion lagged, dragged thin by the water. A breath escaped him, and bubbles slid free from his mouth and nose, scaring off a cluster of greenside darters. Their colors flared of acid green and silver before they were gone, swallowed back into the murk Still, he walked on. Will never questioned how long he had been under, or why his chest hadn’t begun to burn. Questions belonged to the surface.
The silt moved around him, following him as if he were a shadow.
I’m not even Charlie Brown chasing the football. I’m Pig-Pen.
But he saw it in the distance: a glow he was drawn to like a guppy towards the shining bulb of an anglerfish. Not once did he consider that there may be a jaw of teeth waiting for him. He continued until the light was unmistakably door-shaped – his front door. By the time he noticed, it had been opened.
“Dad.”
It was a beautiful sound – light, sweet, and clear as a bell. Will could feel his breath hitch as he muscled up the words to answer.
“Abigail.”
She was leaning against the doorway, her long brown hair settling around her pale face, bright as the moon. The scarf she had around her neck was baby blue, matching her eyes. “Come inside. Tėtis is making dinner.”
“Who?” Will asked when Abigail moved aside. The word barely left his mouth before the pressure vanished.
Will stepped fully inside, and the river was gone.
No water clung to his clothes. No dirt followed him into his house. The vibration cut off as cleanly as a switched radio, replaced by the hum of his old refrigerator working too hard. Everything was how it should be: dog beds on the floor, his desk with all of its trinkets in the right place. Even the lure he had been working on was untouched, orange feathers clamped in the fly-tying vice.
Had he not just been using that?
The door shut behind him with a gentle click. When the dogs crowded around him, Will reached down, absent-mindedly giving them scratches while he tried not to be too stunned at how maddeningly normal everything was.
Then Abigail took his hand and his heart nearly exploded.
She was gentle and Will let her guide him to his modest dining room. The table, used sparsely for work and a morning cup of coffee, was spread with expensive china he didn’t own and two candles he didn’t remember buying. Their wicks flickered with small flame, casting the room in an intimate light. At the center of the table was an arrangement of floral and quail feathers. The greens and browns were rustic, cattails making Will think of the riverbed. A single bleached antler curled up through the moss.
“Will.” Hannibal’s voice was too warm to startle.. He was dressed in the same shade of blue he’d worn in the ambulance that fateful night, sleeves rolled past his elbows, medical gloves fitted snugly over both hands that held a cast iron stove. Both of them were slicked with blood
“You’ve arrived just in time.” Hannibal set the dish down, leaving behind a red smear on the white ceramic. “We’re about to have dinner.”
A practiced hand keeping Devon Silvestri from having one last victim.
A horrible thought came back to Will when he had met Hannibal’s eye.
“Will?”
Having to give himself an internal shake, Will forced a sentence out. “You’re, uh, covered in blood.”
“Am I?” Hannibal turned his palms upward, examining the mess with disconnected interest. The blue latex was covered in glistening scarlet. In some places it had started to darken, flaking when Hannibal moved. He smiled, and Will realized Hannibal found whimsy in his confusion. “An occupational hazard. I suppose you can say that I’ve been ‘caught red-handed.’"
Before he could interrogate Hannibal further, Abigail chimed in.
“My mom always had me wash my hands before dinner.” She sat down, shrugging. “But now she’s only a box full of ashes and a stain on some concrete.” Abigail sounded cold – “surprisingly pragmatic.”
“Urn,” Will corrected lamely. “Your mother’s ashes are in an urn.”
“Either way she’s dead.” Abigail hooked her hair behind her ears. “But now I have you.”
“Both of us,” Hannibal assured, peeling off both of his gloves. “Neither of us will leave you stranded. ”
“You almost ruined dinner.” Abigail told Will, picking at one of the quail feathers. She let it run through her fingers, noticing the difference in spots and stripes. Will realized she was thinking about it dead. “It took you so long to get here...we were worried you wouldn’t make it.”
“Excited," Hannibal assured, setting the gloves aside. They disappeared from the table as if they had never been there at all. His hands beneath were clean, unmarked by cuts or stains, the blood existing now only as memory or something perhaps much worse. Will stared at the empty spot anyway.
“I got held up,” he said, and the words felt mechanical as they left his mouth. He couldn’t remember where he’d been held, only the weight of water, the insistence of the current. “The river.”
"You always talk about the river.”
Will didn't have time to respond, as there was a ‘thump!’ that made Will take half a step back.
A fish pressed itself against the window, its eye rolling, milky and unblinking. Its mouth opened and closed, opened and closed, until Will became uncomfortably aware of the rhythm in his own heart, and how closely it matched. Rationality had been stalking him since he had let the water take him. Now it was slipping a knife between his ribs and twisting. “How…how did you get here?”
“I snuck out again.” Abigail tilted her head. “Is that a problem?”
Will's thoughts felt swollen, inflamed—ideas rubbing against one another until they hurt. He kept seeing things that didn’t belong together and feeling how neatly they fit. The sensation made his teeth ache.
“What’s for dinner?” he asked, because if he stopped talking, he was afraid something else would start. But the room answered when the candles shuddered. Not out, just enough to bend. Will felt a presence pass behind him, close enough to raise gooseflesh along his arms. The air brushed his neck—wet, heavy, smelling of iron and rot. His stomach lurched.
He looked down at his hands.
They were clean, but his skin felt wrong. It was tight, overstretched, as though something beneath it were trying to move. He rubbed his palms together and imagined them coming away slick, imagining the sound they would make. His fingers curled involuntarily, knuckles popping, the joints protesting like they remembered being used too hard.
Meanwhile, Hannibal set the dish on the table. The lid came off with a soft sigh, warm steam rising. Under the rosemary that burned his nose was something sweet and bloated. Will knew the scent. It lived in his sinuses long after a crime scene was scrubbed clean. It clung to hair, to memory, even to the backs of his eyes. Will pressed his teeth together until his jaw hurt, afraid that if he opened his mouth, something else—something true—would come out. It was the smell of meat that had once been someone.
He looked across the table. Next to Abigail was a pallid corpse, body bloated and skin peeling. Garret Jacob Hobbs, nine bullet holes and all.
”I see you,” he rasped, cracked lips turning up into a smile that made Will think hell may be real.
“Please,” a carving knife was somehow in Hannibal’s hand. He gestured it towards the head of the table. “Take a seat. We’re not anything but gracious guests. Well,” he took away Hobbs’ plate. “ – some of us.”
“What is it?” Will asked, voice fraying as he clung for whatever sense of normalcy was left. He dragged his sleeve over his mouth, but the smell seemed to seep through fabric, through skin, straight into his bloodstream.
He sat down and Hannibal began to carve. Will could hear skin crackle beneath the blade.
“Lechon ulo—roasted pig’s head.” The crow’s feet at the corners of Hannibal’s eyes deepened, and Will realized, with a distant, unraveling clarity, that he must have smiled often. It suited him.
“But without the pork.” Hannibal slid the cut of meat onto Will’s plate with ceremonial care. “Much like what I had prepared in my own kitchen. Though I prefer to think of this as a rebirth, rather than something meant merely to fill our bellies.”
“A killing of what was…” Will murmured.
Hannibal inclined his head, proud that Will followed his cookie crumb trail.
Then Will looked down.
At the center of the white plate lay a slab of his own caramelized cheek, darkened and puckered with a faint constellation of stubble still visible. His breath hitched. When Will raised his eyes to Hannibal, his body was already betraying him, trembling, recoiling. The three of them – two living and one dead – only stared at him, smiling.
“See?” Hobbs rasped again.
Will screamed. Or thought he did. The sound never quite made it out as water flooded his lungs and smothered everything. Noise, light, sense all vanished until there was only silence. He stumbled barefoot across the cracked riverbed, scraping his hands and feet, choking, slipping toward death as he fell to his knees, creating new splits in his skin. He could feel hot rivulets of blood dribble down his legs as he lay there, utterly defeated.
He did not realize the stag was there.
It moved quietly, unseen, its presence warm against him. Its antlers slid beneath his shoulder and lifted him onto his side with gentle strength. Its muzzle brushed his cheek, soft,, holding him in place without force. River water spilled from Will’s mouth in ragged coughs. Air followed, burning and sweet. His chest shuddered as it remembered how to breathe again. When his eyes finally focused, he saw it—still beside him, calm, patient, watching over him. The stag lowered its head and touched him once more, gentle as a promise, before stepping back and letting him rest safely on the rough dry riverbed.
Back in Baltimore, Hannibal had come to find Will fast asleep on the master bathroom’s floor, whimpering and twitching as his mind concocted another onslaught of nightmares.
Even out cold Hannibal felt the need to talk to him: “I will help you find the shape of the demon that sits on your chest,” he said quietly, careful not to stir Will from the necessary evil that plagued him. Hannibal sat down, admiring a strong jaw that was uneven and almost always clenched. He was beautiful.
Hannibal knew the cold floor would stave off Will's fever – or at least it would make it feel so. Hannibal gently pushed him onto his side, daring to rub Will’s back as he loosened his own tie with his other hand. Even in sickness, Will Graham held Hannibal’s gaze without knowing it, every ragged breath, every subtle wince, every faint flicker of pain hypnotized him like a spell. Will was impossible to look away from, a living contradiction of vulnerability and strength, and Hannibal felt as though his own heart might fracture under the weight of needing him so completely.
It went far beyond looks; Will was the only living soul that would, in time, accept Hannibal as the man that he was.
In Hannibal’s mind palace Detective Pazzi’s voice was taunting.
“The thing about monsters,” Pazzi said, sliding a matchstick along a thin strip of red phosphorus. A flame caught, its flickering light revealing a face Hannibal knew looked much older now. Pazzi lit his cigarette, its end pulsing red and orange in the night. “ – is that they can be slain.”
If only Pazzi had thought to look up.
Hannibal let a bit of rubble fall onto the detective’s head before jumping to the neighboring building’s roof. He had class in the morning and a boy named Gabriele whom he wanted to kiss again.
Hannibal moved a damp curl away from Will’s ear. His voice was like honey. “I would like to kiss you.”
Will coughed, Hannibal's voice bringing him back to reality.
“Why?” There was real guilt in his tone, the back of his throat making his words sandy and thin. Hannibal disliked this step of Will’s journey—when Will felt compelled to drink down society’s poison that made him turn his back to his true self.
But it wasn’t only for Will. Hannibal had always understood how to disguise loneliness as abundance. He surrounded himself with people, curated them the way he curated his menus. He charmed guests laughing over flutes of champagne, fingers glistening with honeyed fat as they reached for bacon-wrapped dates stuffed with goat cheese. Conversation flowed easily. Appreciation was abundant. No one ever suspected hunger where there was such careful excess.
Hannibal had cured the meat himself, after all. The meat had been named Charles.
Of all things, Hannibal was reminded of Franklyn.
Franklyn, who was lonely in a loud unabashed way, always begging to be seen. Franklyn had wanted Hannibal’s company like a starving man wanted bread, and it had made him obvious. Unbearably so. However, he had said something that Hannibal could not shake: “I worry about hurting. Being alone has a dull ache, doesn’t it?”
It did. Even Bedelia turned her cheek at his own pitifulness.
Hannibal took a deep breath in, making sure that every word would not scare Will away: “I made you Okayu. It’s a simple Japanese rice porridge that will be gentle on your stomach, waiting for you whenever you need it.”
“You didn’t have to do that.” Will was on his elbows, looking far too pretty for a man who had spent part of the night retching. But he sounded grateful, just like a friend would.
“You’re in my care, Will. It is my obligation..” It was the perfect excuse to dote on Will without suspicion. They had kissed, yes, but humans were rarely so simple.
Will snorted weakly, the sound catching halfway into a cough. Hannibal waited, knowing that Will would interpret help as something contextually condescending, but he did offer a hand. Will’s palm was clammy, almost too slick to hold onto. With a strong pull he was up, immediately crossing his arms to self-sooth.
Hannibal reached out, brushing his thumb beneath Will’s eye, wiping away moisture that wasn’t quite a tear. “You fight even in your sleep,” he said softly.
Will shivered at the touch, looking away when he remembered the bloody gloves.. “You’re… hovering.”
“Yes,” Hannibal agreed, unapologetic. “I am.”
“I still need to shower.”
“I’ll make sure to keep your food warm.” He kissed Will’s temple and Hannibal could feel him lean into it.