Warning: this story contains sex which can be interpreted as consensual or nonconsensual. To be safe, I'm labeling it dubcon.
Poems referenced include The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock and The Ballad of Reading Gaol.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
- t.s. eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Will Graham is standing on a cliff. He is covered in blood, some of it his. It fills his nostrils and the cracks in his skin, seeping into his pores. His head is pillowed on Hannibal's chest, and his warmth seeps into Will along with the blood and fills him up. Soon it will be the only warmth he has left.
Will is dying, and all he can think is how good it feels.
His face hurts, and all the other places the knife had punctured. His body seems to be a mass of bruises, but he has slain the dragon; the proof of their act covers his hands and Hannibal's.
"This is all I ever wanted for you," Hannibal says tenderly. "For both of us."
He should hate Hannibal Lecter. That would be the sensible and sane thing to do. But hatred seems very far away right now, locked in a cell, straightjacketed and muzzled. So distant its light won't hit them for a million years.
Hannibal should hate him as well. Will shattered the stillness inside of him, infected him with this inconvenient compassion. Will saw him in a way no one else ever had, and to leave Will alive was to maintain an open wound.
As long as Will lived, Hannibal would never be able to hide the wet and pulsing red truth of himself.
"It's beautiful," he murmurs.
Any moment, the ambulance will be here. They will find Francis Dolarhyde dead, Hannibal dying, and Will on his way. They will resuscitate them with IV fluids, perhaps oxygen until a transfusion can be arranged. No one will pride themselves in saving them. No one will blame them if they do not.
They will be separated.
Will grips Hannibal more tightly. He cannot allow that to happen.
Hannibal doesn't fight him as they go over the edge. His lips brush Will's ear as they fall and fall and fall.
You are standing on a cliff. You are covered in blood, some of it yours. You are almost but not entirely alone.
Jack is not here with his bedrock moral certainty, nor is Molly here with her warmth and wry humor to talk you down, or Walter to plead with his young eyes. All the things you've centered your life around, work and family, family and work, lie behind you. The man who valued those things is dying.
You are free.
For the rest of your life, such as it is.
"This is all I ever wanted for you. For both of us."
You don't ask what he means – the blood on your hands or the blood seeping from you both, mixing in the places where you touch. His blood is your blood now. You want to lick it from his face and neck, but you're growing cold, and it's all you can do to hold on.
"It's beautiful," you tell him, and he grips you as tightly as his failing strength will allow.
You don't know what will kill you first, the blood loss, the impact, or the crushing weight of the water in your lungs, but you will hold this man until you can't hold on anymore.
I am standing on a cliff.
I will not die alone.
Will wakes gasping and soaked. His skin is covered in cold sweat, and he shivers.
"How strange," a voice says in his ear, and he turns.
Hannibal's eyes shine with love for him. It is too bright to look at.
What's strange? he wants to ask, but his voice is stolen by the pain in his gut.
Hannibal lifts the linoleum knife to his lips and licks slowly along the flat of the blade. The fingers of his other hand grab Will and twist inside of him.
It hurts less than watching Abigail fade and wilt on the floor.
Something rips inside Will and he screams. Hannibal smiles, presses something soft and bloody into his mouth.
"Do you see, Will?" Hannibal asks proudly.
Will screams and screams until his throat is raw and empty.
"Do you see?" he hears over his failing voice.
Hannibal's lips are wrapped tightly around my cock. He sucks as if he were starving for it, as if it is the only thing he could ever need.
This is the first time a man has touched me this way. He knows this and revels in it.
His lips part in a moan, and someone's blood drips from his mouth. Not mine. It coats his chin and my thighs and my hands as I pull him closer just to feel him gag. He doesn't pull away as I fuck him, treating his mouth like an anonymous, unfeeling hole as the blood pours from his lips. His tongue flicks against the underside of my cock as I use him. As he lets me use him.
His teeth scrape against the head, and I scream but don't stop him, not until his mouth is filled with blood and come. Even then, he laps me clean as I shiver helplessly.
My fingers curve around a length of forked bone that slashes easily through Hannibal's neck. He grins as the arterial spray undoes his hard work, leaves me dirty with his blood.
He keeps grinning as the floor falls away and we fall with it, again and again.
The stream is bath-warm around him as he casts his line. The trickle of water surrounds him, soothing. Familiar motions. Familiar stream. Rhythm of the currents around him, the endless flow of life.
He never catches fish here. That isn't the point.
His fingers stain red when he trails them through the water. It dries under his nails.
Suddenly there's a tug on the line, hard enough that he falls to his knees and nearly chokes on something that isn't water. He coughs, and a soft currant jelly clot falls from his lips. His stomach seizes with disgust as he pulls back on the line.
A pair of horns breaks the surface of the water, black and flaming and stinking of burnt blood. Then the great, leathery wings. He pulls and pulls, and finally there is a gaping maw to swallow him.
A man is lying on a cot. His clothes are white. The cot is white. His hair is cropped too short; it should be falling in his eyes. His clothes should not be white.
It is not clear why these things are wrong, but the feeling persists.
The man is visible through the clear glass of a cage. His clever lips are curved into something that may be a smile.
The man is in this cage so that he can be found, always. This knowledge settles warmly around him like a blanket each morning. It burns in his muscles as he exercises each morning. It slides past his lips with each bite of bland institutional food. When he goes to sleep at night, the knowledge will leave him, traveling silently over miles and miles to where another man lies sleepless and sweating.
The man in the blank white cage closes his eyes and breathes.
Behind his eyelids, the world is a riot of color.
You are standing on a cliff.
That is not true. Someone else is standing, and you are being held up. His chest under your face is the warmest and firmest thing you have ever felt. His arms clasp you tightly.
"If I saw you every day forever," he murmurs, "I would remember this time."
Carefully, he tilts your chin up. You don't move as he lowers his lips to yours. His mouth tastes of nothing so much as raw meat, bloody and intimate. You chase the taste with your tongue, but it persists. He bites down hard on your lip, and you whimper. The bite is followed by a softer and more chaste kiss.
"I couldn't leave without you, Will."
Before you can ask what he means, he takes both hands and shoves.
The last thing you see is the crashing surf.
Will. You must wake up.
For me, please.
It isn't safe here.
The sea tastes of blood and salt.
His blood.
My blood.
Your blood.
Will -
The tube burns down his throat, and he gags. Hannibal's hands stroke his face, not quite affectionate, not quite clinical.
"You must honor every part of her," the doctor murmurs.
Some distant part of Will wants to scream, but he is locked inside his own flesh, his spasming eyelids, his choking throat.
"There, there," the doctor murmurs once it's over. "It's all right. You've done so very well for me."
He shivers as lips brush his forehead.
Someone is slapping him, but it is far away, as if it were happening to someone else.
He wishes it would stop.
He wishes everything would stop.
I have heard the mermaids singing each to each, he thinks as someone grasps him and turns him onto his back.
Hands crush his chest with bruising force, over and over. The sea roars in his ears.
I do not think they will sing for me.
"I don't find you that interesting," he lies.
"You will."
Someone is standing on a cliff. He does not know why this is important.
White shards litter the floor around him, some crushed nearly to powder, others sharp and gleaming. Some are chased with threads of china blue, others with shell pink cherry blossoms and pale green leaves.
The sea of shards stretches endlessly in every direction. Will stands at its center, the soles of his feet bare against the cold floor.
Before him is a heap of bones and china that stretches far overhead. At its peak is a single skull. He knows that he must hold it in his hands, feel the smooth planes with his fingers. It is the only thing for him in this shattered china world.
The first step tears his feet, and he looks down to see hot red surging over the layer of pastels and pure gleaming white. Tears sting his eyes. He takes another step, then another.
The mountain is too steep to climb on foot, so he must use his hands. Porcelain splinters slip under his nails and between his fingertips. He grits his teeth and climbs onward.
Twice, he nearly loses his footing and is forced to grip as tightly as his ruined hands allow. His blood leaves a trail beneath him. He pants and does not allow himself to think of falling.
It takes hours to reach the summit, or perhaps only minutes. With shaking hands, he lifts the skull to his lips.
Only now there is no skull, but a single unbroken teacup.
He falls to his knees, clutching it close to his chest. Shards of bone and china tear his knees. He is alone on the summit. Somehow he feels abandoned, but the thought makes no sense; abandonment requires expectation.
The sound of rushing water fills his ears. The sea looms over him, boundless and dark and far greater than him in his world of bone and teacups. It washes away the blood and his mountain without care, filling his lungs with the sting of salt.
Soon all this will be lost to the sea, someone whispers.
You ridiculous, stubborn calf. You've insisted on surviving this long.
Survive for me once more.
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which in a minute will reverse.
In the span of a moment, two men lead a hundred lives together.
They meet on the Seine when a young doctor stops to watch a man repairing a boat. He is struck by the strength and surety in this man's hands. Surgeons have worked with less dexterity. When the man notices he is being watched, the doctor does not look away. Their eyes meet and hold. Neither can break free.
They meet at a gallery in Manhattan. The man in the corner is distinctly out of place, discomfort radiating from his pores. You can take the trash out of the trailer, he thinks, but not the other way around. All these high class snobs love to pretend they don't know exactly where he comes from.
"I've never seen anyone look so grudgingly at paint and canvas." someone says, intruding on his silence. "Do you not like the show?"
"It's pretentious." he replies. "Self-congratulatory. Like he can't stop patting himself on the back for being so clever. Obscure literary references. Plays on classic themes. Layer on layer of allusions designed to satisfy critics. At some point, it becomes self parody."
His companion is startled into a laugh. "What do you mean by that?"
"I mean that he's mocking the audience for enjoying this farce."
"That's certainly an interesting theory."
The man shrugs and drinks his wine without tasting it. The silence hangs heavily between them as the intruder fails to leave his space.
"Who are you?" he asks finally.
"Apparently a pretentious, self-congratulatory panderer."
The man nods, offering no apology.
"You would fit excellently in one of my works." the artist says, slipping him his card. "I would love to have you on my couch."
They meet in an abandoned house in New Orleans. A man's lips drip with gore. The police officer watches in stricken silence as he licks them clean. The knife fits in the killer's hand as if it were made for his palm. "I think I will eat your heart," he says thoughtfully, already anticipating the sensation of firm muscle between his teeth. He takes his time preparing his meal.
"Eat it raw," the policeman chokes out, before he goes blank and still.
There is no reason not to fulfill his request.
In London, they do not meet at all. There is only an accidental brush in the street, a muttered apology. It is on this path that their lives stretch the longest. If they feel a longing for something absent, they cannot name it.
Once upon a time in a kingdom by the sea, there was a prince lost in the forest. He was far from home, and the trees were thick and thorned. Briars clutched at him as he pushed through the branches.
The prince was hunting a dragon with blood red scales who lived in a castle of mirrors. They said the mirrors were all shattered and reflected no light. They said the blood on his scales looked black in the darkness.
As far as he walked, the forest seemed to stretch farther, seemingly without end. His mouth grew dry with thirst, and hunger gnawed at his belly. He refused to stop.
When he could walk no more, he found himself on his knees, gazing upward into the eyes of a wolf.
"What great sharp teeth you have," the prince said.
"The better to eat you with." the wolf replied.
The prince shook his head weakly. "But I must fight the dragon."
The wolf bent to sniff him, his breath hot against the prince's skin. "You will never fight the dragon. You are dying."
"Please help me," the prince cried. "Help me, and you'll have anything you want."
The wolf licked a broad stripe up the prince's throat, grazing the skin with his sharp teeth. The prince shivered but did not flinch.
"I would have your heart." the wolf decided.
The prince accepted his terms, and the wolf gave him a ripe pomegranate to eat, bidding the prince to climb on his back. Bright red juice stained the prince's chin and fingertips as he ate.
"Why must you slay the dragon?" the wolf asked. The prince clung to his back as the he ran.
"To keep my people safe."
"Do they love you?"
"No," the prince said. "They fear me."
"Then why protect them at all?"
The prince wound his fingers deeper into the wolf's thick ruff, unable to explain.
When they reached the castle, it was as great and terrible as the stories. Shards of broken glass littered the ground around the castle, nicking the wolf's paws, though he did not seem to mind. The world they reflected was dirty and dizzyingly disjointed.
"How dare you disturb my castle?" the dragon roared.
The wolf gave no answer, only leapt for his throat. When the dragon's claws swiped at his belly, the prince charged with his sword. Together they defeated the dragon, and the prince's hands were stained with blood as well as pomegranate juice. The wolf lapped them both from his fingers.
"You could have been a prince yourself."
"I would rather have the heart of one." the wolf replied.
"Will it hurt?"
"Only very much." the wolf told him. "I shall treasure it."
The wolf took the prince apart quite slowly and ate the heart in one gulp. His screams shook the forest and rang off the broken walls of the castle. It was, all in all, a very satisfying meal.
But something in that heart was like a poison to him. It leeched into him slowly, like a pomegranate seed taking root in the ground, and by the time he realized what had happened, it was far too late. Each time the wolf took down a stag and gnawed his bones, he saw the prince's face. Each time he heard the echo of the wind, it had the prince's voice.
Each time the stolen heart beat inside his chest, he felt the prince's pulse under his tongue.
The throbbing heart became unbearable. He tried cutting it out with a knife made of antler, but he found only muscle, bone, and viscera. The heart remained.
He tried to flee the heart, running until his paws were bloody, but it followed him all the way to the edge of the sea. There was nowhere left to run, only endless lands behind him and the roar of the waves below.
The wolf knew there was only one way to be rid of the heart, and that was to dash himself on the rocks beneath him.
As he fell, he recalled the taste of the prince's flesh.
He could not regret it.
He did not wear his scarlet coat...
Hannibal's nails scratched deep furrows into Will's skin.
"You have taken me a step beyond alone," he panted against Will's throat. "It is inconvenient."
Will gasped and dug his fingers into Hannibal's shoulders. "Please," he said. "Oh god, please -"
Hannibal pushed his thighs apart and sank into him slowly, stretching the moment until it broke. Will made a sound like a dying thing.
"Shhhh," Hannibal whispered as he pulled back only to sink in deeply again. "I've got you."
Will bit his lip until it bled under Hannibal's tongue. The smell of blood and sweat filled the air, hot and overwhelming.
...for blood and wine are red...
He felt raw, exposed, like a severed nerve. Hannibal's skinned burned against him. His weight crushed him as he gained speed, breathing raggedly into Will's chest. His polished shell was nowhere in sight, leaving only this hungry, grasping creature that bit and clawed at Will's skin, that let himself be clawed back.
And blood and wine were on his hands...
Hannibal growled and clutched Will tightly as he came. His grip left bruises in its wake.
"Quite inconvenient," Hannibal murmured.
He made a choking sound as Will's teeth sank into his throat.
...when they found him with the dead.
The flesh tore under his mouth as he swallowed, licked, and ripped off more. It only seemed to add to his hunger, but he couldn't stop.
Each man kills the thing he loves, Will thinks as brackish water fills his lungs.
The kindest use a knife.
They have never been kind to one another.
Will wakes up to fresh pain in his chest and the taste of salt on his lips. Hannibal is staring down at him with an expression Will has never seen before: naked relief.
"It would have been a fitting end." he says. "Drowning, together, in the sea. But it seems fate has given us another chance."
"You have the luck of the devil," Will croaks.
Hannibal smiles. "One must wonder what God is thinking to allow this."
"God has nothing to do with it."
"If you say so." Hannibal replies, stroking a hand down his cheek. "I'm afraid your ribs are broken."
CPR, Will realizes. He pictures Hannibal bent over him, forcing air into his lungs. Meticulously compressing his chest until he felt bone crack.
Perhaps not so meticulous.
"You were willing to die with me. But are you willing to live with me as well?"
Will's head and every inch of his body aches. His world still spins with images of horns, bone, and china, the taste of blood in is mouth.
When they kiss, it is with the roar of the sea behind them.