Men accused women of making me forget themselves. Of walking into a room and making them unaware of everything, but their legs, their torsos, their buttocks, their…everything.
Alana Bloom should have possessed this power, yet it slid over Hannibal, even as he appreciated in a physical way how it manifested within her everything.
Far more alluring was her hushed whisper of another’s power to make both of them forget, Alana and Hannibal, even when they lay tangled in each other’s arms. Trying to forget.
At least Alana was. How curious to be so close, yet so far away. At the same time he appreciated the contact. Appreciated her hushed whisper of intimate things which connected while sliding over him.
“We’ve experienced this power, a power which made us forget,” she murmured against his chest. Voicing a fear she only could post-coital.
Wrapped in his arms, she’d felt safe.
And she had been at the time.
“Will Graham has such power over us. He makes us forget everything, entrancing us, seducing us with his trauma.” Hannibal kissed her brow. “He brought us together, closer than we’ve ever been.”
Just as Will Graham had brought Hannibal Lecter closer to Bedelia Du Maurier. Making their conversations more intimate, half-naked fleshy things.
Was this what happened to women when they talked about men amongst themselves?
How often had he studied Alana, wearing the fashionable armor of suits he’d once favored, facing him on the other side of the glass?
How often had he reinvented her as a goddess in cartoons as once existed in the past before animation, tracing her shape in new forms.
Had she and Margot breathed a fleshy intimacy with each other over him? Mason Verger?
Will Graham?
Such an intimacy might be overshadowed by the one who’d shaped and inspired it, splattering it with blood.
For too long Hannibal Lecter had let himself be distracted by Alana Bloom on paper or in person. He’d made her a promise, a promise which linked them by blood, a promise which would end in blood.
He always kept his promises. He would have to remember his. It was too easy to forget promises which seduced by passion.
A passion which overwhelmed him the moment Will Graham appeared, exuding his wild sweetness under the odors of dog, paint, and his sad choice of aftershave. It threatened to sweep everything away.
Will Graham was here. With Hannibal. Wanting his help. Needing his help. Lost within a facade of normal life and family which constrained and bound him.
Much as Hannibal Lecter was constrained and bound by the cage he’d chosen to enter for Will’s sake.
How fortunate for Will that Hannibal was here for him. Not that Hannibal planned on being anywhere else.
Hannibal had tried to let Will Graham go. Just as Will had tried to let Hannibal go, yet here they were. Again.
Hannibal couldn’t help but smile.
Alana Bloom had been right. Ah, well, she’d claimed she usually was, long ago.
Hannibal wondered how she felt, seeing Will Graham again? If there was a tiny part of her which still forgot everything when Will Graham appeared, in spite of being a happily married woman in the bond she’d formed. If she had to fight that part of herself.
Hannibal was done fighting his feelings.