Hors D'oeuvres (Hannibal One-shots)

All I Want For Christmas

Summary: In another world, Will, Hannibal, and Abigail celebrate their first family Christmas.

Hannibal/Will & Abigail (Murder Family), season 1 AU, post ep. 8.

This Christmas fic was inspired by the poorly-designed holiday mug above that looks like it was found at the scene of a murder, because what screams Hannibal more than that? It was a one-shot originally, but I'm considering writing a continuation of this world in another fic, so if y'all would be interested in that, please let me know! Happy Holidays!

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If anybody had told Will a year ago that he would soon share legal guardianship of a teenage daughter and be in a serious romantic relationship with his unofficial psychiatrist, he would have laughed them all the way to the nearest mental hospital.

And that was without the serial murder, encephalitis, and cannibalism.

Yet here he was in Hannibal's living room on Christmas Day, a fire crackling in the cavernous fireplace and a huge Christmas tree in the corner. He felt a little guilty about leaving his dogs, but he'd gotten Beverly to take care of them after Hannibal convinced him to stay the night. It made heat pool in his abdomen just thinking about it: the Christmas Eve dinner, Hannibal inviting him into bed, how difficult it was to fall asleep with his distracting body heat radiating against his back...

Going into the relationship, Will wasn't sure if he was sexually attracted to men. Now...well, he still wasn't sure, but he knew that he was attracted to Hannibal. That was increasingly obvious. Hannibal had never propositioned him, never expressed an explicit desire for a sexual component to their relationship, but Will had to wonder if it was on his mind. He was too awkward to bring it up to him, though. Besides, it seemed such a minor thing in comparison to the other aspects of their relationship...which was where the serial murder and cannibalism came in.

After Hannibal had discovered his encephalitis and Will had gotten treatment for it, he'd finally put the pieces together. He didn't know why it had taken him so long to realize that Hannibal fit the profile of the Chesapeake Ripper perfectly. Maybe it was the muddying effects of his illness; maybe it was how well-respected Hannibal was in his field, or the distraction of the other cases; maybe it was denial.

Will didn't want to admit that a not-insignificant part of it was denial.

The truth of the matter was that Will had never found a person who understood him so fully and accepted him for it until he'd met Hannibal. They shared legal guardianship of Abigail Hobbs far before their relationship moved out of platonic territory, and they both felt paternal towards her. Hannibal willingly took care of his dogs, made him chicken soup when he was sick, and kept his home open to Will at all hours of the day or night. He didn't see anything wrong with him, even after Will admitted to active murder fantasies (although that part made sense in retrospect, in several ways). Hannibal was his paddle. Hannibal was his friend. He didn't want to give that up.

But it wasn't just that. Hannibal understood him, but Will also understood Hannibal. He knew what made the Ripper tick, why he did what he did, and when the pieces fell together, Will had a moment of clarity unlike any he'd ever had. He understood him, he empathized with him, and, for the first time, he saw Hannibal fully. Will wanted to be repulsed by what he saw, but he wasn't. Just as he wasn't repulsed when he found out that Abigail had killed Nicholas Boyle, or that Hannibal had helped her hide the body, or that Hannibal had killed Tobias Budge. Just as Will wasn't repulsed, even as every fiber in his body screamed that he should be, when he found out that Abigail had helped her father kill those girls — he was upset that his two deepest connections in life were with killers (after all, what did that say about him?), frustrated that he had been so willfully blind to her darkness, and repulsed by the way that her father had manipulated her, but he was not repulsed by her actual actions.