Will/Matthew; Will picking Matthew over Hannibal for tassyriddle

)O(

"I told you that the light of friendship wouldn't reach us for a million years." Will's voice was trembling slightly, and Matthew, watching from the sidelines, knew it well enough to know that the tremor was one of anger, not fear. "Did you think I was going to change my mind?"

"I thought you said what you said in the heat of anger," Hannibal said simply. "You were in a state of understandable distress."

"Being in a state of understandable distress doesn't mean that I didn't mean what I said." Will leaned forward and gripped the bars of his cage so hard that, even from the distance, Matthew could see his knuckles turning white. "The fact that you think that there's even a chance for friendship after what you did to me…"

"Will." Hannibal approached the cage until he was so close that Will could have reached out and strangled him, and though he knew it would doom both Will and him, Matthew found himself mentally urging him to. Go on. Do it. Bastard doesn't deserve to live. Will's hands twitched, but they didn't rise.

"I thought you and I had developed a relationship," he said. How he could stand there and say things like that to a man he had confined to jail was beyond Matthew's admittedly frail understanding of humanity.

"Any relationship we ever had was built from lies and corpses." Will stood up slowly, so he was face-to-face with Hannibal. "And whatever qualities we have in common are ones I wish I didn't have."

Hannibal was silent for a long moment. Matthew couldn't see his face, but he could see Will's, could see him staring so hard into Hannibal's eyes that it must have burned. When at last Hannibal spoke, his voice was quiet, dark, tinted with danger, and quite unlike his usual smooth, diplomatic tones.

"Without me, what friends do you have, Will?"

"Visiting time is up," Matthew said loudly. Both Hannibal and Will startled visibly, but Matthew didn't care. Hannibal's tone of voice had set off an instinctive protective reaction in him, and he wanted Hannibal out, far away from Will Graham, far enough away that he could never hurt him.

Hannibal's eyes flicked from Matthew to Will, back again, and then narrowed slightly. For half a second, an ugly frown marred his face, but then he smoothed it away and gave Matthew a polite nod.

"Of course," he said. "I'll see myself out."

Matthew watched him go, stiff and puffed out and standing between Hannibal and Will like an animal defending its nest. In the doorway, Hannibal turned back one last time and caught Matthew's eye, and something dangerous glinted in him. But then he was gone.

"He won't have liked that," Will said dully. "He'll think you've replaced him. Outshone him."

Matthew turned back to Will. "Haven't I?"

"Yes," he said, and sank back down in his cage. "But he won't have liked it."