I'm back!
Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake never lost it's peculiar enchantment, especially when it was performed by a company such as the Mariinsky Ballet. The tale had been re-enacted perfectly, not missing a single beat. The lovers on stage were about to end their own lives in order to be free from the evil Von Rothbart's spell when Dr. Lecter heard a faint ragged gasp to his right. He turned his chin an inch, catching sight of a fat tear mapping down Adelaide's cheek, her eyes distant and focused intently on the dancers. The sight threatened to make him smile but he suppressed it.
She has undoubtedly known about the tragedy that awaited the souls but the magnitude of the act it seemed to have caught her in it's throes anyway.
As the concert drew to a close Hannibal shook his blue silk handkerchief open and turned again to his companion, fiddling about inside her small lace purse. He smiled openly at her when their eyes met; raising the material to her smudged make-up and drawing the dark stains away with the tip.
She blushed beautifully and thanked him with a wordless movement of her red painted lips. He stood and offered her his hand when another member of the audience pushed by them quietly.
One month had passed, two dinners shared between them somewhere in it's midst and Hannibal was content, there were few people whose attention he honestly agreed with but he had found her always a pleasant flavour. Like a touch of pepper to brighten a dull meat.
(The incident with the blinds went unmentioned even in the privacy of his skull. It did not sit well with him.)
He had pondered the limits of her deeply morbid interests and longed to measure hers to his own - of course he knew she was no murderer, that was his design, and he considered her simply too much in touch with her human soul to be able to find entertainment in truly wicked acts of sadism ... but he wondered all the same.
He had also found his mind wandering about many other subjects and ideas indecisively; he wasn't sure what he really wanted her to be. He knew of the stern limitations he had in the area of emotion and did not attempt to push himself where he knew he was able nor keen to go.
Nonetheless, he had had a fine evening of culture and company.
Her arm was tucked into the crook of his as her neighbour accompanied her on a walk from his driveway to her porch.
"Please come inside?" she said gently, like he might not desire it.
"With pleasure." He replied, needing no second invitation.
She unlocked the door nimbly with her gloved hands and stepped inside, holding the door open for the doctor. He closed it behind him carefully and followed her upstairs.
Adelaide wore an elegant high-waist crimson dress nearly enveloping her feet with flowers of scare gold and red finely embroided on the upper piece slanting down her chest to reveal a taunting swell of cleavage. Hannibal was as always, dressed in a tailored suit – this particular one with fine pinstripes running down the length and as always wore a pale shirt with an exotic tie retaining his professional air.
She poured them both a tot of tawny port in long stemmed glasses and carried them over to where her guest sat on the two-seater in front of her empty fireplace. He leaned forward and accepted the drink with a polite smile, waiting until she sat down before swirling the liquid and sampling it expertly on his pallet.
They sat together in comfortable silence for a few minutes before something new in his hand seized her consideration. He had picked up one of her many sketchbooks on the side table where she'd been drawing the night previous.
"NO!" She yelped in alarm, her face flushed.
Hannibal paused as he was about to crack the book open.
"Why?" He asked with a feigned innocent question. He knew what she was afraid of, of course, discovery of a very private part of the demon driving her to create as she did.
As if reading his mind she protested, locking her fingers around the covers he held on his lap; "There'd be little secrets left." Her imagination wild, dreading with the memory of the images held in the private sketchbook.
"I'll show you mine." He said levelly, bargaining like an old diplomat.
An eye for an eye... Her mind raced around the possible themes of the art of his he was offering to show her, finding none she would find a surprise –
But her insipid curiosity got to her first.
"Deal." She put her hand out to him, for good measure, to bind it as a promise.
"Bring the book." He said, holding it out to her when he got to his feet after they shook hands, smiling evenly at her.
Adeliade rose after him, holding it a little too protectively, but only Hannibal saw the tension in her hand. His own curiosity straining dangerously.
His private sketches got to go first. A classic style nude –drawn from a live model? She couldn't say. Architectural drawings; perfectly drawn facades, pillars, windows, reflections. Watercolour sketches of fruit, birds, a stag, severed antlers...
"This has been censored, Hannibal." Adelaide said after she'd paged through his sketches on a small three-legged table standing against a pillar behind his desk.
The light was low, springing from the array of lamps lit across the room. He had mentioned casually to the heap of paper after he set them down for her to inspect.
"That's everything." He said, "I kept up my end." The corners of his eyes crinkled, his accent breaking into the words he murmured.
After a moment ticked by between their stoic bodies, Hannibal reached for the book in her arms, pulling it free of her grip and flipping the cover open in one movement before snapping it shut with an afterthought.
"Let's sit down."
His last words unsettled her more than anything else and her brain squirmed as they went over to the chaise lounge together.
The first sketch she remembered drawing while slightly intoxicated three months ago. A woman lying on her upper back, shoulders pressed into the ground and hips raised, one leg stretched out, the other held by another woman.
The other woman peeled the skin from the leg of her partner like stockings, the scene did not seem melancholic at all, but rather intimate and ecstatic by the emotion etched into their slightly defined faces. The figures wore no clothing, sitting unabashed opposite each other.
The doctor's eyes lingered on the pair for a fair moment before he glanced up to her, meeting her scrutinizing gaze on him.
His eyes betrayed no emotion and he looked squarely back at her.
He turned the page, figures of men, sitting on their knees whipping themselves like ancient Christian priests did. Coarse robes lay bundled on the floor beneath them.
The next pages all depicted either slight or blatant erotic scenes, laid down crudely and expressionistically on the paper. Men and women locked in intimate embraces, never once though, did she focus on anatomy other than the breasts of the females she realized, thankful that she would at least not appear as tasteless - she hoped.
She was suddenly very glad for the many missing pages in the hardback.
"How many partners have you had Adelaide?" He interrupted her anxious thoughts calmly.
"Two, in high school." She replied, deciding to push back at her embarrassment. She had no need to feel like a child, but she felt exposed to her core and could feel her blush rising.
Hannibal paged back, to her dread, and splayed a set of pages open. A woman, sitting placidly on a window sill with the black night sky at her back, stretched over both sheets: from all over her skin faint roses grew as large as her head.
"I like this one." He stated, continuing to exam the work, his fingers a careful distance from the edges in fear of smearing the black, blue and red pastels.
Adelaide could not find her voice to answer, she had drawn it about twenty hours ago on a random place in the middle of the book, did he know it was her latest work of art?
Dr. Lecter leaned over to her slightly, his fingers combing her hair away from her brow like he did before.
"Why are you so full of fear, Adelaide?"
"You're holding shreds of my soul, Hannibal." She countered. He must understand... and he did, he just wanted to hear the words she chose to answer with.
He was very close to her; she could smell spearmint and faint aftershave on him.
He pulled his hand through the rest of her hair. Closing his fist around a lock and bringing the length to his nose, tracing his chiselled mouth over the soft texture as he breathed her in.
She placed a hand at the side of his face, half into his hair on impulse - to try and exercise some kind of control over the situation.
He regarded her with sober eyes for a dangerous moment of limbo before his eyes cleared with a decision and he rubbed his cheek up her hand like a feline, famished for attention.
She felt his hand twisting into the hair at the nape of her neck, his fist strangling her mane and bringing her face closer to his own.
"I want to dissect you." He hissed into the shell of her ear, his composure unravelling.
Adelaide gasped involuntarily at his hot breath, throwing her head back to look into his clouded eyes.
Then his lips were hard on her own, his tongue moving swiftly, already demanding entrance by pressing at her teeth. She tried to keep up with him, moving both hands to cup his face as he drew her into him; one hand tightening at the base of her throat, the other still lost using her hair as leverage.
The phone rang then, breaking through the cocoon of his spell.
"This time of night? I didn't know you worked for the FBI?" her mind whirled with adrenaline and confusion.
"with them, I help out sometimes... I have to go Adelaide," Hannibal paused, his voice Death's, "I want you to know I do regret that."
R & R!