All characters except Carlton belong to Thomas Harris. Most
of this story was written between 2 and 4am – be warned! Reality check
– please leave reality at the door. The first person to mail me saying,
‘they would never do that’ gets a slap!
* * *
“Your pain has lasted far too long
Release it, it kills you
See me as I feel you
The love you would not share grows tired of waiting”
- from ‘Strong As I Am’, by Gregory Markel, from the ‘Manhunter’ soundtrack
Betrayal III
by elfin
“Will?
“Wherever you are, wherever you’ve gone inside that complicated mind,
I know you can hear me.
“I pushed too hard. You warned me, that afternoon when I came to
see you, you told me you’d kill yourself if I hurt you again.
“They won’t let you, will they? If I gave you a way, would you
do it? Would you like me to do it? I could hold you, comfort
you as I slice across the delicate skin of your wrists and let the blood
run over my hands.
“Is that what you want, Will?
“So fragile. And they’ve handed you to a convicted killer.
Do you find that ironic?”
Lecter reached out and brushed his fingers ever so lightly over Will’s
messy blond hair.
“I do, my fragile one. I do.”
*
“Music! They’re playing music to him! The man’s a Goddamn
serial killer!”
Dr Carlton paced the sunlit flagstones outside the Baltimore Hospital
for the Criminally Insane. His hospital. Only now, there were
FBI agents and psychiatric experts from all over the country sitting in his
office.
Not that they were interested in all of his patients, or even a few of
them. Just one. Just Lecter.
The ever-patient Barney leaned back against one of the stone columns
and tuned Carlton out.
Twenty-feet below them, music did indeed play into Lecter’s cell.
A quiet Mozart piece.
Perched on the single, flat pillow of the narrow prison bed, curled into
the corner between the stone wall and the glass, wrapped in so many blankets
he was almost swamped by them, Will Graham sat, unresponsive to his surroundings.
Under it all, they had him dressed in his favourite grey sweater and
loose, dark trousers. The clothes were warm and comfortable.
His little finger was still bandaged, the top gone, the wound healing cleanly.
The doctors who had brought him here in desperation, including Will’s
oldest friend, Dr Alan Bloom, were convinced that he didn’t know where he
was. Not physically at least. He was somewhere in his own mind,
lost to the world, hidden from the pain and anguish that had been his life
for too long.
Yet it was Clarice Starling who’d first suggested this highly unusual
move. Bringing their patient back to the man who’d inflicted such suffering
as to send Will into the catatonic state in the first place seemed barbaric
and utterly unthinkable.
But Alan Bloom had backed her. He’d explained to the experts looking
after Will’s welfare, using the patient/doctor privilege to attempt to
guarantee privacy, their shared history.
A month had passed since the idea had first seen the light of day.
And then, one morning, with Jack Crawford’s reluctant approval, Will
Graham was moved from the psychiatric wing of Bethesda Naval Hospital to
Hannibal Lecter’s cell.
If Will sustained any injury while the doctor’s ward, Lecter would be
fired upon, that had been made very clear.
For twelve hours now, Will had remained where he’d been placed by Barney
when he’d been lifted from the wheelchair he’d been transported in.
At the beginning, Lecter had spent half an hour talking to him.
Since then, the doctor had chosen simply to sit with Will, reading silently
to himself, enjoying the music. Reaching out every few minutes and stroking
his fingers through Will’s soft blond hair.
The idea of an IV needle being available to Lecter had been shot down
immediately, and so a tiny incision had been made in Will’s stomach and the
feeding tube inserted and taped in place. A saline bag was taped to
his chest. A doctor would change it every twenty-four hours under maximum
security precautions.
Unless Hannibal could get Will to drink. Or eat.
The only thing Graham did do was take himself to the toilet when he needed
to go. It was psychological, the ‘experts’ had decided; he didn’t
want to feel dirty.
The assumption made Lecter angry.
The first time he’d done so while in the cell, Lecter had led him to
the toilet and stood between him and the camera as he peed. The second
time, Will had found his own way. Lecter had protected him again from
being watched and recorded.
“What’s going on inside that complex mind of yours, dear Will?
“Did I do this?
“Did those fools I hired do this?
“When they cut off the top of your finger did they go too far?
“Or was it the method they used to get the semen sample? What did
they do, Will? Did they make you jerk off at gunpoint? Would
you have bothered, I wonder, or just let them kill you? When you refused,
did they rape you?
“That was never part of the plan, Will, I promise you.”
Still no reaction.
Sighing to himself, Lecter shifted closer. Tucking one leg under
him, stretching the other out in front of Will, he slid his arm around
the young man’s shoulders, stroking down his back comfortingly. He
was aware of his audience. He didn’t care, until she spoke.
“That’s sweet.”
Lecter shot a hateful look at Starling where she stood behind the glass.
“Go away.”
“That’s rude.”
“No, Clarice. ‘Rude’ is the way everyone’s watching Will like he’s
some sort of laboratory experiment.”
“They’re fascinated, Dr Lecter. You, a man who’s killed fifteen
people that we know of, is taking care of a man you’ve tried to murder three
times already.”
Lecter smiled. “Who’s the greater fool, Clarice? You brought
him here. I could kill him now before you could move. I could
snap his neck before you could get a key into one of those locks.
I could smother him, suffocate him, strangle him. I could kill and
eat a great deal of him before any of you could stop me.”
Clarice felt vaguely sick, her gaze flitting to Will, sitting as vulnerable
as a child in the arms of a mass-murderer.
“But you won’t.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because you love him.”
He laughed openly. “Please, Clarice. Spare us your psychoanalysis.”
His words were unnaturally cutting, and she fell silent for a time, wondering
about it.
Lecter watched her, expression somewhere between open hostility and clinical
interest.
“Would you kill me?”
The quiet, roughly spoken question snapped Hannibal’s head back to Will.
Clarice too looked up, stepping to the glass.
Getting over the initial surprise, Lecter reassured. “No.”
Blue eyes locked with his own.
“Please?”
*
Sitting shoulder to shoulder on the bed, backs against the cold stone
wall, Lecter listened while Will swung between silence and speech.
He was staring at the small dressing on his little finger, trying to
comprehend what Lecter had told him had happened to it. It was the
first thing he’d asked about, a little over three hours after “Please?”
If he was confused about being in Lecter’s cell, he hadn’t shown any
evidence of it. Dr Bloom was convinced that Will still hadn’t registered
his surroundings.
“I thought I’d killed myself…. I think I hoped I had. You
should have killed me, I should have let you. I don’t know why I fought
you that night.”
Silence for a time.
Every now and again, Lecter reached up and rubbed the backs of his fingers
against Will’s.
This time, when he did so, Will turned his hand over and caught Lecter’s
index finger, rubbing his thumb over it absently.
Lecter allowed the contact, and it prompted more speech.
“I don’t remember them hurting me. I remember darkness. I
thought that was just in my head.”
A long pause.
“Did you rape me?”
“They raped you, Will. They didn’t fuck you, just took some semen
to send to the FBI.”
Lecter wasn’t certain that Will understood what that meant, but he didn’t
seem unduly distressed by it. Instead, he released Lecter’s finger
and went back to picking at the fine edge of the dressing on his own.
He needed time. Lots and lots of time. The doctor could only
hope that those responsible for Will, while he couldn’t be responsible
for himself, were willing to wait.
Will wouldn’t eat or drink, and so the IV bag taped to his chest did
have to be changed regularly. It was a painful process, and each
time Will closed his eyes and turned away. Lecter was worried that the
discomfort and indignity might become too much, and they’d lose what little
progress they’d made.
“If you’d eat, Will, they wouldn’t have to do that. I know you
don’t like it.”
No response.
There was very little to distinguish night from day down in the ‘dungeon’
cells. Bloom insisted that Will be taken outside for at least half
an hour during the morning and afternoon. They had Barney dump him
in a wheelchair and Crawford or Starling would push him around the asylum
grounds.
Bloom couldn’t watch.
During the night – lights out along the corridor – the only difference
was that Lecter tried to get some sleep on the second mattress they’d put
along the back wall of the cell as a kindness.
On the third night, Will returned from whatever place he’d been hiding
in. He opened his eyes and looked from the bed on which he was sitting
to the glass behind which he’d been imprisoned.
And he started to scream.
*
Dr Alan Bloom held his sedated friend securely in his arms. He
was sitting on a couch in Carlton’s office, Will lying on his side next
to him, head cushioned on Alan’s leg, Alan’s arms around him, fingers in
his hair, constantly stroking.
It had taken two hours to get to this fragile peace.
Once woken, the other inmates along the corridor had joined in a cacophony
of sound that had set everyone’s nerves on edge. Throughout it all,
as Barney and the other guards had worked to calm the others, Will had
been freed from Lecter’s cell.
Immediately, he’d launched himself bodily the door as soon as it was
opened, and had run straight into the wall on the opposite side of the
corridor, giving them all a scare.
The cracking of his skull against the stone had been sickening.
It had cut his forehead and stunned him for a few moments, during which
he’d proceeded to wipe the trickle of blood from his eye with his palm, temporarily
half-blinding himself.
Once steady, he’d stumbled down the corridor towards the barred gate.
Bloom had gone to him there, narrowly stopping him from breaking his
hand on the bars as he’d banged on them hard enough to set them rattling.
Catching him in strong arms, Bloom had just held on as Will had struggled
against him, sobbing, begging to be released, to be left alone.
Finally, another of the doctors had managed to get an injection of sedative
into him and he’d gradually tired.
Only when he lost consciousness did they move him from the corridor,
and from Bloom’s locked embrace.
Now he was sleeping while all around him, doctors argued about what this
‘breakthrough’ meant, and what to do next.
*
“How is he?”
Starling leant against the glass, arms folded, watching Lecter as he
sat on the floor with his back against the far wall, legs out in front
of him.
“Sleeping.”
“Sedated.”
“Yes.”
Lecter sighed softly. “If you want him to make progress, knocking
him out at the first sign of life isn’t going to help.”
“You think we should have let him carry on smashing his hand against
the bars of the gate?”
“He’d have stopped as soon as the pain became too great. Bones
heal, his mind may not.”
Starling considered this. “What frightened him?”
“I don’t know for sure. A nightmare perhaps, something he suddenly
saw in his mind’s eye. He has an eidetic mind, you know.”
“Eidetic?”
“It’s akin to photographic memory, but one that also holds emotional
and physical responses, meanings and motives. Most of us are slightly
eidetic, but Will has an extra gift. He can step into other peoples’
thoughts. It’s very rare for one to be so highly developed.
He has a sharp intelligence that makes him invaluable to Jack Crawford.”
“But it tears him apart.”
“Yes. Crawford sees that and still he uses it to blackmail Will.”
Starling sighed, pushing away from the glass. “Why do you care,
Dr Lecter?”
He smiled. “I thought you knew why.”
*
Alan sighed softly. “Where did we lose him, Jack?”
Ignoring the mostly rhetorical question, Crawford spoke from across the
small, cramped office. “He needs a hospital.”
Will was sitting up on the couch, pale as a ghost. Bloom was still
beside him, rubbing his back as he had been doing since the young man had
woken ten minutes ago, a second before throwing up into Carlton’s rubbish
bin. That at least gave Bloom some small pleasure.
“He’s seen enough damn hospitals.”
One of the asylum’s doctors had dressed the small cut on Will’s forehead
from his run in with the wall. Now no one seemed very sure what to
do with him. He wasn’t responding to any of them, simply sitting silently,
staring at the floor.
“You’ve seen the tape,” Crawford started over with his argument, ignoring
Bloom’s heavy sigh. “He was screaming at finding himself imprisoned.”
Alan rubbed at his eyes. They were all tired. “We have no
way of knowing that.”
“When the door opened he was out of there so fast he ran into the wall!
How much more evidence do you need?”
“You don’t know what he was running from!” He took a deep breath.
“Come on, Jack. You can’t know what’s going on in his mind.”
“You seem sure that something is. But we’re not getting a response.”
“Something sent him screaming, Jack! Something….” He trailed
off. Will was watching him steadily, head raised. “Hi.”
“Hi.” His greeting was cautious, and Bloom immediately became suspicious.
“Will?”
“Where I am?”
Crawford answered before Bloom could.
“Baltimore Hospital….”
“No, Will!” But Alan’s shout was too late.
Will went for Crawford, grabbing the gun from the man’s holster before
Jack had a moment to react. “What the hell…? Will?”
Graham was out of the office and down the hall. He knew his way
around thanks to his visits to Lecter, and with the extra, armed guards around
the five gates between Carlton’s office and the ‘dungeon’ corridor were
open.
Crawford and Bloom weren’t far behind, and when Will reached the barrier
of the barred gate at the entrance to the corridor, they hoped he’d be
stopped.
“Open the gate!” Will’s voice was shrill, nearing hysteria.
He hadn’t aimed the gun hanging from his fingers at anyone until that moment.
When the three guards went for their own weapons, he nuzzled the barrel
of the automatic to his own temple and rested his index finger over the
trigger.
Crawford slid to a stop, Bloom at his back.
“Will!”
“Open the damn gate!”
“No!” Carlton was standing behind the two FBI investigators.
“Don’t open it.”
Bloom spun. “You don’t think he’s serious?”
“I won’t put the people under my care in danger from a madman!”
“What?!” Bloom pointed at the entrance to the corridor. “They’re
convicted serial killers!”
“They’re still under my care.”
“Open the gate!” Will stepped forward, finding uncertain guards
aiming their own weapons at him.
Bloom knew that they were less likely to fire than Will himself was.
“Just do it!”
But they weren’t going to. Not without a reason.
So Will lowered the barrel of the gun into his left palm and fired.
“No!”
“God, Will!”
“Open the fucking gate!”
“Open. The. Gate. Please.” Will’s own voice,
strained as it was, cut through the rest of the cacophony; the yells of
his friends, the screams of the inmates.
Bloom backed him up. “Do it!”
“Don’t you dare!” Carlton called from behind the small group.
“You can’t let him take a gun in there!”
Trembling now, blood starting to drip steadily to the stone floor from
his wound, Will lifted the barrel back to his head.
“For God’s sake!” There was an urgency in Bloom’s tone as he stepped
forward to plead with the guards. “Do as he asks!”
Will’s finger tightened on the trigger.
“All right!” Barney raised his hand to the guards and they relaxed
marginally. He unlocked the gate against a backdrop of Carlton’s
threats, and Will stepped through, followed closely by the three armed
men.
Lecter was standing at the glass. To hear Will’s voice had been
a relief after the gunshot. He’d been sure that his young protégé
wouldn’t shoot himself, thinking that he’d fired up or at the floor.
He could barely believe it when he saw the mess of his hand.
“Will, Christ….” Pressing his palms against the glass he tried
to gauge Will’s state of mind. “Are you going to shoot me? End
it at last?” His words were teasing, challenging, but he soon realised
he’d read the situation wrongly.
The barrel of the gun in Will’s hand was still pressed into the silky
blond hair at his temple. Adrenaline in his system was keeping the
effects of blood-loss and shock at bay, but it wouldn’t for long. He
was pale, tears of pain in his eyes. His left arm was hanging by his
side, blood flowing now, over his hand.
“Get out of my mind!” The cried plea was made in a breaking voice,
the words aimed at Lecter.
It took a moment to figure out the complex and not entirely sane paths
Will’s thoughts had taken to reach the conclusion he’d come to. But
they shared the same eidetic imagination and Hannibal worked it out.
“Ah, Will…. I’m not in your mind. It’s you. You woke
up in my cell. They brought you to me. I know what you’re thinking,
what you’re imagining, but you’re wrong this time.”
“I saw what you see every day!” He was still, just a subtle shaking
as the shock started to seep in to his system.
“Because you were in here,” Hannibal smiled gently. “They thought
it would help if I talked to you, thought because we are alike, I could get
through to wherever you’d hidden yourself.”
“Why would they do that? Why would they put me in there with you?”
Lecter couldn’t help but smile at the irony. “Clarice Starling
and your friend, Dr Bloom, thought it was a good idea. I wouldn’t
have hurt you, even though you asked me to.”
Raising his injured hand Will wiped the tears from his eyes, streaking
blood across his cheek and nose.
“I can’t do this any more. I don’t want to know what you know,
what Hobbs and Dolarhyde knew.”
A little way back down the corridor, above the distressed noises of the
other prisoners, Bloom listened to the exchange, his eyes never leaving Will.
He beckoned behind him and Barney stepped forward. Then, Bloom
pointed at the glass door.
Barney hesitated, catching the wide eyes of the armed men whose guns
were loosely trained on the madman with the pistol, although they weren’t
sure what they’d do if he pulled the trigger.
Lecter continued to try to talk him down. “Will, you’re upset,
you’re in pain and shock. Suicide isn’t a decision to be taken lightly.
Put the gun down, let them look at your hand. If you want to kill
yourself, you can do it later.”
Bloom winced, but he supposed one argument was no better than another.
Or it would have been, had it worked.
Will’s finger tightened to the point where a twitch would have blown
his brain across the stone wall behind him.
Bloom’s eyes widened. He bit down on the innate cry that tried
to force its way out and instead looked across at Barney desperately.
The dark man nodded, and taking the key from his belt, he unlocked the two
deadbolt locks that kept Lecter inside.
Immediately, the guns were re-aimed. Carlton’s shout of denial,
quickly silenced, was ignored.
With a mouthed ‘thank you’, Lecter stepped out of his cell for the first
time in a long time. His eyes fixed on Will.
He approached carefully, hands up, palms out. “I won’t hurt you.”
The shaking man backed away just a step. “Come on, Will. You
know me better than anyone, just trust me.”
Ice blue eyes met warm blue ones. Tears were sliding over his cheeks
now; of exhaustion and pain, from the chemical imbalance of his abused
system. But still his grip on the gun remained tight and sure.
“It’s okay, Will.” Stretching out his left arm, knowing if he went
anywhere near the gun they would drop him, Lecter stepped forward until
his fingertips brushed the cold, wet cheek.
For a moment, the pained eyes closed and Will leaned just a little into
the touch. “I… I’m sorry.”
It was a faint murmur, not even a whisper. But Lecter heard it
clearly. And so did Alan Bloom.
“Sorry? For what?” Lecter frowned, mind racing. And
then he knew. “Is that what this has been about?”
No answer.
“Ah, Will… my dear boy….” Moving an inch closer, he stroked the
fine hairs just above Will’s ear. “You did what you had to do.”
“Betrayed you.” Another murmur.
A small smile. “Clarice spoke to you, didn’t she? We had
a… tiff when you were being held in that bunker. But you only did
what you knew was right. Tell me, Will, did you lie in bed that night
and listen for me leaving? Did you hope I would? Did you shed
a tear when I didn’t?” Tired eyes met Lecter’s. Will nodded.
“But you’d planned it all so completely. How long had you lived so
carefully? You set it up. I… just knocked it down. I could
have left without having a drink and you’d never have seen me again.”
Another step, and Lecter could comb his fingers up into Will’s messy
hair, stroking the scalp gently.
“I don’t hate you for what you did, I don’t blame you for what you did.
Don’t blame yourself.” Slowly, minding his distance from the gun,
Hannibal put his other hand on Will’s right elbow. Quietly, he said,
“I’m sorry for what I did to you. I’m sorry for what those idiots
I hired did to you.” Sliding his thumb into the crease of the elbow,
he moved his fingers up the forearm, bringing the gun carefully away from
Will’s temple. “We’ve hurt you enough, Will. Don’t hurt yourself
because of it.”
Bloom stepped around the guards, around behind his friend, and couldn’t
help his deep sigh of relief when the shaking trigger finger relaxed, when
Lecter straightened Will’s arm, and he finally gave up the gun.
Alan took the weapon and clicked on the safety.
Lecter slid his arm around Will, ready when the skinny body practically
collapsed against him.
Adrenaline gone, his stressed-out system was on the brink of shutdown,
one stopped only by Bloom reaching for his left wrist.
“Let him look at your hand, Will. It’s okay now.”
“It hurts.”
“I know. It’s gunshot wound. It will do.”
Will nodded, all remaining colour draining from his face and neck.
Hannibal didn’t let him fall when he finally collapsed.
*
“They’re trusting me a lot more, I must say.” Crouched next to
the bed, Hannibal rubbed the back of his fingers over Will’s where they
lay on the mattress as he slept off the morphine shot.
Crawford had wanted to get him to a hospital. Bloom had taken the
advice of the medical doctor, who’d cleaned, stitched and dressed Will’s
hand, and made his own decision final.
“There’s an IV needle in your hand.” He trailed fingertips over
the bandage holding the IV valve in place. “They’re trusting me not
to steal it.” His gaze followed the narrow tube up to the bag of blood
taped to the bars just above the bed. It was nearing empty now.
“They trusted me to look after you, not to take the gun from you and shoot
my way out of here, or take you as a hostage.”
While he’d slept, they’d changed Will’s grey sweater for a black one.
There was blood on the grey.
They’d moved the saline bag to the second IV valve in his hand and closed
the incision in his stomach.
During all of this, Lecter had remained in the far corner of his cell,
two guns trained on his head, his gaze on Will’s peaceful face.
There was nothing more they could do now but wait.
A couple of hours later, Will opened his eyes. The first thing
he saw was Lecter.
“You’re in my cell,” he told him immediately. “Do you remember
what happened?”
Will glanced at his hands. He nodded.
“Is everyone all right?”
Lecter smiled. “Everyone’s fine. Including you, despite the
mess you made to your hand.”
With a soft sigh, Will nodded and fell silent for a time. Hannibal
just sat, back against the glass, one arm stretched up to the mattress
where he continued to loosely hold Will’s fingers, stroking them gently.
After a long time, he heard, “Hannibal?”
Lecter sat forward. “Yes, Will?”
“What’s the food like around here?”
Lecter laughed out loud. “Terrible.” Turning, he waved at
the camera constantly trained on his cell, he beckoned to those sitting at
the monitors in Carlton’s office, and at the end of the corridor. He
could hear Barney chuckling.
Ten minutes later, Will was sitting up, a bowl of soup on a tray on his
lap. He’d yanked the IV line once, and he was being careful not to
do it again.
Lecter sat cross-legged next to his ward holding the edge of the bowl
with his fingertips, stopping it from shifting on the tray.
From a couple of feet behind the glass, Bloom watched the tender interaction.
He’d been right. He wasn’t sure if he was glad of that or not.
Will was coming back to them, but at what cost? And had the price
already been paid?
He didn’t like to think that Will was emotionally involved with Lecter.
It made an already complicated life even more so. But the evidence
was in front of him and he couldn’t deny it. He cared for Will, always
had done, ever since he’d first met him and realised what he was, what he
could do, and how fascinating a person he was. How tortured.
But their friendship had always suffered through Bloom’s subtle refusal
to be alone with Will. He had a professional interest in him too, in
his eidetic ability. Will would have immediately picked up on that.
And run a mile.
Putting Will with Lecter had been a massive risk. But he’d had
a feeling. Where Will was concerned, his feelings were usually right.
Bloom moved away, but a couple of hours later he walked along the corridor
again to check up.
Will was sleeping soundly. Lecter was sitting at his desk reading.
Alan approached the glass.
Lecter looked up. “Evening, Dr Bloom.”
“Good evening, Doctor.”
“He’s all right.”
“I know. I trust you with him. I’m just not sure why I do.”
Glancing over at the sleeping man, Lecter put down his book. “He’s
the first person… I’ve ever really loved.”
Bloom smiled. “Yeah. That’s probably it.” With an acknowledging
nod of thanks, he left them alone once again.
*
“So it’s a deal, then?”
“It’s a deal.”
Will turned his head and smiled at the man sitting behind him.
They were on Lecter’s bed, Lecter sitting on the pillow with his back against
the glass, Will in his arms.
The IVs were gone, the only bandage now being the one on Will’s wounded
left hand. He wore soft denim jeans and a thick, white shirt.
He was healing.
“Tell me why, Will. Why did you feel so guilty?”
Hooking his fingers over Hannibal’s where they rested on his chest, Will
told him quietly, “I betrayed you. After… what we did. I knew
it would happen that way, but I wasn’t prepared for what I’d feel afterwards.”
“Why did you let me make love to you?”
Will pressed back into Lecter’s arms. “Make love to me, or fuck
me?”
Lecter breathed softly. “Why did you let me make love to you?”
“I wanted it. I wanted you. I wanted to forget I was me.”
When Lecter spoke, it was the first time ever that Will had heard sadness
and actual understanding in his voice. “You know that we can’t have
what we want, not in this life.”
Will turned again. “We want?”
“You’re still alive, aren’t you?”
Glancing up, Will stared for a moment. Then he laughed. And
he met Hannibal’s lips with his own and kissed him for the first time since
that day in Vancouver.
For them, it was a moment in time, an opportunity that would come so
very rarely they’d take whatever they could.
For Bloom, up in Carlton’s office, it was actually strangely good to
see Will happy for a moment.
For Crawford, it was confirmation of what he’d suspected for a long time.
For Carlton, it was a shock. “What the fuck?!”
“You’ll never forget me, Will. In a way I’m sorry for that, in
a way I’m not. But you need to find yourself a man who’ll love you.”
He kissed the pale neck. “Just as much as I do.”
It was a while before Will could speak.
“Why a man, specifically?” His voice was close to breaking.
“You crave the contact, the sex. You need to feel the pleasure
and the pain, the extremes of both, just to make you feel alive.
You enjoy it and that’s not a bad thing, it’s who you are. But you
need the other too, the romance and the closeness. For the longest
time, Will, you just need to be held.”
Lecter felt the tears falling on his hands and felt a little like weeping
himself. He just sat and held Will for a long time, feeling the strong
heartbeat under his palm, feeling his chest rising and falling with each
breath.
When Hannibal finally spoke, it was so quietly that only Will would ever
hear the words. “You’re an easy person to love, Will. You give
yourself so generously and completely. Please, live for me?”
* * *
several months later
“Alan!” Will smiled when he saw his old friend standing on the
doorstep. “What brings you out here?”
Dr Bloom shrugged. “Wanted to talk to you, to see you. It’s
been a while, I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
It was a lie, and they both knew it. It didn’t matter.
“Do you want to come in, or shall we sit outside?” The hint of
sarcasm in Will’s question was justified. The back yard was under
two feet of snow.
“You are kidding?”
“You’ve never been alone in a room with me, Alan.” Bloom’s expression
fell. “Don’t think that I hadn’t noticed.” Bloom raised his
hands, unable to explain. But Will was smiling. “I know why.
You think that if we were alone I’d pick up on your professional interest
in me and I would shut down completely.” He stepped back. “Come
in, Alan.” Bloom went inside. “I’m flattered. Just don’t
try to write a paper on me.”
“Oh, don’t worry.”
Will paused at the kitchen. “Drink?”
“Beer?”
“Ice cold, coming up. Go through, make yourself at home.”
Alan trampled cold, fresh snow into the light lounge carpet before dropping
into an armchair. “Nice place you’ve got here.” Will snapped
the tops off two bottles of Cardinal beer and padded into the lounge, handing
one to Alan. “Thanks. No attempt to hide your address this
time?”
“I figured, what’s the point? Didn’t do much good last time.”
They drank in silence for a short time. “How’s Daniel?”
Will smiled, nodded. “He’s good.”
“Is it serious?”
A pause, a searching look and then, “No. We’re just friends who
fuck now and again. He knows me, knows as much as it’s safe for him
to know. He just accepts it. He’s good for me, I just don’t know
how good I am for him.”
“Is that what’s holding you back?”
Will smiled a knowing smile. “No.”
Alan nodded, scratched his head. “It’s the real reason why you
two are ‘just good friends’ that I came to talk to you about.” Will’s
expression blanked for just a moment. Alan saw it; the mask slipping
into place. “I need to tell you something, and I wanted to watch your
reaction, to know if you’ll be okay.”
“What, Alan?”
“A couple of weeks after we left Baltimore, Dr Lecter was moved to a
better facility.”
Will nodded. “I know, he wrote and told me.”
Alan winced. “He found your address?”
“I gave it to him.”
“Oh. Right. Well, two days ago, he escaped.” Will’s
expression didn’t change, but something in his eyes did, Bloom just couldn’t
be sure what it was. “He killed a guard with a plastic fork.”
Will bowed his head and Alan had the urge to reach out for him. “I’m
sorry, Will.”
A shake of the blond head. “No. I know he’s… what he is.”
He looked up from under long lashes. “Doesn’t change anything, Alan.
I wish it did.” But there was something else now, something other
than the sadness and madness that had been in the soulful blue eyes before.
Something hidden there.
“We need to know if you think you’re in danger.”
“I was in his cell for days. He held me in his arms, Alan.
He could have snapped my neck and I’d have been dead before you could speak.
He won’t hurt me.”
Bloom nodded, finished his drink in one long swig. “Listen, I have
some business in town, but later, can I take you out? Buy you a decent
beer? Steaks?”
“Sure. That’d be good.”
“Great. I’ll see myself out. Later, yeah?”
Pausing to commit Will’s thoughtful expression to memory for the afternoon,
Alan stood.
He was half-way to the front door when he called back, “Don’t think I
can’t feel you smiling!”
Will’s laughter followed him out of the house.
fin
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