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It hits him on a mild spring morning.
The world is quiet and still and Hannibal is cooking breakfast, his features warm and mellow in the light. Their kitchen is brighter than previous days, a clean, compact space swathed in gentle sheets of sun. It is the zenith of spring, which must be a good thing. Surely they’ve spent long enough in the dark.
Will leans against the doorway. He can smell bacon, eggs; domesticity. Meat sizzles in the pan and Hannibal is humming a soft tune, something airy and classical, something that Will recognises but cannot place. So he focuses on Hannibal instead.
In the light, his hair is a keen shade of silver. The glare sharpens his cheekbones, thins his lips, emphasises his bare forearms and sleeves rolled to the elbows. Today he’s wearing a linen shirt instead of his typical sweaters, and it is vaguely endearing to see such a cold cold man drenched in sun.
Absently, Hannibal reaches to season the meat. Anger strikes Will like the hilt of a blade.
The Verger brand strains through his shirt—a sickly silhouette that bulges in the light, gapes like a shadow. It is wide and thick and pulpy and glares through the fabric, bolder in the sun. It is a deformed, putrid thing. It is obvious. It is disgusting.
It is a statement. As long as that mark remains, Hannibal belongs to the Verger family.
This sudden emotional onslaught is surprising. Will has known about the brand for months, has touched it in dark hours of the night. He has traced it like a lover. He has clawed it like a beast. It isn’t the brand’s mere existence that irritates him—Will doesn’t care about Hannibal having wounds, for he is often deserving of them. It’s the significance of this wound that irks him.
Still leaning on the doorway, Will counts his own scars, the innumerable ways that Hannibal has marked him. So much of his flesh has been stolen by Hannibal. So much of him belongs to him.
It’s unfair that Hannibal cannot say the same.
There are the wounds they share from the Dragon and the second-hand slits from Matthew Brown, but nothing direct, nothing personal. Nothing engraved by him alone.
Over the years, Will has grown particularly sensitive to power imbalances. It’s unfair that Hannibal has scarred Will and has no scars in return. It’s also unfair that Hannibal is burnt, marked, claimed by someone that isn’t him. He is bound to another, whilst Will is bound to him.
Bile rises in his throat. On his tongue lies sharp spite, bitter antagonism. Envy.
“Something on your mind?”
Hannibal hasn’t turned around but Will can hear the sly smile in his voice. Always blithe, always omniscient. He understands Will’s moods in the same way that he understands blinking and breathing—as fundamental bodily functions, things he’s known wholly and intuitively since birth.
“What do you think?” Will says, lightly accusatory. He doesn’t feel like speaking about this now, not on a morning so tranquil. But then again, the tranquility throbs with temptation. It is so much more powerful to shatter.
“Your gaze is unusually scathing. What are you thinking?”
Will shifts against the door frame, rolling answers over his tongue.
“I’m feeling combative,” he decides, prioritising emotion over semantics.
Faintly, Hannibal’s lips quirk upwards.
“Petulant?”
“A little."
For the first time this morning, he turns to face Will. His eyes are colder in the sun. Black irises, thin pupils. Love grows narrow in the light. It constricts, prevents more from entering.
Then he smiles. “Can it wait until after breakfast?”
Will likes to think that he’s a reasonable man. He recognises that lashing out over the brand is, for the most part, unreasonable. For once, it’s existence isn’t part of some elaborate scheme or trick or orchestration. Hannibal didn’t ask to be burnt.
But every scar he carved into Will was orchestrated. Will may as well be walking around with a barcode on his forehead screaming Lecter. Lecter’s. It isn’t insulting—in some ways, he’s proud of the scars that he’s accumulated—the fact that Hannibal chose to wound him so cruelly, so intimately. The fact that Hannibal chose to wound him.
But the problem remains, because Hannibal has no intimate scars in return.
Malaise rolls over him in a heavy, rumbling wave.
Today, Will chooses to discard reason. He’s been too tame recently, too passive, like lukewarm water. Now the water is boiling. It’s rising to the brim, spilling over.
His palms itch for spilt blood.
Before he can rein himself in, Will sees himself explode in the reflection of Hannibal’s eyes. He charges forward and the world sparks in tandem.
Hannibal jumps into motion. He abandons the breakfast, fists up and stance wide—reeking of defence—but he doesn’t step back.
The kitchen smells of cooked flesh.
Will dives and crashes into Hannibal brutally, seamlessly. Then, the eruption of pain—a kick to his stomach. The dagger of an elbow in his side. Will gasps, stumbles. Then with more hunger than before, he slams back into Hannibal.
Will shoves him against the fridge, one hand clawing at his hair, the other yanking his collar. Nails scraping skin. Body against body. The rich heat of violence.
There is a flash of light and love and energy, then Hannibal punches him square in the jaw.
The world spins. His bones stutter with shock. In the midst of it, Hannibal smiles with bared teeth—Will lunges back into life, into greater assault.
“This is rather unexpected,” Hannibal says, dodging a fist at his carotid.
Will ducks and throws another punch. “It’s been building up.”
“Clearly.”
Will steps back and snatches a meat tenderizer from the counter. He is quick, he is violent. He is a man and he is starving because this delicate dance is growing tedious, unbearably so, and it needs to end now.
Hannibal’s eyes darken. His pupils dilate. They jab, kick, slam—stalling the inevitability of the tenderizer—and when Hannibal twists to grab a weapon of his own, everything sparkles.
There is an opening.
Will seizes the chance and smashes the tenderizer into his spine.
One hit. Two hits. Three.
There is a hideous shudder, the consequence of blunt force impact, and Hannibal lets out a startling, sudden heave. When the fourth hit strikes, he crumples like a paper dove onto the tile.
Will blinks at the ease in which Hannibal fell.
He must either be playing dead or letting Will off lightly—those are the only two ends that this performance could meet. When a minute passes without movement, Will settles on the latter.
“I hope you’re not paralysed,” he says sardonically. Hannibal smiles into the tile.
“That was rude, Will. Was it your intention to break my back?”
Will almost smiles back. “Your back’s not broken. Should I take over the cooking?”
“Please do. The bacon should be perfectly done by now, but the eggs may be distastefully hard-boiled.”
“I don’t mind hard-boiled.”
“You’ll mind them rubbery.” Hannibal sounds bitter. “This is a dreadful waste of food. Could this outburst really not be contained for later?”
Will stares at him, brandishing the tenderiser. “No.”
He disposes of the eggs and freezes the bacon in complete, almost comical silence.
When everything is done he returns to Hannibal, who has shifted onto his side to watch.
“What do you plan to do?” he asks, curious above all else.
“Haven’t fully figured that out yet. Roll onto your stomach.”
“Manners, Will.”
He grabs the sharpest knife on the block. “Please.”
Affected only by the words and not the weapon, Hannibal squirms onto his front. Undisguised discomfort wracks his movements—the spinal injuries might be worse than intended. That’s a pleasant surprise.
Will lowers himself beside Hannibal, sitting so that he has a direct view of his back. The tile chills his bare legs. Their bodies touch. It is oddly intimate, more comfortable than it should be, and his muscles hum with anticipation.
He rests the knife tip on Hannibal’s upper back, the top of the brand. It is clearer now, glaring grotesquely through the fabric. He presses the knife into his shirt gently, delicately.
Then he drags.
At first there is nothing but the tearing of linen and the gape of a fresh wound. The cut gleams clean and milky white, as if the vessels were shocked by the obtrusion, as if they didn’t see it coming. But then the moment passes. The wound floods with a monsoon of blood.
So he begins.
It is a messy ordeal, rife with torn fabric and skin, blind up-and-down rage. Will only wants to make a mess of him, of the brand. He drags and slits and slices madly, everything shimmering in the light, blood spilling like calligraphy, his blade a leaking pen.
It is cathartic. It is beautiful. Carmine trickles down Hannibal’s sides and coagulates at the floor, the hem of Will’s shirt and shorts. With steady hands he rips open the shirt—ignoring Hannibal’s dramatic sigh of dismay—so that he can see the brand fully.
The injury glimmers with gore, but it is hardly enough. More damage has to be done.
He alternates to scraping with the knife edge but the bulge of it remains, the tissue bloodless because scars don’t bleed even if they should, even if he wants them to. The only blood is from the skin around it and inside it. It has pruned his fingers. It is buried in his nails.
Will stares and stares, listening to Hannibal’s low pant beneath him, the impossible placidity of his breath.
He places two fingers on his neck. Predictably, his pulse is calm and even. His skin is cool.
“You want to remove it,” Hannibal states the obvious. There is a strain to his voice that was not there before—a small victory that Will revels in.
“Observant.”
“Perhaps you’d find better results with a grater.”
With sudden consideration, Will stills.
A grater on Hannibal’s skin, his scar tissue. To grate off the brand.
It is such an insane, unfathomable idea, but it could work in theory. Bizarrely, this could give him what he wants. Of course Hannibal would come up with an idea like this, even considering the expense to himself. Of course he would encourage Will to do so.
“Okay,” he murmurs, resting the knife on the base of Hannibal’s neck. “I’ll try a grater.”
Will returns with a clean, sharp grater, and this time it is difficult to sit beside him without touching clotted blood. He picks up the knife, still balanced, leaving only a small red smear on Hannibal’s skin.
He places the grater against the scar tissue and checks Hannibal’s pulse again. Still even, but slightly elevated.
Satisfied, Will smiles. Then he strikes.
He grates back and forth, slowly but forcibly, watching the scar tissue shed. Hannibal’s muscles coil tight and tense under the pressure, throughout the pain, but he does not resist the violence. Will is slow, he is meticulous. Skin scrapes off in miniscule strips and Hannibal’s breath hitches faintly at each interval.
The flesh smells sharp and ripe, like copper. It is easy to lose himself in the moment. Will permits his body and mind to separate, a schism yawning between them, the difference between physical reality and the state of pleasure, hedonism, dreams—the id and nothing more.
Time transforms like a healing bruise. Soon, the sun has lost its place in the clouds, returning to grey skies, old dimness. This thing, this urge that he has set out to fulfill—it’s complete.
Will leans closer to the wound. The expanse of Hannibal’s back is scraped raw, exposing a pink and angry dermis. The brand has been erased and replaced with something new, all-encompassing. Something that will bloom into a gluttonous, greedy scar.
Hannibal’s fingers grip the tiles weakly, pressing into the crevices. He glistens with sweat. He must be in immense pain, even if dignity prevents him from saying so. He is covert in his suffering. Will is overt in his satisfaction.
Carefully, he places a hand flat on the centre of the wound. Hannibal twitches but says nothing, so Will presses in.
It is slick, sticky, wet. He digs his nails into torn dermis, clawing harder when Hannibal twitches, stifles a groan. Still, there is no protest, so Will lowers his head and smells the injury.
Rich and metallic, it emanates a sweet, special heat. For a moment Will is struck by how strange this all is—here he is with Hannibal, above Hannibal. Doing what he wishes to his body without any consequence.
“You’re being surprisingly permissive,” Will comments. “Doesn’t this bother you?”
Hannibal studies him from the corner of his eye. “Seeing you in your element could never bother me, Will.” His voice is thick and low.
Will digs harder. “Even like this?”
“You already know my answer.”
Content with the response, he lets go.
Now that the brand itself has been removed, Will wants to do something different. There is no point cutting into the wound—it will be a solid mass once it heals, with no room for special carvings. Instead, he returns to the knife and moves towards Hannibal’s lower back.
He feels fleshy but firm. When Will presses the knife tip into Hannibal’s back, he doesn’t flinch.
“Do you know what I’m about to do?” he murmurs.
“I can speculate.”
Carefully, Will shifts so that he is straddling Hannibal, body on body, weight on weight. Hannibal grunts, but only lightly. In this position he has the perfect angle.
Will is meticulous in his carvings. He forms the W carefully and cautiously curves the G, pressing deeper when Hannibal squirms. Then, he underlines the letters with a neat, singular swipe.
Perfect.
It is difficult to see the result with all the blood. He wipes away red streaks and thick clots but fresh blood rushes to replace it too eagerly, too recklessly. It does not stop to think, and this is something that Will can take advantage of.
He leans forward and presses his lips to the sliced underline, that special slit of skin. Then, very carefully, he parts his lips around the wound and sucks in.
There is a light, lazy resistance, the tug of half-clotted blood, then the slit gives way to a dam of pleasure.
Beneath the burst of iron is something darkly sweet and slightly salty, the peculiar richness of deoxygenated blood. His teeth rest on the edge of the lesion, gently scraping its borders, then his tongue slips into the chasm. Hannibal stiffens, then loosens. Will pushes in for more.
Flesh throbs amidst the blood, a gauzy barrier that he teases with his tongue, tempts with his teeth. Will can feel his body reacting in tandem, stiffening in the ways it shouldn’t, shuddering in the ways it should. The more he feeds, the more light and love screams through his body. Hannibal remains docile and passive and still, so still, every muscle in his body tense and poised in submission, permission.
It is delicious and it is beautiful.
Eventually, Will is satiated.
He pulls away, a string of spit glistening from mouth to wound like the slick of a pearl. His face is damp and sticky. His beard is matted with coagulated blood.
Will slumps onto Hannibal, energy seeping from him in a sudden sweep. It is an awkward position, every part of him messy and wet, but Will can’t find the strength to care.
Hannibal remains still, stiller than he should be, and Will slides a hand towards his pulse. It’s slow, murky but present. Still conscious, still here. But he’s uncharacteristically quiet. The blood loss must finally be hitting him. Will has to move.
“I’ll be back,” he murmurs, mouth scraping Hannibal's ear. When he stands up blood clings onto everything it should and everything it shouldn’t, but Will doesn’t mind.
He takes care to wash his hands and wrists, pruned fingers and dirty nailbeds, but for the rest of him the mess can linger. He only needs to be sanitary. Will heads towards the bathroom, scanning the shelves and cupboards for supplies that will undoubtedly be there. It’s a good thing Hannibal treats the bathroom like a hospital storage unit.
Will returns with saline solution, gauze and bandages. No painkillers, because he wants Hannibal to feel the full force of this pain and he knows that Hannibal would reject them anyway.
“I come with gifts,” Will says, kneeling besides Hannibal. Unsurprisingly, he hasn’t moved.
"You've had a change of heart.” His voice is thick, low, tight. “Feeling benevolent?”
"I’m always feeling benevolent.”
“As recent events have demonstrated.”
Will can’t help but smile. Hannibal is remarkably pathetic like this—slumped on the floor in his blood and sweat, muscles twitching, head straining to look at Will. The air is beginning to smell foul.
It’s a privilege to see Hannibal so undignified.
Will holds a hand to his forehead, brushing back damp hair. Hannibal stares up at him, eyes black and beady.
“It’d be sensible to begin the wound care."
“The more you comment on it,” Will begins washing the wound, revelling in Hannibal’s discomfort, “The less I want to.”
“A stubborn, pathological resistance to demands and authority.” Hannibal frowns. “I am not your authority, Will.”
“And yet.”
“Then, a stubborn resistance in general.”
Will cleanses roughly. “Don’t call me stubborn.”
Hannibal has no response but a sly, knowing smile.
As he works, the clouds shift and bloat and blacken. When he is done, the sky is the colour of iron, dark stone.
“It’ll rain soon,” Hannibal says while sitting upright, mostly upright, against a kitchen cabinet. His back is padded thick with gauze. Bandages wrap around him like serpents.
Will shifts beside him. “Funny that. It was so bright in the morning.”
“April showers. Spring has us wrapped around her finger. We must plan our days to her will.”
“I think I have you wrapped around my finger.”
Hannibal casts him a sideways look. He is still weak, sweaty, half-dressed. His pompous shirt has been discarded. His back must be aching from both the dermal and spinal injuries. Yet he does nothing. No retaliation, no condemnation. Only acceptance.
“So it seems,” he says after a pause, “but the same applies to you. What were your motivations for all…this?”
It’s clear that he knows, but he wants to hear it from Will himself.
“I, uh. I couldn’t stand seeing that thing on you,” Will spits. “Mason Verger has no claim over you. It disgusted me.”
“I wasn’t too fond of it either. It was awfully ugly.” Knowingly, he smiles. “Was that all?”
“No.”
Hannibal waits for elaboration. It is difficult to separate his pupils, full and bloated, from the black of his irises. His hair is tussled. His lips are pale. A peach-coloured bruise blooms ripe on his cheekbone.
Like this, he looks incredibly sweet, incredibly tender. Will wants to bite into him like a plum.
He takes a breath and continues.
“I didn't—I don’t like it when things are imbalanced. You’ve done so much to me. You’ve left me with so many scars.”
“Only two,” he counters.
Will doesn’t answer because, strictly speaking, it is true. But it doesn’t feel true, because—
“Sometimes I feel like a festering wound of your making.”
That wasn’t something he meant to say aloud, but the words rolled out regardless, and without regret. Hannibal grows quiet.
“You were wounded before I met you. If we had never met, you would still be wounded. You would die with an abrasion in your chest.”
“And you healed that abrasion?”
“Only you can answer that question.” He pauses. “I wasn’t aware I had such an injury until you, Will. It alarmed me. Though you healed mine.”
Will studies him, struck by a sudden irony. “I certainly haven’t healed anything today.”
Hannibal chuckles at that. Low, easy. The clouds are growing darker outside, casting shadows across the kitchen, and nothing about him sparkles or shines, his features dulled by the lack of light but he looks beautiful regardless, as he always does, as he always will. Will looks away.
“Sometimes that abrasion feels like it’s been filled with rot. Like it’s infected. But I know it wasn’t you—it was never you. That rot was always in me. It is me. And I know that with you,” he pauses, “I feel lighter and freer than I have in my life. You know that. I know that. It’s all down to my perspective. And that...tends to shift.“
Hannibal’s face is soft and warm. “Your perspective is dependent on your mood. It's down to the colour of the clouds in the sky.”
Will doesn’t refute the comparison. “I hurt you today because I wanted you to feel the rot I feel on these days. Because you’ve, uh, you've scarred me personally and I haven’t personally scarred you in return. But now I have. Now we're equal.”
“Even Steven,” he says in light mockery.
“Mm.”
Hannibal raises his hands to cup Will’s face cautiously, slowly. Like one would approach a spooked dog. With a flash of irritation, Will grabs Hannibal’s jaw. His fingers sink in, turn white—he pulls Hannibal towards him and, irked by the widening curve of his lips, catches his lip in his teeth and clamps down.
There is a burst of blood like the pop of a blackberry. Will dives deeper, sucking on the burst lip with new vigour, a vigour that Hannibal returns without hesitation. Will pulls and chews and kisses, tearing at the lip in every way he can, pushing his tongue into Hannibal’s mouth and finding his, fighting his. He smells of cruor and saline. He tastes of copper and cranberries.
Hannibal’s hands move down, down, down, wrapping around Will and pulling him closer, bending so their groins rub together. Pull, push. Heat. Friction. A stirring below born of passion and hunger, that filthy, bestial hunger for one another that never fades, only blends into the background.
Heat throbs at his pelvis. It rests there, screaming through his loins, whimpering in the language of love.
Push, pull, sparks between their groins. Will’s hands move everywhere, gripping Hannibal everywhere he can, everywhere that hurts. He sinks into the bruises and the scrapes and the gauze, the massive expanse of gauze, writhing as Hannibal’s body tenses, as his cock strains with the movement, at the pain. Heat, breath, blood, sweat. Hannibal squeezes his cuts and bruises in tandem, and the pain is so exhilarating that his cock bulges against his, straining for pleasure, begging for release.
Hannibal moves with him, tearing off his shorts and grabbing his swelling cock roughly, cruelly. Will backs up and Hannibal lowers himself even though it must hurt, it must strain, easing Will’s cock into his mouth. There is an immediate calm and then the furious sparks that follow, easy pleasure stroking the length of him, immense heat, incredible warmth. Slick with saliva, soaked in blood.
Through half-lidded eyes he sees Hannibal, similarly hazy but alert, attentive, focused on maximising his pleasure. It’s always thrilling to watch him degrade himself for Will. He leans back, fading into the white-hot pounding, the sparkling nerves, the exhilarating twist of pain and pleasure and pressure rising, rising, collecting throughout, about to burst. He is about to burst.
Then Hannibal withdraws, quick as a knife from a sheath, and offers the rag on the floor previously used for his wounds.
Will stops, scrambles, and clamps the rag around his squirming cock.
His world explodes into warmth and whiteness, a roaring in his ears the frequency of love.
Time passes. Will remains still, panting, too fucked-out to think. When he opens his eyes the clouds remain grey and brooding; he cannot be sure how long it’s been. Hannibal is staring at him, pupils bloated, mouth stained. The rag has been discarded.
Quickly, he does up his boxers and wipes the blood from his mouth. Hannibal is smiling, smiling still, smiling too widely when Will sits beside him.
“Not in the mood to swallow?” he asks, half-joking.
“Not today.”
Will raises his eyebrows but says nothing more, too cushioned in bliss to care.
“I scar your back and you do this in return?” he says finally, cautiously.
“Indeed.” His smile widens. “I am grateful for this day, Will. Whenever emotions like those from this morning rise, you must dispel them as soon as possible. You should never hold them in. Not with me."
“Oh, I don’t.”
“Nor do I.”
Understanding strikes like the snap of a bone. Will knows what will happen next.
Hannibal seizes him. One arm twists to clamp his arms behind his back, the other snakes around to his mouth so he can’t spit, can’t bite.
This is unexpected and predictable. Will knew this was coming. He recognised the pattern, he always does, but today he succumbed to his body and his heart, he let them rule. But the knowledge was there in the back of his mind, in that place of darkness and rationality. It always is.
“Be calm, Will,” Hannibal says with a smile in his voice. Will refuses to stop thrashing, so he clamps his arms harder, restricting almost all movement. With Hannibal’s body pressed against his, he is blocked from using his legs too, pressing against bruises from their earlier fight. It should be impossible how strong he is. How firm, how giant, how broad.
“There we go.”
There is the pin-prick of a blade at his neck. Thin, sharp—a scalpel? Hannibal doesn’t carry one at home anymore. It must’ve been stored nearby, hidden within drawers, between utensils—he must’ve grabbed it while Will fetched medical supplies, then slumped back on the ground like nothing happened. Like he was in too much pain to move at all. He took care to preserve the spilt blood, keep it in the same place, keep his own blood in the same place. Intensely planned, calculated, premeditated. Perhaps from the moment Will stepped into the kitchen, the second he lingered too long at the door.
How typical. Hannibal always has to have the upper hand. Always has to punish those who hurt him.
Will knows he would do the same. He isn’t innocent when it comes to hiding weapons, having backup safety measures. These things are inevitable—they know each other. Their bloodlust is mutualistic.
“Stay still now,” Hannibal says lightly, and a sharp slash follows. Will cannot help but wince. “I must admit, I found the initials rather superfluous.”
More slashes follow. His flesh screams but Will does nothing.
“I can appreciate the personal touch, but initials are rather uninspired. One could even call them dull."
Will writhes beneath the power of his touch.
“Still, we share the same view on the intimacy of wounds. I believe that the scars I’ve given you are intimate, and I suppose initials are an abrupt, albeit straight-to-the-point show of intimacy. But if you’re in the mood for abruptness, then I shall return the gesture.”
The kitchen swims. Will twists to look him in the eye, even if the awkward angle forbids it, even if he has to strain and push more than his bound body can handle. Hannibal, visible in the corner of his eye, tilts his head to meet Will’s gaze. He smiles, a twisted thing stinking of love and pride.
It is clear by the thin, swooping lines that he is carving his signature into Will. What a dramatist. Will would be vaguely endeared if he wasn’t preoccupied by clean, clear brush-stroke pain.
There is a long, thin slash and then the blade resides, leaving the tell-tale burn of fresh lacerations. Then there is something warm and wet and gentle against it. A kiss, deep but fleeting. Hannibal withdraws, slowly releasing his grip on Will and returning to his side, tucked beneath the kitchen counter.
“Touché,’ Will murmurs, unable to hide the smile. “You just had to upstage me.”
“Unintentionally. I only returned your gift—with my own personal flair.”
“And you called me superfluous.” This time he laughs, low and breathy, and Hannibal watches him with a wide smile. In glimpses, it reveals his teeth. Blood coats some of them. It has stained his lips the dark shade of cherries. It has collected in the corners of his mouth.
Will glances at the window.
“Look.” He points. Hannibal follows his finger with curious focus.
“The clouds have finally split,” Hannibal comments. “A well-timed moment of catharsis.”
Rain throbs against the glass, progressively increasing in intensity. Will cannot help but relieved at the sight. He says nothing, only continues to listen and watch.
“In Mayan mythology, it is believed that the god Chaac committed adultery with his brother’s wife, the moon goddess. He was then punished by the other gods, and his tears of regret and agony are what we now recognise as rain.”
“You feeling regretful?”
“Not particularly. I quite like the depiction of rain as a result of karmic punishment. The aftermath of a conventionally bad deed—the emotional release that follows said deed.”
“Hmm. I can appreciate that,” he decides after a pause. “Separate the ‘regret and agony’ and focus on the spilling of emotion. On the punishment.”
“We have punished each other today, Will. The sky reflects this and shows us the conventional aftermath, even if our emotions differ from Chaac’s.”
“I was always told that rain is God pissing on us,” Will says, only to be crude and contrarian. But Hannibal doesn’t bat an eye.
“Yet another connection between rain and punishment.”
“Not necessarily. If you have to go, you have to go.”
Hannibal shakes his head, smiling lowly. “I should dress your wound. We wouldn't want it becoming infected.”
“Oh, ‘course we wouldn't,” he says sardonically. “It might ruin the signature.”
Hannibal smiles. Then he digs his nail into the signature underline, moving across its length, making sure it burns. There is a hideous, brutal sting but Will only stares, only watches him do it—gleaming eyes, lax brows, a soft curve in his lips. This monster. This beautiful, strange man.
Then Hannibal meets his gaze. He stops, rises to get the supplies and says nothing more.