Hello :)

This is a OneShot, written for the topic of Valentine's Day FuriarossaAndMimma's Fannibal-Fanmagazine concerns with.

You can find her drawings on tumblr and deviantart.

It's definitely worth a look. She has some awesome ideas and is a lovely person ;3

Oh, and the verses I took for the beginning and the end are not mine, but from Bad Apple , Touhou Project feat. nomico (English Cover/Translation) : watch?v=J61u3wFzl68

ENJOY

Maybe it's a dream; maybe nothing else is real

But it wouldn't mean a thing if I told you how I feel

S o I'm tired of all the pain, all the misery inside

And I wish that I could live feeling nothing but the night

You can tell me what to say; you can tell me where to go

But I doubt that I would care, and my heart would never know

If I make another move there'll be no more turning back

Because everything will change and it all will fade to black

Will bit back a painful hiss as he was steered into the wide open cabin of the elevator with cumbersome caution.

The arm around his waist cut like a curved piece of red-hot steel into his skin and he had loved to repulse it, to have torn it off with his teeth if necessary, but his vision was gloomy and filled with blurred spots and he knew without the grip, Hannibal did offer him so unselfishly, he would bounce on the floor and stay there forever, exhaling the last, trembling thrusts of his whistling breath. The edge of his functioning consciousness reasonably informed him how the mechanical doors closed and the grip on him loosened for an ounce to push the button for the selected floor. A second later, the arm tightened again and Will's state left him no choice but to surrender, to lean on Hannibal's shoulder and shift his weight on him, trusting he would not be dropped. Not this time.

And Hannibal did not let him. He took the physical load of Will's demolished flesh envelope as if it was his own. And who knows, maybe it was, to a certain degree. Maybe he was it.

His personal burden.

A soulless tune hummed through the small room where they stood and waited, crammed like animals in a too narrow box. Will could not escape Hannibal. He could only dodge his piercing gaze and even that was difficult. The taste of rusty metal crunched like an unspoken curse in his mouth. He spat, and moistened the ground with bloody foamed saliva. He had specially aimed at Hannibal's shoes, but failed them about four inches to the right. Hannibal left this without comment. They did not speak, while the flashing lights climbed up and down the numbers in tough play. Two, three, four ... it did not stop.
Will's current state changed with each rattling pulse beat from sore to numb and from numb to sore. A breath burned like a battalion of fire ants and nibbled on his bruised ribs. He was pretty sure that if he opened his jacket and lifted the shirt, he could admire a signature of hematomas. Dolarhyde's methods had been thoroughly, he had shaded them both without being discovered once, hidden in the thick crowds of people like a rat among sheep. And he took his chance as soon as possible.

It had never been Will's plan, to meet Hannibal under circumstances like these. Not with tied arms and legs and fanned out like a butterfly, punctured with needles and showcased and ridicule, prepared for agony, revealed to a knife and fists that had beaten their own mercy to death in childhood and buried it behind the house silently. He would have never imagined that, instead of fighting each other, they had to join forces to bring down a third enemy in their midst. Not a single second when his plane had landed on Italian, summer browned ground, he had thought he would ever let it happen again that Hannibal touched him, came too close to him, in whatever way.

But now that he was denied his own balance, he felt unbearably hot breath surge on his chipped scalp and that was how tables had turned. A moment later Hannibal's nose sank between his sweaty curls, inhaling him with dizzyingly deep breaths. Greedy, almost animalistic. A furry snout, peeping out from the folds of his man suit, feasting in eternal hunger on his fragrance. It would not have surprised Will if he had heard a wolfish growl. He closed his heavy eyelids and swallowed the groan that wanted to roll up his scratchy throat. But he couldn't hide the shaking that overtook his body from head to toe. He also smelled Hannibal, could not prevent to suffer under the familiar /alienated bouqet like one of the unloved memories from his childhood. Hannibal smelled like he had before, and yet quite different due to the Florentine stay, he allowed himself for almost a year now, hiding from the FBI, turning his back on America. Hannibal smelled like sun rays, fried and crackling on freshly chopped firewood. He smelled of the bustling market on the Piaza San Lorenzo, smelled of butcher meat, tossed in flour and wrapped with a shimmering touch of acidic blood. He smelled of various fruits and spices, of darkness and steel. He smelled of pulse and lacerations and the cuts Dolarhyde had whetted with a barlowknife across his back. He smelled of him, of the mixture of their two scents, of smoke and incense, of death and sweat, of God and Devil. Of Kali, the destroyer of a Buddhist apocalypse.

Will had to pant his breath through his mouth to bear it. Being here, body to body, although a few layers of fabric separated them from each other in a chaste banner, was too much, too much for him. Hannibal was too much. Everything was ... too overwhelming for his maltreated senses. And he knew that Hannibal knew what this meant. Something Will never wanted to admit, not while he sat behind bars, caged under Chilton's attention, not before his betrayal, not after he had seen Abigail's life ended by these hands. He had lain in her blood. The memory let his body stiffen and suddenly the pain flanked him not only externally on skin and wool, but also internally, in his chest and behind his skull. The next thing he was allowed to feel were the lips of the older man as they sank into his hair. Soft and thin, silken and poking like a rose thorn, bound in pollen. It was a soothing, confidential gesture, the intimate meed for what no longer made sense to be denied. And maybe even an action, caused by the fragile feeling of... remorse.

Will would rather remove his skin before he admitted that he had missed those lips. Despite their malice, in spite of the poison seething and flowing from them, dribbling over this tongue, splitting during the blink of an eye in half and re-melting in the next second anew. And the man who wore them as ornamental decoration on his mouth, forming treacherous, sweet-bitter words, creating truth and deception as if he were in a frenzy, blindly writhing in the downfall of own depravity.
As strange as it sounded, Will liked this idea. A suffocation in self-required darkness seemed a better ending to him than being locked behind bars and glass, isolated from everything that was not built bald, smooth and brick.
The cupboard-like chamber stopped with a gentle tug in its movement and a high Pling promised the redemptive outlet for every claustrophobic mind. Will saw how the shimmering grey ripped apart and introduced them into a cashmere painted corridor. Will leaned away from Hannibal, tried to cross the threshold on his own, despite his condition. It provided no successful outcome. He had stumbled and fell forward, if Hannibal wouldn't have kept his hand on his hip as precaution. Will muttered a hefty slander into the empty hallway, half a cry, half a guttural whimper. He was a faithless animal, bound to a master whom he had fled from. Hannibal recognized it without admonition. Here and now was not the time to fight each other because of profanity. Presumably there would be later enough opportunities for that.
The bristles of the carpet made a rasping noise under Will's wobbling feet. Such as matches, being rubbed and rubbed and just missed out to inflame. It was an idle, a yearning sound, full of impatience and delicately grating malice. They stopped only briefly as Hannibal stopped in front of Apartment 27 and pulled a bunch of keys out of his pocket. He unlocked the door with one hand and pushed the leaf green lacquered wooden plate inwards with his fingertips. Not for a single second in which he did so, he let go of Will. Together they went inside the apartment. Will had no opportunity to explore the spaces with more detailed curiosity, he was too weak and his concentration shifted more and more to the simple task of gasping for oxygen and any shuddering weakness upon. He heard as the door snuggled with a coughing bang in its hinges. There was a slim hall they crossed, several incisions in the walls, leading to other rooms. Will registered a bordeaux red diamond pattern with golden irises in its midst, a drab, black ground on which his dogs had whetted their too late trimmed claws with thieving delight. Light, distempered by lowered shutters, blinked through. A few crumbs of dust floated like diamonds of atomic size in the dry, warm atmosphere. He could see more before Hannibal brought him in a room he called the kitchen without hesitation. It was a caricaturistic, doltish set-off in contrast to the place the psychiatrist had previously called his culinary kingdom. The refrigerator squeezed thinly and inconspicuous into the corner, stove and other counters next to it scurried like frightened mice against the wall. A few meters away stood the dining table, a rough, maroon wooden blanket on four edged stilts. Two chairs were properly shoved on right and left. None of this reflected the sophistication that Will had experienced earlier in a lecterous device. This was a ragged hatching of previous work, only succumbed to the purposes of pure, efficient practice. The sun light basked on the hotplate in drunken glory. Will seriously doubted that Hannibal had ever used it.

"Where is Dr. Du Maurier? " he asked, after Lecter had put him on a chair and unbottoned his shirt to inspect the other injuries Dolarhyde had caused his body. Although his fingertips were relatively cool, it seemed to Will as if boiling magma was running down his skin. He did not complain. No sound came from his mouth. Just breathe. Breathe.

"In our house on the other side of town, probably. She loves the garden there." Hannibal announced. He exercised prudent pressure a few inches below Will's sternum, making him compress his lips so tightly that all the color drained from them, coining a pastel white line into his skin. Hannibal took the hint and immediately removed his fingers from the vulnerable point, but not without storing it in his memory ( for later treatment). Will followed the development in his gently widening iris. The feeling of being weaker and weaker, absorbed and swallowed like a crusty cooked deer, maximized with every creeping second he spent in the presence of this man. And the saddest part was that he hardly bore the thought of getting back to exist in its abstinence again. The scar on his lower abdomen teased his marked flesh like a volley of glowing needles.

"And then what is this then?" He wanted to do an extravagant gesture in order to emphasize his question, but to his amazement / his horror, he was not able to lift his arm. It acted numbly, as if someone had given it two ampoules of morphine.

"An apartment that I rented for... emergencies. Bedelia knows nothing about it. I would prefer it to stay that way."

"Don't you think she's long gone by now?"

"She knows I'd find her." Hannibal's voice contained a rigorous equanimity. In contrary to that, his hands ran deeper over Will's body, his tattered shirt pulled to both sides, providing the largest surface possible. Will only thought that it would not be long before he'd find what could break their cryptic calm into escalating splinters."Bedelia's an intelligent woman. She avoids risks and estimates a daily routine. Around this time, she should prepare her tea and –"

Hannibal paused mid-sentence. He had exposed the scar.

The doctor stared at the idly cobbled skin membrane, Will stared on the table calendar on his right, innocently opened, almost blessed in its tactless, puny function. He peered at the date and remembered how Dolarhyde had crouched in his hotel room, strangled him from behind and put a cloth over his mouth so that the clinical, nebulous chloroform sent his senses into a swoon. One ... no, one day and a half had passed since then. The date said Monday, 20th January. Therefore, Hannibal had not entered the apartment for weeks. Will had arrived in Florence about a week ago. Then, the tooth fairy had waylaid him, in the night of 12th February. So today was ... Will thought, added and subtracted. Then, he swallowed.

Valentine's Day.

Well, if that wasn't the irony of the century! He considered it as awful incident.

Silence filled the room like thick, doughy vapor, clumped the oxygen, making it difficult to breathe. None of them were willing to speak up. What should they have said anyway? Outside,Will heard a bicycle bell ring down past the house. Dolarhyde's wounds and their incarnated pain were forgotten and carried away by a warm summer breeze.

Finally, he turned his head and met Hannibal with a slow, knowing and melancholic gaze.

"Want to touch it?"

He did not need to ask. The desire stabbed in Hannibal's blood brown eyes like harpoons.

"Do I have your permission?" Filtering out the small, finished nuance in his baritone, would have been almost impossible to be acknowledged by simple passersby. For Will, however, who Lecter knew better than anyone else, and sometimes, what was terrible, better than himself, it was a skilled task. A distinguished question of attention. He might have even heard it without his empathy disorder.

He gave a snort.

"As if you've ever asked for permission." he replied sarcastically, but his gray glance fell to the floor. "You've created it. It's your right."

Hannibal looked at him. Said nothing, neither denied nor affirmed. Then, after a time, that seemed like an eternity for Will and stitched on his nerves, Hannibal went slowly but purposefully to his knees. The profiler forgot to ask why he did this and where this should lead. Hannibal knelt before him and Will spread his legs without averting his gaze from the elder man. If he had expected a spark of recognition, shock or even hesitation, he would have been terribly disappointed. Hannibal showed none of these things. His mahogany brown focus had shifted to the scar again and probably he wouldn't have drained from this image for anything in the world. Knobbly, shattered flesh, two sallow halves of a single material that had been hastily sewn together to stop the blood loss. No aesthetic in the proper sense. No jewelry, no expensive gem, an obscurity, an aversion. Not ugly, not pretty. Warningly. Paralyzing. It was his work. His work. Like many other things that rumbled under Will's bone coat, but this, this was to be seen for the whole world. And it could never be denied. It was there. It remained.

Hannibal's hands slid over Will's knees and walked to his thighs, took a hold at the base of his hips. He leaned forward, the fingertips of his right hand palpating the scar's edge and the heated flesh twitching underneath. A pause, maybe a second, maybe two, none of them even took care of time in the end. A moment later, Hannibal pressed his nose against the stigma and inhaled the scent of past agony, birth, growth, copper and rosy regeneration. Will's reaction ran over in an uncontrolled trembling and he leaned so far back in his chair until the wood stabbed between his shoulder blades. The function of his arms still bordered on complete immobility and Hannibal's weight pinned him imperiously into place. He breathed through a skinny gap his parted lips offered, hasty and uncoordinated. He wanted to close his eyes, let this whole situation wash over him monotonously but he could not, could not turn away his glazed eyes from this man / monster / demon, kneeling at his feet and smelling him unrestrained, whose hands were upon him as he would be his property, and wait, wasn't he? Hadn't he always been? He let out a groaning curse, as something wet and damp washed over his scar. Watching Hannibal's tongue licking over the healed tissue was an act he shouldn't have expected otherwise to be true. How could Lecter not literally savorthis phantom wound with all senses being available to him? This was a rare opportunity, perhaps the only one which could be not begrudged to him. Again, Will found himself in the faded Purgatorio of one year ago. The memory of the excruciating, throbbing pain in his bowels, the curved blade as it parted his muscles, the loss of balance, the feel and fall although he still stood on tottering legs, fighting, realizing. The steps of Hannibal as he walked out of the room, damning them to death while his own silhouette blurred in pouring rain. When Hannibal pressed his half-opened mouth on his lower abdomen and gently sucked on the thickish bulge of the scar, Will forgot to suppress a dry sob. The experience was euphoric and destructive to the same, delusional extent.

It was this fragile, lossy sound, this proof of his woe, that made Hannibal move away from him, so the reddish, blood-pumping flesh was spared. For now.

"I thought I'd lost you." it breathed warm and inviting above his skin, carrying a hidden danger. Hannibal's jaw rested hovering over his lap. He did not look at him, not now, and suddenly Will was unspeakably grateful for that.

"You should have cut deeper." it crumbled between his teeth. A few minutes ago it would have certainly sounded aggressive. But the profiler was too exhausted. He did not want to play anymore.

"I omitted doing that." Hannibal replied. His hands weighed like anchors at Will's hips. "And now we're here."

"Yes; now we're here." echoed Will. A mirthless smile lured into the right corner of his mouth. "Had I known this, I would have chosen a finer wardrobe."

"Your clothes were relevant to me. Not… much, at least." Finally, Lecter raised his head slightly. They made direct eye contact. "Red cheeks, working lungs, trembling chest ... what else could I wish for than seeing you this way?" Hannibal raised an eyebrow as he winked back down to Will's ribcage. "But you've lost some weight." he judged. It would have been nearly enough to make Will laugh. Nearly...

"Everything seemed tasteless ... after you've been gone. I rarely eat more than absolutely necessary."

"So it's my fault." The doctor got up to full size again, not intending to steal away from Will's vicinity. "How surprising."

Will could not help the contemptuous Pfhh that climbed up his windpipe.

"What's not your fault?" he countered. He was awarded with eyes that spared him with serious accusation.

"You think of Abigail." Hannibal replied simply. "Do you dream of her? Still?"

"Earlier, every night. Now ... sometimes. But I doubt that they'll ever vanish completely." Will glanced disparagingly at the scar. "The brand you've left on me doesn't help to forget either." He coughed. A patch of fresh red dabbed his chin. His counterpart watched silently as it ran down, tough and dark, and how it jumped in the form of a drop off Will's skin. He held out his hand and caught it in free fall. His fingers closed in a fist.

"Wait here. I'll get something to clean your wounds." he ordered what Will secretly stocked as the worst gag of the day. (As if there had been left something different than waiting) He still managed a vague nod before he saw the older man go out of the room and thus disappear from his perception. He listened how he walked away, but not far enough not to hear his voice, something which Will immediately took appropriate use from. Some things were rolling easier off his tongue when Lecter did not stand or kneel in front of him.

"Why her?" he called after him briskly. The question was burning in his chest for months. "I understand that you were going to kill me, but why her? It was my decision. I wanted you to flee and never come back. I wanted ..."

I wanted you to be safe.

Silence beyond the corridor. Treacherous. Will tried to stand up.

"She was my gift to you." it resounded in reply. "When I smelled Freddie's perfume, I knew what would happen. So I left you a farewell letter of my… own writing. To know you had betrayed me ..." A pause. Not worth mentioning, (and yet confessing so much). "You've found a way to hurt me. Many ways. It was not difficult to choose what would hurt you most."

Will moved the left foot. Then the right. The nausea had somewhat dampened by sitting. Whether he would, however, have a firm footing when he got up, remained questionable. Nevertheless, he decided it would be better to at least try out instead of following his fate in the wrong-headed direction without protest. But actually, he had no right to question right from wrong anymore.

"Hasn't the knife been enough?"

"I've drilled the blade through your lower abdomen. I used Abigail to shredder your heart."

"Why two wounds?"

"I wanted you to understand how I felt."

This sentence shook a laugh from the profiler. He dared and stood up, swaying horribly, but remained fairly upright. He was shuffling toward the hallway, leaning several times on each object he could rely on. He hoped his steps were swallowed by the fibrous carpet.

"You? A broken heart? Don't make me laugh. This joke is not even funny." he replied, quieter than before. In fact, he managed to reach the corridor's center without too much difficulty, the door to the outside world always kept in his focus. He could not stay any longer. This was what his instinct told him. This was what his experience told.

It was what his own soul preached, in order, to shelter him from a second death.

Then he felt a grip around his wrist and his own pulse roared like thunder in his ears.

"Will, where are you going?"

Will paused abruptly. He had not heard Hannibal come. He turned around carefully.

"They'll find you if I stay." he said quickly. Hannibal's hold was more definitive than any iron chain that could have been put on him in imprisonment. "I need to ... I have to go." The argument was no lie and not something to be casual about, but it was not the reason why Will wanted to disappear from this place.

An instinctive reflex made his eyelids flutter as Hannibal forced him to stumble forward with a jerk, pressing two knuckles on his forehead. Just now he realized that his heart was pounding in his throat, jumping up and down in an epileptic rhythm. He felt delirious and yet he could not remember when he had been sick the last time. The doctor's hot breath nestled on his cheek. He bit his tongue and felt no pain, no pain ... so little pain that it hurt.

"You've got fever." Hannibal coal-dark eyes tightened in a strict constant over him. "Let me take care of you. Stay with me."

Stay with me.

Will laughed softly. It was a crumbling, bitter laugh, creasing over his bloodied lips. The knuckles on his forehead were like soothing balm.

"I don't think I could ever leave, if I'd take your offer now." he said. He looked intently at Hannibal and had no doubt he was telling the truth.

I can't. You know why.

"Do you also think I'd let you go that easily after I've found you again? It's been one year, Will."

"Okay, first, you didn't find me, I have –"

"We've found each other." the Doctor interrupted him in sonorous decency. "At this point, I should almost be grateful to Francis. Without him, the search would have taken far too long."

"Almost." repeated Will haltingly. His eyes shrinked to angry slits. "Pardon me, but us being reunited in torture is not the nicest way to meet again."

A dull smile, no, the paler reflection of a smile went over Hannibal's face.

"Rude?" His tone was of predatory amusement. Will also gave him a microscopic lifting of his mouth. Desperate, somehow. What would have been a demonic practice for other people, had risen to a macabre joke for both of them. And Will could not shake this off as much as he longed for it. It was in him, the change, the drive, the desire, the morbid qualification for murder.

"Very." he admitted. And he was not ashamed.

"Too bad I forgot to take his tongue. I could've cooked Bollito misto for us."

Will's lips painted a descending curve at the cannibalistic devotion.

"Do I really want to know what that is?" he asked suspiciously.

"A peasant stew with rich meat content. A traditional recipe from Northern Italy."

Will could no longer hold on his feet without supporting himself somewhere, so he crashed against the wall closest to him. He was sweating, and the salty liquor burned like butyric acid in his open cuts. The sunlight threw golden tears over Hannibal's stoic face. Oh, how he loved that face. He would have bent forward to scratch it with his nails until he found bare bone.

That was how much he loved it.

"Had me wondering if you suddenly converted to vegetarianism." he said unimpressed. Hannibal bowed his head. His eyes shone very mild.

"My appetite may have confined, but not vanished." he said. "How would it be if you stayed for dinner? I might serve a snack. We could talk about… old times."

Stop it.

Will shook his head.

"I'm neither hungry nor thirsty."

"You'll be soon."

Please, stop this.

"You don't need to coddle me. I'm a big boy."

"I won't doubt that." Will felt Hannibal's fingers flow from his wrist and how they clung to his cheek. A tender gesture. Will never forgot the cruel, devoting purpose of it. "But you're my boy."

Will had no answer for that. And he forbade himself to know one.

"I won't turn you in." he said instead, changed the topic. "They'll find Dolarhyde's corpse. And two bullets in his chest, fired out of my gun. The case is clear, I will say it was self-defense and they'll celebrate me as the FBI's bad apple that killed the tooth fairy and made it out alive. Your name won't stand in any reports. I can't erase you from the wanted list, though." He took a deep breath, licked his cracked lips. "You're free. You'll stay free."

He wriggled himself out of Hannibal's touch and headed for the door again.

"Will ..."

"Open the door." Will told him over his shoulder. "I'll take a taxi. You'll never see me again, I promise."

They were silent.

If he were honest, he would have never thought that Hannibal would bend a finger for if he revealed this fact. But he did. He did it and a part of Will, the sinister, brutal part, wished he had not done anything.
Soon they were at the threshold of the door, ready to say… goodbye. He could not quite describe what he saw in his face. His expression seemed to elude definition. Hannibal's skin and shirt were still interweaved with dried blood. And although his outer shape praised imperturbability, for Will, he looked destroyed. Sentenced to death. And old. Old like weathered stone.

Will leaned forward and kissed him.

The kiss did not last long. It was not bestial, not engaging, but chaste. Perhaps one last sad reminder Will intended to give the cannibal. Something he had to feast on for the rest of his life. Or to starve miserably.

"Happy Valentine's Day, Dr. Lecter." he whispered against thin lips, after he broke from them. Amber eyes looked at him. Of course Hannibal had not closed them during the kiss. Of course not. "Don't get caught. Please."

Hannibal did not nod. He did not move. He just stared at him. And Will was on his way to leave.

He did not even make it to the elevator. The syringe needle, precisely bored into his waist, did not allow that. The next thing his sensors processed, were Hannibal's arms wrapped around him so that he did not stumble to the ground.

"Relax. The vertigo will be over sooner than you think." he heard it whisper to him as from far away."Then we'll heal your wounds."

Maybe it was not the action itself, that made Will feel incurable anger for Hannibal at this moment, for he knew the psychiatrist, he knew him. But the calmness with which he did it, this smug, gentle, heart-breaking peace ... he did not forgive him that.

"You... bastard ..." he hissed and noticed already, how the liquid hurled through his veins and glowing points started to rotate in his field of vision. You bastard!

The mouth that clung to his ear, was not disturbed by his insult.

"You speak of my freedom. But I can't be free without you. I've learned my lesson and so will you." Hannibal turned the abulic head of the profiler in his direction, accompanied him in the final seconds of his intact consciousness. "Happy Valentine's Day, Will. And the ones that will come."

And he smiled.

Smiled and smiled and smiled. It was like looking into a broken mirror.

Before Will drowned in the blackness of his mind, this smile turned into the frayed, filigree structure of a human skull with antlers on his forehead and the image followed him into the grotesque nightmares that swelled like poisonous mushrooms, turning his sleep into a chase of waking and screaming

This time he did not dream of Abigail Hobbs, how she died, spitting blood on tiled floor. He dreamed not of the perforated Garrett Jacob Hobbs, her father and the victim, with which his misery had begun. He did not dream of Francis Dolarhyde, who wanted to bite the flesh from his face earlier.
He dreamed of Hannibal Lecter. And only him.
For the rest of his life.

If I make another move, if I take another step

Then it all would fall apart. There'd be nothing of me left

If I'm crying in the wind, if I'm crying in the night

Will there ever be a way? Will my heart return to white?

Can you tell me who you are? Can you tell me where I am?

I've forgotten how to see; I've forgotten if I can

If I opened up my eyes there'd be no more going back

' Cause I'd throw it all away and it all would fade to black

Soo, I hope you liked the story^^ Comments, opinions, anything? I'm curious what you think about this ;3