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“Hannibal.”
Ahh, the heady scents of arousal, of wonderful Argentinian sunshine, of Hannibal’s own handmade cologne that only heightened the truest perfection-
“Let go.”
-of sandalwood, of ozone and the sea that only his beloved-
“Hannibal, let go.”
-only his one true perfect match could possibly wear. If he imagined it, just enough, then he could-
“Hannibal, I’m serious.”
-nearly remember the aroma of blood that perpetually hung above their skins-
“People are staring.”
-that clung to every soft curl of-
“Hannibal.”
-perfect, silken-
“I’ll kick you.”
-hair.
“Will,” Hannibal chastised, although he couldn’t force his lips to frown appropriately at the man clutched in his arms, “there was no need to kick me.”
Will snorted and took his chance to scooching his chair over next to a potted plant, wincing at the soreness that made itself very known in his lower body, and giving himself at least three feet of space that he hadn’t had in at least two hours. “When people are worried that you’re having a stroke because you won’t stop smelling me, then that’s when I have to kick you.”
Hannibal pouted - pouted! - at the space between them. Big, round eyes were turned on his beloved, pleading and nearly heartbroken at such a grievous gap between them. Will crossed his arms, firmly on his side of the cafe table, and waited for their orders of coffee and breakfast.
Realizing that Will wasn’t going to budge, Hannibal straightened his posture and smoothed down his lightweight linen shirt of creases that he’d earned from closeness. The hurt look only lingering in his eyes had Will sighing and offering his sandal clad foot instead. Hannibal seized it and settled it in his lap, petting the top of it and feeling the short curly hairs that grew around his husband’s bony ankle.
Husband.
Hannibal smiled at merely the thought of their union. He raised his eyes from Will’s foot to see his husband’s exasperation at the way the patrons around them seemed to slowly, pointedly, tune them out. Simply another sweet gay couple walking around and enjoying the warm weather in a little cafe just on the outskirts of the outer city. The older one might have been a little clingy (only a little?) but the younger one seemed to be leashing him into ordinary submission.
A very willing submission indeed.
Their coffee and their muffins came, along with Hannibal’s order of an omlette and Will’s stack of pancakes. More skillfully than he’d like to admit, Will watched as Hannibal ate his breakfast with only one hand, the other claiming his foot firmly in his lap. If Will didn’t already know it’d hurt his feelings, he might have rolled his eyes at Hannibal.
Will rolled his eyes anyways. “When can I have my body back?” Will asked between bites, “Or am I doomed to be soggy and sniffed the rest of my life?”
Hannibal’s grip upon Will’s ankle tightened. “It has always been your body, Will,” he said stiffly, “I am merely partial to knowing that I have access to your body the same way you do mine.”
Will frowned around a forkful of pancake. He swallowed it down with a mouthful of bitter black coffee, Hannibal regarding his Adam’s apple bobbing with his throat’s contractions.
“There’s a difference between having full access to, and reminding that you don’t need to have your hands on me every second of every day,” Will reminded him.
“If I could crack open your ribs to crawl inside your chest and curtained in your blood to live only there, then I would know true ecstasy, dear Will,” Hannibal’s eyes glittered with his smile, his fingers stroking the foot in his lap almost reverently. “If I could find a way to pry open your skull and be surrounded by naught but your thoughts, to exist within that beautiful mind of yours, then my darling, I would know nothing else but rapturous euphoria.”
There it was, his perfect gift. Will looked away to the people meandering their ways down the busy sidewalk, not watching but merely making sure that they existed. A small smile struggling it’s way to be seen, even though the owner was endeavoring to keep it tamped down. Nothing was allowed to be simply a dream anymore. And- yes there it was, the sign he’d really wanted. A callused hand came up to run its fingers through lush chocolate curls, resting along its way at the nape of his lover’s neck. It was a soft pink that had nothing to do with the early morning sun, though Hannibal knew that the heat was just the same.
“You’re going to get us thrown out of somewhere one day,” Will turned back to his pancakes diligently, “all because you talk about breaking into chests and prying open skulls.”
“No one will ever understand the true enthrallment you hold over me, my beautiful boy,” Hannibal’s smile turned smug at the way Will’s eyes softened at the endearment. Will scratched absentmindedly at the scar on his cheek, only nearly hidden by his thick but neat beard.
They finished the rest of their breakfast in a silence filled with caressing touches both given and batted away, accepting glances and a warning look when a hand went too far up a naked calf. Will could still feel the ebb and pound of every bruise on his body, craftily hidden but loving savored behind a plaid cotton shirt and ghastly Bermuda shorts. Every so often Will would tug his airy scarf away from his neck just to let the wind in, his fisherman’s hat flopping in the breeze and into his glasses.
At one point Hannibal felt a swift kick from Will’s other foot into his linen panted shin when his hand around his ankle kept stroking up and down just a little roughly, just a little damp, a firm twist just under the ankle and all the way back up again to do it once more. A little shifting in his seat told Hannibal all he needed to know about Will’s current predicament.
When they’d finally left the small cafe they were holding hands, their fingers twined loosely with each other. Hannibal looked over to his husband, admiring the way the morning brightness bounced off the silken hair and made it warm, warm, warm enough that he wanted to run his hands through it.
“Hannibal,” Will groaned, his hand once only holding Hannibal’s now an extension of Hannibal’s closeness, his arm now held to Hannibal’s side with his lover’s free arm. “I’m not a gentleman and this isn’t Downtown Abbey, stop holding on like you expect to be pulled away on a horse.”
Hannibal gave his cheek an open mouthed kiss to taste the skin present. “You’re perfectly right, Will. This is more of a fairy tale told once in a dream where you’re a knight in shining armor whose slain the evil dragon.”
Will shot him a playful look. “Does that make you a damsel in distress?”
“Nonsense, my dear Will,” Hannibal beamed back, “It makes me the wizard Merlin.”
Will only snorted, but his smiled lingered and he didn’t make a mention of Hannibal clinging to his side again.
It wasn’t until they’d walked to the local art show nearly a mile down the street that mentions of their closeness once again arose. It wasn’t malevolent talks, just mutterings and whispers about how the older blond man simply couldn’t keep his hands off the younger man in a scarf that didn’t match his outfit or the weather.
Will’s attention was kept by a yellow explosion with leaves of blue and thorns of red on a violet vine that Hannibal began his second exploration of the day.
It was soft, so soft that Will couldn’t feel it from having been so used to Hannibal’s attention grabbing hands. A hand steady from surgeon experience slipped under the loose shirt, stroking the fine hair at the dip of a tanned back but not once touching skin he knew would be soft and weather worn. He didn’t raise it any higher up the shirt, tempted though he was, choosing instead to admire his companion’s profile in the clear brightness and cool atmosphere. He smoothed a hand across a brow furrowed in concentration and hard sight, no doubt trying to decipher the feelings of the painter.
“What are you doing?” Will finally turned his attention back onto his partner, a dry eyebrow raised to him.
“Feeling every crease in your body,” was the ready answer, the hand caressing the skin on Will’s forehead until he reached the single curl that Will kept deliberately in place. He twisted it around one long finger and released it, pleased at the way it bounced back in a loose spring.
“I thought you knew every one.”
“I love to know that I do.”
They moved on from the yellow painting down, down, down the galleria until they stopped to examine a metal rack shaped like branches that held a number of different scarves of all sorts of materials, patterns, and lengths.
“You scarf belongs with them,” Hannibal said, fingering the flimsy gray cloth tied around Will’s neck.
“Only if we want questions about why my neck is spotted with bite marks,” Will slid over a heat filled look, “and just who put them there.”
Hannibal smirked, playing with one of the small tassels at the end of the wrapping. “Is it so terrible that I love to mark you as mine?”
“Everyone knows that I’m yours,” he took Hannibal’s hand away from the scarf and onto a plain rose gold ring, “just the same as you are mine.”
Hannibal held his darling’s face between reverent hands, even as he couldn’t bear to look into his eyes. “No force on earth could ever take you from me.”
“I doubt even Death himself could say no to the great Hannibal Lecter,” Will whispered into the space between them, leaning in the rest of the way to leave a soft kiss onto softer lips.
“Would you go dancing with me, Will?” Hannibal breathed as they parted.
Will grinned, a laugh like a coughing engine escaping from him. “Of course.”
They made their way onto the street then, hands clasped between them.
“Where will you take me?” Will asked.
“Onto the veranda above the vineyard,” Hannibal readily replied. “The grapes will be in full flush, their scents carrying on the wind just for us.”
“How long have you been keeping this little dance a secret?”
“As long as we’ve been away from the art gallery.”
“Hey,” a shrieky Argentinian voice behind them interrupted, “are you two married?”
They turned to see a small boy, no older than eight, staring up at them. He pointed to their clasped hands. “You look like you’re married.”
“Why, yes we are,” Hannibal told him in Spanish, giving his husband a fond look.
The boy looked in awe at the announcement. “You mean boys can get married to other boys?!”
Will chuckled and waved Hannibal and his clasped hands to the boy. “Sure can.”
“But wait,” the boy asked with a deep furrow in his young brow, “who carries the other one whenever they get an ouchie?”
While Will was trying to decipher what that meant, Hannibal simply delighted with all of his crooked teeth on display in his wide smile.
“That would be me,” he said, and knelt down to capture his husband behind the knees and hoist him into his strong arms. Will yelped, reflexively circling his arms around Hannibal’s neck to cling for support.
“Hannibal!”
“If you’ll please excuse us,” Hannibal said to the boy, ignoring his partner’s protestations to give his full attention to the wide eyed eight year old, “my husband and I have a dance to catch.” With that wisdom shared, they left with Will trying to escape Hannibal’s clutches and Hannibal having none of it.
“Hannibal, we are in broad daylight,” Will hissed. “Put me down.”
“Why should I?” Hannibal asked petulantly, as another pedestrian went around them wondering what they were doing.
“Because when people get curious they pay attention,” Will said, although he was no longer struggling. “We don’t need to be caught because you like to hold on to me.”
“I never ‘like’ to hold onto you, mylimasis,” Hannibal told him firmly, readjusting his grip even tighter, “I’ve always loved to hold you.”
“And clearly you do, but no need for everyone else to know that,” Will reasoned.
Hannibal simply pecked his cheek. “Everyone needs something to look up. Our devotion to each other is another goal that they must work to attain, just the same as us.”
“Even with murder and near death experiences?”
Hannibal gave Will another, open mouthed kiss on the cheek. “Always.”
Will, resigned to his smothered fate once again, relaxed into Hannibal’s broad chest to enjoy the warm and shifting muscles beneath. He closed his eyes to the sights around him, drifting off in his own little world where nothing existed except his heart and Hannibal’s.
He knew that Hannibal would take him home now, back to the quiet and blanketed peace of their vineyard an hour away from the city. He knew the veranda that Hannibal spoke of was just outside their bedroom, where before or after (maybe even both) they would do something akin to making filthy love that was sometimes more animal fucking than sex.
He knew that tomorrow would be more of the same. Clinging closeness, shared peaks of frenzy and disorientation of where he started and Hannibal ended.
He knew he would never want anything else in all the world.
He knew Death could never say no to Hannibal Lecter.