rhymeswithcannibal | Until we get a real season 4...

Until we get a real season 4...

[Continuing from thread here.]

The weather forecast for Bethany Beach, Maryland said there was a 30% chance of thunderstorms for the next two days, but currently all the weather seemed to be bringing was cloud cover just dense enough to turn the entire sky steel gray.

Hannibal had a spring in his step as he slid out of the passenger side of the rundown pickup truck they'd bought for cash and never transferred out of the original owner's name. They could leave this behind without worrying that it would ever ever track back to them. No breadcrumbs for Uncle Jack at this marina to have him looking at boats that had been docked for a minimum of three years and then recently left.

"It's the farthest slip from the parking lot," he said as he opened the tailgate and reached in to drag a heavy, wheeled cooler out and settle it on the gravel at his feet.

Five months after they'd died at the cliff house, Hannibal had put some effort into changing his appearance. His skin was tanned, his hair was longer and shaggier, his beard was full, but could never be full enough to hide his distinctive cheekbones, and he was wearing jeans, work boots, a heavy fisherman's sweater, and a bandage on his left hand that he ignored as he worked.

"The keys are in a combination lockbox hidden on deck. I engaged a service to come in quarterly to ensure that the boat was aired out and maintained to a functional standard. We shouldn't have to spend too much time getting our house in order before we can leave."

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"I never said it wasn't." He had enjoyed himself, enjoyed watching Hannibal.

If he had fits of temper, they only emerged in the presence of Hannibal.

"Like a previously contracted limb that has worked to regain range of motion and is enjoying the fruits of that labor." He was at the halfway point of working the scalpel under the brand, cutting it away from Hannibal's body.

And that made it practical. They'd been living very intensely since their fall and they'd needed that time out. Still, they were starting to go around in circles and that was a waste of time and energy just then.

And that was a blatant lie.

Hannibal said nothing for a moment, then cracked a quick smile. "That's a fitting analogy both for our overall circumstances and for this immediate situation."

He pulled away from the basement for a moment, letting the heat of the sun beat down on his back rather than the burn that was building where the scar was already separated from the underlying muscle.

"When you have removed the scar, you can administer the local anesthetic." At least the second stage could be more comfortable.

Not in the slightest.

"I thought you might appreciate it." There was warmth in his tone that conveyed the half smile he wore, one that reached and warmed his eyes.

Will did not quicken his pace though he was nearing the end and wanted to be able to give Hannibal the anesthetic. Cut after cut, he worked the blade through to free the skin he held up with tweezers. Finally, with one last press of the blade, the burn was fully excised. Will lifted it, gingerly, with the forceps and put it in the waiting bowl.

"And it's gone." Let the last mark of Mason Verger on their lives disappear.

The scalpel and tweezers were set aside and Will picked up the preloaded syringe holding the anesthetic. "Now we ruin the flavor of the rest of the meat."

And he began to insert the needle at the first point of injection, just as they'd practiced, and pressed carefully on the plunger to only administer a few mLs before moving on to the next injection site.

"And I do." He appreciated Will's wit and his fits of temper, his flashes of humor and his brilliant mind. He appreciated him for wanting to cut away the mark Mason Verger had left on him, and he appreciated him still more for wanting to eat it.

They really were meant for each other.

"Gone, much like Mason himself." He hadn't moved this whole time, but once Will had distributed enough anesthetic around the excision site, the tension in his shoulders slipped away and he let the beach recede to return his full awareness to the basement.

"For tonight's meal we only need what you've already taken. The rest of the meat can continue to be efficiently preserved."

They were meant for each other. They had made each other compatible for themselves, shattering, breaking, grinding down the sharp edges of the other until their edges aligned together.

Will watched Hannibal's shoulders ease and waited a moment to let the anesthetic fully circulate through the area he was about to suture closed. It was a longer process, though not as long as the excision itself. Will pressed down and spread the skin flap so the edges approximated to the edges left from the brand's removal. When the skin was in place, he picked up the curved needle and surgical thread, pricking it through Hannibal's skin and beginning to sew.

Microsutures would have been a better choice, cosmetically, but were for a hand more skilled than Will's. At least this mark was given to Hannibal by Will himself and Will would find he was unexpectedly pleased by the sight of it.

"I'm not sure I should offer a quip about dessert when you're not supposed to be straining your shoulders and back."

It hadn't always been a pleasant process, but that also fit who they were.

The suturing was much easier to lie through. He could relax, process what sensation filtered past the anesthetic, and think about the meal he'd planned. The first step would be putting the meat into the marinade he'd already prepared. Second step was to rest and let the marinade do its job.

He knew the scar wasn't going to be pretty, but pretty wasn't the purpose here. No scar Will could leave him would be uglier than the brand he'd just excised.

"That comment requires you to follow through with the quip." Will knew that Hannibal's curiosity was one of his weak points after all.

The pressure of the needle breaking skin and pulling as Will tied off the stitch would be easily felt, after all. Only the pain receptors were blocked by the anesthetic, not the pressure and touch receptors.

Mason's brand would be elevated to their table, consumed, and then Mason Verger could be eased entirely out of mind, relegated to the shadows of memory. Though Will's most vivid memory was of him sitting in Will's arm chair in Wolf Trap, cutting off bits of his face and feeding them to Will's dogs.

He hadn't been entirely pleased with Hannibal about it.

Will grimaced, "Ask me later, when we're both upright and I'm not sewing your skin together." Because it was inviting verging on crude.

At worst it was mildly discomfiting. In truth, he could have dozed off then without much effort. The act of will to lie entirely still through the unanesthetized part of the process had been tiring in its own way.

Hannibal quite enjoyed the memory of Mason Verger feeding his face to Will's dogs. The man had brought it on himself, appalling creature that he was. Despite that, he was well aware that Will had been not best pleased with him for it, but Will shouldn't throw stones, at worst Hannibal was simply guilty of feeding them people food.

"I'll be certain to remember." And prod Will into completing the likely innuendo. "Perhaps after I pour you a drink."

Will was not throwing stones at Hannibal feeding his dogs people food with actual people in it. He was understandably piqued at Hannibal enticing his dogs into consuming human flesh. It is a rational and understandable pique.

“I have no doubt you’ll remember,” Will said dryly. “But I will take that drink.”

He tied off the last stitch and cut the thread, tossing the needle on the cart with the rest of the bloody supplies. The drape was next, Will carefully removed the adhesive edges, then balled the whole thing up and tossed that on the cart. “Do you want to look at it before I put the dressing over it?”

It was a somewhat understandable, if somewhat hypocritical, pique.

"You've earned it." He lay quietly while Will finished his cleanup and rolled onto his left side when Will had taken the drape off. "Yes, I would very much like to see it." And in the meantime, he was stretching his neck up to see the circle of his scarred flesh that Will had put in the bowl.

"A picture for your scrapbook?"

He will be very displeased if Hannibal feeds the foster dogs human flesh.

The mirrors he had intended to set up for Hannibal to watch his own back alley surgery with were laying on top of the freezer and Will gathered them up. He offered one to Hannibal, then stood behind him, the mirror in Will's own hands focused on Hannibal's fresh half circle of sutures.

"To go alongside the handwritten recipe you will use to prepare it."

He didn't anticipate having a surplus of human meat to waste on dogs. Not with Will's constraints on his hunting.

While Will fetched the mirrors, he pushed himself upright to sit on the table. He moved carefully, favored his right side for now, and didn't try to go farther than sitting. He took the mirror and moved it until he could see the place where He'd worn the Verger brand for the past four years. He smiled approvingly and shifted the mirror's angle to see Will's face. "Thank you. You did well."

The recipe card was already written. He'd had ample time to consider and plan and settle on a relatively simple preparation and presentation. There was no need to have any pretense about this meat.

A bonus to his attempts at curtailing Hannibal's fun.

In the reflection of the mirror, Will caught Hannibal's gaze with his own. "Mason Verger's last major fingerprint in our lives gone. Replaced by Will's fingerprint, this one willing accepted by Hannibal. There was a sense of relief, the space after a breath held then released, for nothing have gone wrong in the process.

He lay the mirror down and turned again to Hannibal's back. Picking up the roll of silk tape, he tore off four lengths, one by one, lining them up with the barest tip stuck to the edge of the table and the lengths dangling off. With a careful touch, he applied the non-stick gauze pad to Hannibal's wound and, one by one, took a length of tape to secure the long edges of the gauze.

His hands dropped slowly to the table, splayed to the side of and behind Hannibal's hips. He leaned in slowly, keeping a careful distance between his chest and Hannibal's back, voice quiet as he said, "I don't like the idea of you being prone and pained under someone else's knife."

You're welcome.

A moment later, he stepped away to pick up the camera he'd left earlier next to the mirrors, on top of the freezer. A polaroid. Aesthetic.

Edited 2017-12-08 18:09 (UTC)

Curtailing Hannibal's fun was about as safe as shaking a bottle of Coke and immediately opening it. The pressure would be released eventually.

May Alana provide a win for nurture over nature with his son. Hannibal didn't mind the mark on his back now that it had a better provenance. Scars were just markers on the road in their household, neither of them unmarked by the lives they'd led, separately or together.

He kept the mirror and watched Will as he applied the dressing, and was rewarded with being able to see Will's face when he finished. The words were just as satisfying as having the scar removed, possibly more satisfying in their way. Will had come so far. The man he'd first met would only have been able to voice such a sentiment with self-recrimination. Not so his Will.

"What you have excised is for the record, but the mark you left behind is not?"

Fun in moderation.

Will's brows drew together, "I thought about it. A visual record of the immediate post removal wound to contrast the end, healed scar. But I find myself not inclined towards sharing this exact moment with anyone." The scant drying blood and serous fluid at the edges of the wound, the orange stain across the square of skin exposed during surgery. These particular things were Will's alone.

"When we've changed the dressing, if you're still inclined to indulge me." Will knew Hannibal would be so inclined.

It was not just a picture of the brand in the bowl, but of the mess of things atop the cart's once sterile field- the scalpel, the curved needle with a length of suture thread still attached. The snips, the tweezers. All with scant traces of blood.

All things in moderation. Including moderation.

"What part of this did you find most meaningful?" He took his time standing, keeping his left hand on the table until he was certain of his footing, then circled around Will to retrieve his shirt and pull it on, taking care not to tug at the sutures as he did so.

He circled around behind Will to look over his shoulder as the polaroid developed. "You didn't make that a question because you already know the answer."

Not helping him relax.

"What part of this wasn't heavy with meaning?" He turned his head just enough to see Hannibal from the corner of his eye. "You met a practical need by indulging my very impractical want." He knew Hannibal had his own reasons. He also knew that Hannibal had reservations up until the very first cut. Then he had committed. "There was a certain vulnerability in your being unable to remove the brand yourself, of having to lay still and accept someone else's blade in your skin."

Will held the polaroid between two fingers, the image beginning to emerge, colors and shapes surfacing from a flat pool of ink black nothing. "I didn't make it a certainty so you could decline if you didn't want to."

He'd offer ways to help Will relax, but won't when it would give Will the opportunity to use his healing back as a reason not to indulge.

"It was all meaningful. I asked what had the most meaning for you. Was it my vulnerability or my trust in you?" Of course he'd had reservations. It had been unlikely that Will would cause excessive damage, but it hadn't been impossible. "Or was it my pain, freely given into your hands?"

He was close now, every breath bringing in a melange of scents that he sifted through before focusing on Will's scent. He knew the smell of his fear and his anger; this was something different. "I agreed to participate in your record of our time. I won't decline now."

Can't risk puling those stitches, Hannibal.

"The overarching trust you put in the whole situation." That trust ran through each act like a thread, tying the whole piece together. "The trust implicit in that vulnerability with a knife at your back, the gift of your pain into my hands and the trust that I would not exacerbate it needlessly."

Will could feel Hannibal behind him, the heat of his body and the air he displaced. "Mm. So I will just assume your participation, then."

Beneath the lingering adrenaline, the faint nervous sweat that had mostly dried, and the sterile smell of the strong antiseptic soap lingering on his hands, there was something else. This is what hunger smells like on Will.

No real risk in what they've done so far.

"Trust despite all my doubts." He brushed his fingers on the back of Will's neck. "In truth, I didn't find trusting you for this to be difficult." Will had worked too hard, had been too intense in his focus, and he'd asked to do this and been given exactly what he asked for.

"I appreciate being asked," he said firmly. This time and every time. He wouldn't be taken for granted.

"Are you satisfied with your photo? I'd like to tenderize the meat and start it marinating, then I'll buy you a drink."

More would be a risk.

His eyelids slid shut at the brush of fingers, awareness spiraling down to that point of contact as the sensations of skin and heat lit up his nerve endings. "Would you have trusted me for this a year ago?" He was curious if tings had gotten better with Hannibal's concerns tugging at him like so much scar tissue.

Will turned to face Hannibal, "You're the one who made it an issue." Not now and not soon, but one day, as the ending was beginning, he would start taking Hannibal for granted.

"I am satisfied with my photo." Marinating his own flesh. And that wasn't the strangest thing he had ever heard.

"In the days immediately after Francis?" He wanted to lean in and press a kiss to Will's nape. He wanted to snake an arm around his waist and hold him. Would Will pull away? Or would he let his weight settle back against Hannibal? "It would have been difficult. The window of opportunity for you to return to your old life would have still been cracked, and there would have been the shadow of a chance that you would have decided to turn back and reclaim what you'd renounced."

Regretfully, he let his fingers trail over Will's neck as he turned, then dropped his hand. "I made an observation, not an issue."

He held Will's eyes for a moment, then stepped around him to retrieve the bowl. It was peculiar to look into the bowl and see a piece of his own flesh, but also satisfying, to see that brand in the bowl and not on his back. The marinade and tenderizing hammer were already waiting for him upstairs.

"Did you listen for signs of betrayal after the infection and the morphine cleared?" He tried not to begrudge Hannibal the tenuous trust they had shared those first few days, weeks. Will understood the reasons and the logic behind the caution and yet a flash of annoyance chilled the heat of his blood. "How far we've come."

"The purpose of which was?" He was not gong to pick a fight. He was not. This was his mantra. The question was just about curiosity.

Will lingered in the basement, doing a cursory cleanup, everything biohazard would be incinerated to destroy the blood evidence. Things could be more thoroughly sanitized later. He gathered his camera and the polaroid and headed upstairs, crossing the kitchen to sit down. To watch. The camera and polaroid were laid on the nearest flat surface.

"Yes." It was a simple answer. He could have equivocated, tried to temporize and minimize the impact of the answer when Will's mood was taking one of its swings toward waspish. He didn't. "You have twice determined to take a specific course with me - once to give me to the FBI, once to feed me to the Dragon - and changed your direction at the last possible moment. You have taught me to expect that from you. I have spent the past year unlearning that expectation.

"As for the purpose of my observation, it was an acknowledgment of your reading of the situation. There was no question that I would agree to allow you to photograph my back." Will tended to spoil for a fight when they had moments that could be tender.

Upstairs while Will cleaned up, Hannibal washed the meat, rubbed salt on it, and laid it out on the butcher block between two pieces of plastic wrap before he began to thoroughly pound it with the tenderizing hammer held in his left hand to reduce the strain on his back. He didn't distance himself from the reality of what he was doing or where the meat came from. This was worth remembering in every particular.

Will sank into his seat, laying his forearms across the arms of the chair. His fingers dug into the upholstery as he tipped his head back. He closed his eyes slowly, deliberately, listening to Hannibal tenderize the meat. After a minute he opened his eyes and lifted his head, "You aren't wrong." He knew Hannibal didn't need to hear the acknowledgement, but Will needed to say it.

He did not intend to elaborate.

There was a pattern he recognized in his own actions and knew it had not changed over the past year. He knew he had made no effort to change it. Year two might be a different beast.

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