The language barrier wasn't a consideration Will had hit on, yet. He was too busy unraveling a surprisingly-dense web of connections about the idea of Hannibal sitting rapt and absorbing science on the larger, broader scale of things like time. Does he watch videos on quantum mechanics and make all sorts of imagined interconnections? Hannibal's bend in their discussions had always been on making cause and effect out of things, of chasing down and then destroying any confusion or random chance that comes up naturally when studying something as complicated as human medicine.
He seems to at once hate and be fascinated by chaos, an oddity that Will always thought...really fit someone as calculated as Hannibal.
But yeah, picking up more appropriate contractions sounds like a reasonable addition to that list of 'why Nova documentaries'. "Is it working, though? He actually used the word 'ignominy' out loud last Saturday."
Hannibal makes a soft sound of scorn, standing in his pristine kitchen with his button-up shirt on. Sometimes Will wonders if his life for the past several months has just included a lot of fever dreams, and that eventually he's going to wake up and realize he never made friends with two teenage runaways and their suspiciously-vast fortune.
Hard to say if Hannibal's scoffing at Will, though, or at Neph letting her coke can glug into the glass Hannibal had clearly gotten for water for her. He stares at her in pained consideration - Will can nearly hear the way he's weighting arguments against effectiveness in his head - before just returning the filter to the fridge, only two glasses filled.
"I liked that one, too." Because PBS is easy to get even in shitty cable situations, and Will isn't immune to being home late on a Saturday and channel-surfing. And because Will is going to make a concerted effort to actually converse with the two of them, especially after-- everything earlier. It's not pity, just an...awareness.
Do they have a TV, though? Will's never actually seen one, but at this point he would take it in stride if Hannibal lead the way into his bedroom and pressed a button and a wall panel fell down to reveal a flatscreen tucked away.
As it turns out, following Hannibal out of the kitchen while Neph gets the microwave happily popping their food, Will ends up tagging along to a-- surprisingly eclectic bedroom.
Hannibal's furniture is reasonable, if expensive-looking - bed and desk and wooden, non-swiveling chair. There's not knick knacks, or at least not the kind Will's ever seen in a home outside of grandmothers - there's a few small-scale statue mockups, and some prints of paintings on the walls, but the main thing coating the corkboard near his desk and the walls all across where his closet stretches is--
"Are these yours?" Will touches the nearest one, a blue-penciled, lineless sketch of the shapes and shadows of a dress. There's a person wearing it, but the sketch ends at her knees and the face is turned away, only hair fuzzing across the nape of the neck.
"Yes." Hannibal is taking a laptop off his desk and is already leaving the room, although he stops in the doorway when he seems to realize how much Will is staring. Will lets go of the paper he'd been pressing more flat, cowed, but he can also tell he's not about to get a reprimand. Hannibal has his pre-preening look on, flattery clearly sparking in the air around him.
How is he so easily satisfied with the barest amount of attention, and yet he self-isolates so much?
(How is it fair for Will to even think that sentence, when it describes himself pretty damn accurately too?)
"I just...didn't know you drew. Or painted." Will says lamely, glancing at the rest of them - he's no expert in recognizing different mediums, but the texture varies enough that he assumes there's pastels in there as well, something thicker than the colored pencils and paints, nearly textured right off the page.
"Since I was a child." Hannibal says, and his voice warps. In anyone else, Will would call it nostalgia.
"They're nice," Will shrugs, hands shoving into his pockets. He presses forward out of the room, although Hannibal does his best attempt at making it awkward and standing his ground - eventually he relents and they both go down the short hallway, clearly heading for the living room. "I don't think I've drawn anything since I was using crayons."
Hannibal doesn't look dismissive, clearly considering that. "I've never used crayons."
"Yeah." Will snorts, as he helps move what appears to be half a constructed pillow fort off the living room table. "Somehow that doesn't shock me."
The microwave buttons beep a flat counterpoint to Neph's sudden ringing laughter. "I don't even know what that means!" she slaps a hand against the counter and covers her eyes with the other. Ignominy. If Will hadn't said it like it was a for real word, she'd've called bullshit. To Hannibal and his disparaging sigh, she asks, "Where'd you read that one?"
What else do they have that's ready-edible? Much as he bitches, Hannibal doesn't restrict her shopping habits. It's Neph herself who holds back from buying All The Seasonal Oreos. Old habits die hard, and old habits dictate non-perishables and coupon clipping. Cookies were for shoplifting. Rice, beans, bread, peanut butter, jelly, pasta and cans of sauce or veggies, all the stuff that didn't need a fridge for storing or anything more than a hotplate for cooking, that's what she's used to spending her grocery money on. Lecter's prepaid cards broadened her range a little to deli fixings and meat cooked same-day, partly because she could afford them but mostly 'cuz she happened to have a minifridge at the time.
"It was really...he just explained everything real well," she nods to herself, and to Will, half muffled by the open cabinet door. "And you gotta appreciate all the shade at the anti-science caveman crowd."
Hannibal had been so disappointed, if ultimately unsurprised, to hear that people still persisted in believing in a 6000 year old flat earth, she hadn't had the heart to tease him.
As the boys duck out to find a laptop, Neph goes spelunking in the actual pantry, pushing aside carefully organized dry goods for a tightly rolled, half-empty bag of Chips Ahoy. There's crackers, too, probably meant to be eaten with cheese, but which Neph tends to mindlessly munch over her transcription work. She dumps both on a plate and leans back against the microwave, listening to it hum behind her head.
This is...good. Not being alone right now. Not having the space to sit and think. Activity to keep the panic at bay until she can rationally consider her next steps, that's what she needs. Briefly alone in the kitchen with the comforting white noise of popping kernels, her thoughts drift not toward the dizzying list of shit to arrange now that she's called dibs on Baltimore, but to Will's growing familiarity. He knows Hannibal's name, now. Hannibal gave it to him.
Neph folds her arms over her stomach, shifting her weight as she turns that fact over to examine it from another angle. Hannibal wants Will to know him, wants to keep him close. His feelings for Will complicate everything, and not just because they're a massive security risk; Will's not into guys, so what will Hannibal settle for if he can't have his romantic interest returned? What other secrets will he trade away to keep Will around?
If things keep on, they're gonna come down to the M-word eventually, she feels it in her belly like a flicker of Electrum. Neph breathes in against it, reminds herself that's Hannibal's secret to share however he wants, just like his real name. She just...needs to talk to him before it comes to that, 'cuz if she were Will, she'd immediately figure Hannibal's roommate was a mutant too. Neph's hidden behind that assumption before and she'll do it again, but there's a creepy crawling feeling that comes with the thought of pretending to be a mutant while Hannibal's standing right there. Just picturing it has her running her tongue over her teeth, scraping off a patina of imagined guilt. If they discuss it first, and he says it's okay, then maybe...
The microwave shrieks and Neph shakes those thoughts away. Without the mechanical background hum, she can make out the low murmur of the boys' voices down the hall, drawing closer. She dumps the popcorn into a large mixing bowl, balances her glass of Coke on the plate, and emerges into the living room just as Will says something dry.
"Just shove that on the floor," she jerks her chin at the blanket she'd draped over the table, the better for reading under by flashlight. "I'll use it again."
True to her word, she sets down the food, whisks the blanket around her shoulders, and seats herself on the floor with her chin propped up on the table while Hannibal fiddles with his laptop. "You got the charger?"
'Romantic' is such an ultimately useless word. It feels powerful, at first, and it can be to an individual, but this is one instance where perhaps collective intelligence fails to come up with the best average.
Hannibal has an interest in Will. He has an interest in several things, and he attaches to each one aggressively. His classmates as well as strangers seem to quietly assume he and Neph are a couple. (Sometimes not so quietly, as was the case with a particularly chatty neighbor one morning.) Hannibal might be entirely content never having any term for what he wants to have with Will - he only knows that he wants it, and he wants it dearly.
If they ever get to the point of navigating Will's interest, it's likely that their entire relationship will be guided by Will's expectations of what a 'relationship' is. Until then, Hannibal will content himself with this - drawing Will in closer, seeing him in his own spaces more. Hannibal only wants proximity, to be as near to behind the ribs of someone else as he can conceivably be, and he's alright with the concept of Will determining what that means, later.
The image of Will, not drugged this time, helping himself to tap water is a powerful one. He's usually so careful to make himself a stranger everywhere he goes - the complete opposite of Neph, who Hannibal has seen sit on top of restaurant tables and pet strangers' dogs.
Hannibal himself has just touched the concept of his most closely-guarded secret - after the time travel, of course, since now he has two secrets from everyone but Neph - when Neph whirls in behind them. She drops to the floor, a decision that falls oddly flat for Hannibal, because:
1) He doesn't want to sit on the floor, but
2) He does enjoy sitting next to Neph, occasionally, when they're home at the same time. Which seems unfair of her to lose sight of, since
3) It's his birthday, and
4) He might earlier have stated that didn't matter, but quite frankly, anything that gives Hannibal more right to demand things is something he'll eventually take advantage of.
Will, who is awkwardly waiting out of the way to Hannibal's other side, still standing by the table, is eyeing him with what appears to be concern. Or suspicion. It can be hard to tell.
"Yes." One end of it is in the laptop, and the other end Hannibal glances at and then hands to Neph. "If you could." Maybe if he sits down in the center of the couch, and very pointedly leaves space on Neph's end, she'll sit back down next to him.
Assuming, of course, that she doesn't just crawl/roll over to where the wall outlet is, just narrowly covered behind the couch's arm.
Maybe Neph will get the idea better if Hannibal pointedly stares at her and then pointedly glances at the empty couch cushion to his left.
"Yesyes," Neph shrugs her swaddling blanket to the floor and takes the plug from Hannibal, who's far too dignified to bend over the arm of the couch and stretch for the outlet. If Neph were a different person (or a better wingman) she might point out that doing so would probably show off his ass even in those semi-formal slacks, but she's neither of those things and so the pitch doesn't occur to her. Besides, she's got the skinnier arms.
"We gotta do something about these old outlets," she grumbles as she wedges the charge pack between the wall and the back of the couch, "They're so loose, everything just falls right out."
When she straightens back up, Hannibal's not in his usual spot on the end of the couch. That might not be so weird - it's his laptop, and if they're all gonna watch then it makes sense he/it oughta be in the middle - if Will weren't hovering tensely and Hannibal weren't practically pointing at the couch cushion beside him while staring at her, unblinking. He's about as subtle as a housepet standing over an empty food dish.
Neph would snort, but she's pretty sure she's wearing one of his shirts (she fished it out of the dryer because all her tees are wadded up in her laundry basket; she hasn't broken the habit of putting off a trip to the laundromat until the last possible second, even though the apartment came with a washer-dryer) and anyway Will might be deferring to her preference, here. So she slips over the arm of the couch as though it were the hood of a car, leans forward to grab the bowl of popcorn, and deposits it in Hannibal's lap.
"Middle seat holds the popcorn," Neph declares, like she couldn't have poured it into more than one bowl in the first place. With her legs folded sideways, her knees press into the side of his thigh
Luckily, Hannibal is precisely the sort of person who would be less than offended by the suggestion of shamelessly showing off for a prospective partner, because that's essentially his MO anyway with people he's attempting to woo platonically. But maybe it's best that Neph doesn't make that suggestion, because then they not only don't have to deal with Will's inevitable heart attack at Hannibal doing something so undignified as leaning upside down off the arm of his own couch, but it means Neph does, in fact, notice Hannibal staring.
And the empty couch cushion. And more importantly, she notices the problem with the empty couch cushion.
Will makes a sound of strangled surprise to Hannibal's right, but for a few suspended moments while Neph settles in, Hannibal doesn't bother glancing over at anyone else. He's smiling at his laptop while he sets it up and gets it running, the casual familiarity with which Neph just tucks her knees against his thigh something he enjoys but hardly even remarks on. They've become part of the landscape for each other, a possession, and keeping physical distance seems like such an unnecessary lie by now.
If Hannibal tilts so that his shoulder more firmly presses against hers, well. It's not as if Will's standoffish slouch to his right seems particularly jealous.
Hannibal would be a lot more suspicious about Neph's designs in putting the popcorn bowl in his lap if she was a different kind of person. Luckily, as stated earlier, she isn't, and so he doesn't, but he does feel the slow-burn pleasure of knowing that people he likes are going to be in close proximity for the next hour-minus-removed-commercials.
"Do you even eat popcorn?" Is apparently the safest topic Will can still find to address. All in all, it's nice to hear him make the effort at all. Earlier Will was taciturn to the point of seeming sullen, although Hannibal knows well that he's bristly and quiet because of something more like dread-filled shyness.
"Only when required by certain company."
As Neph digs into the bowl of popcorn, he thinks about said current company. He'd never put it in such terms, but if he recalls that boy earlier, and what he'd been planning to do--
Hannibal realizes that he's now found a third person he's willing to kill for. And that's enough to have him giving a short, content noise while letting the side of his head rest against Neph's, Nova documentary playing background noise to the chatter in his mind.
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nepharious) wrote2016-06-02 11:53 pm
no subject
He seems to at once hate and be fascinated by chaos, an oddity that Will always thought...really fit someone as calculated as Hannibal.
But yeah, picking up more appropriate contractions sounds like a reasonable addition to that list of 'why Nova documentaries'. "Is it working, though? He actually used the word 'ignominy' out loud last Saturday."
Hannibal makes a soft sound of scorn, standing in his pristine kitchen with his button-up shirt on. Sometimes Will wonders if his life for the past several months has just included a lot of fever dreams, and that eventually he's going to wake up and realize he never made friends with two teenage runaways and their suspiciously-vast fortune.
Hard to say if Hannibal's scoffing at Will, though, or at Neph letting her coke can glug into the glass Hannibal had clearly gotten for water for her. He stares at her in pained consideration - Will can nearly hear the way he's weighting arguments against effectiveness in his head - before just returning the filter to the fridge, only two glasses filled.
"I liked that one, too." Because PBS is easy to get even in shitty cable situations, and Will isn't immune to being home late on a Saturday and channel-surfing. And because Will is going to make a concerted effort to actually converse with the two of them, especially after-- everything earlier. It's not pity, just an...awareness.
Do they have a TV, though? Will's never actually seen one, but at this point he would take it in stride if Hannibal lead the way into his bedroom and pressed a button and a wall panel fell down to reveal a flatscreen tucked away.
As it turns out, following Hannibal out of the kitchen while Neph gets the microwave happily popping their food, Will ends up tagging along to a-- surprisingly eclectic bedroom.
Hannibal's furniture is reasonable, if expensive-looking - bed and desk and wooden, non-swiveling chair. There's not knick knacks, or at least not the kind Will's ever seen in a home outside of grandmothers - there's a few small-scale statue mockups, and some prints of paintings on the walls, but the main thing coating the corkboard near his desk and the walls all across where his closet stretches is--
"Are these yours?" Will touches the nearest one, a blue-penciled, lineless sketch of the shapes and shadows of a dress. There's a person wearing it, but the sketch ends at her knees and the face is turned away, only hair fuzzing across the nape of the neck.
"Yes." Hannibal is taking a laptop off his desk and is already leaving the room, although he stops in the doorway when he seems to realize how much Will is staring. Will lets go of the paper he'd been pressing more flat, cowed, but he can also tell he's not about to get a reprimand. Hannibal has his pre-preening look on, flattery clearly sparking in the air around him.
How is he so easily satisfied with the barest amount of attention, and yet he self-isolates so much?
(How is it fair for Will to even think that sentence, when it describes himself pretty damn accurately too?)
"I just...didn't know you drew. Or painted." Will says lamely, glancing at the rest of them - he's no expert in recognizing different mediums, but the texture varies enough that he assumes there's pastels in there as well, something thicker than the colored pencils and paints, nearly textured right off the page.
"Since I was a child." Hannibal says, and his voice warps. In anyone else, Will would call it nostalgia.
"They're nice," Will shrugs, hands shoving into his pockets. He presses forward out of the room, although Hannibal does his best attempt at making it awkward and standing his ground - eventually he relents and they both go down the short hallway, clearly heading for the living room. "I don't think I've drawn anything since I was using crayons."
Hannibal doesn't look dismissive, clearly considering that. "I've never used crayons."
"Yeah." Will snorts, as he helps move what appears to be half a constructed pillow fort off the living room table. "Somehow that doesn't shock me."
no subject
What else do they have that's ready-edible? Much as he bitches, Hannibal doesn't restrict her shopping habits. It's Neph herself who holds back from buying All The Seasonal Oreos. Old habits die hard, and old habits dictate non-perishables and coupon clipping. Cookies were for shoplifting. Rice, beans, bread, peanut butter, jelly, pasta and cans of sauce or veggies, all the stuff that didn't need a fridge for storing or anything more than a hotplate for cooking, that's what she's used to spending her grocery money on. Lecter's prepaid cards broadened her range a little to deli fixings and meat cooked same-day, partly because she could afford them but mostly 'cuz she happened to have a minifridge at the time.
"It was really...he just explained everything real well," she nods to herself, and to Will, half muffled by the open cabinet door. "And you gotta appreciate all the shade at the anti-science caveman crowd."
Hannibal had been so disappointed, if ultimately unsurprised, to hear that people still persisted in believing in a 6000 year old flat earth, she hadn't had the heart to tease him.
As the boys duck out to find a laptop, Neph goes spelunking in the actual pantry, pushing aside carefully organized dry goods for a tightly rolled, half-empty bag of Chips Ahoy. There's crackers, too, probably meant to be eaten with cheese, but which Neph tends to mindlessly munch over her transcription work. She dumps both on a plate and leans back against the microwave, listening to it hum behind her head.
This is...good. Not being alone right now. Not having the space to sit and think. Activity to keep the panic at bay until she can rationally consider her next steps, that's what she needs. Briefly alone in the kitchen with the comforting white noise of popping kernels, her thoughts drift not toward the dizzying list of shit to arrange now that she's called dibs on Baltimore, but to Will's growing familiarity. He knows Hannibal's name, now. Hannibal gave it to him.
Neph folds her arms over her stomach, shifting her weight as she turns that fact over to examine it from another angle. Hannibal wants Will to know him, wants to keep him close. His feelings for Will complicate everything, and not just because they're a massive security risk; Will's not into guys, so what will Hannibal settle for if he can't have his romantic interest returned? What other secrets will he trade away to keep Will around?
If things keep on, they're gonna come down to the M-word eventually, she feels it in her belly like a flicker of Electrum. Neph breathes in against it, reminds herself that's Hannibal's secret to share however he wants, just like his real name. She just...needs to talk to him before it comes to that, 'cuz if she were Will, she'd immediately figure Hannibal's roommate was a mutant too. Neph's hidden behind that assumption before and she'll do it again, but there's a creepy crawling feeling that comes with the thought of pretending to be a mutant while Hannibal's standing right there. Just picturing it has her running her tongue over her teeth, scraping off a patina of imagined guilt. If they discuss it first, and he says it's okay, then maybe...
The microwave shrieks and Neph shakes those thoughts away. Without the mechanical background hum, she can make out the low murmur of the boys' voices down the hall, drawing closer. She dumps the popcorn into a large mixing bowl, balances her glass of Coke on the plate, and emerges into the living room just as Will says something dry.
"Just shove that on the floor," she jerks her chin at the blanket she'd draped over the table, the better for reading under by flashlight. "I'll use it again."
True to her word, she sets down the food, whisks the blanket around her shoulders, and seats herself on the floor with her chin propped up on the table while Hannibal fiddles with his laptop. "You got the charger?"
no subject
Hannibal has an interest in Will. He has an interest in several things, and he attaches to each one aggressively. His classmates as well as strangers seem to quietly assume he and Neph are a couple. (Sometimes not so quietly, as was the case with a particularly chatty neighbor one morning.) Hannibal might be entirely content never having any term for what he wants to have with Will - he only knows that he wants it, and he wants it dearly.
If they ever get to the point of navigating Will's interest, it's likely that their entire relationship will be guided by Will's expectations of what a 'relationship' is. Until then, Hannibal will content himself with this - drawing Will in closer, seeing him in his own spaces more. Hannibal only wants proximity, to be as near to behind the ribs of someone else as he can conceivably be, and he's alright with the concept of Will determining what that means, later.
The image of Will, not drugged this time, helping himself to tap water is a powerful one. He's usually so careful to make himself a stranger everywhere he goes - the complete opposite of Neph, who Hannibal has seen sit on top of restaurant tables and pet strangers' dogs.
Hannibal himself has just touched the concept of his most closely-guarded secret - after the time travel, of course, since now he has two secrets from everyone but Neph - when Neph whirls in behind them. She drops to the floor, a decision that falls oddly flat for Hannibal, because:
1) He doesn't want to sit on the floor, but
2) He does enjoy sitting next to Neph, occasionally, when they're home at the same time. Which seems unfair of her to lose sight of, since
3) It's his birthday, and
4) He might earlier have stated that didn't matter, but quite frankly, anything that gives Hannibal more right to demand things is something he'll eventually take advantage of.
Will, who is awkwardly waiting out of the way to Hannibal's other side, still standing by the table, is eyeing him with what appears to be concern. Or suspicion. It can be hard to tell.
"Yes." One end of it is in the laptop, and the other end Hannibal glances at and then hands to Neph. "If you could." Maybe if he sits down in the center of the couch, and very pointedly leaves space on Neph's end, she'll sit back down next to him.
Assuming, of course, that she doesn't just crawl/roll over to where the wall outlet is, just narrowly covered behind the couch's arm.
Maybe Neph will get the idea better if Hannibal pointedly stares at her and then pointedly glances at the empty couch cushion to his left.
no subject
"We gotta do something about these old outlets," she grumbles as she wedges the charge pack between the wall and the back of the couch, "They're so loose, everything just falls right out."
When she straightens back up, Hannibal's not in his usual spot on the end of the couch. That might not be so weird - it's his laptop, and if they're all gonna watch then it makes sense he/it oughta be in the middle - if Will weren't hovering tensely and Hannibal weren't practically pointing at the couch cushion beside him while staring at her, unblinking. He's about as subtle as a housepet standing over an empty food dish.
Neph would snort, but she's pretty sure she's wearing one of his shirts (she fished it out of the dryer because all her tees are wadded up in her laundry basket; she hasn't broken the habit of putting off a trip to the laundromat until the last possible second, even though the apartment came with a washer-dryer) and anyway Will might be deferring to her preference, here. So she slips over the arm of the couch as though it were the hood of a car, leans forward to grab the bowl of popcorn, and deposits it in Hannibal's lap.
"Middle seat holds the popcorn," Neph declares, like she couldn't have poured it into more than one bowl in the first place. With her legs folded sideways, her knees press into the side of his thigh
no subject
And the empty couch cushion. And more importantly, she notices the problem with the empty couch cushion.
Will makes a sound of strangled surprise to Hannibal's right, but for a few suspended moments while Neph settles in, Hannibal doesn't bother glancing over at anyone else. He's smiling at his laptop while he sets it up and gets it running, the casual familiarity with which Neph just tucks her knees against his thigh something he enjoys but hardly even remarks on. They've become part of the landscape for each other, a possession, and keeping physical distance seems like such an unnecessary lie by now.
If Hannibal tilts so that his shoulder more firmly presses against hers, well. It's not as if Will's standoffish slouch to his right seems particularly jealous.
Hannibal would be a lot more suspicious about Neph's designs in putting the popcorn bowl in his lap if she was a different kind of person. Luckily, as stated earlier, she isn't, and so he doesn't, but he does feel the slow-burn pleasure of knowing that people he likes are going to be in close proximity for the next hour-minus-removed-commercials.
"Do you even eat popcorn?" Is apparently the safest topic Will can still find to address. All in all, it's nice to hear him make the effort at all. Earlier Will was taciturn to the point of seeming sullen, although Hannibal knows well that he's bristly and quiet because of something more like dread-filled shyness.
"Only when required by certain company."
As Neph digs into the bowl of popcorn, he thinks about said current company. He'd never put it in such terms, but if he recalls that boy earlier, and what he'd been planning to do--
Hannibal realizes that he's now found a third person he's willing to kill for. And that's enough to have him giving a short, content noise while letting the side of his head rest against Neph's, Nova documentary playing background noise to the chatter in his mind.