Actions

Work Header

Dancing with the Beast

Summary:

In order to catch a mediocre serial killer, Will must pose as Hannibal's date for a series of pretentious social events.

Hannibal is dramatic and jealous as ever, and Will is having a great time without the encephalitis. Of course, it's a love story.

Notes:

Title comes from a lyric in the song "Tokyo (Vampires & Wolves)" by The Wombats :)

And, just so you know, this story is very much an AU. The timeline is sort of different from canon, so bear with me.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter 1: Désir

Chapter Text

A cold December afternoon.

The sun has already set, and the fireplace in Hannibal's office is crackling with warmth. He stays close to that fire, warming his back as he watches Will pace among the bookshelves.

Will is unaffected by the temperature, it seems. The sleeves of his olive green sweater ride up his arms as he paces, and his hands lift to rub the back of his neck.

Hannibal's thoughts have been trailing as he listens to Will recount the new case. Will has attributed the killer's actions to desire, and the word and its synonyms continue to roll off of Will's tongue.

"He wants something," he grumbles, turning on his heel to continue the circuit of his pace. "Not the girls he killed. He doesn't desire them, not in the way that Freddie Lounds' article said he did."

Hannibal nods. The article depicted the murders as acts of lust, just days apart from each other. Both of the women were brunettes in their mid-thirties, of short stature and slim figure. They were both found dead in their bathrooms. As TattleCrime put it, the situation was practically stereotypical. One lone, sex-starved psychopath who lives out his fantasies by murdering women who fit similar physical profiles to the woman he craves.

"He left no DNA evidence on their bodies. There were no assault wounds, sexual or otherwise." Will shakes his head, and stops above the ladder. He looks down at Hannibal, still perched by the fire. "I just don't know what he wants."

"Desire is often difficult to pinpoint," Hannibal agrees. "It's his motive, his drive. It's your job to find out what that is."

Will groans, and turns to climb down the ladder. "I know that." He steps down slowly, rung by rung, careful not to slip as always. "But that doesn't help me know what he's craving when he kills them."

On the subject of desire, Hannibal allows himself to watch Will's movements. Ordinarily, he would be unaffected by them. He is not ordinarily familiar with that particular brand of want, but in recent months, it has haunted him. Off-handedly, he blames it on the thrill of bringing back the Ripper, but he knows that it's not the real case. 

Quiet thoughts of skin and caress flit at the back of Hannibal's mind, and he dismisses them. Desire, lust, is nothing but a weakness in the end, something that will be held against the one that harbors the feeling.

He is used to drowning his desires. It keeps him safe. Desire is a feeling possessed by others, never himself, and it is something he knows how to take advantage of.

Will drops down into the seat across from him, neither graceful nor deliberate in his motions. Hannibal shifts in his stool, partially to turn another side of himself to the fire, and partially to get a better look at his not-patient.

"What do you desire, Will?" he asks him, tilting his head.

Will frowns. "What does that have to do with the case?"

"Everything," responds Hannibal. "By searching for your own desires, you learn the path to discovering those of others."

"I don't know." Will folds his hands on his lap and closes his eyes. 

Hannibal bites back a frown as he sees Will's expression change to the one he wears when he is elsewhere. Outside of himself, looking into the mind of another.

A power Hannibal envies, certainly, but one that he can't help but think is damaging to Will.

"Are you with me, Will?" he asks. "I asked you what you desire."

Will's eyes open, and he shakes his head. "I don't know what he wants."

"You are not him."

"I'm not the important one right now." 

The heat is searing against Hannibal's back now, so he stands, lifts the stool, and moves it to the side. Its wood is hot to the touch, and so is the fabric on his back. He moves back to sit at his desk, where the air is cooler.

"Don't you have something to say?" Will asks, watching him as he sits. "An objection?"

Hannibal smiles, a barely tangible thing to most, but he knows that Will picks up on it. "Would you like me to object? To tell you that you are important?"

Will looks away sharply. "Usually you try and steer the conversation back in the direction of myself."

"And I would, if I thought it would bear any fruit." He lifts a pencil from the desk to twirl in his fingers. "Today, however, it seems that you aren't in the mood."

"Am I ever?"

"Less so today than normal."

At that, Will laughs. "Thanks for noticing."

"It's my job to notice these things." His fingers slow, and so does the pen's rotation.

"You do a better job at it than every other shrink I've seen."

Hannibal sets the pencil back on the desk, a frown forming on his face. "I am not your psychiatrist, Will. These are just conversations."

"Yeah, sure." Will nods, an odd look settling on his face. "Conversations where I reveal my deepest, darkest thoughts, and you help me sort through them. Like a psychiatrist would."

"Or perhaps like a good friend," he offers.

Will looks up. "Is that what we are, Dr. Lecter? Friends?"

"We are what you deem us to be," Hannibal responds. "But it is simpler for both legal and financial purposes that I am not your psychiatrist."

"Friends don't meet in an office three times a week."

Hannibal watches Will now, who is reclined back in his chair with his eyes and the ceiling. "They can," he says. "But if you would prefer, we could meet elsewhere to have our conversations. They need not be so official, if that is more to your liking."

"This is fine." Will lets out a long sigh, and he looks as though his eyes are tracing patterns in the ceiling above him. "I'm not so good with socializing--you know that."

"Then perhaps this is a chance to practice."

Will turns his head to look at him, a teasing grin lining his face.

"Spoken like a true psychiatrist."


Desire is a tricky concept.

In the days following that session, Hannibal finds himself pondering it, questioning its meaning. 

What do I desire?

His first answer is beauty.

Hannibal strives to live surrounded by beauty--in art, in music, in food. He fills his home with artistic creations for his eyes to feast upon; he attends operas so that his inner ear may be satisfied; he cooks so that his tongue may be enraptured by flavor. Those are safe things to desire, he reasons. He can acquire them on his own, without depending on others. They cannot be used against him.

His second answer is revenge.

When he hunts, he is cleansing the world and himself. When he devours, he is righting what is wrong, and he is not letting the faults of the world overcome him. That is not such a safe desire, but he believes it to be worth the risk. He is not easily blind sighted in his efforts, and he knows he cannot be caught. 

His third answer, and perhaps the most damning, is understanding. 

Hannibal lives a life in secret, a life he does not share. He does not share because that is not safe, but he wants someone to know. He wants someone to see him and to know him fully and to understand. And that is not safe, because it means vulnerability. It means dependency.

When Will returns for his next session, he is brimming with understanding.

But not for Hannibal. Not for the Chesapeake Ripper.

His understanding is for the Egalitarian.

"Two more killings," Will says, with bright eyes perpetually weighed down by exhaustion. "This time, another similar pair. But they don't match the profile of the first two."

"Yet you sound sure that they are connected."

"They are," Will says, leaning forward in his seat. "The first two women shared similar physical appearances, but their lifestyles were entirely different. The first woman who died was a single mother of three; she worked two jobs and had always been of low socioeconomic status. The second, her basic physical doppelgänger, was a senator's daughter who married a millionaire." 

Hannibal nods. "A curious contrast. It carries over onto the next two victims?"

"Yes," Will says, and he sounds almost eager. "The third one we found was an older man. Asian, tall. He owned a golf course in D.C., and we found him hanging in his kitchen." Will raises his eyebrows.

"Very different from the first two," Hannibal replies.

"Yes, but the fourth matched the third. Similar physical features, same circumstances in death. The defining difference was that he was dirt poor."

Hannibal nods. "So, our killer is taking them in pairs."

"He's giving them equality in death that they never shared in life."

"An opportunity based solely on appearances, to contrast the differences they had in life despite their similarities."

How shallow, he thinks.

"Jack's calling him the Egalitarian."

"How creative," Hannibal deadpans. 

"You don't seem to like it so much."

"A strange title to award a murderer as crude as he, I suppose." Hannibal pinches the bridge of his nose. "Does that mean you now know what he desires?"

"Yeah." Will smiles. "Didn't have to dig too deep within myself for that one. The evidence presented itself."

Hannibal can't help but feel disappointed, though he's at a loss as to why. 

"Has the cause of death been determined for the first two?"

"Poison." Will's eyebrows knit together. "Actually, all of them were poisoned. Katz said it was arsenic."

"A bit archaic."

"That's what she said to me," he mutters. "The second pair died from the poison and were strung up afterwards."

Hannibal nods, pensive for a moment. "Then he isn't staging them as suicides."

"No," Will agrees. "He's made it clear that they're murdered. The rest is theatrics."

"And what does Jack have to say about all this?"

Hannibal knows that Jack Crawford must be hung up on the Ripper's recent resurgence. The rise of a new criminal is likely a major inconvenience to him, and despite their growing familiarity, the thought amuses Hannibal. 

The amusement pales as he notices the look on Will's face: his lips drawn into a frown, his eyes heavy. 

Will is tired, because Jack is having him work on both cases. He's being stretched too thin.

"Jack's still Jack," mumbles Will. "He can't help it."

Hannibal sighs. "You work too hard. Have you been sleeping enough?"

He can tell that he hasn't. Too busy focusing on other parts of Will, Hannibal has neglected the bags gathering underneath his eyes like suitcases. His shoulders are hunched forward in an exhibit kindred to relenting. He is tense, unnaturally tense, and he reeks of stress from the cortisol hurtling through his system.

"The nightmares haven't stopped, if that's what you mean."

"Nightmares are not the only negative consequences accompanied by your work with the FBI, Will." Hannibal takes in Will with another look, and the desire tickling at him is washed away by something else entirely. 

Compassion, he thinks, and it's even stranger to him. 

"I know," he says. "It follows me in the day, too. I feel like--like something has latched on inside of me. Like a parasite. It moves with me, moves like me. Sometimes I even think it is me."

"While that is another concern in and of itself, I was referring to your lack of self care."

"Oh." Will ducks his head slightly, averting the gaze that Hannibal was just thinking of casting at him.

"You're not eating, Will, and you're not resting. Something needs to be done about that."

Will's nose wrinkles; it's definitely something that he has heard before.

"And what something is that, Doctor?" he demands. 

"If you're concerned that I will put you on an involuntary hold at the hospital, you needn't worry." 

Will's expression immediately relaxes, his fear relieved.

"But," Hannibal adds, "should this behavior continue, I will find it necessary to do so."

He would never send Will to a hospital, though. The idea of allowing anyone else access to the world's most wonderful mind makes him seethe. If Hannibal had any say, and likely even if he didn't, he would never subject Will to seventy-two hours of mindless interrogation from therapists and psychiatrists oblivious to the beauty of the mind before them.

Hannibal senses that Will knows this, on some level or another. 

"Then what do you think I should do?" he asks, wearing a hesitant expression.

"Allow me to cook you dinner," Hannibal offers. 

He can see that this takes Will off-guard, if for just a moment. It's a satisfactory thing.

"Do you have all your patients over for dinner?" 

A defensive question, but also one that merits an answer.

"No," Hannibal replies, "but remember, Will: you aren't my patient."

"I told you I wasn't good at socializing."

"And I am giving you an opportunity to practice."

Will looks exasperated for just a moment, on the verge of rolling his eyes, but he concedes with a polite half-smile. 

"I suppose I could use something decent to eat."

Hannibal thinks of the scent on Will's breath when he greeted him at the door. It had been nothing but instant coffee and mediocre whiskey.

"I know you could."