Thanks for all of the follows, faves, and reviews! I appreciate them! I just hope I'm doing all right with the pacing, the plot, and the characterization. It will all come together, at one point, and will hopefully all tie together nicely.
Disclaimer: I don't own Hannibal, but all original characters are mine.
Playlist:
Your Heart Is as Black as Night, Melody Gardot
Chasing Pavements, Adele
Runaway, Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Strange & Beautiful (I'll Put a Spell on You), Aqualung
Pretty Little Things
Chapter Four
January, 2007.
Hannibal Lecter, Victoria decided, was the most intelligent, charming, and erudite man she had ever met. She felt at ease with him, and she found that she could talk about almost anything with him. He didn't treat her like she was damaged or broken, but he honestly seemed to care for her. He seemed all too content to let things progress slowly and let her set the pace.
They'd been out together several times in the past two months: once he had driven to D.C. to attend the matinee performance of a Molière play with her and then have lunch at the wine bar down the street from where she lived; another time he had come to see the exhibit of Impressionist paintings at the art museum with her. She had been to his house for dinner many times, this time being a dinner party to which his friends and colleagues had been invited, and had even spent a few weekends with him. He was an excellent host, making sure that she was introduced to everyone—though she was sure they were aware of who she was just through recent news—and he spoke about the topic of her dissertation in such a way that people became interested in what she was writing.
"I'm writing about the fear of imprisonment present in Victorian gothic and sensation literature," she told two of the other guests as Hannibal came to her side, handing her a glass of wine and placing his hand on the small of her back. "It's used in both The Woman in White with the sane Laura Fairlie being committed to an asylum as the insane Anne Catherick and in Jane Eyre with Mr. Rochester's first wife, Bertha, as the madwoman locked away in Thornfield's attic." She sipped at her wine and the psychologist beside her nodded in understanding.
"It sounds very intriguing," he remarked, "given some of your recent experiences, Victoria. I'd like to read it when it's finished. Have you read any of it, Hannibal?"
Victoria glanced over at Hannibal, who smiled at his colleague and replied, "Yes, I have read it so far. It is brilliant. Victoria has a very compelling argument. If I didn't know better, I would have thought that she'd had some kind of training in the fields of psychiatry or psychology."
"Which I don't," Victoria added honestly.
"But don't you remember your Rousseau, Victoria? Experience can be the best teacher. Your experieces may have taught you something that a professional such as myself or Dr. Erskine may have spent years studying," Hannibal reminded her, and she heard Dr. Erskine laugh.
"If Hannibal thinks it's brilliant, then I'll have to read it when it's published," he told Victoria, raising his glass to her.
"It won't be ready for awhile," she said to Dr. Erskine. "I'm still doing a lot of the research for it. Hannibal has only been reading my notes and already thinks it's some great masterpiece."
"Dr. Lecter is a very good judge of what's good work and what isn't," the novelist—Mrs. Komeda—said to Victoria. "You should trust his opinion."
"Now you're putting her on the spot," Dr. Erskine chided Mrs. Komeda teasingly.
Hannibal laughed, kissing Victoria on the temple. "Dr. Erskine, I'm afraid I'm being put on the spot. Everyone places too much faith in what I think is le bon goût. With Victoria's dissertation, though, I don't think I'd be giving a fair opinion. I would give a favorable critique of anything she wrote."
She let him lead her to her seat at the dining room table, where the dishes he had prepared had been laid out. It was an impressive spread, one that, to her, was just as wonderful to look at as it would be to eat. Hannibal leaned over and whispered into her ear, "What are you thinking?"
"I'm thinking that this is all absolutely gorgeous," she replied, turning to address him. He seemed touched at this sentiment. "But I also think you're very sneaky."
"How so?" he asked her, seeming genuinely curious.
"You were indirectly quoting Madame de Staël," she explained, "and I think I was the only one who picked up on it."
"And this makes me sneaky?"
"Not in a bad way."
"Are you teasing me, Victoria?"
"Maybe."
She glanced away from him to answer a question that someone else asked her, and that led to a conversation about her father's novels and what it had been like growing up in California. There was some talk about the wine country, and the semesters she spent abroad in Europe, and why she had chosen to go to grad school. His friends seemed to accept her, she realized, and it had been easy, almost as easy as the relationship with him.
Almost as easy as falling for him.
"That was amazing," Victoria stated as they sat in his kitchen after everyone had left the dinner party. "Dinner, the guests, the wine—everything. Everything was perfect."
He poured himself some more wine, and he reached for her wine glass. "Would you like some more, or will you be driving home tonight?"
"I thought I would stay here, like we talked about, if you haven't changed your mind." She bit her lip.
"I haven't changed my mind." He refilled her glass. "The sheets in the guest room are clean. Where are your keys? I'll bring your bag in."
"Hannibal." She called out his name as he was going into the living room, and he stopped in his tracks and looked at her expectantly.
"Yes, Victoria?"
"I won't need the guest room tonight. I—I want to sleep in your bed. With you, and..." Her voice trailed off as she saw the corners of his mouth lift into a smile.
"Let me bring in your bag and you can tell me what else you would like to do with me in my bed," he said to her, and she laughed and watched him turn on his heel to find her car keys.
"I don't understand what the big deal is. It's not like you were raped."
That was what one of the responding officers had said to her when she had told him of how McCarren had touched her.
"That's not the point," she had said angrily.
"Then what is the point?"
"I don't know!" she had exclaimed, her eyes filling with tears. "I don't know what the whole point has been to any of this! Why don't you go fucking ask him?"
Hannibal had been very understanding of it, and she wss sure that much of that came with his training as a psychiatrist.
When she told him she didn't feel ready to have sex with him yet—as much as she had really wanted to—he had assured her that they would wait until she was ready. During those two weekends when she had driven up to Baltimore to attend an opera and later a charity dinner with him, he had allowed her use of his guest room. And that was when she had started to fall for him.
He took her suitcase to his bedroom and then returned to the kitchen, coming to her side and taking her hands into his. "You were going to say what you wanted to do in my bed with me—aside from sleeping."
Victoria laughed, standing up, conscious of how much taller he was when she wasn't wearing her heels. "I want to have sex with you, in your bed."
He bent to kiss her, his hand wandering to her waist. "You have a very dirty mind. What do you think we ought to do about that?"
"Indulge it."
He seemed to agree with this, and he followed her to his bedroom.
She'd always thought he was an amazing kisser but he was amazing at everything else, too. He took his time with her, asking her more than once to tell him what she wanted him to do. He eagerly followed any directions she gave, and she was just as eager to please him. She liked how he felt on top of her, how she had to brush his hair out of his face when he kissed her before putting on the condom. He tugged on her hair when she came the second time, just so he could kiss her, and he found his release after that. He pulled away from her so that he could dispose of the condom, and once he had done that, he returned to her side. He ran his hand through her hair and stared down at her with amusement on his face.
"What is it?" she asked him, and he lie down beside her, pulling her to him.
"I ws only thinking," he answered, "of how beautiful you are, and how much better my bed looks with you in it. I should have you in it more often."
She brushed his cheek with tender fingers. "I think that's a wonderful idea," she told him.
October, 2012.
That Saturday afternoon they went to a screening of The Scarlet Empress, a favorite of Victoria's, at one of the independent movie houses in town. As she beside him, she felt him place his hand over hers companionably, almost proprietarily. These moments left a heaviness in her heart, for she could pretend, just for a bit, that she loved him and that he loved her, and that they were just a normal couple enjoying a nice Saturday afternoon together.
But nothing could be further from the truth.
Once, when she'd been tipsy from too much wine and he'd had a long day seeing patients, they'd sat on the large sofa in the living room listening to Chopin. She'd been curled against him,inhaling the smell of his cologne, listening to his heartbeat and breathing, reveling in the feel of the material of his shirt against her cheek. Sometimes, when the mood seized him, he would asl her to make up stories about the works of art in his home. Tonight he asked her to do so with the Ophelia photo.
She more or less retold the story of Hamlet, only changing Ophelia's fate at the very end. When she had fallen into the river, a knight visiting from Lithuania, a good man who never would have broken her heart, pulled her from the river and took her to the nearest convent to be nursed back to health. He fell in love with her during this time, and she with him, and they were married in that very by a passing priest. When she discovered that not only was her father dead, but her brother, too, and that everyone in Denmark thought she was dead as well, she returned to Lithuania with her new husband and became the chatelaine of a great estate and lived happily, her old life in Denmark now some distant dream.
"I like that story best, I think," Hannibal murmured into her hair.
"Why?"
"Because," he said, "there is a bit of truth to it. Isn't there, Ophelia?"