Chapter Text
A woman, dark haired and bright eyed, was hastily exiting the house he and Hannibal shared as he pulled into the driveway. Will watched her suspiciously as she climbed into a small sedan and left the property without acknowledging his presence at all.
It wasn’t until he found Hannibal in the shower and their bed stinking of sex that the pit formed in his stomach. It was then that inside his heart, embers of betrayal quietly ignited what would eventually become a burning rage.
But he knew Hannibal. This was all intentional. He was trying to anger Will for some reason. He knew that Will considered infidelity the sole unforgivable transgression against their relationship. He could deal with gaslighting. He could deal with near-fatal injury. He could even deal with being abandoned to a group of curious opera patrons to awkwardly make conversation while Hannibal fucked off to acquire some more wine and whiskey.
He could not deal with infidelity. He could not forgive it. Hannibal knew this.
The only response Will could make that would give the other man no satisfaction was to pretend nothing had happened as he planned his revenge.
He stroked the face of his new watch.
—
A few hours earlier…
His burner phone vibrated as he watched the ducks swim in a lake, relaxed on a park bench. Checking the caller, he smiled. “Stefan,” he greeted. “News?”
“Mr. Morel,” Stefan said. “Excellent news. It’s ready.”
“You’ve tested it?”
“No, no, of course not. You know there is no way to return. But the calculations are all correct. The power source is miniaturized. If this doesn’t work, nothing will. Nothing that we can create.”
“Okay,” Will agreed easily. “When can I pick it up?”
“It’s ready now. Come whenever you like.”
“See you in fifteen.”
—
Will was a patient man. He could wait.
He did wait.
He lived life as normal with his husband. They hunted, cooked, ate, talked, and fucked as normal.
But neither of them was really there, anymore. Will waited for Hannibal to redeem or doom himself. Hannibal waited for Will to acknowledge the strain and tension growing between them. The uncomfortable reality of a relationship beginning to crumble.
It had been a long time coming. They loved each other with passion and violence, and they understood one another far better than most couples. But years of cohabitation had led to resentment and regret, a sense of being without options. Familiarity had bred contempt.
Their downfall would be their mutual possessiveness. Despite the peeling edges of their relationship, despite the low current of resentment running through Will’s veins (resentment born after their cliff fall, when he blamed Hannibal for their life on the run). Despite it all, Hannibal belonged to Will. Will belonged to Hannibal.
And yet.
The girl. Woman. She couldn’t have been older than thirty.
She found Will home alone one day. Hannibal had left to retrieve a few last-minute things he needed for dinner, he had claimed. Unlike him. Will had been suspicious.
He saw her coming. He watched her reflection in the smooth glass of his tablet screen, his back to the sliding door she eased open after unlocking it with a key hidden beneath the mat. There wasn’t usually a key there.
The classical music on the audio system, music Hannibal had queued up before leaving, concealed the soft fwoosh of the door in its track.
Will would have noticed the difference in air even if he hadn’t seen her reflection. The slight breeze. The pleasant odor of the lilies that grew just outside.
He watched her toe off her flats, leaving her in socked feet. Good girl.
He watched her slowly, silently approach him from behind. He could smell the expensive perfume he’d seen a bottle of in Hannibal’s shopping bag a few weeks previous. Sloppy. Wearing a fragrance on a kill mission was very sloppy.
The knife she drew from a sheath on her belt made no sound. She drew it with confidence. Practiced. Accomplished.
But she was still young.
She was surprised when, reaching forward intent on quickly cutting Will’s throat, she found her arm seized and sharp teeth sinking into her wrist and tearing off flesh and veins. He spat out the flesh and blood immediately, not fond of raw meat.
She screamed, dropping the knife from the sudden pain. Will nudged it underneath the sofa. They wouldn’t be needing it right then. He pulled her over the back of the furniture by her wounded arm, catching her against his still-solid chest, a mock embrace.
“Oh darlin’, what’d he tell you?” Will crooned.
Her terror-filled eyes watched him, frozen in fear. Freezing in the face of danger was a very undesirable trait in an apprentice. Did Hannibal know about this obvious weakness?
She didn’t answer him.
“Doesn’t matter, I suppose,” he said. He applied pressure to her wrist to staunch the bleeding. “Listen, sweetheart. I don’t know what he told you about me, about us, so I’ve already forgiven you your trespasses. I haven’t forgiven him, though, and that’s something I need to work out with him alone. So I’m going to fix you up enough for you to get yourself to a hospital, and you’re going to go. Understand? You won’t return.”
She nodded, hesitantly.
“Good.”
He helped her to her feet and led her to the downstairs powder room. There, he carefully tended to her wound, applying hemostat before covering it with gauze and wrapping it with a bandage. She would be fine until she got some professional treatment.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked with a pleasantly husky voice, less fearful than she had been, though her eyes kept straying to his mouth, still stained with her blood.
“The man has a silver tongue,” he said. “I fell for it too. Maybe you’ll turn out better than I did.”
—
"It was a test." Will made no effort to hide the disdain in his voice.
"Yes." Hannibal’s person suit was completely buttoned-up, his emotions suppressed. Will hated it when he did that while they were at home together, and Hannibal knew it.
"After all these years, you are still testing me. To what? See if I've still got it? Or are you just bored?"
"To some extent, both." The way he leaned casually against the kitchen counter as if everything was fine was infuriating.
"Why are we still here then? Why are we still trying?" He did not attempt to conceal the snarl his lips twisted themselves into. Hannibal knew he was angry.
"You know why,” Hannibal said with a look. “And you passed my test."
"You're still bored. You'll test me again." Will felt exhaustion creeping up on him. Emotional exhaustion. His body felt wired.
"Likely. Yes."
That was when Will’s patience snapped. When all of his resentment, contempt, and buried hatred for this man exploded into flame. The burning love that he felt for the other only added to the inferno. He wondered if Hannibal could see the fire in his eyes. How dangerous it was for him.
Outwardly, Will sighed with disappointment. He walked the few feet to Hannibal, grabbed his jaw, and angled his face to kiss him, deep and filthy. He inhaled Hannibal’s exhaled breath, buried his tongue in Hannibal’s hot mouth, made a small, pained noise as he remembered their time together.
Hannibal moaned. Hannibal trusted him.
Hannibal didn't notice the knife, retrieved earlier from beneath the sofa, until it pierced his abdomen and was yanked across. Deeper than their kiss. Deeper than the linoleum knife had pierced so many years ago.
Hannibal's moan changed in character, a kind of pleased agony, as he clutched at Will’s arms and shoulders.
Will guided him to the floor and held the bleeding man in his lap, kissing him and stroking his face. His fingers left streaks of blood in their wake. He spoke quietly, mournfully, to the man he had sacrificed everything for. The man who had guided a transformation that needn’t have ever taken place.
“I had a gift for you, you know. Time and teacups, as you like to say. A clever scientist in the city was happy to devote his team to a special project once I showed him the amount of funding I could offer. I thought we could find your sister. Make a new life where we could raise her. Where we weren’t wanted men. But I came home to sheets wet with a woman’s cunt, and I started thinking that I would have been better off never meeting you. I told you, Hannibal, that it was the one thing I could never forgive. I think I'll always love you and hate you in equal measure."
The heartbreak in Hannibal’s eyes was precisely what Will had hoped to achieve. It wasn’t satisfying, though. Not like he’d wanted.
He kissed the broken man’s lips one last time. “I hope for both our sakes that there’s no such thing as hell,” he whispered. He held and comforted his love until the end. Hannibal never tried to retaliate. They both knew that at least one of them would die by the other’s hands, someday.
Once Hannibal had breathed his last, Will laid him gently on the floor. Closed his blankly staring eyes. His body was diminished in death, his self-assured posture completely lax. The man he had loved and hated was gone, nothing but a shell left behind.
He showered while Hannibal's body cooled, his lover’s blood mixing with water and flowing down the drain.
He dressed as the body’s decay began, choosing the practical tactical-style clothing he preferred wearing on hunts. His oilskin duster went on top, and sturdy leather boots hugged his feet. His favorite pistol in its pocket holster was tucked into his pants.
He took his pack from the guest room closet and made sure it contained what he would need. Some survival supplies, a lot of socks, cold-weather gear, his favorite knives, his revolver, ammo for both guns, and a few other odds and ends. He wasn’t too worried about what would happen to him. He would join his Hannibal in death before too long. If the button worked, it would be a little while yet before he did so. If the button proved ineffective, he would be joining him tonight.
He returned to the body one last time. From his watch, he slid free a card-shaped metal piece and dipped it in Hannibal's blood, then re-inserted it in the watch. He used a dropper to fill a vial with more, just in case.
As his last act in this world, he brushed the hair away from Hannibal’s face, softly caressing those devastating cheekbones and gently smoothing his near-invisible eyebrows. “This world is better off without us, babe,” he said to the corpse.
He made no effort to conceal his guilt. They would search for him, but they would never find him. Or if the button didn’t work, they would find him, right next to Hannibal. His right hand brushed over his left wrist, gently rubbing the face of the watch resting there. It was nothing special looking. No need to tempt anyone into stealing it.
On the side of the watch, he pressed a red button.