Chapter Text
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“We don't begin to covet with imagined things. Coveting is a very literal sin–we begin to covet with tangibles, we begin with what we see every day.” ― Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs
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It’s the screaming that wakes him.
High pitched wails, shattering the silence of the night, and Will Graham-Lecter jackknifes out of sleep, already bolting from the bed, running more on autopilot than any conscious thought; instinct.
He knows these screams.
He makes it through the doorway only a step before Hannibal does, despite his head start. He’s not quite yet at the stage where he needs to waddle, but at five months pregnant, he’s not exactly as quick as he used to be.
He can still get where he’s needed.
“Daddy, Daddy,” Han sobs, little face red and soaked with tears that wet Will’s nightshirt as his son burrows in, for comfort and warmth. “There was a monster under my bed!”
Will knew letting the twins show Han Monster Inc. was a bad idea.
Still, six years and three children have made Will a veritable expert at things like this, and so Will only cuddles his scared son closer, presses kisses to his little face and soft mummers of comfort before he says, turning his gaze to Hannibal, who is standing by the edge of the bed, with an instructing gesture, “Papa will check.”
And then, to Han, this little carbon copy of himself except for Hannibal’s eyes that stare back at him from his son’s little face, “Papa’s battled monsters before, and he always wins. If there’s any there, he’ll take care of them.”
“Promise?” Han wobbles, turning eyes that could erode stone to his papa, and Hannibal, who Will knows once killed a man for stepping on his toes and not apologizing, melts.
“Of course, sweetling,” Hannibal says to their son, brushing his fingers, gossamer soft, over cheeks still chubby with baby fat, “I will never let any harm come to you.”
He would, Will knows, kill anyone who tried, and if it came to that, Will would do more than just the observing he does in their basement.
Will would help.
Still, such sentiments have no place near their children, and so it remains unspoken and banished from his mind as Hannibal makes his way down onto his knees, makes a show of checking for monsters they both know are not there.
In this world, monsters need not to hide under any beds.
“No monsters, I promise mažylis,” Hannibal assures, coming back up onto the bed, the Lithuanian endearment rolling warmly off his tongue as opens his arms and lets their son burrow between them.
“Just a bad dream, baby,” Will says, pressing a feather light kiss to chocolate brown curls, “Do you want Papa to sing you a lullaby?”
Han nods, burrowing somehow deeper into their combined warmth, and so Hannibal opens his mouth and does as he has been bid, with Will and Han as his captive audience. And by the time the lilting tones of his soft baritone, wrapped appealingly around the foreign vowels of his native language have slowly died off, Han’s cheeks are dry of tears and he’s nodded back of to sleep. As such, it is easy for Will to press a light kiss to his baby’s forehead, and then carefully extricate himself from the bed, leaving his son to sleep.
In the hallway, Will takes a second to listen for Alex and Ella, but hears only silence, a welcome result. “The twins managed to sleep through that,” Will says, once they are back into their own bed, voice pitched down low, so as not to tempt fate.
“Hardly surprising; they could sleep through someone being murdered,” Hannibal says, eyebrow raised, faux blandness personified, because Hannibal loves his freaking awful puns.
Will rolls his eyes so hard he’s surprised he doesn’t sprain something.
“It’s safe to say I didn’t marry you for your humor,” Will sighs, but there is the tiniest curve to his lips, because Will loves pretty much everything about Hannibal.
Even his dreadful puns.
“And why did you marry me then, darling?” Hannibal teases quietly back, dark eyes twinkling as they only do for Will and the children.
“The sex, of course,” Will answers, deadpan, because, you emotionally manipulated me into it with our children and Abigail’s help you ridiculously possessive cannibal is a little to on the nose for this conversation, for all that Hannibal had pretty much played into his hands on that one.
Will does enjoy making Hannibal work for it.
And besides, it’s hardly a lie.
The sex is fantastic.
“Well, then, I must endeavour to do my part,” Hannibal says, not loosing a beat, slipping a teasing hand into Will’s boxers, before asking, entirely tongue in cheek, “And must I check under your bed for monsters as well?"
"I rather thought the monster preferred sleeping in my bed,” Will drawls back with a pointed eyebrow, and an exaggerated shrug, “rather than under it, but hey, if you want to mix it up, be my guest."
“And yet you impugn on my sense of humor,” Hannibal sighs, failing utterly at looking wounded, an effort not helped by his hand rubbing teasing circles down the curve of Will’s ass.
Will rather has plans to impugn on something else.
“Let me kiss it better,” Will drawls, and slides down, down, down, and swallows Hannibal’s next retort along with his already hardening cock, all the way.
Hannibal responds with a sound that might be best described as a gurgle.
The rest, as Shakespeare says, is silence.
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Eight thirty finds them in the kitchen, with Hannibal packing lunches and Will on child wrangling duty, as is their routine for school mornings. This morning however, Will has it easy, as the twins got up and started getting ready with little prompting, and Han is too tired from last night to cause any fuss. As such, in these moments of relative quiet, Hannibal is indulging in a vice as he works: TattleCrime, and Lounds’ latest lurid headline, while Will contemplates if the lack of noise upstairs is a good thing or a bad thing.
Ella and Alex are beautiful, perfect children, and Will would kill for them in an instant.
That doesn’t mean they aren’t occasionally hellions or the highest caliber.
"Buffalo Bill," Hannibal says, pulling Will out of his musings as he reads the headline off his Ipad with an air of faint distain, hands steady in their work of packing the twins their lunch. "Honestly, from what terrible reservoir of journalism do they produce these names?"
"This one started with local cops," Will says, shooting a quick look to Han, finding him still dozing lightly on the couch, catching up on needed sleep, "One of them rather regrettably said to the media that "this one likes to skin his humps.”"
There is a moment of strange silence in the kitchen. And then...
"Jack has asked you to consult on the case," Hannibal says, voice oh so casual, his hands tightening slightly, crunching a leaf of freshly washed lettuce.
“Yesterday,” Will says absently, vexed by the disappearance of his keys, the very ones that he’d sworn he had not a moment again.
Seriously, he’d lose his head and all that these days.
“And you accepted?” Hannibal asks, and while it is not quiet an accusation it is not quite a question either.
“It does well to keep Jack…occupied, as you very well know,” Will says, still on the hunt for his keys, internally despairing at how ‘pregnancy brain’ has hit him particularly hard this time around. “Bella’s death hit him hard. Keeping him busy hunting the media’s favoured killers keeps his mind of that…and off other things he could be hunting,” he finishes, with a gentle hint of significance in his tone.
Any monsters that keeps Jack away from Will’s monster serve at least one useful function.
“He is killing omegas,” Hannibal says, and this time the iron in his voice tips Will to how serious Hannibal really is, gets his full attention as Hannibal finishes, voice especially flat, “Killing and skinning them.”
Will considers mentioning that skinning is probably a step down on the proverbial totem pole from eating, but he refrains. There’s a time for snark.
This isn’t it.
“Yes, but never pregnant ones,” he says instead, moving to curl gently into Hannibal’s stiff frame, burrowing there until his husband softens, appeasing him as only an omega can, “I don’t fit the victim profile.” And then, with a nod to the still manageable bump that is their forth child, “And we’ve got months before this one makes an appearance.”
“I’ll be careful, as always,” Will continues, quiet and sure, a promise that Will, the man who shot Abel Gideon, who ensnared The Ripper, intends to keep. Will might not be the monster that Hannibal is, but he’s no lamb, waiting to be lead to the slaughter. Will is a wolf in his own right, and when it comes to his mate and his children he’s got very sharp teeth.
And hunger for a snout full of blood.
“I…worry,” Hannibal allows, the words delivered on not so much as breath but harsh air, and even after all these years, and all they have been through, Will knows how much it still costs him.
Hannibal Lecter is not a man for whom vulnerability suits.
“I know,” Will says quietly, softly, the words a whisper against the harsh angles of Hannibal’s face, “It’s part of what I love about you.”
The kiss that follows is intense, sweet, and just the tiniest bit desperate.
Will loves it.
Still, to be kind and let Hannibal escape the emotion that threatens to grip him, Will gives him a tiny squeeze, and then steps away, bellows towards the stairs, “Alex, Ella, time to leave for school, come on!”
The sound of small feet thumping down the stairs announce that the twins are thankfully ready, and they make a path to Hannibal, who has composed himself again, flawless in his person suit holding out the twins lunches for them to take.
“Thank you Papa,” Ella chimes, on her tiptoes to meet the cheek Hannibal has already lowered for her kiss. Alex is a little more reserved, taking his lunch with a side hug for his papa, and then his voice joins Ella’s to say together, harmonizing with that strange symmetry that twins have, “See you tonight!”
“Race you to the car!” Ella dares her brother, mischief twinkling in her eyes, already making a beeline for the door, and Alex follows, hot on her heels as always, while Han makes his way slowly after them on his little legs, still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.
“No running in the house!” Will yells, knowing its futile even as he says it, shooting Hannibal a fond look that his mate returns before making his own way to the door.
And then, a thought catches him and Will stops, one foot out of the door and asks Hannibal, a careful emphasis in his voice, “There aren’t any…other reasons I shouldn’t consult on this one, are there?” Because for all that Will is a willing audience member in Hannibal’s darkness, Will would convert this household to veganism before he would risk letting that darkness touch their children.
Honestly, Hannibal would probably make tofu taste good, though the mental image of watching him try has occasionally brought Will great joy.
But, he digresses.
“No, darling,” Hannibal says calmly, smoothly, his eyes dark, voice velvet, “I simply could not bear it if anything happened to you.”
“Same to you,” Will says, letting his relief out with a little smile, and he’s almost closed the door behind him when Hannibal’s, “Will…” has him pushing it open again, and shooting his husband a querying look.
Hannibal in return raises an eyebrow as he jingles Will’s misplaced keys teasingly, and Will huffs out an exasperated sound – honestly, his brain on this pregnancy is just awful – and Hannibal tosses them gently to him in a perfect underhand throw, the tiniest smirk on his face as he does.
Will thinks sticking out his tongue is absolutely the correct, mature response.
Still, he’s smiling as he does, because Will Graham has a pretty great life: fantastic children, a wonderful mate, good friends, and to top it all off, a monster to hunt.
Will couldn’t ask for anything better.
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In the silence of his home left by the departure of his family, Hannibal Lecter stands, a civil war made flesh. Externally, he is calm: a statue, twisting his wedding ring gently, an absent gesture. Internally, he is a thunderstorm: dark and foreboding, worrying his wedding ring, this simple symbol of his greatest joy in what one might call guilt.
“There aren’t any…other reasons I shouldn’t consult on this one, are there?” Will had asked, blue eyes clear except for concern for him, a miraculous thing. And Hannibal had looked up the breath of his life, his only love and thought:
Of a flute, played terribly off key, polluting the orchestra. Of a patient, an anxious, buzzing pest, uninteresting until he’d whispered, “Dr. Lecter, I think there’s something wrong with him… I think he might have killed someone.”
Of a body displayed in a home, this anxious buzzing pest made into art, and a table of bores and braggarts dining on the flesh of their colleague and offering their sweet, unware praise. Of returning to the scene, unwise though it was, curious when he had seen no media report a week later.
Of returning, and finding not his work of art, but instead only the head, painted in make up, smeared on by an unpracticed hand. The head, in a jar, the fumbling but oddly charming work of a fledgling killer, whom Hannibal supposes must be this mysterious suitor his patient had only ever referred to as “J.” And, printed on simple white paper, a note, that could only have been for him – not the doctor, but the monster.
YOU TOOK HIM FROM ME
YOU MADE HIM BEAUTIFUL
I WISH I HAD THE GIFT OF TRANSFORMATION YOU DO
AN ADMIRER.
“There aren’t any…other reasons I shouldn’t consult on this one, are there?” Will had asked, and Hannibal had looked at the clear, trusting eyes of his husband, his mate.
And lied.
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