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- This is a rather obnoxious idea, even for you,” Will murmurs, tightening a leather strap around a scarred wrist.
- I merely suggested it. The rest is all you,” Hannibal replies calmly, before adding a little more hurriedly since Will’s clothes are brushing awfully close to his bare chest, “No bucket this time?”
Will tests the straps with a few more tugs. They’ve had a fancy wooden cross custom built, a far cry from Matthew Brown’s attempt on Hannibal’s life with ropes, tape and wet buckets. Hannibal is standing on the very tip of his toes on an outrageously small ridge protruding from the cross, and his wrists and neck are tightly bound to the wood with elegant leather straps.
For authenticity, Will has only tied a white towel around his hips, leaving him otherwise bare against the cross. Will steps back slowly to take in the sight of Hannibal. Crucified. It’s both oddly fitting and quite disturbing.
- I didn’t exactly give him details. I merely suggested killing you, the rest was all him,” Will parrots.
- Was it now?” Hannibal asks almost gleefully, and Will dearly wishes he’d have gone through with the crown of thorns to see blood drip on that feline grin.
But then the cannibal focuses his attention on him once more, and Will sees an even brighter glint in his eye this time. This would be his first ‘tableau’ of sorts, featuring… Hannibal. It probably feels like taking his virginity to him, or something.
He takes deep breaths. Lowers himself to one knee. He forgets everything around them that’s not Hannibal, on the cross, above him. It’s almost the same half-haze that washes over him on crime scenes, leaving just him and the victim.
- Can you move?” he asks calmly, reaching slowly into his jacket, as if he were in a church trying not to bother goers during mass, or as if he were trying not to frighten a prey animal in the distance. He eyes Hannibal’s muscles ; watches as they flex uselessly against the bindings. However he doesn’t risk moving his feet - probably having no interest in breaking his neck or strangling himself, too curious for that, fully intending to see what Will has in mind for him as they continue.
- I’m afraid not. Or, glad I suppose.”
Will stays still, interrupting his gesture to reach into an inner pocket. Hannibal can barely see him breathe, only his eyes move as he blinks - focused on him. Hannibal licks his lower lip and tries to calm himself down. The towel around his hips is fastened tightly, thankfully - trapping a rising erection between his legs. He doesn’t want base, animal instincts to interrupt this pseudo-worship of him.
He wonders if Will will pray to him.
Rolling his eyes (and his head, pushing it against the cross) back to collect himself for a second, Hannibal misses Will unsheathing a knife from the depth of his jacket and making long strides to return close to him, reaching upwards to slice at his stomach. It’s, all things considered, a rather light strike - it’s not deep enough to cut too harmfully, but it’s enough to have a small teacup’s worth of blood cascading down to stain the towel around Hannibal’s hips.
- Don’t look at me,” Will demands with a suddenly raspy voice, dropping his knife. He puts both hands on Hannibal’s knees and leans in to press his lips to the cut, and he licks it.
Hannibal can’t help it. First he flinches, then he groans, then he looks.
Below him, Will is quite pathetic to look at. Sweat is already gluing some hair strands to his wet forehead, his eyes are shut tight, and his hands are shaky and rough on Hannibal’s legs. The knife at his side seems ridiculously small from this angle and Hannibal can’t help a delighted, throaty chuckle, the sound of which rolls off his tongue and pours straight into Will’s ears, prompting him to look up with eyes that can only be described as ‘wild’.
- I said don’t look at me,” Will near-whines, broken as Hannibal finally finds his center. He’s the wounded one, yes, but it doesn’t affect him - in fact, it empowers him, proves some sort of superiority, that he would be able to keep composure better than the unharmed man already crumbling at his feet. He is crucified and bled like cattle, but he is stronger than his captor.
- But why, Will? Are you ashamed?”
Both men shudder for different reasons when Will picks up the knife again. Seeing him down there, focused on him, both seeking him out and rejecting him, harming him and honoring him, it has Hannibal feel an ever-renewed fondness for Will. He guesses this is what a potential God would feel like, watching Their creation, Their children erecting towers to get to Them ; cursing Them out for every little woe and then building temples to Their glory in the same beat of time.
And collapsing the temples of these unruly children.
Perhaps to return them to their Maker.
- Do you not know what was said to the children of Israel,” Hannibal murmurs kindly, as Will shakes his head anxiously, making another light cut into his flank. “No one among you shall eat blood, nor shall any stranger who dwells among you eat blood. You are not a stranger, Will, you are mine - why disobey me?”
- There’s more about blood in the Bible,” Will counters shakily, this time almost kissing the newly opened wound, only collecting a drop to savor. It makes him feel ill and beautiful all at the same time. He thinks about cannibalistic cultures in which tribe members ate their deceased leaders’ brains to absorb their greatness.
Instead Hannibal seizes the opportunity to twist the blade deeper, leaving Will to wonder who’s really holding the handle. He comforts himself by pressing the flat side of the blade menacingly against Hannibal’s stomach once more.
- But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.”
- Shut up,” Will complains huskily, teeth closing in on Hannibal’s sensitive, cut skin, triggering goosebumps which he feels against his stubbled cheek.
- You must bleed me before eating me,” Hannibal summarizes, as if Will were a simpleton. Although he very well might be right now - had he not been healed from his encephalitis a while ago, Will would have sworn another seizure was coming from how shaky and sweaty he felt.
Bleed him he would, then. Ascending to his feet once more, Will plasters himself against the naked man’s side, reaching up with both hands. Skin to skin contact happens once Will pushes Hannibal’s forearm tightly against the cross and Hannibal sighs at the feeling, pleased, almost blushing. He closes his eyes contentedly, tilts his head as much as the leather strapped around his neck permits him to, and Will takes a few seconds to contemplate him.
He only recalls seeing him so relaxed up on the cliff, and a few times since that, but not much otherwise. It’s an expression he surprisingly seeks to trigger more often.
In the meantime though, he shatter’s Hannibal’s bubble by slicing cleanly at his right wrist, reopening the scar eagerly. The crucified man lets out a half-grunt, half-moan - he rolls his head to the side (again, as much as he can, but he still compresses his trachea quite a bit on the way) to stare at his own blood trickling down his arm and Will’s knife.
He shifts his eyes find Will’s, which were already pointed straight at him in spite of his earlier begging not to be looked at. He leans in for a lick, still staring at him from the corner of his eye, like a dog doing something it’s not supposed to.
- Don’t say anything,” he murmurs once more, pleadingly this time, lips painted over with Hannibal’s blood.
- Ye shall not eat the blood,” Hannibal begins, and Will’s eyes widen, wet with tears that are just begging to fall. He murmurs a soft litany of ‘no’s, uselessly. “Ye shall pour it upon the earth as water.”
And so Will slowly slides down, obeying. His fingers cling at Hannibal’s skin, but they slip. He’s brought to his knees ; and then his nose touches the ground too. Only his hands remain on the very base of the heavy wooden cross, and his fingernails weakly chip at the polish protecting it. From his lips when he speaks, blood does dribble onto the floor.
Curled up at Hannibal’s feet, he demands. He negotiates. He threatens.
Hannibal smiles down as his blood drips nearly everywhere but on Will.
- This is not the proper way to ask.”
- Please,” Will amends through gritted teeth.
- Please to whom?” Hannibal asks, relishing his power over Will, even bound and bled like this.
- Please, Lord,” Will utters hotly, keeping his head down but stretching an arm up painfully to touch Hannibal’s ankle. He sifts through old memories of church and occasional bible studies. “Please. Feed me. Carry me in your bosom. I shall not want. You are my shepherd.”
The towel now does very little to hide Hannibal’s pressing biologic issue. He can feel himself straining against the fabric. His face is red and burning and it takes a lot of self control not to start squirming ridiculously.
- Come to me,” he commands instead, impatient. “Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life ; and I will raise him up at the last day. Drink my blood Will, and eat my flesh, so I’ll keep my lamb by my side, fed and watered forever.”
- Yes,” Will chokes out madly, scrambling up to latch onto Hannibal’s open wrist and suck on it, eyes squeezed shut this time. Rather un-divinely, he gets a lot of it all over himself, letting the red from Hannibal’s torn veins soak into every fiber of his clothing that it can reach.
Even more un-divinely, he puts his hips flush against the cross (and Hannibal’s thigh) and holds them there quite firmly. He’s gritting his teeth against the flowing blood, eyebrows knit upwards in an expression of tortured ecstasy.
Feeling as though this little excursion is reaching an end, Hannibal drops his last little quip -
- He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. I dwell in you, Will. You were unbelievably right about our conjoinment. We’ve more than blurred at the edges ; we’ve melted into each other, mixing like - “
“I dwell in you, Will”. Jesus - if he’s listening. Will definitely feels a seizure of sorts coming.
- Apologies, my lord,” Will grunts out, cutting cleanly a strip off the towel still hanging on for dear life on Hannibal’s hips. He ties the soft material right over Hannibal’s eyes and it’s weirdly enough finally his turn to be tortured now.
Because no matter how hard he tries to cajole Will into removing the makeshift blindfold off his eyes, even embarrassingly and unsuccessfully shouting commands at him at some point, he can’t get him to undo this particular bondage.
And so Hannibal can only hear the clinking of a belt buckle being undone and the ‘thunk’ of that same buckle hitting the floor, followed by increasingly shakier and noisier intakes of breath, a single hand groping his exposed, crucified and cut body as he gets the distinct impression due to air displacements that Will’s second hand is very busy elsewhere.
No matter how much he tries to listen harder, inhale deeper or threaten louder, he can’t gather more proof, but the final choked-out moan expelled as Will sucks hard at the cut on his side erases most doubt on what kind of ‘worship’ is happening betwixt his Lamb’s thighs.
Collapsed at the foot of the cross, Will pants almost as hard as Hannibal, except he had some sort of earthly relief from all of this. He stares at the divine blood drying on the palm of his hand, and at where it also stains him between the legs. Will hurriedly pulls his pants back on and runs to their first-aid kit, red in the face as Hannibal squirms deliciously in his predicament.
In his tableau, Will thinks as he takes a step back to admire him one last time.
In his design.