Disclaimer: I don't own NBC's "Hannibal." Everything belongs to whoever owns them, my wishful thinking aside.
Authors Note #1: I wanted to write a bit of pre-slash Preller where after Beverly was murdered, Hannibal came after Zeller next, only – unexpectedly - he bit off a bit more than he could chew this time.
Disclaimer: vampires, vampirism, blood drinking, gore, blood, canon appropriate violence, adult language, mild animal traits/behaviors, pre-slash, drama, angst.
The (right) kind of monster
Hannibal's blood was tart under his tongue. Heavy and fetid with something he figured was probably in his own head rather than anywhere else as he ripped himself away and spat into the long grass. Half-stumbling as he shuddered through a dry-heave, then another. Feeling the stab wounds that littered his torso slowly starting to heal as he forced himself to focus. Letting the new blood knit his flesh back together as his stomach rebelled.
He'd always hated the taste, but this was something else.
Hannibal tasted wrong.
Like he had veins full of wet-rot and pre-diabetic mania.
It was like you could fucking taste the brand of crazy that made him what he was.
Like-
He slapped Hannibal's hands away with a vicious sound. Pristine nails curled like they could equal his own unnaturally sharp ones as the doctor tried to jab at his eyes. Swearing he could taste every victim on his tongue as his canines found the man's carotid and tugged. Squeezing his eyes shut as what felt like the echo of every scream, every cry, Beverley's last words, everything- rebounded in his skull like a living heartbeat.
Just another addition to his already healthy repertoire of cycling nightmares.
He snarled, animal-low and more vicious than he could ever remember feeling as the man twitched under his hands. Enjoying the strange shiver of pleasure that came part and parcel with forcing the polished asshole to heel through his death throes. Watching through fluttering lashes as Hannibal's mouth worked, trying to make sounds. Baring bloody teeth up at him like he didn't know it was already over. Fingers scrabbling down his forearms like he was still looking for an opening, before he sank his elongated canines deep into sinew-soft flesh and ripped him bloody. Wondering - off-hand and only slightly dissociating - if the man felt anything at all as he watched those unnerving maroon-tinted eyes start to dull.
This wasn't who he was.
This wasn't what he did.
But it was tonight.
For Beverly.
For himself.
For Jimmy.
For Jack.
For the next victim.
And the next.
And the one that was going to come after that.
And-
He growled as red fountained down the front of his dress pants and leather jacket. Following a trail of rich, unsullied red that was different from the rest. Host to a spark that danced like butter-soft electricity across his tongue. Something that had him swallowing without him even being aware of the action. Guzzling Hannibal down like this was the only part of his baser nature he was ever going to allow out into the open. Letting the darkest parts of himself blossom like a corpse flower as the man let go of a fractured sound. Coaxing out the last of it as the Chesapeake Ripper dripped down his chin in a long smearing trail. Sensing the moment the life left the crumpled thing as he tossed back his head and bared bloody fangs into the moonlight. Hazing steam and condensation into the crisp pre-dawn as he licked his lips and let the body drop into the frost. Leaving the corpse where it landed like every other broken thing that deserved discarding. Out of sight, out of mind and quickly forgotten.
He didn't care.
Hell, he didn't even feel bad.
And maybe that should have scared him.
But it didn't.
Instead, he was thinking far more selfishly. Licking his lips free of the clinging red as he looked down at himself with distaste. Hating that for every quarter-pint that'd flowed out from the hole he'd worried in Hannibal's neck, the less he could smell Jimmy clinging to his clothes. And he was just high enough on blood-lust, adrenaline and pheromones not to hate the thought openly.
He didn't quite know why that was.
He had a few hypothesises, but obviously not nothing concrete.
Embarrassingly, there was just something about Jimmy that'd always had him on the cusp of wanting to glut himself. Like one of these days he was going snap and to do something creepy. Something like taking one of the man's shirts home and just fucking rolling in it. Melding their scents so deep that no one could doubt they belonged together in the first place. Comforting himself with the familiar even when the man wasn't there. Enough to get him through the rare weekend they spent apart these days.
Hell if he knew why.
Okay, that was a lie.
Sort of.
He supposed a connoisseur of such things would be able to break it down somehow. Like the bouquet of an expensive bottle of wine an over-dressed waiter served to you in quarter portions from deep-stemmed wine glasses at some restaurant that had the right aesthetic in the right part of town.
But he wasn't that person.
He could live another one hundred and eighty-five years and he still wouldn't be.
Some things just didn't change, not even with time.
Hannibal, on the other hand, was - or at least had been. The past tense was important. Mostly because the man was dead in the dirt at his feet and unable to explain all the reasons why he'd never measure up in the way he or even Will fucking Graham did. That in spite of all his gifts and all the years he had on them, he could still be outshined relatively easily.
Fifty or so years ago that would've bothered him far more than it did now.
Which was saying something, because it did bother him now.
It bothered him a lot, actually.
The truth was, he'd never quite gotten around to working on that whole hubris thing. That'd been pretty fucking obvious when he'd walked into his house after work and nearly gotten ham-stringed by a length of razor wire set up like a booby-trap next to the kitchen. Barely able to pull away in time to miss the second act as sharp metal flashed through an upswing pivot. Feeling the slash hiss across the tops of his knuckles as he reached up to block it at the last second.
He'd come face to face with Hannibal Lecter in his own god damned living room. But this time the man was a far cry from the placid psychiatrist who'd made himself all but indispensable to the bureau over the last year. The switch had been immediate and there had been no time to do anything but accept it. Dropping his briefcase, wallet, car-keys- everything - as he kicked out. Forcing the man back with what he figured would be the last bit of a grace period he had as he managed a clumsy back flip and slammed into the wall on the opposite side of the razor wire.
Skipping the pleasantries and collective 'what the fucks' as they tripped right into vibrating with the effort of keeping the other locked motionless in a battle of muscle against muscle. Slamming into the walls, the coffee table, you name it, before his superior strength finally got the memo and he shoved the other man across the room. Breathing hard as he sank down into a defensive crouch. Hand automatically flying to his empty holster as Hannibal held the stolen Glock in his hands, gleaming teeth and temple-sweat in the half-dark.
"It seems as though I've underestimated you, Mr. Zeller," Doctor Lecter had purred, like a stand in for a hello. Looking at him appraisingly from the shadows he'd danced into when he'd managed to avoid the arcing slash of the man's scalpel and land a punch somewhere in the middle of the man's ribs. Blending into the corners of the room so artfully that he could've sworn the man had been here before. Maybe he'd even planned this ahead of time. For days- maybe even weeks while he'd been none the wiser. Ass deep in the Ripper case when the real thing had been staring him smugly in the face all along. "Perhaps you are interesting after all."
Honestly, Hannibal should have been the vampire, not him.
Not that he was a vampire, mind you.
At least not exactly.
More like a regular person with similar abilities a couple times removed. Enough to sport fang when he wanted. Enough to have bit higher than average speed, strength and healing. But with none of the shitty drawbacks. Like, you know, turning into a human fire cracker in the sunlight or asphyxiating on garlic. He did get a hell of a sunburn without his medicated sun-screen in the summer though, but he supposed that was neither here nor there.
Anyway-
Reality creeped in slowly, but no less as complicated or horrifying. His apartment – if Hannibal had left it standing - was probably a fucking battleground. He had a bump on his head from where he'd been stuffed in the asshole's trunk and a lingering headache from whatever sedative had been supposed to knock him out completely. He had no idea why Hannibal had been after him in the first place, unless he was just going after the team one by one at this point. He had twenty-three missed calls and texts from Jimmy and six from jack. Half a dozen people probably thought he was dead and now he was out in the middle of fucking no where, covered head to toe in someone else's blood with a dead body, a mountain of criminating evidence, and frankly- he was drawing a big fat blank on all of it.
Fuck.
Well, at least he wasn't dead
And yeah- he had kind of just killed the Chesapeake ripper.
Which, admittedly, was good for both the ego and the soul.
Not that he could ever explain how.
Which was honestly God's most fucked up joke ever right there.
He figured Beverly would have approved of the sentiment, if nothing else.
In the end, he did the only thing he could do short of leaving the country.
He tampered with the evidence.
He retraced the fading scent trail back to Hannibal's car and grabbed the biggest screwdriver in the asshole's tool kit and went to work. He skipped making it look perfect, and instead focused on making it look probable. Keeping the majority of the scene intact, he just went about modifying it slightly. Making it look like he'd gotten the upper hand while Hannibal was dragging him towards the clearing he figured was going to be the stage for his 'latest creation' featuring one, Brain Zeller.
Something which was true by the way, only he hadn't done it with a damn screw-driver.
Anger bubbled up unexpectedly when he reared up from the wreck of Hannibal's neck. Realizing it would have been a scene that Jimmy and Jack would have had to process with shaking hands and grim faces. Just like Beverly's. Weaving between hovering FBI trainees desperate to make a name for themselves and fluttering police tape that was just barely keeping the media at bay. Tagging and bagging all his bits and pieces spread across the cat-tail framed clearing until someone far braver than him tried to coax Jack and Jimmy away so another team could take over.
He looked around the clearing for a long moment, ignoring the insistent buzz of his cell against the blood-soaked flat of his thigh. Feeling the vibrations hum like miniature tremors through his skin. Realizing with an admittedly belated start that he was supposed to have died here. It was obvious, but honestly- mostly just bizarre when you really stopped to think about it. He did this shit for a living and now he was probably about as close to experiencing his own death as he could get without being cold and slack on an autopsy table.
He knew death wasn't something you could escape, but frankly this was fucking ridiculous.
He dialed 911 with bloody fingers that refused to shake and sat down in the pooling blood beside the body. Deliberately dragging himself through the trail he'd already made in the long grass. Covering it with a smearing meld that made it look like he'd killed Hannibal in self-defence and then crawled away in a daze. Effectively covering the directional blood spatter that covered his clothes until not even Jimmy would be able to tell the difference.
Using all the tricks in the book to make his testimony speak the loudest. Loud enough that no one would go digging for anything more than proved what they could see with their own eyes. That Hannibal was the Chesapeake Ripper. That Hannibal had killed Beverly. And after attacking him in his own home and stuffing him into the trunk of his car, he'd managed to get the upper hand before Hannibal could kill him. Stabbing him in the neck with a screwdriver repeatedly and yes- even with attacking him with his own teeth when he fumbled with the screwdriver and dropped it. Giving him an explanation for the blood he would never be able to scrub off in time or the bits and pieces of skin that were likely still stuck between his teeth. A walking smorgasbord of DNA and trace evidence he couldn't explain.
He let the phone slip out of his hands after wheezing his name and credentials. Playing the part that was expected of him as the shell-shocked victim who'd just beat all the odds. Watching the screen blink and dim as Jimmy's name flashed insistently on the edge of the screen. Finding it far more soothing than the growingly frantic voice of the 911 operator trying to keep him talking and pin-point his exact location.
He had about twenty-five minutes before the sound of wailing sirens reached him. Listening to the vibrations of far away cars and trembling wildlife already shying away from the stink of aging blood as he stopped crawling halfway back to the car. Pressing his ear to the grass as he closed his eyes into the musky soil and gave himself ten minutes to learn how to shudder apart.
Ironically, the worst part of the whole thing was when Jimmy and Jack pulled up on the edge of the scene with the screech of tires and aging breaks. The worst part was how Jimmy smelled like scotch on the rocks and self-harming tears that didn't settle smooth until the man caught sight of him wrapped up in a shock blanket on the back hitch of the ambulance. Certainly looking the part as he sat there- lost, small and practically luminescent with Hannibal's blood as Jimmy made a sound that was all vowels and internal relief that would have fucking crippled him if he hadn't already been sitting down.
The small smile he sent him took almost everything he had to get out.
But when Jimmy reached him and forgot to be skittish. Forgot that what they had hadn't quite gotten past a holding pattern without any actual holding and seized him up in maybe the most gently violent hug he'd ever experienced, he realized for the first time in a long time that even now – after Beverly, his destroyed apartment, and the blood coating his insides like an oil slick – even after everything they'd happened, they were probably going to be okay.
A/N: This story is now complete. Thank you for reading, please let me know what you think. Considering making this a series.