The first time Clarice Starling tastes human flesh, she is thirty six years old
The balcony doors are thrown wide open because he doesn't like enclosed places, and she needs air to breathe because there isn't enough, not right then, not with numb limbs caged in the safety of his arms and his chest heaving down against her. She can feel his heartbeat, faster than her own, so fast, and she thinks this is what combusting must be. This is sweet death.
His pupils are dilated, nearly black, and so inexplicably swallowing.
She realizes too late, only when his one extremity shifts to caress her timid cheek, that there is blood in her mouth. The sharp copper tang pricks her taste buds. Scarlet streaks his neck, dripping ruins onto the bed sheets.
Clarice jerks into the mattress, cringing. She almost gags when the reality of it hits her.
Hannibal goes very still.
He dares not roll away from her to separate them. As it is, Clarice digs her nails into his forearms and holds him in place, like an anchor, a touchstone to the reality that she is not lost to the tide, that she is not the hull of a ship waves slap against. He is solid, above her, around her, inside her.
Time stops.
She gains her footing once again with a ragged inhale, quivering, and,
"That's something," she tries to laugh, but it's an ugly sound, and her voice breaks in two places. Politely, Hannibal pretends not to notice.
She thinks, errantly, hysterically, that this is a silly reaction to such an intimate occurrence.
It's not as if he had served her something pretty and dressed in sauce on a silver plate.
There is a careful, composed look on his face when she finally draws back up to meet Hannibal's gaze. This man is the epitome of control, she thinks. Through all of this, his pulse is steady against her clavicle.
Instead of tying things with medicinal syllables, they hold in this embrace; Clarice regaining the ability to breathe and Hannibal staring into the blues and greens of her irises and calming her through osmosis. It's strange, the varying ways they come together. Moon beams on eyelashes and melting candle wax, bruised wrists and twisted sheets. Their methods change.
Then, sometimes- sometimes there's no words involved at all. They've mocked the idea of mortal souls before, during lengthy dinner discussion, but only now does it truly come into play. There is nothing more pure than moments like these; when bodies shift into the perfect undefined sanctity.
It is something neither ever experienced before- not in useless trysts in school parking lots, not in simple entertainment at John Hopkins. Their souls fit.
Finally, they move apart. It's like ripping stitches, and she winces, and he winces. Being apart is not pleasant, anymore. It amuses him, as he pulls the useless cloth from the bed and settles with her back to his chest, that freedom isn't entirely obtainable nowadays. In the instance where the only thing Hannibal Lecter had to reasonably worry about was escaping the bars that surrounded him, freedom was at his fingertips, just out of reach.
Now, Clarice has him tethered. Caught.
When it comes to defining Paris bathed in purple light, sun kissed locks strewn across sweat ravished skin, glistening in the morning song- they do not reconcile what all this means. The truth is: it might never make sense, even if configured by ten newspapers, a federal agency, and two human hearts. Hannibal Lecter has never recalled a time in his existence when he's hoped for something, but in this moment he releases a quiet huff, thanks whatever deity that exists that Jack Crawford and a SWAT team are not jockeying beyond the hotel room door to pull their bodies from one another.
Every time he thinks it, he sees the headlines:
Ex-Special Agent is Monster's Bride
The world will never understand what they share.
Still, they don't speak of these things. They can debate for hours on Dante, sip champagne and lay entwined on the couch like two parts of a whole. He takes her to operas and she makes him coffee that tastes too bitter. They live in peace.
And so, he gives himself entirely to the feeling of her skin against his skin.
He hopes that things like this won't prove to be too much. He doubts she would bend to the weight, the warrior that she is, yet at his core he is still a man; a human, whose fear is that one day she will leave him in the dark, and he will never know of this light again.
She was halfway through orgasm, head thrown and body arched up against him, when she convulsed inwards and bit down on his shoulder harshly, tearing skin, tearing him wide open. Metaphorically speaking, this had happened long ago- but he imagines his past played a hand in her squeamish reaction to the unintentional gesture. Still, the audacity of Clarice- the instinct to take a part of him for her own, and accepting him so freely, despite knowing what he is.
Clarice Starling will never cease to surprise him.
His girl.
With that musing, he leans in to nuzzle the skin where her shoulder meets her neck. Sunlight is beginning to stream through the small room, throws prisms off a half-filled wine glass on a side table. Blood colors her lips, her swollen lips.
Hannibal kisses her carotid artery gently.
He's so close to killing her, she thinks, yet fear does not plague her. He wouldn't.
He couldn't.
Paris is half way to awake when Hannibal breaks the silence. He tells her he loves her in husky French.
With a thick swallow, Clarice's tremulous plight dies like embers. She leans back further to kiss him, far harder than either had anticipated, and even if it leaves them both gasping, it feels good. It feels good to know how much their lungs enjoy the feeling of oxygen.
"I love you," she repeats, this time in accented English. He sighs into her mouth.
He truly has grown to adore her twang.