Behaviorism

“Oh my god," says Will, the moment he enters the front hallway. “Hannibal, jesus. What are you even going to do with all this space?”

Hannibal raises his eyebrows. “Fill it with furniture, of course,” he says lightly. “Art. Useless trinkets. Things that remind me of you. Things that would tell anyone who’s truly looking what I am and what we are.”

“Right,” says Will, his voice echoing off the walls of the empty house. He pokes his head into the front sitting-room, looking bare and drafty, though the fireplace promises future comfort. “But I mean, you can only own so many sofas when you live alone.”

“I’m going to be a socialite,” says Hannibal. “I’ll need entertaining space.” He turns from where he’s staring out of the front window of the house onto the upscale Baltimore street. “Or are you getting jealous already?”

Will’s lip curls. Hannibal looks supremely innocent, his hands thrust into the pockets of his pants. Apparently his new persona favours horrific pattern combinations, and Will can tell he’s going to have an unhealthy sexual response to clashing versions of plaid for the rest of his life. He starts stalking towards Hannibal, backing him up against the wall right next to the window and yanking the curtain closed. Normally he wouldn’t care if the neighbours got an eyeful, but it wouldn’t do for them to be seen together this early on.

Hannibal’s head hits the wall, exposing his neck, and Will shoves his thigh in between Hannibal’s legs to keep him in place and leans up to brush his lips gently against the skin of his throat. “Extremely jealous,” he whispers. “God knows what I’ll do. You could be fucking your way through half of Baltimore’s high society scene, in a place like this.”

“Is that--” Hannibal makes a choked-off sound as Will starts sucking a bruise into his neck-- “within the rules of our game, then?”

Will gives a rough shove, their chests making contact firmly, his hands on the wall on either side of Hannibal’s shoulders. “Since when do our games have rules?”

And Hannibal grins, the wide dangerous one that seems to expose every one of his sharp, crooked teeth. Teeth that were made to tear through flesh.

Will thinks that perhaps he could have recognized him from his teeth alone, all those years ago. He hadn’t needed to; by the time the twin scourges of Italy had mutually agreed to reveal themselves to each other, somehow the Florentine police had already gotten hold of a photo of Hannibal, so Will knew what he looked like. Hannibal hadn’t seen Will before, though, and Will can still call to mind the look of rapture on his face when they’d locked eyes in the catacombs of the Norman Chapel.

It wouldn’t be quite accurate to say that at that moment they’d both known their lives would never be the same again. Will had known that from the first time he saw a news article about Hannibal. The Italian family who ran a diner in one of the towns Will and his dad had passed through got a newspaper from back home every Sunday, and Will had asked about the photo of the dead body in it. He had insisted that the owner of the diner, an elderly woman who grew more and more frightened as Will showed interest in the article, translate the entire thing for him word by word.

And as she did, Will had known that somewhere, across the ocean, was someone who would understand him. Someone who could see him.

He’d clipped the article out of the newspaper to bring with him. He’d left the rest of the newspaper in the diner owner’s chest cavity, where her heart used to be, though it hadn’t done much to staunch the bleeding.

Will had gotten on a plane that evening, and spent the better part of the next year engaged in a game that could be characterized not so much as cat-and-mouse, but more as cat-and-cat. He had introduced himself to Hannibal with dead bodies and police reports and blood painted on walls: demonstrating to anyone who could interpret the message how his mind was able to see into the core of a person, turn them inside out and give them the death most appropriate to their deeds. Will had known that it was within his abilities to draw Hannibal out, and he’d succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.

The plane is the only part he regrets. It was an inelegant way to go meet his destiny. If he could do it over, he knows, he would sail. Hannibal had laughed when Will had confided that bit to him. “The plane got you to me faster,” he’d said, eyes warm, “For which I am grateful. But perhaps one day, you will be at leisure to sail.”

Now, Will stands in the house that will be Hannibal’s home base for their new entertainment, and stares into those infinitely loving, dangerous eyes. He nods. “No rules,” he agrees. “No limits.” He leans in to press his mouth against Hannibal’s, allowing a moment of tenderness before he breaches Hannibal’s mouth roughly with his tongue and their teeth clack together with the force of the kiss.

“You better buy a nice big bed in this place,” Will says. “Every person that you touch, every person you even meet, I’m going to have to fuck the very memory of them out of your head.” He fumbles with Hannibal’s belt, getting it open and his fly open just enough to roughly shove a hand into his pants. Hannibal gasps, his mouth hanging open laxly, lower lip looking plush and good enough to bite, which Will does.

“Aaaah, Will--” Hannibal’s hands come up to grasp Will’s shoulders, and he leans most of his weight forward as Will strokes him mercilessly. “And you?” He manages to gasp into Will’s shoulder. “Will you buy a big bed for me to fuck you in?”

“I don’t think my FBI alter-ego is quite... with it enough for that level of home decorating,” says Will contemplatively. “A mattress on the floor should do fine for him.” He mentally dares Hannibal to object, and Hannibal doesn’t, too focused on the unrelenting pleasure of Will’s hand on his cock.

Will lets Hannibal lean forward and bite into his shoulder as he comes, one arm wrapped around his shoulders possessively. “Good,” he murmurs. “Good, just like that.” He wonders if they’ll meet, in their professional lives. No, he’s certain they will; Hannibal won’t be content to have him in private. Now that they’re marginally public people, with separate houses and friends-- or at least they will have friends, once they find the right victims to manipulate into friendship-- Hannibal will want to engineer a meeting between them, and preferably a public one. Will wonders if he’s a good enough actor to keep from laughing, when that happens.

He pulls away from Hannibal, who’s trembling slightly but pulling himself back together enough to tuck himself back into his pants. “Okay, I know you’ve been waiting for this,” Will says. “Show me the kitchen in this place, then.”

***

Will loves Wolf Trap, Virginia from the first time driving through it. It’s an attractive enough place to entice Hannibal to visit him: there’s a performing arts centre in the national park that defines the region, an enormous botanical garden complex, and enough little farms to supply any sort of local, organic vegetables and supplementary meats that Hannibal might want. There’s also plenty of secluded space around the house that Will’s gone out to see, and he feels immediately drawn to it.

It’s exactly the sort of place that he imagines himself ending up, if he’d never heard of Il Mostro, never gone off in search of the man who shared Will’s darkest dreams. Far enough away from where he grew up to be comfortable, but with the familiarity of all the kinds of places his dad used to choose for them: as much seclusion as possible, forest, and fishing. Will makes an offer above asking price on the spot, and a few days later, he moves in with little fanfare and no possessions.

Hannibal doesn’t come with him: he’s setting up a psychiatry practice in the city, and apparently that means taking on actual patients. Besides, Will is somewhat excited to introduce his space to Hannibal organically. It feels like revealing a new part of himself, and that doesn’t happen often any more.

He walks around the empty house, sinking into his new role. Will Graham, FBI profiler, isn’t all that different from Will Graham, serial killer. He’s shockingly similar, actually, a fact Will enjoys. Hannibal is the more dramatic one in their relationship, but Will still had fun toying with the man the one time he’d met the FBI’s Jack Crawford in person. He’d told him that the Evil Minds Museum was a terrible name, and enjoyed the look of shock on his face.

Hannibal had asked him afterwards if it was really his intention to antagonize the FBI, and Will had rolled his eyes and said, “Please, I could probably convince that loudmouth to hire me, if I wanted,” and Hannibal had gotten that gleam in his eye that meant a challenge when he’d said, “Could you, now?”

Which is why Will is now setting up shop in Wolf Trap, and Hannibal in Baltimore, and Will has enough people willing to vouch for him because a friend of a friend said he used to be a cop that Jack just might come knocking. In the meantime, he’ll get to educate impressionable young people about the artistry of serial killers. Will pokes his head into the kitchen, the wanders back into the large living room. He’ll put a piano in the corner, Will decides, and keep it intentionally out of tune just to irritate Hannibal.

Will sighs in contentment, looking around at his new space. He loves living with Hannibal; he loves killing with him; he just loves Hannibal, period. But it’s been a while since they’ve tried something new, and admittedly they do both get bored easily. Living separately feels like a challenge; like invading each others’ separate spaces might be a new way of infiltrating each others’ minds. Will wants that, wants it to feel new again, wants to see Hannibal from the outside again and bask in his glow. Wants to see how Hannibal might see him, the person he might have become.

Plus, roleplay is just fucking hot. Hannibal might be too sophisticated to admit it to himself, but Will isn’t.

He glances out the window. A stray dog wanders past, and Will frowns. He’d always wanted a dog, he realizes. It had never occurred to him to keep one during his life with Hannibal; they move around too often, and anyway Hannibal wouldn’t appreciate dog hair all over the furniture. Will mentally revises his profile for the role he’s slipping into until it accommodates a dog. Maybe several dogs. It fits, he’s thinks: a lonely, half-crazy savant living in the woods, collecting stray dogs to soothe his solitude. He grins, grabs a packet of beef jerky from the glove box, and heads out to take in his first stray.