Yearn | Hannigram

true care

"What were you thinking about, my love?"

     Will is yanked from his thoughts like a young kitten, by the scruff of his neck. Hannibal's words like sharp fangs in his skin, reminding him of where he really is. Far from humid swamps and the splashing of fish out of the water. No, he's in the frigid North; bundled in scarves and blankets. Ice may be melting but it is just not the same. 

     "Where did you go?" The older man asked, brushing a strand of ashy hair from out of his eyes. 

    "Home... Louisiana," Will responded, setting down the plate he'd been rinsing in the sink and turning to face his lover. He hadn't noticed his daydream, one that had taken place as he gazed out the frosted kitchen window. Hannibal had just asked him to wash up after breakfast. The hot water from the faucet had been running for god knows how long now. 

    Hannibal hummed, low in his throat like a soft buzz of a wasp. "Are you alright?"

     "I was just thinkin' about what it'd be like if I never left... if we lived down south and grew up together. If we still would've been us."

     "You mean would we still be in love? Or if our love would be just as bloody as it is now?"

     Will laughed softly, "A bit of both." 

     "Our pasts made us who we are, every moment that shaped us, and every place, made us ourselves. I don't know if we would be exactly as we are now, I surely wouldn't... But, I know if I was walking by and saw you, sun-kissed and circled in smoke, I wouldn't be able to help myself from approaching you."

     Will leaned over, pressing his lips against Hannibal's, firm and with intent. An unsaying 'I love you'. He would live any life with Hannibal, as long as they could be together. 

     "Where is this all coming from? Are you starting to miss the heat?" 

     "A little. But I was thinking of this old abandoned motel where I found my first mutt. It was one of those awful lover's getaways covered in red shag carpet and fake crystals... anyway I thought if we met where I was from, we would've gotten married in a courthouse then ran away to a place like that. Had a trashy honeymoon, gotten matching tattoos."

     Hannibal smiled, though his distaste for the idea was clear but he was trying to be a bit kind. "I've thought about the opposite. You and me in Europe, showing you the old wine cellars and wandering through the misty forests of my home country. It's a lovely thought." 

     "So you wouldn't get a tattoo with me?" Will joked. 

     Hannibal laughed a bit, "Sadly not, darling. However, if you'd like to carve our names into each other... that might be more enticing. I would be delighted to share a brand with you of another kind." 

     A whimper slipped out of Will's throat at the thought. "Please?" These visions of ownership, intertwined and not truly giving up power, just sharing it are beautiful. Bride of Dracula, receiving all the benefits of said status while, at the same time, giving him just about anything he could ever want, reveling in the delights until the day the angry mob may finally catch up with them.

     "It is so hard to deny you anything, Will. But we should wait," Hannibal sighed, rubbing Will's cheek gently. 

-

Hannibal was pondering morality, his feelings of affection and admiration for Will were bringing up things hard to ignore. Previous philosophies felt abandoned when Hannibal's previously egoist lifestyle has now morphed into codependent domestic bliss; or at least their equivalent to such. What does it mean to care for Will? Does Hannibal love him because they are just alike, does he just foster his narcissism through the lens of those oceanic eyes? Or is it what makes Will unique that draws Hannibal in like butterflies to blood? Perhaps both. 

     Caring is found in our natural instinct to nurture, to provide for a family. Hannibal had been a caretaker before, for Mischa, for Abigail, now for Will. But Will was not a child, and the way Hannibal cared for him was truly unlike anything he'd ever experienced. Love was unknown, because every minor infatuation or attraction before this point simply paled in comparison to the ecstasy of Will's tongue lapping up spit from Hannibal's bottom lip. He is enraptured in this relationship to a point that he barely cares for his own self preservation. 

     Is this care, righteous martyrdom? Hannibal would sacrifice himself for Will, but surely he'd rather them both die as they are destined, entangled in each others organs, ripe and rotten. But how much of care is defined in loss of self, or is it that care is wholly treating an other as you would treat yourself; that childhood golden rule completely defined by selfish projection onto the rest of the world. It is unfair in that regard, for the rest of the world is completely undeserving of Hannibal, or Will for that matter, and their care for those pigs are nothing compared to them. Only God himself could create these moralities, but they exist without him regardless. Churches burn, babies are stillborn, genocide depletes a population, and God does nothing; so who is he to make laws on good and evil? 

     He hasn't half the empathy or care that William does, God would quiver and buckle at the knee if he could truly see what delightful horrors the two of them have released on this piggish world. A slaughterhouse just for the two of them to have their pick, so damn the good and damn the evil as long as they can continue this bloody passage. 

     Hannibal will care, however that may be defined, for Will as long as they both live. Will's daydreams of marriage and such traditional desires shocked Hannibal for a moment. But then it made all the sense in the world, Will had been deprived of that his whole life. He never got to see that love, feel its warmth and hold onto its stability like a moral rope. Hannibal hadn't either. Maybe it was foolish to believe they even had the capability to live life like that. But however uncommon of Hannibal's philosophy or moral code, his mind is filled with intense protectiveness over Will, to enable his every whim and bask in the glory of his becoming. Since he dropped Randall like a sack of meat on his dining table, Hannibal would never think of only himself again. 

     Mischa is why Hannibal may even have half a breath of care in his body, the only memory he has of caring and being cared for. But her loss, her death, was what ripped any chance of his normalcy away right at the cartilage covered joint of her wrist. It had created a hungry pit in his stomach that thirsted only for those impure, rude bodies to fill the graveyard growing inside him. Who would've thought a summer breeze of southern drawl, the smell of old spice, and a permanent scowl would be the thing to tear that care out from where it had been buried for decades. How it would light a soft fireplace in the frigid stonework that was built underneath Hannibal's skin.

     Bedelia, and many others who think to have known Hannibal, would say he cannot care, for he has no empathy still. But they are blind and drunk on ancient virtuosic thought. Their limited scope of view cannot comprehend the grandiosity and beauty that can come from this beastly care. The destruction of all to bring each other pleasures, flavors unexperienced by anyone else alive. No one outside of Will and Hannibal could truly know this kind of nurturing; one completely in support of any 'immoralities' the other may commit; hedonistic to the point of complete bliss and entire lack of fear regarding how the other's perception would twist to disgust if one of them was revealed to be a monster. Knowing monsters, in love and lust, may just have the truest and most unconditional sense of care in the world.