AN - Before proceeding I recommend re-reading the second part of chapter 05, I was feeling lost when I posted it and re-wrote the second half of the chapter.
A big thank you to everyone for reading and leaving a review~3
I own nothing.
Not beta read.
OoOoO
Chapter 06
Darkness consumed him.
He faded into its velvet caress like a corps drifting to the ocean's depths, his body slipped through winding tendrils as his mind swam in the blackness of its void. There was peace within the darkness, serenity and calm as he had never known it before and for a moment Adam wondered if perhaps he were dead. Strangled during their love making or perhaps Hannibal had grown curious what he would look like dressed in rivulets of his own blood, drowning in the thick copper of his life.
His only regret would be not having taken the killer with him.
Such thought of death were proven in falsehood when the sensation of cool water rushed over his feet, up his calves and the chill of night air kissed his skin. He opened his eyes to find himself clothed in a shroud cut from the starless night sky and the blood of his victims, a moon too large and too full to be real hanging bright and low in the late autumn sky.
It should have been eerie, to wake standing alone in the river surrounded by towering trees, to anyone else it might have been. But he was a predator and the shadows of monsters that moved within the darkness did nothing to scare the killer standing in the river.
He began to walk, watching the shadows as they moved, others like him, monsters craved of flesh, bone and blood twitching through the forest, the broken steps of disfigured victims and the crawl of those who had killed them; all hidden within the coverage of the trees that framed his river, all fearing the creature who strode down its middle.
This place, Adam knew it, was familiar with the sweep of the current and the fish that swam past his ankles. He knew that place held meaning to him, though the memories associated with such a land were hidden deep within the confines of his mind and lost to him. He strode through the river, dressed in nothing, moonlight and blood, as he had been when he'd awoken, when he'd been born.
Despite the cool kiss of water lapping at his legs he felt no chill from it, despite the icy autumn breath running over his skin he did not shiver. It was as real as memory could provide and as vivid as dreams would allow - as his empathy would allow - so close in its semblance to almost have Adam fooling himself of the realness of the world around him.
A bellow cut through his forest and for a moment his breath stopped, heart skipped a beat as the hollow echo of a demon rang out through the darkness to silence birds that did not exist and bring stillness to the shadows of his realm, the creatures that had followed him within the veil of darkness finding fear in the cry of this beast.
Curious he pressed on, pace quick, eyes shifting, ears attentive to all sounds within his world. Something was with him. Something was watching him.
"You don't belong here." It was a voice he knew but didn't, one edged with fear and lacking the confidence that Adam harboured so easily. "You need to leave."
leave...He knew without elaboration what the voice meant, not leave the river, not leave the world, leave his mind. It was a demand to disappear.
A demand he would not acquiesce.
"I have no intention of going anywhere." Adam's steps were brought to an abrupt halt with the turning of bloody depths upon him, the stags deep maroon eyes almost glowing in the white illumination of the moon. His breath froze within him as he laid eyes upon the beast. He was power and beauty incarnate, donned in a robe of his ebony pelt, satin fur and thick feathered plumes streaked with silver by the moons kiss and honored by the towering crown of blood stained antlers that stretched to the sky above him.
If Adam were an angel as Hannibal claimed him to be, then this beast was a god.
A man stood with the stag, his back to Adam, his hand buried in the creature's soft pelt. "It's not your right to stay." The hand that had stroked the tendrils Adam itched to feel stilled, fingers twitching in the black as the man released the beast, "That's not your decision to make." He scathed turning on Adam in a whirl.
He shouldn't have been surprised, not by the man who turned to face him now. He suffered from empathy, Hannibal had said, would it be so far a stretch to believe himself capable of compartmentalizing himself? To grant a physical form to his other half with the strength of his imagination?
No, but it still stirred something in him all the same, a sense of fear, a caution of losing the freedom he had rightfully gained.
"Who are you?" He stepped closer to the anomaly before him, the man identical and yet so different from himself. This was who he had been, who he should be. The true him sleeping deep within the bone cage of his mind. He was lost in this forest, a world created to be their own and he was searching for the way out.
He wasn't about to let himself become replaced.
"I'm the one who should be awake, not you." He spat, the fear that had laced his voice thinned, anger and hatred taking its place.
He thought the desire for vengeance suited the tired stubble shadowed face more.
Where Adam stood naked but for the moonlit, skin splattered with the arterial spray he had been born to, the other man stood before him in too big khakis, a faded green polyester shirt and thick rimmed glasses that had no right to sit on their face. They didn't need them, he knew it, he used their eyes every day and they worked fine.
He considered his words, the underlying promise of blood if he did not comply. "If I give our body back to you, what will happen to me?" He canted head, a trait picked up from Hannibal he knew, the man was bleeding into him more and more with each passing day and without a proper sense of self he could hardly stop the transgression. But that didn't mean he wished to disappear. He was becoming his own person; one he hoped would combine the two of them into one with his control. A control he would keep, to retain his new sense of self, with the slow regaining of their memoires.
He refused to disappear. Now that he had woken up, a personification of the darkness that had lived inside them, the raw capability of the monster they were meant to be, he would never sleep again.
They'd had a taste for blood. There would be no taking that back. It didn't matter who became next.
"You'll die. Another monster locked away in another box." He stepped toward him, the towering stag on his heels - loyal dog to his master. It was a sight to behold, this man walking against the current of the river, illuminated by moonlight, the imposing figure of the nightmare stag towering behind him in his ascent. Hannibal had been wrong. Adam was no angel of death. This man, his other half, was the hand that had fallen upon Egypt.
"Lock me in a box to haunt you with the rest of our nightmares? Torture you as one of the beasts who run through our forest?" He was gathering thoughts now, the river feeding into him hint of memories and self he had forgotten.
Filling him with Will.
He smiled with a twisted freedom that this man would have never allowed himself. "No I won't. Whatever happens between us: You're awakening, my remembering, our coming together as one. I will never sleep again." If he had to kill them together, he would never sleep again.
Calculating, two monsters made the same and they lunged. They lunged and it was a fight that should have never been, two killers one in the same struggling to end the other, their witness and judge the nightmare stag who stood over them like a God. Watching them as the father had once watched the battle of Michael and Lucifer for freedom and imprisonment. Their cage waited.
Hands caught cloth while fingers slipped on slick skin and Adam proved the victor, knocking his other self to hold beneath the rivers surface. He would not lose, he couldn't.
Thumbs pushed into the windpipe of the man who would sooner see him die, stormy eyes identical to his own watching as he worked to kill himself from within the rushing waters depths, "When you wake up, Will," the name was biting, "You'll be the one joining me, not the other way around." He pressed harder, felt the dig of nails in his skin, the scratch of flesh rolling down his wrists beneath nails, body arching beneath where he straddled on his chest for escape. "I will win."
He woke to the sound of vibrations against wood and the feel of a strong arm holding him close, head on the predators chest to feel the rise and fall of breath and hear the quiet beat of his heart as he slept, Hannibal holding him close despite the fever that made him sweat. Adam knew without having to look that there would be salt rings on the sheets, he also knew without having to ask that Hannibal didn't care, the man more pleased to have Adam in his bed than worried about the staining of satin or silk.
"You should sleep Adam," Calloused fingers combed slicked curls back from his youthful face, the press of thin lips to his crown as his free hand found the cell phone charging by the bed, answered with the press of a key. If he had to make a guess, Adam would have said that Hannibal had been expecting the call, as tired as he seemed from being roused, he had not seen the doctor take his phone to bed with him before. Yet here it was, waiting for the doctor to answer as they slept. No note of disgruntlement in him for having been disturbed beyond the tired that came from being woken.
"Jack?" Though he feigned the confusion, the sense of fatigue was all too real; he had taken little more than two hours of sleep before the call, the hour still early at only 6:34am. "Has something happened?" He had been kept awake by the persistence of Adam's fever and it's reluctance to break under even his careful watch. It wasn't until he forced the temperature of 102 to settle at 99 that he allowed his angel to sleep and had disappeared to settle other matters at hand.
He had kept his Adam asleep this time with a small amount of sedative mixed in his lemon-ginger tea, insurance that the man would not be tempted to wonder the city during his absence again. But despite its breaking he could feel the rising of heat under skin once more, the warmth of the fevers return seeping into his fingers where they touched. He would have to give more careful examination to Adam's ailment upon his return.
"We've got a body." The agent's voice was heavy with concern, a burden sitting on his shoulders as he was made to consider options he had not cared to face before. "Shirlington Dog Park. Arlington, Virginia. You know the way?"
"I have a GPS, I'll be there as soon as I can." He ended the call with faux concern and a smile, burying his nose in soft ringlets to lose himself in the sweet heated scent of Adam. "Your fever is back, how are you feeling?"
He felt the shift of the beautiful boy against him. Let his fingers skim the pleasant curve of his sweat slicked skin to settle on his hip. His shirt had ridden during the night, revealing a long pale plane of flesh for fingers to dance upon. "My head hurts more than anything. I'm light headed. Feel airy and displaced."
He smiled looking up at those beautiful maroon eyes that almost seemed to glow in the moon light - his feathered stag - and brought a hand to touch beneath those beautiful eyes to have his fingers caught, brought instead to lips offered a delicate kiss against his knuckles, "As much is to be expected when one is sick." He disentangled himself from the beautiful man and slipped an arm beneath his knees, one behind his back and lifted him much as one might a bride. "You need to clean the sweat away, cool yourself. I'll run you a bath. You will change into fresh pajamas and then once you're settled again I will leave."
His angel gave a snort, eyeing him as he was set to his feet and left to strip the salt soaked pajamas, "Doctors orders?" He pulled the button up over his head anyway. This felt close to something familiar, not the same but familiar, the need to change during the night, to wash the sweat from his body and prevent a chill.
A hum, amusement, as the bath was drawn, "Yes."
He stepped toward the killer, the feeling of airy disjointment following him as he did. If Adam were to be honest with himself he hadn't realized he was sick because he had felt the fever since waking. He had been sick with it since the moment he'd met Hannibal on the highway. "And should I refuse?"
A look of amusement graced the killer as he drew the sick man to him, brush the curls back from his elusive gaze and kissed him on the mouth. "Then I will force you better, but I will not lose you."
He smiled at the reassurance, stealing another kiss before slipping into the tub. "Go to your meeting, I'll be in bed when you get back."
"You're not feeling the urge to wonder this morning?" He sat on the tub edge, cupped a handful of cool water and drizzled the cooling liquid over his head.
It felt like ice sliding down his back, skin hot enough to make the cool seem cold against him.
"I'll behave." He smiled, looking into the water at his legs and memory, "Go." He would let this man, this predator, make him better, and keep him safe within the confines of his home. At least until he developed enough of himself venture out on his own. For now it was too dangerous, he would be too easily fooled by those who would mean him harm.
And he had nowhere else to go.
A wet hand soaked a print through the cotton of Hannibal's sleeping pants as Adam gave him a half-hearted push to leave. "I'll leave you my number by the bed and more soup. Eat before you sleep and call should you need anything." Though those beautiful stormy eyes refused to meet his own he could see the promise hidden within them, a tension that had been held in his shoulders since waking releasing with the promise of keeping him.
As if he would let him go.
Was his Adam concerned he may be forced to leave? The idea was laughable, enough so to have the monster grinning as he left the ensuite to change the sheets before venturing downstairs. His Angel wouldn't be leaving and Hannibal wasn't about to risk letting the younger man escape again, not with the possibility of Will waking while Hannibal was otherwise unavailable.
He stirred the clear tasteless sedative into Adam's soup and slipped the cloche over the bowl.
He wouldn't be risking losing Adam during his absence again.
OoOoO
TBC