DISCLAIMER: I claim no ownership of Hannibal NBC or affiliated branding (sadly).
SUMMARY: Will has Hannibal. Margot has Mason. Opposites attract, but understanding is found in similars. Or – late night drinking leads to an open conversation between two people who are being swallowed alive by their very real monsters. Oneshot.
NOTES: See chapter end.
'Metanoia – The breakdown and the healing.'
Will is in a wandering mood. Wandering has always been the way to settle him. Crisp air leaves a warm taste in his mouth, associations flowing unbidden from years past. Back when folks used to pull strings, call him a troubled, special child, Dad would hold his hand through the brambles and marionberries dotting dry Texas rivers to take his mind off of it: a rare moment of physicality between them, if only for practicality. He'd take his guitar, a Vintage Statesboro without the top two strings, and struggle to fingerpick his way through Louisiana folk tunes.
It was easier to forget, then, the people who tried to convince his father to send him to therapy, to social services – to a mental hospital, at worst.
An odd image, in hindsight. Local alcoholic and single parent Graham, the fisherman and the engineer by practice, half-heartedly strumming as his wide-eyed son, wrists thin enough to snap like bird bones, sat silent and still. For all Dad's reputation, he never handled Will with anything worse than a harsh word or disappointed glare. Everything else was soft words and fierce defence, a mentor but a distant one. He feared tainting Will with his worst habits.
But Will was a scary child, pupils too keen for his face. People's lives stuck to him like cobwebs to pant legs, and bad habits even more so. The music was a rarity, not for him to keep. The smoking, the drinking, that stuck. At least for a bit.
He almost wishes for the guitar himself now. It would complete his well-worn image. Coming home broken and anguished, drinking Jack Daniel's and trudging through the forest, singing to his pack of muddied dogs – perfect, in some sense, if he could hold a tune. Not to be in reality. Besides, Dad still has the guitar somewhere down South, shoved in an attic somewhere, an extension to a dead Oklahoma plaster house.
Well, beggars can't be choosers, and Will may not have all the equipment but he sure as hell won't let that stop him drinking. He's finished a whole crate since Randall Tier, on top of the wine Margot brought those previous few nights. Before he can think he's knuckles white, brows furrowed in the kitchen, rooting through the cupboards for something strong.
He avoids rifling behind the basmati rice and gone-off loaf. Hidden in that nook is the Dalmore whiskey, glaring and pale and expensive. Hannibal gifted it to him. When Will can't say, a memory locked away for safekeeping. It could have been last week for all he knows. It's a beautiful box, worth more than the entirety of Will's foodstuff. A white stag symbol adorns the packaging, a cruel hand of humour on Hannibal's part.
Will grits his teeth. Not tonight. Tonight he's getting hammered by his own hand, even if that means cheap beer and the demoralising guilt that plagues him following any money wasting pastime. He welcomes the shame. Another problem he can pile onto the burning hell tearing his mind to slips of paper.
He wants to call someone. He doesn't want to call someone. He wants to slip into his car and jam the keys in the ignition, to gather his dogs and sob into their unbrushed fur, to pack his gun and his flannel, his canned soup and, hell, throw the Dalmore in for good measure, then drive North, or West, far away and far away again. He needs to get out. Away from Alana, her pity and her infatuation with everything Will hates. Away from Jack Crawford, his deadening guilt and sharp words. Away from Hobbs, and Tier, and all the unnamed corpses littering his hands, littering his mind like flies floating in honey.
Away from Hannibal. God, he needs to get away from Hannibal.
He's halfway through his first bottle when he hears a knock. Time's strayed from late evening to the touch of early morning; it's just past midnight. Will straightens in his lounge chair, stretching his back. Nothing good comes from night knockers, and there's only a minimal handful of recurring perpetrators.
(Please be Hannibal. Please don't be Hannibal. Will doesn't know what he'll do either way.)
He hovers at the door, the lines in the wood's varnish glaringly obvious. His thoughts dance around the possibility it is another attacker, another poor kid manipulated by Hannibal into a futile attempt at assassinating him for entertainment.
Will isn't in the mood to fight back tonight. He'll lay back, rest his head, flatten his unwashed curls against the floor and let it happen. Peaceful.
Unexpected, however, is Margot Verger, eyebrows raising as he finally unlatches the door and it swings narrowly into the cold.
"Began to think you were sleeping. For once."
Will clutches the door near his shoulder, not letting her catch more than a glimpse of the corridor beyond. Golden yellow light from the wall sconces in his kitchen flood her face and capture the flutter of her eyelashes.
"If you're here to have sex with me again, then you can count the evening over." But Will opens the door nonetheless, holding it as she slips her coat from her shoulders. They're broad shoulders (which he knows far too well for his own comfort), hinting at previous muscle gone to waste, a land of thinness and bones at the twisted fingers of her brother.
He follows Margot to his living room. The mess is worse than her last visit, his paperback copy of Byron poems and a salmon shirt not quite dirty enough to wash strewn about his floor. He listens to her talk, her voice soft and cordial.
(Like Hannibal's voice. Articulate. Calming.)
"Situations have changed. My current state of affairs, as ordained by Mason, have rendered any intercourse difficult." Margot twists her hair around her ring finger and it comes away in a whorl as she sits, perched like a delicate owl, on Will's chair. "Thankfully I'll heal," she continues bluntly, "I'd hate for my only intimacy with a man to be my last."
"Can't blame you. I won't take offence," Will says. He raises his eyebrows, tilting his bottle towards her. "Drink?"
"No, thanks. I'm here on personal business."
"Manipulating me to impregnate you not once but twice? I'm impressed." His voice falls bitter, and harsh, cold considering the surgical violation she's undergone. Now Will can't give her an heir if he tries. And, despite the loss of his unwanted child, as carefully as he would have cradled their head in the palm of his hands, he has no doubt Margot feels that pain sharper and deeper than his brain could conjure in nightmares.
She brushes away his misgiving with a sharp smile, all white, artificial teeth and perfect hygiene – she is a Verger, after all. "I didn't bring wine. But I brought some casserole." Off Will's visible confusion, she unpacks a plastic box and struggles with the lid, unveiling an amalgamation of bright carrot, finely chopped beans and the dark flash of well-done chicken. "Comfort food. Figured I owed you it."
"You… owed me a casserole?"
"For lying to you about birth control, then taking advantage of your poor self-esteem and projected rejection sensitivity? Yes."
Margot's face is so earnest, so apologetic, that it stifles the laugh in Will's throat instantly. He supposes his own methods of apology are equally as awful, destructive to both parties. A homemade meal from someone who was raised in the presence of chefs cooking every course seems so innocent in comparison.
"Chuck it over here," he sighs eventually, "I'll warm it up."
Granted, it's far fancier than his usual affair. Smells of cinnamon and cumin waft through the kitchen, a soft aroma. The chicken swims in sauce, the red colouring seeping through the skin and rendering it a vibrant crimson.
(Not blood. It's not blood. It's chicken. It's not blood. Margot made this. Hannibal didn't make this. He couldn't have gotten anywhere near this.)
Will swallows. Lung sausage and morsels of muscle drench his tongue, a phantom aftertaste, accompanied by coffee drugged up with who-knows-what.
(Then the chicken soup. That, inexplicably, was just chicken. That's all it was. And that was nice. That was kind. Hannibal was kind to him for the sake of being kind. And, god, doesn't that mess him up?)
He shuts the oven door with a slam. Returns to Margot, collapses across from her. Not expectant. Just tired. He wants to sleep, or cry, or both. He wants to run into the forests of Virginia, but is stuck with a
haunting soul seeking solace at his door.
"How's Hannibal?" Margot's question is sudden.
Will's skin chills and he raises his shoulders defensively, barring her eyes from scraping across his torso and peeling the truth from its burial spot near his sternum. "Hannibal? I haven't really thought much about him."
(He has. He hasn't stopped. He never stops. It's all he thinks about.)
Margot swirls her foot. Once clockwise. Twice anticlockwise. The unbalanced action unnerves Will. "Last time we spoke, he reinforced his original backing of my position. Which was my plan to kill my brother."
"Oh. Yeah. What about that?"
"Just wondering," Margot mutters, closely, to herself more than him, "wondering, if he's like this with me, how is he with you?"
Will frowns. "Largely the same. He's unorthodox."
"Oh, he made that very clear." Margot's 'Oh' is different to Will's. It's assured, clever in articulation. A hint at an analytical monster beneath the surface. "Lecter tolerates me because I am polite, and we are similar in standing and fate's unlucky bunch. He may even like me, at a stretch. But you –"
She leans forward, squinting at Will's face. "He is enamoured by you. His regard for you seeps into all other conversations, eats up at other topics, like he sees you in every obscure reference, every other character."
Will shuffles.
(He doesn't want to talk about this. He wants to get out.)
"This has sparked your interest," he speaks slowly, with clear diction, "for what reason, exactly?"
Margot shrugs a shoulder, the whites of her eyes catching the light and shining red, raw. "I'm alone in this world. My brother's love for me is as consuming as it is enrapturing."
"You see that in me and Hannibal." Will feels dim behind his irises, autopilot taking control. "You seek understanding," he states. It's not a question. It's a fact. He sees it in the undone lace of her beige blouse sleeve, the mascara leaking from the outer corner of her left eye, the clutch of her nails floating over her abdomen, a flimsy barrier against previous hurts.
He'll see the same signs in the mirror later, only in a different form.
"My brother does obsess over me. He pretends not to, yet while he is painful I would never consider him to be inconsistent. I'm beginning to guess your good doctor may be the same." Margot's voice carries a natural lull between words, like she's not used to speaking uninterrupted. Will's never heard her say more than a sentence in one breath.
"Dr. Lecter and I have a rather complex history. As I'm sure the tabloids kept you well updated with." Will grins and bares his teeth, his tongue finding the roof of his mouth and pressing hard at the bone. "But, yes. He's… consistent. To put it nicely."
Margot considers this. A heavy misery invades the comely tilt of her lips, one long considered and bordering on despondent acceptance. Will luckily needs not ponder on this long, as she's frantic for comprehension. Yearning for visibility.
He can relate to that in some sense.
"To what extent would you go to rid yourself of Hannibal's affections?"
"Attention," Will replies solidly, "not affection."
Margot nearly rolls her eyes, if it would be dignified for a woman of her standing to do so. Instead it's a brief twitch, an exasperated disbelief. Will bristles.
"I despise Mason. He's barbarous and bloodthirsty. But," she pauses, "– but he can be gentle. He's soft around the edges where I'm concerned, in his own twisted way."
The alarm for the casserole dish goes off, drilling into Will's head. He sets his bottle down and offers Margot a penitent nod, leaving her to nibble at her lip. There's dark lipstick on her teeth now – this week it's less for seduction and more for pure comfort in her own skin. The colour does not quite match her complexion.
Will coughs and blows away the oven's fleeting exhalation of steam. Wrapping a dishcloth around his hand, he tugs out the meal he'd thrown haphazardly into the spare deep dish he thrifted. He scoops it into two bowls (also thrifted, mismatched, one pale yellow like an infirmary wall, or an old-peoples' sunny yellow, and one a flat, ocean decorated gift from his dad – Will's favourite), and returns sheepishly. The interruption was welcome on his part, but he doesn't begrudge Margot a vent. He doesn't begrudge her anything.
Against his better judgement, against everything that's happened, Will likes Margot. She's him in a different life, a different font, a mirror where he has only ever been the reflection himself.
"Where were we?" He asks as he sits, slouching terribly. He tosses Margot a fork and she catches it, smirking. "I hate to interrupt our impromptu group therapy."
"Always nice to have someone to talk to," Margot agrees. "Someone who isn't convincing us to kill people." She's sagacious. Will is unsurprised she's figured out she's not an isolated case of psychological malpractice.
"You know," Margot continues, focus distant, an invisible hurt dancing through the dust particles between them, "I remember when I was fifteen, Mason convinced me to climb out the library window. It was late, gone nine. I'd been arguing with our father about the girl I was seeing at church. He held my hand and led me through the grounds until we reached the stables." She huffs out a laugh. Will watches politely, more than a little at a loss for the relevancy.
Margot is swallowed by the memory. "Turns out he'd snuck the key from the groundskeeper, bribed him somehow, so we could go riding under the stars without our parents knowing. He must've threatened the entire staff to hush it up. All because I was upset. And…" She's still, choked despite her unaffected demeanour. "And I've never loved someone more than in that moment. Never."
"That's your chicken soup."
Margot levels him with a bemused, almost humorous glare. "My what?"
Heat climbs Will's cheeks and he clutches his untouched food to his chest. "Uh – Hannibal… Hannibal brought me chicken soup when I was in hospital. I didn't know he was…" Evil. A serial killer. A cannibal. "– I didn't know he was… as weird as he is, back then. Nobody… nobody has ever done that for me before. It was like a glimpse of tenderness wrapped in a shell of torture."
"They treat you just sweet enough to hook you –" Margot is matter of fact about it. "– then –"
"Then reel you in for capture," Will finishes. Images of Hannibal, as if sketched in charcoal and slashed with watercolour, are drawn from the page in sharp scarlets and cardinals, and drift into the corner of the sitting room. His veined hands are so delicate, adroit in their soft touches. Will falls into his eyes and his heart burns with acid, tears stinging the back of his head, longing stabbing his gut. He wants those palms at his chin, untangling his hair. He wants the precision that comes with calculated endearment. He'll take everything else, he'll take the torment, the pain that Hannibal loves to inflict to see the desolation on Will's face, the distress and the heartbreak, so long as it's followed by soothing words, reassurement through showered infatuation, his tears thumbed away and body held.
He'll take all the injustice in the world if there is a kindness on the other side.
(And that scares him.)
Margot's not watching him, a similar nerve struck in her own posture. Will wonders what horrific proclamations of love she's imagining. His own fantasies are largely unfounded, at least on the side of tenderness, but Margot's must be near non-existent.
They are bound by cruel intentions, by isolation.
(He can't deal with this. He needs to walk. He needs to run. He needs to get out. He needs –)
Will shovels a forkful of casserole into his mouth. Shuts his racing mind down with flaky meat and soft vegetables. Margot follows suit, critical as she spins her fork. She says, "the carrots are overdone," in a self-deprecating sigh, but overall seems inclined to pride. Will can't imagine she cooks much.
"It's lovely," he reassures.
"Far better than your chicken soup," she claims, a wry smile suggesting she knows it's anything but.
"Of course." Will's stomach turns. Abigail's ear sits at the tip of his tongue and the blood deluges his taste buds with strong, tangy iron, drenching his mouth like the tide rolling in over the shores of East Washington. Dad took him there on a day trip, wasting what few spare dollars he hadn't spent on Will's highschool textbooks and new glasses – Will'd broken his foolishly, stupidly, left them unfolded on the couch by the TV. No apologies made that particular mishap any easier to stomach, but his father stayed calm, tempered.
They went on the trip a few weeks later, a seaside visit which wasn't plagued by work and fishing. He stuck to his dad's side like glue, and his dad the same, eating trashy fries he bought from a dollar stand with too much salt peppered on the soggy potatoes. At night the sea came rushing in up to their ankles, a dark, horrid red colour tinting the waves. A whale explosion, the elder Graham said, or dolphin hunting.
Will, unperturbed by the violence of such events, man-made or otherwise, didn't retreat from the waves. He dipped his toes in, close enough for seafoam to brush his lips, for another hour, his father watching with blithe disregard, given up on protesting. A little blood didn't hurt anyone.
Hannibal dominates that memory now. With every new meal, every new murder, his presence grows stronger there, watching the curly-haired, sharp-eyed boy hold his shorn trousers up and leap. Will turns and his father is gone. Hannibal has taken his place on the shore. Will is not a child anymore. Hannibal holds out a hand.
"Are you a poet?"
Will blinks. Margot has vanished, gone from his line of sight. He twists, jarring his hip, and locates her by his shelf. She thumbs through his books carefully. He'd zoned out, missing a puzzle piece formed out of whatever she'd been saying before.
"Uh… no. Poet at heart, maybe. I struggle with transferring the words from my head to the paper."
"I fancied myself one as a child. I memorised pages and pages in the hopes I'd somehow absorb the skill." She shuts the page of Will's The Odyssey copy, and begins to quote. "'That moment she was mine, mine, fair, I found a thing to do, and all her hair. In one long yellow string I wound, three times her little throat around.'"
"Porphyria's Lover? Browning was always a little pretentious for me."
"Go figure," Margot replies, "Southern boy." It wasn't a jibe, as far as Will could tell, merely the truth. He grew up around travelling every other sunday and dusty motels and self-righteous preachers waving on crossing corners – not around the romanticism of fresh pomegranates and European vacations and ancient civilizations, as much as he tried to glean it from the history channel on cable TV.
"Though," Margot resumes, "I think Porphyria will grow on you. You're very alike."
"Long golden hair and blue eyes," Will jokes dryly. "The spitting image."
"Murdered by her lover in a fit of possession. A clutch at preservation. Submitting to his whims because, although he's her end, he does so out of overwhelming devotion."
Will purses his lips and scrunches his nose. "That's not me. I wouldn't let that happen."
("You don't get tired of lying to yourself?" Alana says in his memories, and he stares at her pleadingly from behind Baltimore bars, Hannibal a loving shadow at her side.)
"I would." Margot is unrelenting in her honesty. Her comment throws Will off, forcing a reconsideration of his own omissions. "Not that Mason is my lover in any sense. But he's certainly not averse to tormenting me in the name of platonic attachment."
"Why haven't you killed him?"
"Why haven't you killed Hannibal?" Her voice is firm as she adds, "don't pretend he's an innocent bystander. I've seen enough to make my own judgement."
Her words come together into an accusation Will has thrown at himself weekly, daily, hourly.
(Why hasn't he killed Hannibal?)
"Because… I don't know. The chance did not arouse enough joy in me. There was no conciliation in an adored corpse." Winston presses a soft nose to his fingers, materialising like a ghost of support at his feet. Will rubs his ears, the winter fur thick and unkempt.
Margot traces the line of her jaw and massages the bone like she wants to wear it away. "Is there not justice? Is there not a promise he will never hurt you again?"
"That's – that's not the kind of promise I'm looking for. Not…" Will's biting his tongue. He's hurting. "– not if it means a complete absence of his presence."
Margot sets her plate to the side, the half-picked dinner swimming in sauce, exposed and gaping like a ribcage of antlers. Will urges his eyes to comply and look away, but he's fixated on the image. His own food turns repugnant in his stomach, threatening to come back up as his mouth dries.
"I can't thrive without Mason. You can't thrive without Hannibal. Simple." Margot's waterline shines white, a sheen of makeup hiding her imperfections the same way Will wears ugly lumberjack button-downs and hiking boots to emphasise his.
"Is that why you came here tonight?" Will furrows his brow. "A stab at familiarity?"
"I wasn't lying when I said I was lonely. And I wasn't lying when I said I thought you might be too."
"Yeah, well." His neck aching, Will's fingers find the top of his spine, and he digs his nails into the muscle there. "I don't have many friends right now. So thanks. I enjoy your company."
"Tolerate," Margot corrects, smirking.
"Enjoy," he reiterates in turn, rising to the challenge.
Her stare softens, wrinkles appearing at the outer corner of her eyes. "It can't be fun having me psychologically dissect you."
"You'd be surprised," he replies, "my sense of pleasure is largely warped these days."
"Is that why you haven't asked Dr. Lecter for a referral?"
(And they're back. Margot is ever curious, ever desperate to find company in shared horror – sheltering in the stomach of the beast. Hannibal and Mason blur into one Leviathan being, a force beyond comprehension.)
"I don't get off to my own physical violation and emotional exploitation, if that's what you're implying." Will raises his eyebrows so high he feels his forehead may crack from the pressure, glowering at Margot's striking silhouette.
(He doesn't crave those interactions, not in a sexual sense. Emotionally? Well, it's nice to feel wanted. Even in a gruesome juxtaposition of protection and persecution, even as a lab rat for a psychopath.)
Her lips form a wide smile. "Oh, there's no judgement here. We all have coping mechanisms. I'd kill for some that aren't self-destructive."
Silence falls, like snow settling on pavement tiles and tarmac until all signs of human life are void. Will risks another mouthful of food. His stomach settles at the extra calories, content for the first time in forever. He's not been eating well. For obvious reasons.
Margot exhales heavily, a cat curled on Will's chair, her hand heavy on the armrest and chin tucked into the crook of her elbow. A picture of simple domesticity. Will's craved it his entire life, but never was one to hold a place down much longer than a girlfriend. He still craves it now, consistency and routine and structure. Yet when he imagines it an elk obscures his view, altering the scene – it's not a woman at the counter, as a culture-conscious, all-American boy Will Graham would have expected as a youth. They're not small hands prepping soup from a can, they're precise and dexterous, diplomatic – chopping and dicing finely.
Will shakes his head.
He really needs to go to bed.
But Margot's lazy comfortability and uncanny ability to unpick his stitches of impersonality is somewhat a relief. Will's eyes droop, not from tiredness but from the influence of gentle, congenial company. His limbs feel less fragile, less glass-like, less mouldable.
"You reckon you'll ever get out?" He speaks first, for once.
Margot inclines her head until the strands coming loose from her bun trail onto the armrest of his chair. "No. There is no reality in which I exist outside the realm of my brother. I can fantasise of such worlds, but they are not mine to live and breathe."
"Not even with all your plans to kill him? Your plans of having… having an heir?"
"It's like cutting your hair," she says with a sharp, solemn grin. "You're confident until the moment you stand at the mirror with the scissors."
Will downs the dredges of his drink, the taste far too rich, too sweet, for the current bitterness digging its way into his gut. "Once you've made the first snip, it gets easier. There's no turning back."
"Have you made a first snip, Will?" His name rings cold and foreign in her mouth. An honour not bestowed on one night stands and manipulation, though Will finds himself acclimatising to the change. Margot is more than that. A fellow soldier. A friend.
"I haven't decided yet." He mirrors her expression, fingers white and aching against his glass bottle. "It wasn't mine to snip, anyways. Crawford's got the tools. Or Hannibal. Depends who you ask."
"You've got a shit support group." Margot is wry, comedic despite everything. Will finds an unwitting laugh torn from his throat – he knows damn well she's got it worse than him, but he appreciates the alleviation of his luck.
"Can't be more horrific than Mason Verger, I'm afraid. You beat me in the shit friends department."
"At least mine couldn't care less if I live or die. Yours seem quite attached."
(Will is in Hannibal's office, at Jack's orders, and he wonders if they'll leave him chained here, strung as a sacrifice, as an Andromeda ankle-deep in the salty sea to appease Poseidon's monster. Except there's no Theseus to save him, or Theseus and the monster are one and the same.)
(Will doesn't even think he'd complain.)
"Surprisingly most of my friends dumped me when I was incarcerated."
"Funny," Margot says. "People have a habit of leaving when you need them most."
He fumbles with the button on his sleeve. "You know, I think I would've given anything."
(Anything to be believed. Anything for them to stay. Anything for Beverly to live. Anything.)
Margot looks sad now, sour and drawn in. The claws-out savagery flowing through her voice is withheld, shaking behind flimsy barriers. "Shame you didn't have anything."
"We have ourselves." Will sips from his empty bottle. Draws attention away from the sincerity dusting the hairs on his face. Margot may be referencing the past, but the present is crueller and more relevant.
"Mason's doing his best to ensure I don't even have that." Margot's voice quavers. Will catches the glint of steel in her irises, even as it wilts away to the soft grey of clean sheets and water. For once he's not a mirror, but still finds himself floating in the pool of her eyes – devastated and furious and sad. No matter how much he knows scientifically it's impossible for his empathy to stray into complete telepathy, the sea of tears in her eyes is rough-bitten in its familiarity. "I'll never be my own."
(Three pills today. Two the next. Five on Friday. All a different set. Inside, outside, inside, outside, inside again. Breakfast by the week cycle. Chilton revels in lack of autonomy, and Will despairs in it.)
Ghostly fingernails dig at Will's collarbone, at his shoulder, at his neck. They tunnel in like Virginia creeper foliage, wrapped onto the top layer of skin cells so tightly they'll never come loose. The leaves will redden majestically in autumn, like blood.
He's not sure he'll ever be his own either.
He's not sure he wants to.
Margot's lip wobbles. She's bright-eyed and wanting, so alike in stature to Will's memories of bloody oceans and long, solitary walks.
He sighs and puts his bottle aside. It clatters against his stained green coaster. He opens his arms in invitation. Nods his head in an act of permission. An offering.
Margot stands, a doe in her tentative steps. But Will isn't afraid of this intimacy – this is not like the last time they touched. That was frenzied isolation on his part and strong-minded need on hers, and lust to round it off. Now her hair brushes his face as she shuffles next to him on the seat, the weight of her temple feathery on his shoulder like she's wary he might break down if she touches him again, like she's a malevolent wrongdoer over a victim. Will won't pretend he loves her, and he won't pretend to forgive her, but he understands.
(That's the root of all his problems. He doesn't forgive. He doesn't love. But he understands, and isn't that the same?)
Her cheeks are damp and hazy; Will pretends not to notice as he throws an arm haphazardly around her shoulders, unsure if it's for his comfort or hers. He clings to the soft fabric of her blouse, even as it slips through his fingers in a bid to escape. Untrappable, like the rest of her. His own vision is blurry and painful. A scream claws at the flesh in his oesophagus, a dead thing thrashing inside his bone marrow, planted there to tear him inside-out.
Soft hands, free of calluses and fingers searching, find the wetness on his cheekbones and stay there, tugging him down until he's resting on her shoulder instead, body angled towards her. There's no love here, not in a way either understands intimately. Hannibal holds his face rougher than this, and no doubt Mason holds her rarely and harshly.
Yet there's no place for old pain in this embrace. Will's is dwarfed by the keening agony prickling the back of his mouth; his gun wounds feel fresh and dissected, emotional rather than physical. Margot's hands are holding his chin as his are wrapped conservatively around her shoulders. They've seen each other naked but they are more vulnerable than before, hurting and hungry for kindness that doesn't precede and succeed in torture.
(Her hands are too small, nails too chipped and dainty to slot into the puzzle of his skin right, but they'll do.)
They're both crying now, ugly sobbing, but stifling the sound to their own disposition. Will removes a hand from Margot's collar to clamp it over his lips, biting back an animal wail. The hand in his hair is platonic in nature, and all the more comfortable for it. No confused attachment, no misplaced romance, no begging for it to become more.
His dogs shuffle and whine at their feet, taught better than to climb onto the couch but mutedly frantic to provide companionship. Will lets his hand trail to their noses, to rub under their chins and the side of their faces, comforted by the wet of their eyes and the tear tracks on the smaller breeds, their eyes blissfully blank.
Time passes.
Margot's sniffing soothes and Will forces his own to follow. His breathing rattles and shakes like his organs are cornered in a cage, aching and stinging and burning. Two minutes have come and gone in a whirl of grief and now it's silent.
He's warm in Margot's arms, diaphanous as she is in her hold, and his muscles weaken, the tension draining into the air. He worries he's hurt her with his harsh grip, but when he tries to alleviate the pressure she rests her hand over his, holding him in place like she'll fall apart and bleed into a gaunt shell if he removes his fingers.
"This is embarrassing." Margot's voice is husky and guttural, and springy despite their impromptu group breakdown. It rips a laugh from Will's chest, tugging at the solitary drops of good-humour that are untouched by Baltimore and Bloom and Crawford and Lecter.
"I love a good cry," he replies. He tastes salt and his voice cracks. "Emotionally healthy."
"Did Hannibal tell you that too?" He hears her wet smile and his face splits into a grin, despite the tears trailing down his face.
Laying there is a de-pollution, hands wound tightly in place of someone else for each of them. Will closes his eyes and the red of his eyelids gives place for another scene, another person, another scenario where the touch is heavier and it is adjoining and proximate.
"I think I'm going insane," he says when he finally opens them.
"Then we're identical in at least one sense, I suppose."
Will's bones are heavy. He's so tired. He can feel himself getting sicker. Illness rests torpid in the cartilage of his spine, weaselling its way into the sponge underneath like a rabid dog scrabbling at the dirt, at his elbows, lethargic but hungry for relief, a creature of terror nestled in the mouth of the hound.
But his own hand cups Buster's face, worrying at the skin there. His own head is held in a caress, a nagging gentleness at his jaw and his cheek in the form of painted nails. His own knees are clutched to his chest, tucked safely away from external harm.
It's sheltered. Will wants to stay here forever. Margot is pleasant company in all her cordial talk and generous physicality.
(It's not enough. But it will do.)
"You reckon you'll kill him?" Margot's voice is rough with sobbing and disuse, a faint twang wriggling into her words that wasn't there previously, informality hidden under layers of upper class conditioning. Will imagines her clearly now, young and sneaking out, starved of friends who weren't daughters of noblemen.
"I –" he stutters, breathing quickly, "I don't think I can. He'll talk me down. Or he'll kill me."
"I could do it for you. I'm not attached."
An offer. A genuine offer. Will's floored by the admission, the actions playing out in his mind like black and white pictures in an old cinema. Margot with a gun – she'll be quick, efficient, no obligation to Baroque imagery – she'll treat her session with him as normal, as a commonplace conversation, and wait until he turns his back, hands clasped around the trigger. A sharp bang and it will be over.
(Hannibal will know. He'll smell the gun. He'll see the nervous chewing of her lip. He'll hear the rustle of her coat.)
"No. I need –"
(He needs it to be personal. To watch skin pale, like a statue stripped of paint, a face twisted into cruel disappointment as Will does it quickly, doesn't savour the action. A formality bypassed, misattributed as a certainty in their relationship. He needs Hannibal hurt in his last seconds.)
"– I need to do it myself." If he does it. If he can do it.
"Fair enough." Margot leans forward and her cheek brushes the top of Will's head, flattening the curls onto his scalp. Will opens his mouth but she shushes him. "Don't. I need to do it myself too."
Will nods, all mentions of Mason dying at his dry lips.
They're suspended there, hands tangled in shaky hands, like bugs solidified in amber. Will's eyes drop to half-shut, his head swimming with empty thoughts. No crime scenes, no murder, no Hannibal. Just warmth. It's a desire half-sated. It's a placeholder.
It's enough for now.
A/N: Always thought their relationship could've been expanded on. It's very interesting :D