Chapter Text
Hannibal Lecter’s funeral is open-casket.
Because of course it is.
Will can’t bring himself to look.
Alana speaks. Jack speaks. An old friend or two of the doctor’s speaks. The grief is twofold, and it shows in their faces, permeating through every trembling word of their eulogies. Brief anecdotes about his exceptionalism are followed quickly by wretched expressions of horror and disbelief at the exposed truth of his nature. Admiration discolored by betrayal. They are mourning a man who, in their minds, they lost twice.
Will does not speak. He has nothing to say to these people. Any words he has to say about Hannibal Lecter are exclusively for Hannibal Lecter.
He didn’t speak at Abigail’s funeral either. Not until everyone else had left, and he could press his hand over her coffin, closed casket, and whisper his apologies into the wood.
Jack and Alana hover around him as the small gathering disperses. They ask him how his healing is going. His healing is going fine. He says goodbye to them and drives to the nearest bar before they can ask him anything else.
He workshops his eulogy in his head while he stares into glass after glass of whiskey the color of Hannibal’s eyes.
If Will were the only man in the world, he would drive back to the funeral home while wasted, but he isn’t, so he doesn’t. He won’t let his disregard for own life result in harm to the lives of others.
So he calls a cab back to the funeral home, breaks in through the back door, and finally, he and Hannibal are alone.
Will does not turn the lights on. Instead, he staggers to the end of the aisle to stand in one of the sole circles of moonlight filtering through a window above, not six feet from the casket of the man he loved. The man he killed.
“I wish you hadn’t made me kill you,” Will says. They are not the first words he intended to say, but he can’t stop them from leaving his mouth. The shadows behind Hannibal’s coffin shift, like he’s listening. “I wouldn’t have stabbed you if you hadn’t hurt Abigail. I wouldn’t have hurt you if you hadn’t used her like a fucking pawn, just to get back at me,” Will says, all of his carefully considered words abandoned in the wake of his intoxication and the wave of madness that’s breaking through the dam of numb repression that he’s kept up for months. “If I knew, if I knew from the start you hadn’t killed her, I would’ve gone with you.”
The shadows move again as Hannibal steps closer, his handsome silhouette dark and featureless as it listens to Will’s broken eulogy. Will is only momentarily caught off guard by this. He is no stranger to madness, and he wants the dead man listening.
“No one has ever known me the way you do,” he continues in almost a whisper, one hand falling to the pew at his side and clutching it with white knuckles as his body begins to tremble more violently with the oncoming storm. “No one has ever made me feel the way you do. You opened my eyes to beautiful, terrible things that I would’ve spent my entire life hiding from, but you’ve ruined it, ruined it all for me, because none of it means anything without you,” Will confesses, voice rising with the magnitude of his grief. Hannibal begins to move around his coffin towards Will, and it just makes Will angrier, incensed by the notion that he thinks he can approach Will now, after everything.
“I love your light,” Will gasps, his shaking only getting worse, “and I love your darkness. I love the way you think, I love the way you move; I love the way you held the knife when you would slice vegetables, and I love the way you held the knife when you opened me up. I love the way you dragged it through my flesh and muscle and guts, painting your goddamn design onto me, because you knew exactly what you wanted to do to me, how you wanted to hurt me and forever leave me with your mark, without killing me– I wish you had cut me with the intent to kill!” he snarls out wretchedly, accusatorially, as Hannibal’s shadow takes another slow step closer. “I wish you had kissed me with the intent to live!” he cries out, voice ragged with fury and anguish, fist slamming into the wood at his side, and the shadow takes another step. “Why didn’t you ever fuck me? I would’ve let you, I would’ve let you ruin me; if you’d kissed me just once, you fucking coward, I would’ve gone with you anywhere!”
One moment, the shadow is a shadow, and the next, it is a man.
Switching on a dime from a slow stalk to an alarmingly sudden blur of motion, the shade that Will has been speaking with seems to materialize into a real body directly in front of him, so quickly that Will can only stumble back a step before the shape of Hannibal catches him around the waist and pulls him back in.
“Has God’s favor finally turned from Abel to Cain? Men would kill for such an inheritance,” a half-way familiar voice rumbles next to Will’s ear, and Will’s entire body freezes up under the firm grip. “Just one kiss, and you’ll go with me anywhere, angel?”
Will’s mouth falls open in shock. Even in the relative darkness, he can see the faint, familiar outline of the doctor’s handsome face. “Hannibal,” he says in a dazed whisper.
“Not quite,” Almost-Hannibal’s voice replies, and before Will’s drunken, grief-stricken brain can attempt another coherent thought, his lips are captured in a deep kiss.
Will has only kissed a handful of people in his life, and most of those kisses were sloppy, amateur, first-date kisses with poor chemistry and too much tongue. This is miles from that. This isn’t a reach for purchase, or a nervous floundering. It is confident, experienced lips sliding hot and heady against his own, every small, sensual movement laced with the hunger of a mouth that knows exactly what it wants. Will’s brain is fuzzed out with liquor and overwhelmed with confusion, his whole body feverish and startled and aroused by the intensity of something as simple as a kiss. But it doesn’t just feel like a kiss.
It feels like a promise and a command.
It feels like a gift and a theft.
The hungry mouth pulls back from him finally, a thin line of saliva following his retreating lips before snapping between them. Will blinks once, inhales shakily, and punches Hannibal’s shadow in the face.
“Fuck!”
And that’s strange, Will thinks distantly as his knuckles smart and the figure staggers back a step, because Hannibal doesn’t really swear like that.
“Stop haunting me,” Will snarls, his words on the verge of slurring. “I’ll kill you again, you motherfucker.”
The shape of Hannibal wipes a sleeve across its jaw and lets out a low, unfamiliar laugh that Will can only think of as sounding… sleazy.
“Fuck, gorgeous,” the man says, straightening back up to his full height. “Even a kiss from your fist hurts just right. But I’m no ghost,” he continues, taking a step into the pool of moonlight that filters in through the glass window above. “And I’m sure as hell not my fuckin’ brother.”
And Will should’ve realized from the moment he saw his shadow, should’ve realized the moment he heard his voice, should’ve realized the moment the man had kissed him, that this was not Hannibal. He should’ve realized, but somehow, he didn’t. Couldn’t. Grief is a funny thing, and denial is, afterall, one of its stages.
But it’s unavoidable now, the realization that the man standing before him is not his Hannibal.
While their bone structure and facial shape is nearly identical, there is something slightly leaner about this man that makes him look meaner and sharper. He’s wearing a suit, but it’s all black down to the dress shirt and tie; sleek, but otherwise lacking in character. There’s a kind of lazy liquidity to his movements, and every action he takes, no matter how small, feels carelessly expressive in a way that feels at complete odds with Hannibal’s perpetually carefully coordinated actions. The slight tilt of the man’s head, the casual rolling of his shoulders, the way his hooded eyes narrow in interest– he communicates with his body in a way that is deliciously cavalier.
Where Hannibal always made sure that he was projecting nothing but class and composure, this man seems to wear his jagged edges on his sleeve. Where Hannibal’s facial expressions were always strategic and controlled, mild and pleasant more often than not, this man is smirking down at him with confident, undisguised desire.
“Hannibal had a–” Will blinks rapidly, all of his wild fire flickering low with confusion and uncertainty. “You’re Hannibal’s brother? Who are you?”
“I’m Nigel,” Hannibal’s brother says. “I’m the man who’s gonna do what my brother apparently didn’t have either the brain or the balls to do.” He’s closing the gap between them again. “I’m gonna fuckin’ ruin you,” he breathes, their foreheads nearly touching. “Just the way you begged for it so beautifully.”
The world blurs before Will has time to digest this, and he finds himself yanked forwards harshly, towards the man, towards the casket, until he’s clawing at the hands that hold him, and is thrown to the ground by the coffin.
Landing hard on his hands and knees, Will gasps, head spinning. There’s movement and sound beside him, followed by a loud clatter of wood on stone, before he’s being lifted up again, back pressed tight against Nigel’s chest.
“What–” Will gasps, heat pooling alarmingly in his gut even as he struggles sluggishly against the man restraining him. “What the fuck’re you–?”
“I know you haven’t looked yet,” Nigel whispers in his ear. “I was watching you from the balcony during the funeral. I know you haven’t looked at his body. I want you to look now, while I take you. I want you to see that he’s fuckin’ dead.”
Will’s vision clears as Nigel grabs his chin in one hand and angles it sharply down, down, until he’s looking straight into the open casket.
At Hannibal.
They’ve dressed him in a plain black suit, ironically enough. It’s something painfully pedestrian that he never would’ve chosen himself. At least it’s well-tailored. Well-tailored, and well-fitted enough that Will can almost see the gentle swell of muscle that Hannibal had always tried to hide beneath his own far more ostentatious suits. This unremarkable suit that he now wears hides something else. Something that the medics tried their best to sew shut, to no avail.
The skin of his face is smooth and pale, but it always was. His hair is perfectly styled and swept back, but it always was. His expression– Serene. Calm. Uncanny, really. The corners of his mouth are just barely tilted upwards, a private little smile that makes it look like he knows some secret that no one else does. But then again, he always had.
Will can’t decide if Hannibal looks like he could still be alive, or if he just always had the cold countenance of a walking corpse.
“There we go,” Nigel murmurs in his ear in a gravelly drawl, warm and firm and very much alive where he’s pressed against Will’s back, thumb stroking gently over his chin in a way that Will wants to lean into. “That’s the man you said all of those beautiful things about, yeah? There he is. He’s gone. He never fucked you, and he never will.”
Will is trembling even worse than before. He’s gone, he’s gone, Hannibal is gone. Hannibal is gone and yet he’s also right in front of him, and his identical fucking twin brother is behind him, and is holding him with a kind of obvious power and latent violence coiled in his arms that’s sending shivers down Will’s spine–
“To have had a thing like you in his hands and let you go–” One of Nigel’s hands has moved, and there’s a rustling of clothes behind him– “He was an ungrateful, stuck-up fucking bastard.” Will finds himself bent forwards, Nigel’s hand on his chin moving to his back to guide him down until his hands are scrambling to brace himself on the sides of the coffin, his face only inches from Hannibal’s corpse. He can’t suppress the half-squeak, half-gasp that escapes his lips, but the dark chuckle behind him makes his gut flare hot again with alarm and excitement, because there is something familiar here. Being desired this fiercely, however restrained Hannibal was about it, is familiar. Having his body manipulated against his will for his pursuer's own pleasures, is familiar.
In this familiarity, Will does the thing he does best, and reads Nigel. In this familiarity, he finally finds his voice again.
“Have you ever gotten anything by yourself, or have you always had to wait for your brother’s hand-me-downs?”
Nigel freezes where he was pulling Will’s belt free, and Will feels a thrill of adrenaline, like he just tripped and barely caught himself before falling. Then Nigel is half-laughing, half-snarling at his neck, hands ripping his pants and boxers down to his ankles until Will’s ass is left bared and presented to him. And then Will feels the hot, wet stroke of a tongue over his throat before Nigel’s teeth sink into the nape of Will’s neck like he’s a small animal that Nigel is about to snap in half.
Will cries out, wit gone again, crushed under the barrage of new, overstimulating sensations; a large hand squeezing his asscheek, a heavy chest pressing him further down into the coffin, a pair of jaws clamped down on the back of his neck.
“Wai– Wait!” Will finds himself crying out. “Wait, I’ve never– I’ve–” The teeth unlock from his neck, and he lets out a relieved wheeze.
“Has a fuckin’ fag like you really never taken it up the ass?” Nigel finishes in a low growl, but Will shakes his head frantically.
“Never– anything. Never done ‘nything. Past kissing.” The flood of embarrassment he feels from saying the words aloud is brutal. He shouldn’t give a single shit.
But Nigel pauses, lets out a disbelieving huff, one hand snaking around and under Will’s torso to cradle his throat in a loose grip. “Oh, baby,” he murmurs, the words sounding both fond and incredulous. “You’re a virgin? Are you fuckin’ with me?”
“No,” Will whispers.
The hand around his throat moves to hold his cheek, thumb stroking over his cheek again, suddenly so gentle that it makes Will’s chest ache.
“Fuck, gorgeous. Fuck,” Nigel breathes, his exhale shaky. Will gasps when he feels the hard press of Nigel’s clothed erection rutting against his ass. “Alright,” Nigel says, as if he’s calming himself down. “Alright, sweetheart. I’m gonna take your virginity right here, and I’m gonna make it so good for you. I’m gonna fuck you so good you’re never gonna think about my bastard brother again. I’m gonna make you fuckin’ mine.”
Will’s head is swimming, his body burning up, his core seizing and spasming with excruciating grief, with hysterical amusement, with pulsing, sinful arousal. He doesn’t think. He’s tired of thinking.
“Sure,” he says.
“Fuckin’— did you just say sure?”
Then the teeth are back in his neck, and the hand is back around his throat, and he feels a slick, wet finger burrowing between his asscheeks to stroke at his hole.
“Oh my god,” Will chokes out, vision cutting in and out with the blinding ache of the teeth holding him in place, face still inches from Hannibal’s as the man’s brother forces a lubed-up finger past the previously untouched ring of muscle.
Nigel shakes his head like a dog where he’s still got Will’s neck by the teeth, and Will cries out, tears pricking in the corners of his eyes at the rough treatment. The man lets out a satisfied exhale as he releases Will’s neck again, tongue still licking over the throbbing expanse of flesh he’s laid violent claim to.
“I’m going to give you my light,” Nigel snarls, finger sinking deeper into Will’s clenched hole before it begins to curl and stroke at his insides. “And I’m going to give you my darkness. I’m not gonna pussyfoot around what I fuckin’ want, baby. I’ve heard all of the beautiful, unfiltered madness of your fucked up little heart,” he purrs, a second finger beginning to tease at Will’s hole where the first still wriggles inside of him. “I’m gonna give you all my love. And I’m gonna give you all my violence.” Strangled gasps and trills are escaping Will’s mouth unbidden as he squirms and thrashes beneath Nigel, and the man bucks up against him again, sizable bulge rubbing over Will’s ass.
Two fingers, then three. Will doesn’t know what he’s saying anymore. It’s something like “Wait,” something like “No,” something like “Okay,” something like, “Please.” Nigel is cooing all sorts of filth into his ear as he stretches him out, and Will can feel himself leaking over the front of the coffin as he’s fingered open expertly.
Every time he opens his eyes and manages to focus his vision, he sees Hannibal’s pristine face. Smiling. Unmoving. Unwilling witness to the desecration of the man he killed and died for.
When Will finally feels the hot press of Nigel’s cockhead against his hole, he feels nearly delirious.
“I’m gonna give you everything,” Nigel promises him, and the burn behind Will’s eyes lessens as the tears finally fall and begin to stream down his cheeks. “I’m gonna give you everything, and you’re gonna fuckin’ take it.”
Will sobs in agreement. Nigel thrusts forwards into him.
Hannibal’s tie is in Will’s face. Will’s hips, his lower stomach, and his pelvis all burn and ache with the stretch. Nigel is big. Will wonders if Hannibal is the same size. He realizes that he could check.
Nigel pulls back with a pleasured groan, and Will feels like his cock is trying to drag Will’s inner walls out with it, trying to excavate his hole, his guts, and turn him inside out. It’s like Will’s body is trying to clamp down around the massive intrusion and keep it buried snugly inside of itself. The fit is so unbearably tight that Will swears he can feel the veins on Nigel’s cock dragging grooves against his soft passageway.
And then Nigel is thrusting back in, and Will is clawing at Hannibal’s chest, and Nigel’s hands are both gripping his hips hard enough to bruise, and Will’s vision blurs out again.
“Oh my god–” Will chokes out, his entire body seizing and twitching as the heavy flesh inside of him rams into his prostate.
Nigel lets out a guttural sound of satisfaction, shifting his hips to nail the spongy bundle of nerves dead-on again, and again, the mushroomed head of his cock repeatedly ramming into Will’s sweet spot like Nigel is trying to bruise it. Will is trembling and bucking uncontrollably in Nigel’s iron grip, body alight with the throbbing, intoxicating sensation of the older man’s ferocious love-making.
The pungent scent of formaldehyde invades Will’s sinuses as he’s forced to fully collapse his upper body over Hannibal’s corpse. Each of Nigel’s unforgiving thrusts feel like they’re driving Will’s brain further out of his skull, turning his head to mush and filling the resulting vacancy with nothing but overstimulated pleasure of being fully impaled on the man’s thick cock. Nigel’s hips keep smacking loudly against the back of Will’s thighs in a sinfully lewd rhythm, and Will knows he’s hiccuping pathetically every time Nigel spears back into him.
“You fuckin’ take me so well,” Nigel breathes in his ear as he rolls his hips. “So well, baby; like your tight little hole was meant for my cock.” Buried balls deep, he pauses his relentless rhythm to just shift his hips back and forth for a moment, rubbing the head of his cock back and forth over Will’s prostate until Will is jerking beneath him like he’s been zapped. “I’m gonna cum inside you so hard I’m gonna fill your little belly up, angel–”
“Jesus Christ–"
“Say my name,” Nigel snarls, teeth nipping at Will’s ear as he pulls back and rams into him again. “Say my fuckin’ name as I cum in you, baby–”
“Nigel,” Will gasps out brokenly. His field of vision is filled with Hannibal’s cold, unmoving face. His body is filled with Nigel’s hot, relentless hunger. “Nigel!” Will cries again, and Nigel lets out a feral growl as he slams into Will one more time, balls twitching against Will’s taint as he spurts hot and heavy into Will’s body.
The man groans against Will’s neck, fully draped over him, slowly circling his hips against Will’s rim as his cock pulses through his orgasm. Will isn’t sure if it’s just in his imagination or if he can actually feel the wet, silky ropes where the head of Nigel’s cock is still pressed firmly against his prostate.
For a minute, Nigel just breathes roughly against Will’s cheek, chin draped over his shoulder. He’s massaging Will’s jaw with one hand while offering the occasional slow, lazy thrust, like he’s trying to fuck his cum as deep into Will as possible before he has to leave his body.
Will is still vibrating against his chest, dizzy with the relentless attention Nigel has been paying to his prostate. As the man begins to go soft inside of him, though, Will becomes aware of just how hard he is, his own hips twitching frantically against the coffin.
Nigel seems to realize this at the same time that Will does, and he lets out a somewhat disapproving hum, which makes Will strangely feel like he’s done something wrong.
“I’ll teach you to cum untouched on my dick,” he murmurs, and Will inhales sharply. “In time.”
Then one of his warm, calloused hands is wrapping around Will’s cock, and the other is pulling Will flush against his chest as he straightens back up, and it’s only a couple strokes before Will’s ready to burst, and he realizes what Nigel is doing.
With a stuttering cry, Will tries to pull back, to turn to the side, but Nigel holds him in place and massages his balls just right, squeezes him just right, and Will is helpless in his hand as he seizes up and cums over Hannibal’s body.
White liquid ropes shine in the faint moonlight where they stain the front of Hannibal’s suit and tie. There’s a single wet spurt on his face.
Will feels the lust and energy and mania drain from him all at once, like a popped balloon. His legs turn to jelly, and it’s only Nigel’s arms around him that keep him from collapsing on the ground.
Nigel lets out a satisfied sigh into Will’s hair before pressing a slow, chaste kiss against his temple. “Perfect.”
A shifting and clicking, as Nigel puts his pants back on and buckles his belt, one arm still supporting Will. When Will’s pants are pulled up his legs and refastened, he doesn’t fight it, but doesn’t assist. He can’t stop staring at the desecrated body before him. When his head is tilted to the side as the man nuzzles against his cheek from behind him, he doesn’t resist, but doesn’t react.
“And now, you come with me,” Nigel murmurs.
The world rotates again as Will finds himself scooped up in Nigel’s arms bridal style, cheek resting against the man’s shoulder.
The only sound in the hall of the funeral home is the sharp click of fine shoes on marble flooring as Nigel walks him down the aisle.
Lifting his head enough to look over Nigel’s shoulder, Will stares at Hannibal’s body as they draw farther and farther away from the coffin. He wants to reach for him, but his limbs feel like lead. He’s so tired, and Nigel is so warm and strong.
“Eyes forwards, angel,” Nigel rumbles in warning. “You’re fuckin’ mine now.”