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An ortolan’s heart is very small.
Smaller than a grape seed, perhaps. Smaller than anything that would ever be granted metaphor on its own. He imagines how quickly it must beat. How frantic, how earnest. A bird’s heart is built for speed, for flight, for panic and escape. It does not idle. It does not contemplate. It lives as if every second is borrowed, because for a bird, it is. He imagines it hammering against its own delicate cage of bone, a blur rather than a rhythm. Not lub-dub, not a dignified pulse, but something closer to a vibration, a trembling insistence. A pleading without language.
Then the Armagnac. Sweet, he knows, because sweetness is the lie that makes violence possible. The ortolan does not know what drowning is; it only knows sensation. Warmth. Sugar. The confusion of pleasure arriving where terror already lives. The liquid fills the mouth, spills into the throat, floods the small lungs that were meant only for air and song. He imagines the panic sharpening, the heart accelerating beyond what should be survivable.
And the liquid seeps everywhere. It cannot be contained. It reaches places it was never invited. The lungs surrender first, collapsing into useless softness, and then, the heart. Not because the heart drinks, but because everything drinks when the body is overwhelmed. The Armagnac presses in, steals heat, steals oxygen, steals time. The heart keeps beating anyway. It does not stop out of protest. It does not stop out of dignity. It beats because that is what it was made to do, until it cannot.
Bones tell the truth that flesh tries to obscure. An ortolan’s bones are decorative, fine as filigree. He feels them between his teeth even before the memory reaches his hands, the faint resistance, the delicate protest before collapse. It is a soft, intimate crunch, the kind that happens close to the ear, close to the mind. A private sound.
There is no veil over his face. He does not hide from God. To look away would be the real sin. Still, he has not felt this particular exposure in a long while. This complete absence of concealment. The ortolan is naked in its death. He is naked in his feeling.
He thinks of the bird’s heart again as he eats it, not as an organ now, but as an idea. Where is it, really, once the body has been reduced to sensation? Does it dissolve into warmth? Does it leave a taste? He has often wondered if hearts are ever sweet. Poets insists they are. They insist hearts are red, that they melt, that they have a point you can spin on, like a top. That they flip over cleanly when love demands it.
Perhaps the ortolan’s heart is not sweet at all. Perhaps it tastes of iron and effort and fear. Perhaps it does not dissolve; perhaps it resists, even in death. Perhaps it is lopsided and unimpressive and utterly sincere. His own heart, his own treacherous, ridiculous heart, has begun to behave like that. It beats too fast. It does not listen to reason. It does not slow when commanded. It is not impressed by discipline or intellect. It has been taken, very simply, and submerged.
He feels drowned in Armagnac himself. In that same hazy tenderness, that same confusion of sweetness and loss of control. Everything inside him feels flooded. Warm. Unstable. As though oxygen has become optional. As though he is living on sensation alone. His heart burns.
Will has taken his heart and done this to it.
He understands the ortolan better because of this. The bird does not choose. It is gathered up by hands larger than itself. It is offered sweetness. It is overwhelmed. It dies being entirely present in its body, with no illusions left. There is something unbearably intimate about that. Something almost devotional. To be known fully is a form of death. You cannot survive total exposure unchanged. Something in you must be extinguished to make room for what comes next. He does not want to hide this heart. He does not want to veil it or protect it or pretend it is not beating out of rhythm. He wants it seen. Taken into another’s mouth. Broken down, bone by bone, without apology.
He did it himself. There was no intermediary, no delegation of the act to ritual or tradition or some inherited choreography meant to absolve the hands that perform it. He wanted the knowledge to be exact. He wanted the weight of it to sit precisely where it belonged. So he opened the cages himself. He remembers the small, bright impatience of the birds, the way their bodies quivered with a readiness they did not understand. They trusted motion. They trusted air.
He lifted them gently. The glass caught the light briefly, amber and forgiving, a color that promises kindness. He watched the liquid climb their feathers, seep through the spaces between bone and down, press against their beaks, their eyes.
He watched their bodies react to sensation they had never encountered, not once in their brief, ferocious lives.
The liquid flowed into their throats, their lungs, filled places that had only ever known air. They struggled then. Not wildly, not at first. There was confusion before terror, surprise before pain. He could see it in the frantic adjustment of their limbs, the useless beating of wings that had nowhere to go. He wished, fleetingly, that he had the ears to hear their hearts. He wanted that sound. That frantic, intimate percussion. But he did not need it.
He smelled it.
Panic has a scent. Overwhelm has a scent. The body produces it honestly, without shame. It bloomed around them as the Armagnac did its work, a sharp sweetness laced with fear, with exertion, with the metallic edge of life realizing it is slipping. The absolute saturation of sensation overtook them, warmth, sweetness, pressure, the confusion of drowning in something that tasted like indulgence.
Then came the surrender. Their movements slowed. Their bodies softened. Their eyes closed. He held them there, just a moment longer than necessary, long enough for them to be fully claimed by the sweetness. Long enough for the struggle to resolve into stillness. Long enough to be sure.
Preparation followed. He plucked them himself. He dried them.When he roasted them, he watched closely, adjusting, turning them so the heat kissed each surface evenly. Their bodies caught flame, a bright, almost celebratory burn, the skin tightening, crisping, sealing everything inside.
They were beautiful then. He placed them on the tray himself. He carried them himself. He brought them to Will himself, their little bodies still faintly aflame, heat rising in soft waves.
“Bones and all?” Will had asked, quiet, curious, already knowing the answer.
Yes, Hannibal said. Bones and all.
Will had taken the bird onto his tongue, its small weight settling there. He watched Will chew. Slowly. Thoughtfully. The bones crunched, soft sounds, intimate sounds, and Hannibal heard them as clearly as if they were happening inside his own mouth. Each crack registered somewhere low and electric in his chest.
He wondered when Will would reach the heart.
That was the moment he waited for. The point of no return. The place where resistance gives way to collapse, where effort becomes yield. He imagined the heart between Will’s teeth, imagined its last integrity failing, imagined the warmth dispersing, imagined the sweetness released at last.
Will had not been gorged, plucked, and drowned yet. Not in the way the birds had been. But Hannibal had. Entirely. Repeatedly. Every time Will’s eyes settled on him, something submerged. Every look pressed deeper, flooded him further, filled places he had once kept dry through discipline alone. Will did not need Armagnac. He did not need flame. His attention was enough. He drowned Hannibal slowly, tenderly, without touching him at all.
He felt it even now, the same panic, the same overwhelm, the same sweetness blooming where oxygen should have been. The same surrender, drawn. Watching Will eat has undone him more completely than the act itself. The trust. The willingness. The earnestness. The knowing. The way Will accepted the offering without veils, without apology. The way he chewed and swallowed and lived.
Hannibal wondered, fleetingly, if this was how the birds had felt in those final moments, not fear, not pain, but the strange, unbearable feeling of being fully taken in. Of being reduced to sensation and meaning all at once. Of ceasing to exist as oneself and continuing, somehow, in another.
The birds died together, after all.
After Hannibal ate his first ortolan, he was euphoric. It was a bright, lucid euphoria. Power. The reminder was not that he could kill, but that life and death were not opposites. They were adjacent rooms. A door, thin as skin, swung easily between them if one knew where to place the hand.
It was stimulating. Clarifying. A reinforcement of order.
Will’s heart did not race when he killed Freddie Lounds. The calm that settled over Will afterward was diagnostic. A low heart rate is a true indicator of one’s capacity for violence. Panic is inefficient. Rage is sloppy. Violence, when it is intrinsic, does not disturb the body. It clarifies it. Will had been steady. Grounded. Present.
That had told Hannibal everything he needed to know. But violence is not the only measure that matters. Capacity is a broad thing. It does not belong exclusively to destruction. There is another question, one that has begun to trouble him, not because he lacks an answer, but because the answer implicates him.
What about tenderness?
What about the body’s response not to taking life, but to holding it?
When does Will’s heart race?
Hannibal’s euphoria after his first ortolan had been rooted in certainty, in knowing exactly who he was and what he could do. The euphoria he feels now is more unstable. It trembles. It threatens to undo rather than affirm. It asks questions instead of answering them. He finds himself measuring moments now not by how little his heart responds, but by how much.
Hannibal has come to understand that blood and breath are the only elements that truly change. Everything else is architecture. Even flesh, for all its softness, follows instructions it has been given for centuries. But blood moves, and breath moves, and in their movement they transform. They are the only things willing to be spent. The only things that agree, again and again, to become something else in order to sustain a fire.
This is how light works. This is how Will works.
A source of light is never passive. It is always burning. Something must be consumed for radiance to exist. He has watched flames long enough to know that brightness is not generosity, it is expenditure. To glow is to give something up continuously, without pause, without complaint.
Will glows, now. Perhaps it was worth the fire of his mind. That radiance is fueled by blood and breath. By the blood that moves through him, carrying heat, iron, intention. By the breath that leaves and returns, over and over, drawing the world inside him and releasing it changed. Hannibal thinks of how often Will forgets to breathe when he is thinking, how his chest stills as if breath itself were an interruption. And then the sudden inhale, sharp, necessary, as if his body insists on rejoining the living despite the mind’s reluctance.
Blood and breath. Consumption and release.
This is what the ortolans taught him, long before Will ever did.
A bird is almost entirely breath. Hollow bones, light body, a life structured around air. Its blood runs hot and fast to sustain that impossible engine of flight. Everything about it is designed for movement, for lift, for burning quickly and brightly. And when it is drowned, when breath is replaced with sweetness, when air is denied and liquid takes its place, it is not merely killed. It is transformed. The blood reacts. The heart accelerates, tries to compensate, tries to burn harder to make up for what has been taken. The body floods with sensation. Blood and breath enter crisis together, and in that crisis, something essential is revealed.
Hannibal has always believed that revelation requires pressure.
When he drowned the ortolans, he watched that pressure build. He watched breath fail and blood riot in response. He watched the heart attempt heroics it could not sustain. That frantic radiance, the last bright surge before collapse, had fascinated him. Will exists in a prolonged version of that state.
A source of light. Burning.
Armagnac drowned the bird not because it was violent, but because it was indulgent. Warm. Inviting. Replacing air with pleasure until the body could no longer distinguish between nourishment and annihilation. The heart did not know how to refuse it. It only knew how to respond. Two burning hearts in close proximity alter each other. They draw on the same air. They risk consuming it.
Hannibal’s dinners with Will are the highlights of his week. It is a simple accounting of anticipation. The days bend toward those evenings. Time organizes itself around them. Other obligations are endured, dispatched, forgotten. They are weightless by comparison. What remains, is the knowledge that Will will come. That he will arrive emptied out and willing, belly hollowed of the ordinary world, ready to be filled.
Hannibal looks forward to this more than anything. He does not pretend otherwise to himself.
When Will comes to him, he comes knowing. That is the part that still astonishes Hannibal, even now. Will knows what he eats. He knows what Hannibal is. He knows, and he comes anyway. There is no veil between them at the table, no pretense of ignorance to preserve comfort. Will arrives empty and consenting, prepared to be fed by Hannibal’s hands.
There are moments when Will smiles at him, small, gentle smiles that feel almost private, as if meant only for Hannibal’s recognition. And then there are moments when something storms through him instead, when his expression tightens, when his eyes sharpen with a sudden, remembered fury. As though he needs to remind himself that anger exists. As though he fears that if he does not rehearse it, it might leave him entirely.
Hannibal does not resent this. He cherishes it. That anger is not rejection. It is Will asserting the full range of himself. That he is still choosing, still negotiating, still alive to contradiction. Hannibal has always loved complexity. Will embodies it effortlessly.
Will is lovely company. Conversation with him is never inert. It moves. It surprises. It resists being predicted. There was a time when Will believed he could not fit into Hannibal’s world. When he assumed the architecture of Hannibal’s life was too rarefied, too exacting, too monstrous to accommodate him. That belief was wrong. Will is the only one who ever could.
Others have admired Hannibal’s world. Some have coveted it. None of them belonged in it. He enters it as he is. And it holds. Hannibal has opened himself to Will in ways he did not know were possible. Not strategically. But wholly, with a recklessness that still startles him when he pauses to consider it. He has exposed his heart, not the controlled, curated version he once believed sufficient, but the frantic, drowned thing beneath. The heart that races. The heart that burns.
Will has seen it. Will has become something Hannibal could never have predicted. A companion who alters him. There is joy in this. A quiet, sustaining joy Hannibal had not realized he was missing. He had assumed his life was already full, rich with sensation, meaning, control. And it was. But it lacked this particular rhythm. This back-and-forth. This mutual feeding. Because Will feeds him too. There will never be anyone else like this. There never was.
They go into the study with their digestifs.
Hannibal carries the glasses himself. The amber catches the low light as they move, a quiet glow that does not compete with the fire but converses with it. Will begins to walk the room. He drifts, slow and thoughtful, head tilting as his gaze settles on objects, then moves on. A book spine. A sculpture. The negative space between things. He looks as if he is listening with his eyes.
Hannibal remains by the fireplace.
The low light loves Will. It breaks him into planes and shadows, softens the edges without erasing them. The slope of his nose casts a gentle line into shadow. The line of his beard darkens his jaw, gives weight to his mouth. His hair catches just enough light to glow faintly.
He is so very beautiful. Hannibal finds himself admiring him most like this, half-lit, half-held by shadow, a figure emerging and retreating with each small movement. Not alone in this darkness.
They have not touched. Not tonight. Not really. There had been the washing of Will’s split knuckles. He had watched the bloom of Will’s blood in the water, the way it unfurled delicately, staining the basin in pale reds that darkened as they spread. He had held Will’s hands then, cleaning, binding. Will had let him. Had watched. Had not pulled away. Where else would he have gone?
That had been enough. Tonight feels different. Gentler, in a sense that resists definition. There is nothing gentle about the way Hannibal feels toward Will, nothing gentle about hunger, about devotion, about the way desire tightens and burns. Nothing gentle about drowning, even when sweetness dulls the edges. It is still a violent act. It still overwhelms. It still takes more than it gives.
And yet.
Will seems softer tonight. Open. As if something in him has relaxed its grip, loosened its stance. His shoulders are lower. His movements slower. He does not brace himself between one thought and the next. He looks at the study not as if searching for threat or meaning, but as if allowing himself to be curious. Hannibal wants to touch him.
He thinks of Will holding him. In those hands that carry anger and fury and promised reckoning. Hands that know how to strike, how to steady, how to choose. Hannibal wants to be held by that. Wants to be contained by it. Wants to know what it would feel like to be gathered up by someone who understands. Someone who hates him, and yet knows hatred is more tender than indifference.
Will continues to move through the room. He pauses at a shelf, leans slightly to read a title. His head tilts again. Will’s silence stretches, unbroken, unawkward. He stands by the fire, the heat pressing gently at his back, a constant reminder of combustion. He takes a measured sip, lets it warm his mouth, his throat. He watches Will’s reflection flicker faintly in the glass of a cabinet, fractured by flame.
Hannibal feels his heart respond to it, not racing now, but tightening, attentive. Perhaps the drowned heart does not always thrash. Sometimes it simply waits, suspended in sweetness, aware of the depth around it. He feels exposed in this waiting. He has already opened himself to Will; that door cannot be closed. The frantic heart has been seen. Acknowledged. Left intact, for now.
Hannibal breaks the silence gently. “I was in Italy,” he says, voice low, unhurried. “The first time.”
Will turns, just slightly. Not startled. Interested.
“It was not planned,” Hannibal continues. “Or perhaps it was planned by other people, long before I arrived. One of those inherited moments. Cultural muscle memory. I was invited, and I accepted because refusal would have been a kind of dishonesty.”
Will’s mouth curves faintly at that. He lifts his glass but does not drink. “Dishonesty with whom?”
“With myself,” Hannibal says. “And with hunger.”
Will nods once. He understands that language. “It was late,” Hannibal goes on. “Not late in the evening, late in the year. Autumn, pressing toward winter. The light had already begun to thin. Italy does that beautifully. The sun withdraws, as if it trusts you to notice its absence.”
Will leans back against the edge of the desk, crossing one ankle over the other. His posture is loose. Receptive. “You were young.”
“Younger,” Hannibal allows. “Still forming. Still susceptible to revelation.”
“And you didn’t know what it would feel like,” Will says, not a question.
Hannibal smiles, just barely. “I knew what it was meant to feel like. That is not the same thing.” He takes a sip of his drink. “They spoke of it in the usual ways. Transgression disguised as reverence. A delicacy that pretends it is about tradition when it is really about courage. Or vanity. Or both.”
“Or control,” Will adds.
“Yes,” Hannibal says, pleased. “That too.”
He remembers it vividly now, the table, the intimacy of it, the way the room seemed to contract around the act. He describes it not in detail, but in impression. The sense of being ushered into something forbidden but carefully curated. The expectation that he would react in a particular way.
“It felt,” he says, choosing carefully, “as though a boundary I had always assumed was fixed had been revealed as permeable. Life. Death. Consumption. Meaning. They rearranged themselves.”
Will studies him in the low light. “You didn’t feel guilt.”
“No.”
“Relief?”
“Not exactly.”
Will hums softly, thoughtful. “Power. Over life and death, like you said.”
“Yes,” Hannibal agrees. “The knowledge that I could participate fully in the cycle, in that way too.”
Will’s fingers tighten briefly around his glass. “I’ve felt something like that,” he says after a moment. “Not from eating. From crossing a line and realizing it didn’t end me.”
Hannibal watches him closely now. “And?”
“And realizing,” Will continues, “that the line had always been closer than I pretended. That stepping over it didn’t make me something new. It just revealed what was already there.”
“The bird,” Hannibal says, “is not significant because it is rare. Or forbidden. Or expensive. It is significant because it demands your full presence. You cannot eat it casually. You cannot lie to yourself while doing it. It resists abstraction.”
Will considers this. “Like killing.”
“Yes,” Hannibal says softly. “And like loving, some would say.”
Will does not flinch. He exhales, slow. “You were alone in Italy?” Will asks.
“No,” Hannibal says. “But I was unaccompanied in the way that matters. I was veiled the first time.”
Someone had draped it over his head. It had smelled faintly of starch and old smoke, of hands that had done this many times before. The idea, of course, was concealment. From God. From witnesses. From consequence. From themselves.
He remembers the way the world had narrowed under the cloth. Sound muted. Light filtered. The table became an abstraction, the people around it reduced to breath and shifting fabric. The veil created a small, private universe in which the act could take place without interruption, but it also removed something essential. Context.
“They believed the veil created intimacy,” Hannibal says. “What it actually created was distance. A suggestion that what we were doing required hiding to be tolerated.”
Will considers this. “And you disagreed.”t.
“The veil forced me inward,” Hannibal says. “But not toward truth. Toward performance. I was aware of myself being watched even as I was supposedly hidden. It introduced an audience where I did not want one.”
The veil, he had realized, was not about sparing God’s gaze. It was about sparing the diner’s. It allowed people to pretend they were not fully present. That they could compartmentalize what they were doing. That the act belonged to tradition rather than to choice.
“When I removed it,” Hannibal says, “when I ate without it—everything changed. The sweetness was cleaner. There was no need to hide from anything. Least of all myself.”
Will’s voice is low when he speaks. “Being veiled in company sounds lonelier than being unmasked alone.”
“It was,” Hannibal agrees. “Lonelier, and strangely diluted.”
“God,” Will says, “has done far more monstrous things than eat a bird. Floods. Plagues. Demands for blood. If God exists, He’s not scandalized by appetite. He’s fluent in it. You would know a thing or two, about that.”
A faint smile touches Hannibal’s mouth. “Yes,” he says. “God has never been delicate.”
Will exhales softly. “So the veil wasn’t about God seeing. It was about not seeing yourself. About not having to witness your own face while you crossed a line.”
Hannibal nods. “It was about plausible innocence. About pretending the act belonged to ritual rather than choice.”
“And you refused that,” Will says. “You sat there and took it off. You looked at them. You made the moment belong to you.”
“I did,” Hannibal replies. “Because I realized something in that instant. That if God was watching, He was already watching. And if He wasn’t, then the only witness that mattered was myself.”
Will studies him carefully. “And now?”
“And now,” Hannibal says quietly, “the witness is you.”
The words settle between them. Will does not deflect them. He absorbs them. After a moment, Will asks, almost casually, though Hannibal hears the weight beneath it, “What was it like? Drowning them.”
Hannibal does not answer immediately. He considers the question as it deserves to be considered. “It was intimate,” he says at last. “More than killing usually is. You are not striking, not severing. You are holding. You are close enough to feel the heat of them. Close enough to sense the moment when panic becomes comprehension.”
Will’s brow furrows slightly, not in revulsion but in concentration. “So they knew.”
“In a way,” Hannibal says. “Not conceptually. But bodily. Their hearts changed first. Accelerated. Breath became noise. Then effort. Then absence.”
Will swallows, but he does not look away. “Was it violent?”
“Entirely,” Hannibal answers. “And yet—sweet. That is the deception of it. The Armagnac confuses the body. It replaces air with warmth. It convinces the senses that something nourishing is happening, even as the lungs fail.”
Will is silent for a long beat. Then, very softly, “That sounds like a lot of things.”
“Yes,” Hannibal says. “It does.”
Will shifts his weight, restless for a moment. “You didn’t hide from God when you did that.”
“No.”
“And you didn’t hide from yourself.”
“No.”
Will lifts his gaze again. “And you’re telling me because you don’t hide from me.”
Hannibal meets his eyes fully. “Not anymore.”
Will’s mouth tightens. not with anger, but with something restrained. “You do hide some things.”
Hannibal does not deny it. He steps closer. “You told me not to lie to you, Will,” he says. “And I don’t.” Will’s face changes before he can stop it. Just for a moment. A shadow passes over him, sadness, sharp and unguarded. Something like grief. Then he schools himself. Straightens. Puts the familiar steadiness back into place.
And it is true, Hannibal thinks. He does not lie to Will. He stands naked before Will in every sense that counts. There is no veil. No performance. No god to hide behind. There are things he has not told him. This, too, is true. He has not told him about Abigail, yet. He has not told about winter, yet.
In time, he will tell him everything. He thinks of the life that waits for them, just beyond this one. Not an escape, but a continuation, a shedding of skin that has grown too tight. He imagines Florence first, as he often does. The city rising out of stone and blood and beauty, unapologetic in its contradictions. He wants to abandon this life and step into the next with him, not because this one has failed, but because it has ripened. Because there is nothing left here that has not already been tasted, tested, understood. What remains is expansion.
He wants to show Will the world. The truth of it. The horror. The rapture. The way humanity devours itself. The way beauty insists on existing. He wants Will to see that he is not merely in the world, that he is of it. That he is it. That the same forces that shape cities and gods and rituals move through him. That he belongs to the long, unbroken lineage of appetite and meaning.
There is so much awaiting them that sometimes, when Hannibal allows himself to consider it fully, he cannot breathe.
The longing closes around his throat. It is a choice to die a thousand imaginary deaths, to allow the self to be undone and remade again and again in the presence of another. Hannibal has orchestrated death all his life. He is not kneeling before God. He is kneeling before Will’s mind, angry, brilliant, searching, incandescent. To be seen by that mind is to be judged and cherished at once. To be dismantled and understood. Hannibal finds the whole of everything embodied there. The ortolan’s heart beats wildly because it knows it is seen. Hannibal’s heart does the same.
“Then tell me,” Will says. “Tell me what you’re thinking about now. Aside from ortolans and God and all the old scaffolding you lean on when you’re circling something. What are you really thinking about?”
He looks at Will. Then, he looks down at his drink. The glass is warm where his fingers rest against it, the liquid inside holding light the way memory does, distorted, refracted, never still. He watches the surface tremble, just barely, betraying him.
Then he looks back up.
“Touching you,” he says.
Something in Will reacts immediately. He steps back without seeming to decide to, retreating deeper into the low light, into the shadowed edge of the study where the fire can’t quite reach him. His shoulders angle inward, his outline blurs.
Will’s voice comes from the shadows, quieter now. “Do you think about that often?”
“Yes,” Hannibal says, without hesitation. “I think about it with a frequency that would once have terrified me.”
Will peers at him from the dark, eyes catching just enough light to glint. The contrast makes him striking, cheekbones half-vanished, mouth defined only by the faintest shine. “You? Terrified?” Hannibal finds him devastating like this. Reduced to essentials. Appetite and thought and shadow.
Before Hannibal can answer, Will speaks. “You know,” he says slowly, “there was a moment—when I was with Margot—where something slipped.”
Hannibal’s attention sharpens. “Slipped.”
“I saw something,” Will continues. “Not about her. About myself. About where my attention went.”
Hannibal takes one careful step closer, not enough to crowd him, but enough to mark intention. “What did you see?”
Will’s answer comes as a whisper, as if volume alone might rupture it. “I saw you,” he says. “Unveiled.”
Hannibal shivers. He wonders, suddenly and with a quiet terror, what that looks like inside Will’s mind. A starved thing? A lonely one? Something feral and half-formed, circling its own hunger? Or something worse, something pitiful. Something that wants.
He keeps his voice steady. “And how,” he asks gently, “did that make you feel?”
There is a pause. Then Will steps out of the shadows. Firelight reaches him again, reshaping his face, filling in the hollows. His eyes are sad, openly so, but there is something else layered beneath it. Hunger, yes. He looks, Hannibal thinks, exactly as he did when he first came to the table empty. Belly hollowed of the world. Waiting.
“Euphoric,” Will says.
Hannibal looks at Will for a long moment before he speaks. He has spent his life deciding when to take, when to offer, when to withhold. Asking is newer. Asking exposes something raw and unarmored. Asking admits need. “May I touch you?” he says.
Will lifts an eyebrow as he brings his glass to his mouth. “Permission?” Will asks. It’s curious. Testing.
Hannibal swallows. He feels the movement all the way down, feels how his throat tightens and releases. “If you’ll give it to me,” he says.
Will doesn’t answer right away. He sets his glass down carefully, the soft clink loud in the hush of the study. Then he starts toward Hannibal. Slowly. His blue eyes burn, with the steady intensity of flame held at the right height. Hannibal thinks of the birds again, briefly, the way fire had licked along their bodies, bright and consuming without frenzy.
He feels smaller. Smaller in the way one feels when standing near something immense and alive. Smaller in the presence of Will’s gravity, the way his attention bends space around him. Smaller in the possibility of being gathered up—or not. Will could decide not to touch him.
Will stops in front of him. Close enough that Hannibal can feel his warmth, the subtle movement of his breath. “I could see the outline of your ribs,” Will says. His voice is low, thoughtful. “When I saw you like that. I don’t want to think about what that means about you. And what it means about me.”
Hannibal tilts his head, considering. “You’re avoiding your thoughts,” he says gently.
Will shakes his head. His lashes flutter once, a reflex he doesn’t quite suppress. “It’s hard to avoid thoughts about you,” he says. “No matter how much I try.”
“Do you try?” Hannibal asks.
Will pauses. The space fills with the sound of the fire, the quiet tick of time passing. Then, quietly, “I needed to think about you, then.”
“With Margot?” he asks.
Will nods. “With her.”
Hannibal absorbs this without visible reaction. “And I suppose,” he says, softly, “you don’t wish to speak about what that means about you. And what it means about me.”
Will nods again. His lashes lower this time, briefly shielding his eyes. “No,” he says.
“Then let me touch you,” Hannibal says. “As I am, now. As you can.”
He feels as though his heart is a bird’s heart, beating just beneath his ribs. Beating close enough that Will could feel it if he chose to place his hand there.
Will’s hand lifts. Hannibal watches it rise as if through water. It halts in the space between their bodies, fingers curling slightly, trembling with a fine tension. Then, as if the air itself has grown too thick to penetrate, Will lets it fall back to his side. He fists it there, the knuckles bleaching white with the force of the grip. The tendons in his forearm stand like cords.
A sharp, clear thought cuts through the fog of Hannibal’s want: Is he going to hit me?
He would let him. He would turn his cheek, his jaw, his ribs to that fist. He would wear the bruise. But the blow does not come. Instead, Will closes his eyes. He stands there, a man trapped in the amber of his own feeling, and another wave of profound, desolate sadness passes over his features. It is there and gone, a shadow through deep water, but it leaves Hannibal gutted. He has seen Will angry, fevered, cunning, and cruel, but this unguarded sorrow is a new thing. Hannibal does not know its cause.
“Will,” Hannibal whispers, the name a plea.
He goes closer, erasing the last safe distance. He lifts his own hand, a mirror of Will’s abandoned gesture, and cups Will’s cheek. His palm meets the warm, slightly rough skin, the prickle of stubble. Will inhales sharply, a jagged sound, and for a glorious, suspended moment, he turns into it. He presses his cheek into Hannibal’s hand, a blind nuzzle of a creature seeking shelter. Then, as if burned, he turns away, breaking the contact.
“What do you think about?” Will asks, his voice rough. “When you think about touching me.”
Hannibal’s hand remains in the air, feeling the ghost of the warmth. “Anything you’ll let me have,” he says, and it is the absolute truth.
Will huffs a laugh, a dry, brittle thing. “Let you? Don’t you like to take what you want?”
The question hangs, and Hannibal considers the history of his taking. the blood, the flesh, the lives, the manipulations. All of it ash in his mouth compared to this. “I believe it would be far better if you gave it to me, Will,” he says, his voice dropping. “Or denied me. A choice is sweeter than a conquest.”
Will opens his eyes. They are dark, liquid, full of unreadable weather. He lifts his hand again, but this time it is not to strike or to caress. He grabs Hannibal’s wrist, his fingers a firm band. He squeezes, and Hannibal knows he is feeling for the scars there, the raised lines under his sleeve.
“When did you become such an obedient thing?” Will asks, and the question is not mocking, but wondering, almost pained.
Hannibal sighs out, a release of held breath. “We’ve changed each other,” he says. It is the simplest and most complex truth he knows.
He leans in then, drawn by the gravity of Will’s mouth, the promise of a final, answering pressure. He aims for his lips, but connects instead with the rough plane of Will’s cheek, scratching slightly on the stubble. Will shivers, a full-body tremor, and turns his face away.
“Will,” Hannibal whispers again. He moves his head, persistent, a compass needle finding its north. This time, he finds Will’s lips.
They connect. Not a kiss, but a brush, a fleeting touch of softness and heat. It is a spark leaping a gap, there and gone. Will turns away again, his throat working as he swallows hard, as if forcing down something vital. The air is charged, thick with everything unsaid and everything done.
Will’s eyes meet his, and in them is a storm of conflict, of want and fury and a devastating need for control. His voice, when it comes, is low.
“Get on your knees.”
The words are a stone dropped in the center of Hannibal’s being. He does not hesitate. He does not speak. He simply goes. He sinks down, the floor rising to meet him. The wool of his trousers is no insulation against the hard reality of the wood, but he does not feel the discomfort. He is aware only of the shift in perspective, of looking up at Will from this new, profound angle. Will is immense from here, a column of tension and decision, outlined by the firelight. Hannibal’s head is level with his hips.
He kneels, and he waits. His bird-heart beats against his ribs, a frantic prisoner. He is a supplicant before a furious, sorrowful god. He is the captured bird, drowned in the Armagnac of his own devotion, roasted in the fire of Will’s regard. The choice to consume, to crush him between the teeth of his mercy or his cruelty, belongs entirely to Will. Hannibal’s head is uncovered; there is no napkin to hide his face, no shroud to spare God the sight. He lets Will see it all, the hunger, the surrender, the absolute, unwavering yes.
Will stares down at him.
From this angle, he is monumental. His hands hang beside his thighs, not in fists now, but open, fingers slightly curled as if still feeling the phantom shape of Hannibal’s wrist. He simply looks. For a long moment, there is only the look. It is a conversation without words. He can see the flicker of thought, of emotion, a turmoil that is beautiful in its chaos. He sees the anger, yes, but beneath it, something more terrifying: a raw, unchecked wanting. A hunger that mirrors his own, but is born of a different star.
Then, Will moves. He doesn’t come forward. He takes a step back. Then another. He walks backwards, his eyes never leaving Hannibal’s, until the backs of his thighs meet the solid edge of an oak table in his study. He leans against it, letting it take his weight, a casual pose that is anything but casual. His breath is a little quick, a little shallow. He reaches out blindly, his fingers finding the rim of a glass he’d left there earlier. He brings it to his lips, his eyes still locked on Hannibal kneeling on the floor.
He takes a sip. Then a deeper drink. Hannibal watches the muscles of his throat work as he swallows. He is drowning himself in it, Hannibal thinks. Drowning the last of his resistance in the amber alcohol, hoping it will burn away the clarity, the terrible, beautiful clarity of this moment. But his eyes, over the rim of the glass, remain painfully awake. They are dazed, yes, but not with drink.
“Where are you going, Will?” Hannibal asks. His own voice surprises him. it is soft, but clear.
Will lowers the glass. A faint sheen of the liquor glistens on his lower lip. He swallows again. “I’m staying here,” he says. His voice is rougher than before. “With you.”
The words are simple. They are everything.
Hannibal looks down at the floor for a second, at the grain of the wood, the dust motes dancing in the firelight. He looks back up at Will, leaning against the table, holding his glass like a shield. He doesn’t stand up. That would break the spell, would reintroduce a parity that has been gloriously shattered.
Instead, he gets on his hands and knees. The soft thud of his palms, then his knees, on the hardwood is the only sound in the silence. He begins to crawl. The soft scuff of his trousers, the faint creak of his shoes as he moves. He keeps his eyes downcast for the first few paces, watching his own hands advance, palm after palm. Then he lifts his gaze and fixes it on Will.
Will has gone very still. The glass is forgotten in his hand, tilted, the ice cubes silent. He watches Hannibal crawl to him. His lips are parted again, his breath held. There is a kind of horrified fascination, a naked awe. He is seeing something he never imagined he would see.
Hannibal reaches him. He stops when his head is level with Will’s knees. He can hear Will’s breath leave him in a shaky, ragged exhale. The sound is a reward. He doesn’t speak. He leans in. He presses his nose against the rough fabric of Will’s trousers, right at the kneecap. He inhales deeply. He smells wool, a faint trace of the outdoors, of dogs, of the crisp Virginia air that clings to Will always. Beneath it, the warm, salt-and-skin scent of the man himself. He drags his nose upward, a slow journey along the hard line of Will’s thigh. The fabric is a barrier, but it is a thin one. He can feel the heat of Will’s body beneath, can sense the muscle tensing, quivering under his touch.
He moves inward, following the seam of Will’s pants, nuzzling into the intimate hollow of his inner thigh. The scent here is richer, more potent. His nose travels up, over the coarse texture of the zipper, to the cold, smooth metal of the belt buckle. He plants his face there for a moment, feeling the hard ridge against his cheekbone. And there, just to the side, he can see it. The undeniable evidence of Will’s desire. A growing bulge, straining against the confines of his trousers, a shape of urgent, contained need.
Hannibal turns his head and presses a kiss to the center of the belt buckle. It is a chaste kiss, dry and gentle, laid upon cold metal.
Above him, Will makes a sound. A choked, breathless thing. Hannibal looks up.
Will’s face has gone slack. All the conflict, the sadness, the anger, has been wiped clean by a wave of pure want. His eyes are wide, dark pools of lust, pupils blown so wide the blue is just a thin, fiery ring around a black abyss. He is staring down at Hannibal with a look of such hungry possession that it steals the air from the room. Hannibal can smell it on him now, that lust. It’s a sharp, sweet, coppery scent. It smells like desire. It smells like yes. It smells, overwhelmingly, like the rich, pungent burn of Armagnac, the very spirit used to drown the tiny bird, to marinade it in fire before the consumption.
Will’s hand comes down. Not to push him away. His fingers, trembling slightly, brush through Hannibal’s hair. It’s not a caress, not yet. It’s an exploration, a confirmation that this is real. His thumb strokes Hannibal’s temple.
His voice, when it comes, is a rasp, a ghost of sound.
“Bones and all?”
Hannibal looks up at him, from his knees. He sees the desire, the fear, the terrible, wonderful hunger. He nods, once. A slow, solemn dip of his head.
“Bones and all.”
Will’s hands move to his belt buckle. Hannibal watches, utterly still. He sees the slight tremor in Will’s fingers as they work the leather free, the dull metallic clink of the buckle coming undone. The sound is obscenely loud. Hannibal, almost without thinking, settles back on his heels, giving himself space to watch. He wants to see this. He needs to see the mechanics of Will’s surrender, which is also, impossibly, his assertion of control.
Will pushes his trousers and briefs down just enough. His cock is half-hard as he pulls it out into the fire-warmed air. It is a beautiful thing, flushed a deep pink in the firelight, almost glistening. The skin looks soft, delicate, drawn tight over the firming shape of it. A single, dark vein traces a path along the underside. Hannibal cannot take his eyes off it.
But he does look away, when Will’s gentle hand comes to cup his chin. Will tilts Hannibal’s head up, forcing his gaze away from his cock and back to his face. That touch makes Hannibal shiver. It’s the holding, the way Will’s fingers cradle his jaw, thumb resting on the hinge.
Will pants a bit, shallow breaths, as he wraps a dry hand around himself. He holds it tightly, a rough fist, and begins to stroke. He’s watching Hannibal’s face. Hannibal doesn’t look away from Will’s eyes. He watches the dark centers swallow the blue, watches the flutter of his lashes, the slight part of his lips as his breath catches.
Hannibal feels a profound tenderness then, a wave of it that threatens to unseat him. He turns his head slightly, nuzzling into the hand that still cups his chin. He presses a soft, closed-mouth kiss to the center of Will’s palm, to the calloused mount beneath his thumb. Then, moving slowly, giving Will every chance to pull away, he lifts his own hand. He places it over Will’s, where it moves on his cock. His fingers settle over Will’s knuckles, feeling the motion, the heat, the tight grip.
Will’s throat clicks as he swallows. He lets his hand be covered, lets Hannibal feel the rhythm for a beat, two. Then, carefully, he slides his own hand out from under Hannibal’s, leaving his cock in Hannibal’s grasp. He settles back more fully, leaning his weight against the edge of the heavy table behind him. He just watches, his chest rising and falling.
Hannibal looks down at what he now holds. It’s fully hard now, a solid, living weight in his palm. He adjusts his grip, not stroking, just holding, feeling the pulse thrum against his fingers. Hannibal bends his head.
He doesn’t take him into his mouth, not yet. First, he snakes his tongue out, a testing stroke. He licks a slow, flat path over the very tip, where a bead of moisture has gathered. It’s a flavor he’s imagined a thousand times, and the reality is so much more potent it makes his own breath stutter. He closes his eyes, savoring it, letting it bloom on his tongue.
“Keep them open.”
So Hannibal looks down, watching himself as he does it. He opens his mouth and takes the head of Will’s cock inside. The smooth, broad crown fits against the roof of his mouth. He lets his tongue swirl around the sensitive ridge underneath, feeling the different texture there, the frenulum, a soft, taut string. Will makes a sound, a punched-out gasp that isn’t a word.
Encouraged, Hannibal sinks down further. He goes slowly, letting his body adjust, letting Will feel every millimeter of the descent. He relaxes his jaw, hollows his cheeks, creates a warm, wet sheath. He feels the thick stretch, the gentle pressure against the back of his throat. He breathes carefully through his nose, the scent of Will’s skin and sweat filling his head. He can see, in his lowered gaze, the way his own lips are stretched taut, the way a little saliva escapes to gleam in the firelight.
He pulls back almost all the way, until just the tip rests on his tongue again, then sinks down once more. He sets a slow, deep rhythm. In, out. Each time, he takes a little more, learning the shape and heft of him. He uses his tongue constantly, a firm pressure along the underside, flicking over that sensitive spot on the upstroke. His free hand comes to rest on Will’s hip, feeling the muscle there jump and tense with each movement of his mouth.
Will is trying to breathe, but it’s ragged, uneven. His belly is a tense, quivering line. Hannibal can see the effort it takes for him to stay still, to not thrust up into the wet heat of his mouth. One of Will’s hands has gripped the edge of the table behind him, knuckles white.
Hannibal loses himself in the act. He savors every detail: the salty precome that beads on his tongue, the low, helpless groans that vibrate through Will’s body and into his own. He could stay here forever, at Will’s feet like this. On his knees, with the taste of Will flooding his senses, with the proof of Will’s desperate pleasure throbbing against his tongue. This is the marinade in fire. The eventual consumption, the shattering of bones, that is still to come. But for now, this is everything.
He takes it whole. He attends to it with absolute focus, wanting to know every contour, every response. To take the ortolan, you do not use your hands. You lean forward, and you accept it into your mouth. It is an act of receiving as much as taking. It requires a yielding, a trust. His own heart beats against his ribs, a tiny, captured thing, and he wants Will to drown it more. He wants the sweetness of Will’s pleasure, the salt of his sweat, the proof of his surrender, to cover his own frantic heart completely, to still its panicked beat with a greater, more overwhelming truth.
He changes his rhythm, sucking harder on the upstroke, applying a vacuum that makes Will curse, a broken, beautiful string of syllables. He looks up then, meeting Will’s gaze. Will’s eyes are wide, dark, glazed with a pleasure so intense it borders on pain.
Hannibal holds the look, even as he deepens his mouth’s work. He lets his own eyes communicate what his mouth is too full to say. He sees the moment Will’s control fractures. The hand leaves the table. It hovers in the air for a second, trembling, then comes to rest on the back of Hannibal’s head. Not pushing, not forcing. Just holding. The fingers tangle in his hair.
He relaxes his throat completely, taking Will in to the hilt, feeling the wiry hair at the base against his nose, the heavy weight filling him. He holds it there for a count, swallowing around him, and the vibration draws a shattered sob from Will’s lips. He pulls off, gasping for a clear breath, a string of saliva connecting his lips to the shining, swollen head. He doesn’t let Will cool. He laps at the tip, kittenish, then takes him deep again. The hand in his hair tightens, just clutching. Will’s thighs are trembling. His other hand comes down to brace on Hannibal’s shoulder, fingers digging in.
Hannibal can taste the change, the gathering storm. The precome is more plentiful now, a steady, bittersweet leak. He drinks it. He wants it all.
It is only when Will shifts his stance, a slight adjustment of balance, that Hannibal feels it. Will’s leg, his bent knee, comes forward, sliding between Hannibal’s own thighs. Hannibal, lost in the rhythm, in the taste, in the sounds Will is making above him, doesn’t register it at first. It is just another point of contact, another pressure.
Then Will presses it more insistently against his groin.
He becomes acutely, overwhelmingly aware of the hot, damp crush of his own erection trapped within his trousers, pressed now firmly against the hard muscle of Will’s calf. The fabric is soaked through. He can feel the wet squish of it, the evidence of just how much he has been leaking, untouched, just from this, from serving, from tasting, from being used. A whimper is torn from him, a high, helpless sound that vibrates directly against Will’s cock.
Will grinds the sole of his shoe, still planted on the floor, upward against Hannibal’s trapped cock. The pressure is brutal, perfect, a rough, obscene friction even through the layers of wool and cotton.
Hannibal breaks off with a wet, gasping sound. He sags forward, his forehead resting against Will’s trembling thigh, his own hips jerking helplessly against that grinding shoe. “Will,” he moans, a wrecked thing.
His hands, which had been resting on his own knees, fly up to clutch at Will’s calf, fingers digging into the firm muscle there, holding on as if to a lifeline in a storm.
Above him, Will clicks his tongue. “Keep going,” he says.
Hannibal breathes. He drags air into his lungs, which feel scorched. He turns his face, pressing his hot cheek against Will’s thigh. Then, obedient, he turns back.
He takes Will into his mouth again. This time, his own need is a live wire, a distracting, agonizing throb. He sets a rhythm with his mouth, sucking hard, taking him deep, and in counterpoint, he grinds himself down against the sole of Will’s shoe. Each downward grind sends a spike of blinding sensation up his spine, makes his thighs shake, makes his mouth go slack and desperate around Will.
He thinks that he will eat ortolans with Will in Florence. He will guide Will’s hand to the tiny, warm bird. He will eat so many with Will, they will make the the species extinct themselves. And what would God do then, peering under the napkin to find not one, but two sets of eyes staring back, unrepentant, mouths stained golden with fat and sin?
He whines against Will’s cock, the sound trapped and vibrating, as he sucks and grinds, a broken, beautiful machine of want.
Will’s hand fists tighter in his hair. “Look at you. God, look at you.”
What does Will see? Does he see that other creature, the one he spoke of with such pained recognition, the being with the starved skin and the exposed ribs, the raw, unveiled thing? Is this kneeling, desperate, leaking figure the true unveiling? He hopes it is. He hopes Will sees the bones. He hopes he finds them worth crushing.
He can feel it, the tidal pull in his abdomen, the inevitable surge. His body seizes, back bowing slightly as he grinds down hard, once, twice, a third time, and then the climax rips through him. His vision bleeds white at the edges. He feels the hot spill in his trousers, a shocking dampness against his skin. The intensity makes his jaw clench, his teeth biting down, just a little, on the sensitive flesh in his mouth.
Will hisses, a sharp intake of breath. “Ah—easy.”
His hand in Hannibal’s hair tightens, not in anger but in abrupt control, and he guides him off, pulling his cock from the wet, clutching heat. Hannibal makes a sound of raw, desperate displeasure, a choked protest at the loss of contact, his body still juddering with the last pulses of his own orgasm.
“Shhh,” Will hushes him, his voice rough but oddly gentle. “Just wait.”
Hannibal kneels, dazed, spent, a mess of damp wool and trembling limbs. He watches, breath heaving, as Will gets a hand around himself. His cock is flushed a deep, ruddy red, glistening with Hannibal’s saliva, the head swollen and dark, a bead of clear fluid already welling at the slit. It is a beautiful, brutal piece of flesh, utterly alive, and Hannibal wants it back in his mouth with a hunger that is beyond thought.
Will presses the tip to Hannibal’s wet, parted lips. He doesn’t push in. He just rests it there. Then he begins to stroke himself, his fist moving in a slow, tight glide, his eyes locked on Hannibal’s face.
“Come on,” Will breathes, his voice thick, strained. His hips give a tiny, involuntary thrust against his own hand. “Keep your mouth open. For me.”
Hannibal obeys. He lets his jaw go slack, his tongue resting behind his bottom teeth. He keeps his eyes open, fixed on Will’s face, on the contortion of sublime agony there. He offers his mouth.
Will’s strokes become quicker, less controlled. His breath comes in sharp, ragged gasps. He is watching his own cock, watching the place where it almost touches Hannibal’s tongue, then he flicks his gaze up to Hannibal’s eyes. Then he shudders, his whole body tensing. The first pulse is silent, a visible throb. The second releases a hot, thick stripe that lands directly on Hannibal’s waiting tongue. It tastes sweet. It is the taste of the ortolan’s essence, the forbidden golden fat. The third pulse follows, and the fourth, and Will is shaking above him, his other hand still fisted in Hannibal’s hair, holding him in place.
Some of it goes past his tongue, landing on the curve of his upper lip, a warm droplet hitting the very tip of his nose. He holds still, his mouth open, accepting every part of the offering. He swallows what is in his mouth, the sweet-salt warmth sliding down his throat. He wants to suffocate on Will’s desire for him, simply because he feels desire for Hannibal at all.
Will slowly stills, his body slumping with exhaustion. He releases Hannibal’s hair, his hand falling to his side. He looks down, his chest rising and falling rapidly. He looks at Hannibal’s face, at the spend on his tongue, on his lip, the droplet on his nose.
Hannibal remains on his knees, his own orgasm a cooling patch in his trousers, Will’s a fading sweetness on his tongue and skin. His heart has finally burst against its cage, and he is glad. A heart exists to move blood. When blood demands more, the heart answers. Even when the answer costs it everything.