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The third time Hannibal Lecter invites Will to a dinner party, he says yes.

The first time, Lecter could be excused for not predicting that Will would hate it, knows he would hate it, and would avoid accordingly. The second time made it clear Lecter understood, but didn’t care. The third? The third is so emphatically desirous, so needing Will’s presence despite his guaranteed discomfort, that Will decides he’ll be better off making an effort. Lecter gets the dubious pleasure of his company in a crowd, and Will gets to show him just why a dinner party with him in attendance is a terrible idea.

And, for his pains, he’ll get a good meal.

He pulls out one of his two finer button ups that need to be painstakingly ironed to be presentable. He doesn’t even break these out for lectures; they’re funerals and court only. (And dinner parties, apparently.) Even the few times he’s eaten at Lecter’s with Jack, he hasn’t donned the good stuff, but party equals glitter in his mind, and his primary goal is not to stand out.

He’s probably going to fail. It’s not like he has a waistcoat or a proper dinner jacket.

More attention paid to his beard than usual, some self-critical attempt at product in his hair, glasses waffled over for twenty minutes before being left on his sink. No aftershave at all, because he doesn’t need Lecter judging it silently in front of all his hangers-on. He’s halfway to Chandler Square by the time he thinks to wonder about what he’s going to do with his car. Is there even going to be space for it? Maybe; do the rich and sociable of Baltimore even drive themselves? It’s very possible they’re being dropped off, and it will just be Will’s Volvo sitting out front of the house, looking entirely out of place.

Did he pack a lint roller? God dammit. This is a terrible idea, and he should turn around right now. Go home, call with an apology; he doesn’t even need to lie and say Harley got into something he shouldn’t have, because Lecter will see through it in an instant, and will respect Will saying, “Actually, you know what? No,” more than he will a polite fiction.

Will keeps driving. It’s one night. He may dislike having to be sociable, but he is capable of it, even on maybe three hours of sleep and with a splitting headache. He swallows down some aspirin and cracks the window, hoping to avoid smelling like he’s decided to decant Buster’s anal glands into a new and daring cologne.

There are a few cars parked outside of Lecter’s house when he pulls up, but not enough to edge him out of a prime space, and not enough to account for the bodies he can see through the lit glass. And there are a lot of bodies. Far more than can fit at Lecter’s table, if it’s not some kind of panic-induced optical illusion. But he’s here, and he parks, and he gets out of the car and uses the lint roller (that was stashed in the glove compartment years ago, probably, but is still sticky enough).

He walks to the door, furious that he’s been lied to.

This isn’t a dinner party. This is a cocktail party.

It should have been easier. A cocktail party means corners to hide in. It means the anonymity of being one in a group. It means not being held captive by table neighbors, forced to interact for hours on end.

But table neighbors are a defined audience to perform for, the equivalent of a lecture auditorium. He’s gotten through dinner with Freddie Lounds at Dr. Lecter’s table, for Christ’s sake; a few socialites would have been child’s play. They would have eventually turned to each other anyway, and he could have eaten his dinner in peace.

Instead, Lecter isn’t even there to meet him at the door. A young man in a uniform and white gloves smiles and takes his coat. Will almost asks where Lecter is, but surely everybody asks that, and surely it’s going to be obvious when he wades into the (yes, glittering) sea of humanity.

He should be forgettable (ignorable) in this context, and yet he only makes it halfway down the foyer before somebody greets him. 

It only gets worse from there.

There are at least thirty guests, and circulating waitstaff, and none of the food is more than a single bite, the better to allow everybody to continue talking. Very few people know each other, which makes this a mixer cocktail party, and everybody wants to know who he is, what he does, how he knows Dr. Lecter. As always, the truth is too complicated and too intriguing, and he doesn’t have a ready alternative. Even being taciturn and noncommittal only gets him more attention, as people with too much money and too much botox vie to be the one to unspool his mysteries.

Everywhere he turns is a new performance, another test of his ability to be pleasantly sociable, and he thinks he could murder Hannibal, if given the opportunity.

(It’s either a sign of his quickly mounting irritation and fatigue, or of the intimacy of intended homicide, that he slips into thinking of the man by his first name.)

But an hour in, he’s only glimpsed Hannibal twice. He’s received a delighted smile, gone again an instant later, and then a gentle touch at his elbow with a murmured, “Try the salmon,” before he’s adrift again. There are too many people here, and Will is drowning.

This can’t continue.

His increasingly desperate but too-undirected chase turns into a hunt. He will find Hannibal, and he will ask what the hell he was thinking, inviting Will to something like this. Jack isn’t even here; there’s no halfway-safe port to shelter in.

Hannibal isn’t in the room Will’s in, and he isn’t in the dim cavern of the dining room, where the table is heaped with yet more nibbles and glasses of champagne. Will isn’t intimately familiar with the house layout, but unless Hannibal has retreated upstairs, there aren’t many places left. A study, maybe, but he’s not sure how to get there, so he takes a left, steps into the kitchen.

Hannibal’s not there.

The kitchen is far from empty, though. No, there are more caterers, and Will wants, for the briefest of moments, to grab one of Hannibal’s no-doubt expensive knives from the block and slit either their throats or his own, he’s not sure which.

“May I help you?” asks one of the caterers, voice way too perky to disguise the fact that she hates being here, and hates making herself look clean-cut. She has make up covering a tattoo on her neck, but didn’t blend it down beyond the top of her uniform’s collar.

“Just, uh. Dr. Lecter asked me to get a particular bottle of wine,” he says, lying because it’s the path of least resistance, and then he’s walking into what looks like the pantry like he knows exactly where he’s going, because otherwise there will be more questions. The pantry, at least, is bound to be uninhabited.

It is. No Hannibal, no guests, no nothing, except for mood lighting and racks of wine and an absolutely immense wheel of cheese.

He closes the door to the kitchen and sags against it, brain screaming out the reverberations of everybody he’s been forced to talk to in the last hour, nerves bowstring-taut and under-rosined.

The air in here is cool and close, the lights low, and for the first time since he arrived, he feels like he can think. He shuts his eyes, inhaling, picking up a few stray scents from the kitchen and, more immediately, spices and the tang of red wine. Almost like there’s an abandoned glass in here, and there very well might be. Maybe Hannibal does take shelter in here, occasionally. Maybe he will again, and all Will needs to do is lie in wait.

And then…

What?

He scrubs a hand over his face. His well-groomed face. Well-groomed for the benefit of Hannibal’s guests? No, of course not, and the fact that he’s fooled himself for this long is both impressive and pathetic. No, he’s all cleaned up so Hannibal could see him, and take pleasure in Will performing for him.

If he’s honest with himself, he expected to be seated next to Hannibal, too. He expected that they would have some subtle or unsubtle connection, an alliance. Will would get Hannibal’s companionship and attention, and that would be bulwark enough against every other indignity.

All because Hannibal had invited him.

Sure, he’d invited everybody else, too, but Hannibal knows that Will wouldn’t say yes to this lightly, so to ask must have meant something. Will had assumed it meant something. That was the only reason any of this was going to be worth it.

And instead, Hannibal is a ghost in his own home, and Will feels abandoned, because, of course, he’d come into this with expectations.

Slit his own throat, for sure. The caterers aren’t anywhere near as deserving.

With a huff of a laugh, he pushes himself away from the pantry door. He needs to go. This is far past the point of ridiculousness, and there’s almost no chance Lecter will even realize he left. And if he does, if he asks about it at their appointment-not-an-appointment tomorrow evening, Will can respond with something properly acerbic and withering about setting up his patient-not-a-patient to fail. He’ll have had enough time to ruminate over it to have come up with something appropriately pointed in his own defense.

He takes an irritated circuit of the small room, trying to pull himself together enough to walk back out of here without looking as wrecked as he feels. Wine, too; he needs wine, or the caterers will ask questions. There’s not really enough breadth for him to stomp across the room, but he takes a good shot at it, drawing up to one of the wine racks and staring at the rows upon rows of foil-wrapped necks.

Find the one you gave him the other month. Before Silvestri and Budge and Hannibal looking up at him like Will meant something. But for all Will knows, Hannibal already tossed it as not up to snuff, or maybe even cooked with it or drank it because it didn’t register as being worth saving, and–

And when he turns around, too fast, too irritated to go searching, bottle hastily pulled from the rack in hand, his elbow wings a decanter, already full. The glass tips, rolls toward the edge of the counter. Will swears and catches it with his free hand, but he’s too late. He’s managed to spill wine all over the floor.

He is living in a farce.

Face heating with humiliation, he shoves the decanter back further on the counter and sets the bottle he grabbed beside it, then snatches up a tea towel, luckily darkly colored. Kneeling, he starts mopping up the mess. It’s not a lot of wine; he has that going for him at least. He’s almost got it all cleaned up when he notices that some of it has pooled in a very straight line.

As if there’s a gap in the flooring.

Will frowns and leans closer. There is a gap, and it has nothing to do with the layout of the hardwood.

There’s a door here.

“Don’t,” he tells himself, softly, but he’s already running his fingers across the barely-visible panel, feeling for some sort of catch, and he knows if he doesn’t find one, he’s going to get the folding knife out of his pocket and start checking seams. But the catch is there, and when he eases the door up, he’s met not with the musty smell of an unused basement, but something almost… hospital.

Bleach and metal and the faintest echo of something organic.

Stairs descend into darkness.

He considers, not for long enough, and then begins the climb down, hands out to either side, feeling for railings. He finds them, and the light switch, before too long.

Banks of fluorescents spring to life, cold and clinical in comparison with the rest of Hannibal Lecter’s house, illuminating a cold and clinical space. Tile floor, surgical steel, drains. Chest freezers. 

A meat hook.

Will descends the rest of the staircase, slower now. He knows what he’s looking at. He can’t not know. He doesn’t want to know this, and yet it also makes a certain sick level of sense.

He reaches the floor. Turns around in a slow circle. Wishes he had more aspirin.

“God dammit, Hannibal,” he mutters.

He’s going to need that bottle of wine after all.

Five minutes after Hannibal loses track of Will, he goes looking.

He will freely admit that he’s perhaps miscalculated, drawing Will here for this party in particular. It’s certainly a challenge, and Hannibal didn’t exactly lay out the parameters in advance. But he’s not unreasonable, Will knows that. He likes to think they know each other well now; that Will lasted as long as he did is flattering to Hannibal’s ego, and now he’s free to retreat as needed. To use Hannibal’s home as his own. 

If he’d had another few minutes, Hannibal would have extended the invitation himself. As it is, he fully expects to find Will sitting in the study, with a glass of whiskey instead of another champagne flute, helping himself to Hannibal’s books. Waiting for him, in a little island, a small recreation of the office. 

But he’s not there.

Hannibal frowns, head cocked slightly to one side. The study isn’t empty ; a young sculptor is embroiled in a murmured conversation by the far windows with a man thirty years his senior who has a thing for patronage, in a very old fashioned milieu. Hannibal leaves them to it before they can notice him, and takes a moment in the darkened hallway to consider. He’d have seen Will leave, he’s fairly certain, though he can’t get close enough to a front window to check for his car without getting tied down into other conversations. But assuming he hasn’t left, then where has he gone? Restroom? Upstairs, perhaps, being more willing to violate Hannibal’s space than anticipated?

Kitchen, he decides. Perhaps he even hoped to find Hannibal himself there. The mental image is enticing, if unlikely. Will isn’t the sort to rely on others, ever.

Still, he makes sure his suit is lying well and his hair remains neatly combed back before he steps into the kitchen, just in case. But only catering staff are at work, though when they glance up, it’s wary.

“Is something the matter?” he asks, all calm geniality.

“I–maybe,” says one of the staff, a younger woman who’s all but vibrating with barely concealed nervous energy. “A guest said that you’d sent him to fetch a bottle of wine from the pantry, but he’s been in there for a while now.” To her credit, she doesn’t wring her hands together, or even clutch at the dishcloth tucked into the waist tie of her apron. “We haven’t heard anything, though.”

No, they wouldn’t. The door is quite thick.

“Thank you,” he says, “I’ll take care of it.” It can only have been Will; he doesn’t bother asking for a description. He wonders if Will is going to be primarily angry or overwhelmed. Either way, he’s not likely to be polite. Apologies will be necessary, and they’ll need to be good ones. He’s mulling options over in his mind as he knocks.

No answer.

Frowning slightly, he tries the knob. The door opens as usual. The room beyond is empty, and smells too strongly of wine; he only barely avoids stepping into the remnants of a spill.

He registers that the decanter has moved. A tea towel sits, sodden, beside it. There’s no hint of Will’s aftershave, but then, Hannibal thinks he bypassed it tonight anyway (and had intended to untangle the why of it over after dinner drinks, once it was just Will and him alone). He can, however, pick up on the faintest, sweetest aftertaste of fever.

Will has been here. Will isn’t here now. The caterers would have seen him leave.

His gaze drops to the trap door, slightly lifted up from its flush setting, closed incorrectly.

He allows himself ten seconds to mourn, and then he takes off his suit jacket and sets it, neatly aside. He unbuttons his cuffs. He removes his shoes.

He opens the trap door and climbs down.

He expects one of two scenarios to await him: either Will hasn’t had time yet to process what he’s seeing, and isn’t prepared to defend himself, or he knows exactly what he’s looking at and has already called Jack and possibly armed himself. 

What he doesn’t expect is Will Graham, sitting in one of the comfier seats in the basement, elbows braced on his knees, massaging at his temples with one hand, open bottle of wine in the other. The lights have been dimmed. Hannibal makes no sound as he steps onto the floor, but Will notices anyway. Maybe some electric charge between them, some shifting of ions in the atmosphere, or else Will’s eyes aren’t as closed as they appear.

For all his exhaustion, he is beautiful tonight. He made more of an effort than Hannibal was prepared for. He seems destined to remain full of surprises.

“Do not make me go back up there,” Will says. “Not until your guests are gone, at any rate.”

“Was it really so intolerable?” Hannibal replies.

Will answers him by taking a swig from the bottle of 2000 Valdicava Brunello di Montalcino, the image of St. Michael glowering out from beneath the fist around the bottle’s neck. A muscle by Hannibal’s left eye twitches, from the unpleasant combination of irritation, confusion, and fascinated charm that is circulating through his upper chest at the moment. For a moment, he dares hope that Will is drunk enough that he won’t remember finding the basement in the morning. 

But no. While he’s never seen Will drunk, he knows that the man looking back at him levelly is entirely sober. Not even a well-timed fugue state to spare them from what comes next.

“Why did you invite me tonight?” Will asks, voice pure acid. “It’s not as if your guest list and catering plans changed wildly two hours before the party. You knew exactly what you were making me walk into.”

“I wanted to see what you would do,” Hannibal says.

“Wind me up and watch me go.” He purses his lips. “Well, apparently, this is how I go.” He takes another long pull from the wine bottle, then sets it down beside the chair, running a hand through his curls.

Hannibal wonders if he’s talking about the alcohol, or about the likelihood of his own death.

“I had also hoped,” Hannibal says, drawing no closer, “that if you stayed through the evening, we could speak after. Just the two of us.”

“A reward for my endurance?”

Hannibal tries not to smile. For once, he doesn’t succeed. “Does it appeal?”

Will scowls. “Yes,” he says.

“The opportunity hasn’t been lost.”

Will’s head jerks up at that, and he searches Hannibal’s face. “Well,” he drawls, “I did say I wasn’t going back up there. So I suppose I’ll be here. When you’re done peacocking.”

“I’ll bring you a glass,” Hannibal says, nodding at the bottle. “May I get you anything else?”

Will thinks a moment, then shrugs. “Something,” he says, stretching out the word as if tasting it, “vegetarian.”

His gaze is sharp and steady.

He knows, then. Without a doubt, incontrovertibly, certain and most true: Will Graham knows the monster he is looking at, better than he knew him two hours ago. All it took was a few minutes alone down here.

Hannibal goes to fix him a plate.

With a selection of polenta squares and roasted eggplant nigiri duly delivered along with a fresh wine glass, Hannibal is forced back into his party, a Hell of his own making. He wonders, as he makes smalltalk and smiles and suffers, if Will intended this. If Will knows that he’s transformed an expression of Hannibal’s desire to perform and caretake into purest torture. It’s possible; it’s equally possible that he just doesn’t care.

He wonders, as he talks to Irene Komeda, what Will is doing down there. He seemed so placid, not upset at all. An act? Shock? He shouldn’t have left Will alone, should have at the very least subdued him. That it barely occurred to him to do so until he had already made his choice has nothing to do with the potential for witnesses, and everything to do with a stubborn frustration.

He wanted this night to go a certain way. He isn’t ready for it to be otherwise.

But he can’t shut the worry away entirely. A part of his attention is focused, always, on the muffled ambient road noise. If Will calls Jack, there won’t be sirens to announce the FBI’s arrival, but there will be a change in traffic patterns. If they get as far as busting down the door, would it be better to take a hostage? To surrender, and count on them underestimating him? What are the odds that they’ll have found and locked down the side door?

“We’ve lost your Mr. Graham,” one of the directors of the BMA says, coming to stand at Hannibal’s side as he surveys the picked over (but elegantly adjusted to account for the depredations) dining table. “Is it true, that he works for the Bureau?”

“It is,” Hannibal says, smiling instead of baring his teeth. “We met when I was asked to consult on a case, several months ago.”

“Some rough edges, but entirely engaging. How’d you get him to come?”

“Persistence,” Hannibal says, and wishes Will’s own had held out a little longer.

The last of the guests filter out into the night. The catering staff are gone less than half an hour later. Quiet settles over the house, and Hannibal pours himself a last glass of wine, pockets a syringe of midazolam, and heads back down into the basement.

He finds Will bent over an open chest freezer. There’s a knife on the nearby counter, within reach. His back is to the stairs.

“You don’t like using frozen meat when fresh is available, I take it,” Will says, conversationally, “though you’ve got a nice vacuum pack set up going. And you’ve still got a surprisingly large stock. Does your frustration with humanity outpace your stomach that much?”

“Will.”

His plate is empty and set neatly on the counter closest to the stairs. His glass is by the knife, half-full. The bottle beside it looks mostly empty.

“Not all human, but then, we can’t be the best tasting animal out there. Spring lamb?” he asks, holding up a shank.

“Yes.” He has every opportunity in the world to come up behind Will right now, slip the needle into his arm or thigh. The formulation doesn’t need a vein to work quickly. He doesn’t know why he hasn’t so much as reached for his pocket.

(He does. As insufferable as this is, as raw as his nerves are, as ruined as the night is,  he still isn’t ready for it to be over. He isn’t ready to make a decision.)

“Have you called Jack?” he asks, instead of moving.

Will stashes the cut of meat back where he found it and straightens up, closing the freezer lid and turning to face him. “No,” he says. He might be lying. Hannibal doesn’t think he is. “No cell service,” Will points out.

“Do you intend to call him?”

Will leans back against the freezer, hands gripping the edge. He rolled up his sleeves at some point, and his forearms are tense. “Would you?”

Hannibal frowns. “For my own survival? Yes.”

Will looks past his shoulder, then shrugs. “If I get the chance to call him, then my survival isn’t really in question, now is it? You’ll have decided to let me go.”

He does have a point.

“Do you want to move upstairs?” Hannibal asks, twisting at the waist to gesture back to the trap door. “There’s a fire laid in the study. More comfortable seating.”

Will glances around, but doesn’t ask More ways to kill me? The space may be better equipped for processing than for slaughter, but they both know it holds more than enough tools for both. “To talk,” Will says.

“As promised. You can bring the knife, if you like.”

“A security blanket.” His lips twist. “Sure. This room is fucking cold.”

“Separate climate control system,” he says, because Will seems if not fixated on the practicalities of the space, then at least interested. And there’s something in this idle honesty that is making Hannibal perk up, too. Past the irritation, the worry, the uncertainty, he never thought he could talk to anybody–let alone Will Graham–about this part of his life so simply. Without artifice.

“You’d want it to be, yeah. Helps with the soundproofing too, I take it?”

Hannibal inclines his head, then turns and goes up the stairs. Will follows, and Hannibal tries not to tense. He doesn’t think Will is going to stab him, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility.

Will doesn’t stab him.

“If you’re still hungry,” Hannibal says, with a gesture toward the fridge, “there are leftovers.”

“Maybe later,” Will says, and Hannibal wonders if it’s a joke. Gallows humor, helping Will follow him to the study, letting him settle in one of the chairs before the fire. Hannibal silently sets a decanter of brandy and two snifters beside Will’s knife on the small table between the two chairs, then takes his own seat, wine glass still in one hand, pocket subtly adjusted so he’s at no risk of stabbing himself.

It’s not the same as sitting in his office, but it’s not entirely dissimilar. And they’re finally sharing a drink together. He wonders if that makes them friends.

Hannibal gives Will two minutes before he gets up and starts pacing.

“Why haven’t you killed me yet?” Will asks, at the one minute mark.

Hannibal gazes into his wine. “It would be a waste,” he says, after some consideration. “I’d rather not have to.”

“And how do you accomplish that?” Will leans back, finishing his own wine in a heavy swallow and reaching for the decanter. He doesn’t look at Hannibal. “What can I ever say that would make you trust me?”

“Would you lie to me, to save your life?” Hannibal counters, because it strikes him that Will hasn’t resorted to begging or threats. It isn’t that he doesn’t want to live; Hannibal has seen the aftermath of how he’s fought before, knows the fire is in him. And it isn’t even that his enemy being Hannibal has made him give up. It’s something else. Will is viewing this as a puzzle. He’s looking for a solution, just as Hannibal is, and certain options are simply off the table.

Or maybe he wants it to be a clear and simple fight, if it comes to that. Fang and claw, blood will out.

Honest.

“No,” Will says. “Because it wouldn’t work. Because you’d know.”

“Then I suppose you’d have to tell me the truth.”

What truth, Hannibal isn’t sure. Even Will promising to keep his secret, and being entirely genuine about it, feels wrong.

This is all happening too soon. For all that Hannibal thinks that Will knows him well, they don’t know each other well enough. Will’s brain is smoldering, when it needs to be burning. And for all that Hannibal takes delight in shifting his plans on a dime, he feels moribund now, sluggish and drained.

Will finally splashes brandy into his glass, too much, the scent sharp and floral. “I’m not sure there’s a correct truth to tell you,” he says, standing. (He made it four minutes, Hannibal notes idly. Maybe the alcohol helps.) “Not one that will matter.”

Hannibal forces himself to consider it. As he does, he withdraws the syringe from his pocket and sets it on the small table. He sets aside his wine glass, barely sipped from, and pours his own brandy.

Will watches him sidelong, hand trailing along the mantel.

“A sedative,” Hannibal says.

“We were going to have this conversation no matter what?”

He inclines his head, spreads his hands. “I wanted the option.”

Will accepts that, no doubt fitting it into the puzzle of the monster in front of him.

“As for truth, we can start from what I know,” Hannibal says, when Will’s wandering takes him close to one of the windows, the one where the sculptor had sat earlier in the night. “I don’t want to kill you. And you aren’t sure what to feel about me at all.” He pauses. “You know what I am.”

“The Chesapeake Ripper? Yeah, figured that out. The timing of that dinner party during the Silvestri case makes a lot more sense now.” Will tips his head back against the window, staring up at the high ceiling. “Copycat?”

“Yes. And more besides.”

“Right. So, yes, I know.”

“And you’re very calm.”

He shrugs. “Working through some stuff.”

Hannibal crosses his legs and forces himself to sink back into the chair. The brandy is smooth across his tongue. “No room to panic when you’re inside the monster’s lair,” he ventures.

“No room to panic when I’m still trying to put all the pieces together. When I’m still more angry about a party than I am the human tongue I found in your icebox.” He laughs, weakly. “Did you know, right before I found that door, I’d thought–”

He cuts himself off and drains half his heavy pour.

Hannibal waits.

Nothing. Will resumes pacing, shaking his head, and yes, there’s the agitation Hannibal expected. The bare minimum. Oddly, Hannibal suspects it’s because Will feels safer, the longer they talk. 

“What did you think?” he prompts.

“Doesn’t matter,” Will says. He’s almost out of view. But his cheeks are pink, and it might just be the alcohol, but…

He takes in, anew, how Will is dressed. How long he stayed before going, not in search of an exit, but in search of a reckoning.

“You thought,” Hannibal ventures, “that I’d invited you because of the connection between us. And you liked that. You wanted to be on the inside, for once; a conspirator, with me.”

Will grimaces and then he’s out of sight, behind Hannibal’s chair.

“I’d realized,” he says, voice rough and closer than he was before, “that I’d expected to be seated at your side, at the dinner table. Even though we’re work colleagues at best, and the guest list was sure to be full of people way more important than I am. And that’s about the moment when I panicked and spilled the decanter and found your lair, when I just meant to run away.”

“You felt abandoned,” Hannibal says. “Not just ignored, but rejected.”

“Don’t,” Will says, and now he is close, just behind the chair, and Hannibal isn’t surprised when he sees Will’s hand snatch up the knife. “Don’t make it sound like something it’s not. I got attached like a stray to the first person who shows it affection. It’s pathetic.”

“You were right,” Hannibal offers, even as the knife blade comes to rest just below his jaw. He tilts his head back, and he can see Will now, his brow furrowed in pain more than anger. “That was where I’d have seated you.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Would you like to see my draft seating charts for the two dinners you didn’t attend?” he asks, carefully setting his brandy aside. He never looks away from Will’s eyes, and Will doesn’t break his gaze, either. The knife is steady. So is Hannibal’s pulse.

He wonders what Will’s is doing.

“Do you still want that connection?” he asks, setting his hands palm up on the armrests.

“You want me to want it. If I think I’m special, I’ll trust you. I won’t hurt you.”

“I don’t believe that.” Hannibal wets his lips. “Feeling special, being special, has never granted you comfort or complacency. It only increases your mistrust. But you are special. Unique, and important to me. In ways I am only beginning to understand.”

Will’s jaw tenses, but his gaze drops to the syringe. Unused, deliberately displayed. 

“I have not survived this long by being sentimental,” Hannibal says.”I am vicious in the protection of my life.” But not now. Not with him.

“You take risks.” Will looks back at him, then, after a moment’s hesitation, he circles the chair. The blade never leaves Hannibal’s throat. “I’m a risk. Knowing me at all is a risk.”

“And yet I’ve done everything I could to keep you close,” Hannibal says.

“The better to sway my thinking. Keep tabs on how near I was to seeing you.”

“And dinner tonight?”

He’s close enough that their knees brush. Hannibal could reach out without leaning forward and catch hold of his thigh. He says nothing, waiting for Will to come to his own conclusion.

“You ignored me all night,” he says. “Avoided me, even. You wanted to watch me struggle.”

“I wanted to encourage you to take refuge in my home,” he corrects. “And I wanted to be able to see you.”

There’s a delay, but Will’s cheeks stain red after a moment, and Hannibal can see he wants to look away or otherwise retreat. His grip on the knife shifts.

“And you wanted me to see you,” Hannibal adds.

“It doesn’t matter,” Will says. “It stopped mattering when I found your murder basement.”

Hannibal tilts his head to the side, and shifts just enough so that the blade catches on his skin. Not enough to cut, not until one of them moves. “Did it?”

Will’s answering exhale is shaky, and the knife wavers. And then it cuts in, deliberately, and traces up, up to Hannibal’s ear, and there’s blood, hot, along the column of his throat.

Will kisses him.

It’s fumbling and awkward and urgent, and the knife comes very close to slicing into his skin once more as Will shoves his hands into Hannibal’s hair, holding him steady. The cuts on his throat are shallow, bleeding but barely stinging, easy to ignore in the face of– this. Of Will panting against his mouth, twitching and nearly pulling away when Hannibal traces his tongue along his lower lip. He tastes like brandy, sharp and bright and thick. If Hannibal reaches out, he can pull Will into his lap. His hands lift from the chair.

Will lets go of him abruptly and slams his hands down onto Hannibal’s wrists. He pulls away, enough to stare into Hannibal’s eyes as he struggles to breathe steadily again.

“Show me,” Will rasps, furious. “Show me the seating arrangement.”

He’s lost his fucking mind.

There’s no other explanation for how he can be leading Hannibal Lecter, at knife point, into his own dining room, a syringe of something no-doubt incapacitating or deadly in his other hand. No other explanation (save for the alcohol) for how he’d let Hannibal goad him into kissing him, trying to prove a point and failing so spectacularly he proved another. No other explanation for what he intends to do next, if this night keeps barreling forward at a hundred miles per hour.

He makes himself go over every single bit of evidence he saw in that basement. The human body parts, reduced to cuts of meats and carefully packaged. The medical tools, the drains, the art supplies left over from crime scenes he’s memorized every detail of. Hannibal is the Ripper is a fucking cannibal, and Will…

Will is almost relieved.

This, at least, makes sense: why a man like Hannibal would have the slightest interest in having him for dinner.

(In both senses of the word.)

Maybe that’s why he’s not terrified, or furious, or anything much beyond exhausted and deeply curious. Angry, yes, occasionally, but it rises to the top, then dissipates on the next wave, pulled under, replaced by some other emotion. Sadness, at the loss of his life. Betrayal, occasionally, but in a muted way. Longing, often.

A need to know, more and more, roaring above it all.

They step into the dining room, where the lights are low, as usual. All the food has been put away, though there are bottles of booze on the sideboard still, and some olive oil and other nonperishable seasonings tucked in near the centerpiece (the length of the table, ferns and bird skulls and ruby columbines). He doesn’t miss the way Hannibal frowns at the items; Will wonders if the catering company is going to be down an employee soon.

“Show me,” Will says again, certain he’s delusional, too tired not to ride the current of it.

Hannibal looks at him for a long moment, then goes to the head of the table. Will follows, close enough that he’ll be able to add more blood to Hannibal’s perfect clothing, if needed. The coating down Hannibal’s throat makes his mouth water, makes his hand tremble slightly.

(Maybe there’s another reason he’s still here. Maybe there’s another reason he kissed the monster even as he wounded him. But if he turns to face it, with its pepper-hot breath on the back of his neck, its antlers arching toward the ceiling, he’s going to lose track of Hannibal. And he can’t do that.)

Hannibal pulls out the chair to the right of the head seat. “Here,” he says. “The seat of honor. Where I always put you, Will.”

And that’s true, isn’t it? He thinks back to the dinner with Freddie. He sat in that exact seat. But that had felt natural, obvious, whereas his expectation of tonight had felt like fantasy. The difference, of course, is in the context. And tonight, he’d wanted Hannibal to lavish attention on him in front of the connections Will doesn’t give a single shit about, but who might matter to Hannibal.

They stand across from each other, separated by the chair. The knife is warm in Will’s palm. Hannibal doesn’t look away from him. His lips are reddened, but it’s hard to see in the dim light.

“I’d have you there again,” Hannibal ventures, softly. “I would have my freedom and your company, both, if it were possible.”

“Isn’t it?” Will asks. Slowly, almost casually, he sets down first the knife, and then the syringe.

Hannibal’s gaze grows sad. Poignant. Will searches it for signs of artifice, but he can’t see the scaffolding. No, it’s true regret, he thinks. Exactly what Will had felt in the study.

“I can’t trust you for as long as you’re in Jack’s orbit,” Hannibal says. “Even if you intend to keep my confidence. We both know your nature. You’ll have reactionary, reflexive desires to confess. To unburden yourself. And I can’t ask that you resist them.”

Will’s laugh is short and sharp. “You’re right,” he says. “I can’t live a double life. I need honesty, Hannibal. Without it, everything becomes unmoored.” He licks his lower lip, then adds, softer, “And we have honesty. Right here. Right now.”

The moment Will leaves this house, the bubble will burst. The night barrels on ahead. Will makes his choice.

“Which means,” he says, into the silence Hannibal hasn’t dared to break, ”you’ll have to steal me.”

The chair tips and crashes to the floor before Hannibal is conscious of tossing it aside. But he must have, because then his hands are on Will, and he’s bearing them back against the table, right where his place setting would have been. Will lets him. He doesn’t reach for the knife, or the syringe, as Hannibal’s mouth captures his. Instead, he opens, pushing himself up onto the table, spreading his legs to encourage Hannibal closer.

It might be a trap. Hannibal doesn’t care.

It feels as if everything is happening out of order, as if the linearity of the world no longer presides as a governing rule of existence. Will knowing his nature, this coming together of their bodies, this leapfrogging of responsibility and obligation–it all spins out of control around them as Hannibal undoes the buttons on Will’s shirt, as Will returns the favor, shoving his jacket from his shoulders.

It’s beautiful.

“Condom,” Will groans. “Wallet. Back pocket.”

Hannibal finds it, breaking away long enough to look and– “It’s expired.”

“Yeah, well, better than nothing.”

“Upstairs–”

“I’m not going upstairs,” Will says. “Take the risk, Hannibal.”

It’s his name on Will’s lips that does it, even though he knows, logically, that the bedroom would be more comfortable. But the bedroom is for some other timeline, and there’s a bottle of olive oil close enough; it will do. The condom isn’t latex.

He drops his mouth to Will’s neck, setting the foil packet aside and working at Will’s belt instead.

“I want the chance to understand you,” Will says, voice already wrecked, as Hannibal shoves his pants down his hips. Hannibal’s not sure if he’s explaining to himself or to the both of them. “To find myself in your reflection.”

Hannibal answers him with a nip at his throat as he pushes Will onto his back, legs bent back at the hip. He doesn’t have the patience for a full disrobing, worried that pulling away for even an instant will have this all evaporating into some hazy fever dream.

“I can’t promise I won’t turn on you,” Will continues. “Won’t try to kill you, when I come to my senses. But–”

“Who holds the devil, let him hold him well,” Hannibal murmurs, palming Will’s ass for just a moment before reaching for his own fly. “He hardly will be caught a second time.”

Will’s head drops back against the table with a breathy laugh, and he takes his own cock in hand, stroking pointedly. He bites his lower lip, and Hannibal wants to devour him. (He settles for rolling the condom on; it doesn’t break or feel particularly brittle. It’s still a terrible idea.)

“I will not let you go,” Hannibal promises him, slicking his fingers with oil. He knows he should be promising the opposite; that Will’s freedom accompanies his own, that he can be a civilized monster.

But Will wants honesty. And there is no other way for this to work than total consumption.

He presses his fingers into Will’s body, and the other man yields to him, hands scrabbling for a hold on the table. There is none. And with his legs in the way, Hannibal can’t lean down to gather him up. Another time; another place.

There will be many.

“Like that, like that, fuck,” Will gasps as Hannibal works him open, and in this he is as exquisitely sensitive as in everything else. It’s Will, though, who somehow has the presence of mind to fumble with one shoe, to free a leg from his pants, and then he hooks that leg around Hannibal’s waist and surges up to kiss him. He gets a hand on Hannibal’s throat, right over the stinging line the knife left before, and his fingertips dig in. Not choking, but prying, and Hannibal wants to let him peel everything away, every surface level.

He adds a third finger and fucks him a little harder.

Will’s hand spasms, then gentles, even as he bites at Hannibal’s lower lip, explores with a hungry tongue. At the thought of feeding Will in the future, at a hundred other tables, Hannibal groans. Eventually, he thinks, Will’s curiosity will get the better of him. He’ll want another taste. And another. Hannibal can cook to please any palate; he’s sure they’ll find some compromise.

(It’s not a stretch, not entirely desperate. He’s already seen the way Will looks at the Ripper’s kills. Knows how he talks about them. The memory makes his cock throb.)

He removes his fingers and thrusts in deep.

Will arches, head tipping back, and Hannibal bites at his throat. He breathes there, hot and wet, until Will adjusts enough to rock his hips, a wordless demand. Then he lifts his gaze, meets Will’s eyes, and begins to move, in the wreckage of Hell around them.

Neither of them look away.

Will is vocal, poised on the border between ecstasy and suffering, and Hannibal loses all capacity for gentleness. He holds Will in a bruising grip, unwilling to let him go, unwilling to allow his brutal thrusts to push Will away from him. And Will takes it, all of it, one hand back against the table to brace himself, the other tangling in his hair.

(Another night, much like this one, where Will doesn’t know who he is, but stays anyway; not here, but in the bedroom, or in the study, gentle things, just enough ferocity below the surface so that like calls to like. It would have been good. This is better.)

He’s never going to dine at this table again. Never going to cook in his kitchen again. His last night, and it was caterers who used his stove, who plated his food, who washed up afterward. There’s so much to do, to uproot a life, but Will has given him a gift: time, and something to run towards, instead of away from.

“Hannibal,” Will moans, and Hannibal changes the angle of his hips, pushes Will down once more. Will’s spine bends, and he writhes, taking, demanding. Anchoring. Hannibal covers him with his body and kisses another gasp of his name from Will’s lips.

He is going to learn every inch of Will’s body, the way he’s already learned so much of his mind. The exact note of his moan when Hannibal takes his cock in hand, the precise intonation of his cursing when Hannibal works his prostate. There’s so much to know, so much to uncover. Hannibal’s drowning in it.

“Harder, harder,” Will pants, and then, “come here, let me kiss you,” and Hannibal follows every order. He never thinks not to.

When Will comes, it’s with all the force of a bowstring snapping, and it pulls Hannibal helpless in its wake.

The house settles around them, silent, as they cling to one another.

And then Will’s hand leaves him. Hannibal tenses, waiting for the touch of blade to skin again. The knife is right there, within reach.

But Will picks up the syringe instead. He presses it against his own thigh.

“Do it,” he murmurs. “Now, if you’re going to do it at all.”

He regards Will for a long moment, wondering if he should object. Should find some other path for the two of them. But this is the path they have made, when all else has gone out of order.

Hannibal takes Will’s hand in his, guiding his thumb over the plunger.

“I’ll tell you when to stop,” Hannibal says.

And Will pierces the needle into his thigh and pushes.