It's not easy, listening to Neph's silent command not to start anything other in this courtyard. For all that Hannibal is dedicated in spirit to the idea of them working as a team, it's harder in practice to have to bow to anyone else's orders.
But the boy (a name, he wants a name for this face, to know what they'll be destroying later) doesn't come forward to strike any of them. He doesn't run, either, but he stands there panting and looking like he's finally realizing that he's outnumbered and doesn't have any way of checking how much he may or may not be outclassed.
Neph has been vague about the true breadth of her powers, their depth. Hannibal knows some specifics, he knows she's more powerful and varied than her peers, but he's now realizing that means he has no idea how limited the other ones might be. What this one might or might not be capable of.
Hannibal stays put while Neph speaks, a blizzard just barely kept at bay by a locked door. But he can't help but watch the way blown pupils fixate, how her jaw tightens and ticks up just the barest amount, as she turns a general challenge at that boy into a command.
He knows about territories and the politeness that's involved. That's the exact excuse Neph had given for leaving that BnB apartment for hours the day after their argument - to go and make sure that no locals had noticed her display the night before and gotten nervous. There's some sort of honor system about not interrupting one another, and now apparently Neph is invoking it as something a lot less polite and a lot more fearsome.
If Hannibal is the point of a triangle beyond the boy and Neph, then Will makes it an awkward rhomboid, staggered further off behind and to the side of Neph. He looks uninterested in charging the newcomer, no matter how furiously his face is twisted, but Will keeps inching closer to Neph.
'No, what I can't do is go tell Anansi you didn't--didn't do what you did.' The implications there are ones that Hannibal doesn't want to explore without confirmation or denial from Neph. They're too serious.
But quite frankly, he feels willing to take that risk, cut their mutual losses, and decide what this kid's fate is going to be regardless of what Neph may or may not explain later.
Even as the newcomer is backing down - especially with Neph so righteous and proud to his right - Hannibal takes another few steps inward, mostly to shield his words from Will rather than loom. This boy is a spare few inches taller than him, about Will's height, and he's almost twice as broad as Hannibal himself is. Hannibal isn't looking to intimidate in any meaningful physical way. He stops well short of arm range.
And his voice continues to be calm and quiet. "I hope you're taking her seriously. I don't know your name yet, but I know your face. I hope I don't see it again anywhere near her." Said like a promise, his face serene fury.
Beyond him, Will has come up almost level with Neph's shoulder, half a foot from her. His attention is equally divided between Neph and the other two boys, expression tightly concerned.
Grudging retreat or not, Neph doesn't trust Samson not to lash out at the last. She doesn't have a frame of reference for how he reacts to a total asskicking - she'd kinda run away last time, after putting him halfway through the wall of an elevator car. He seems like the type to try for one last jab, one final word, so she keeps her eyes on him as he shifts his weight to pivot.
Then Hannibal steps past her, arms at his sides, composed and collected except for the glimpse she catches of his eyes and mouth. The restrained violence there sets her stomach tumbling, a small cascade of pebbles followed by a rockslide when he warns Samson away from her. When he follows her threats with his own, but because she made them first.
This isn't just backing her up, something she's somehow come to hope for from Hannibal, even if she wasn't yet at the point of expecting it. This is grabbing her problem by the ankles so its legs don't drag while she hauls it away. It's literally stepping up and putting himself in the middle of something she'd known, five minutes ago, she'd handle herself. Unasked, unanticipated, as though it were inevitable.
Neph--doesn't know how to handle that. With gloves on? Held at a safe distance? Cradled close to her chest? The buzzing from before, that spreading awareness that she is not an organism alone, but one plugged into a greater network, compresses to diamond stillness behind her sternum. It is sharp and raw and shining, too razor-edged too touch, too bright to look at. She stares at the back of Hannibal's head instead, Samson barely registering in her field of view. When Will draws up beside her, her wide eyes fall on him. For one accidental moment, their eyes catch, and her whole face blasting are you seeing this is this happening.
It must be, because Samson says, in the dead even voice of a Pewterarm who's lost count of how many bones he's broken. "I know yours, too. Best remember that."
"Samson," Neph barks, head snapping back around. Why is he still here? She should've anticipated it'd take some shoving to get him to back off - past evidence kinda bears that out. She reaches for Copper, compresses it to mirror smoothness and shoves it at him again. It's not as easy, this time, with only dregs guttering in her gut (she must've flared it hard, before, almost tapped it out). The wall doesn't go far, just enough to press against the red haze that had begun to seep from his body. He flinches. "I'll take you apart if you even think it. Get going."
She came on too strong, knows it the second his rage-bright eyes catch on hers, shift speculatively between her and Hannibal. Samson sucks in one last breath, Pewter coiled tight at his core, before he storms off down the path. There must be a second exit, an entrance into another wing of the museum.
Neph watches until she can't hear his footsteps, and then she lights Tin and strains extended senses after him. No echoes suggest he's doubled back, no crashing or banging indicates a tantrum just around the corner. The smell of him lingers in the air, a smell she hadn't realized she'd catalogued somewhere in her hindbrain. Her stomach heaves, but there's the dry iron scent of imminent snow to calm it, the cold frost of Hannibal's mouthwash, the cedar smoke of Will's aftershave lingering on the collar of his shirt, but not his skin. The urge to gag recedes, a little.
With Tin dismissed, Neph takes a deep breath. Then another. And another, until they're not so deep as they are short, sharp, and spiraling out of her control. She whirls away from the boys, all the careful, cautious composure she's been clutching flying apart at the seams. A burst of frenetic energy, of adrenaline and suppressed flight response, jangles her limbs. She stomps back to the two pillars and paces between them, wrenching herself back and forth and back again. One arm curls around her ribs, pressing against their heaving, while her other hand flattens over her mouth to catch and smother her steaming breath.
One final turn puts her back at her original pillar, and then her knees cut out. She folds to the ground, feet planted, knees up around her shoulders, hands reaching up to scrape her hair out of her pale face. "Shit." Neph gasps.
This boy's been in fights before, his tone rings with them - but Hannibal had already been assuming as much. Neph wouldn't look so enraged if he wasn't a threat. Hannibal's upper lip curls, snide but silent, teeth starting to show in a smile, and then Neph's voice cracks the air between them.
He and the boy turn as one back towards her. And then Neph threatens him, again, this time on Hannibal's own behalf.
His mouth stays open, lips falling a bit more slack, a small puzzled and wondering expression for the few beats until sound and motion start up again from the outsider. Hannibal doesn't even bother glancing back for the boy until he's been listening to him walk away for several seconds, and only then because it's nice, sometimes, to be able to watch someone retreat away from you.
Hannibal's been involved in plenty of confrontations over the years, and several of them had multiple players. It's just that everyone else has never been on his side during it. That's happened twice in his life - once with Murasaki, once with Neph. And now again with Neph, except Hannibal was the one who intervened into one of her fights.
Hannibal and Will. Will, who is watching Neph with restrained worry, forehead lined and mouth partially open with words he keeps not saying. He must see something before Hannibal does, because moments later is when Neph - changes.
She stalks away, breath puffing unevenly into the air. Hannibal follows her pacing with light footsteps, alarmed and surprised until he reconsiders what he's fairly certain he caught implied.
This likely isn't about - or not just about - the physical danger. This is about the emotional forces at work behind possible physical dangers. And with an ice-dunk of realization, Hannibal knows he wants to track this boy down. He's good at finding things, he could follow the boy like a bloodhound out of this place, sneak up behind him or even do it from a distance if he found an appropriate weapon. All Hannibal knows is he wants to kill him for how he's made Neph--
How he's made Neph feel.
Neph's here, though. Neph is feeling those things here and now.
And Hannibal realizes that, more importantly than revenge, he can't leave her. Even with Will hovering near her and then circling back towards Hannibal himself, Hannibal can't leave her alone right now.
Will's arm moves halfway towards Hannibal's hip in an aborted arc. "Can I have your copy of the map?" It's in Hannibal's back pocket, folded up. Neph had taken one too, had hidden it somewhere in her pockets and layers, but Will had shrunk away from the friendly greeter and avoided getting one. Hannibal takes it mechanically out and hands it over, Will accepting it with a nod and a bitten-off thanks, already turning away to glance over it.
Hannibal moves in just as Neph swears under her breath, vapor steaming in front of her face. It creates a film of moisture - soon to be ice - across her eyelashes and the edges of her hair where she holds it out of her face. "Neph," Hannibal says, voice-- He doesn't quite have the words for it. Braced, perhaps?
One hand comes out to press against the back of one of hers, right by her temple. "It's alright, you've won for now. He's left." Which is said with a certainty of his own - Neph might have been able to listen beyond anyone's realization that that was what she was doing, but Hannibal also can't smell him as strongly. He's gone, or at least so far out of the wind that he'd take a while getting back over to them.
Hannibal is crouched in front of her, one knee planted on the ground. Will comes seemingly out of nowhere on Neph's side, though, and sits smoothly down in one motion, jeans on cold stone. There's about half a foot of space between his leg and Neph's, and he doesn't lean into her line of sight to try to get her attention.
Instead, he presses the map between them, keeps it low to the ground and offers it up for her to look at if she'd like. "There's other entrances to and from the courtyard. The one to the right goes through an armory exhibit, there'll be a lot less people there than back through the Nepal thing that's big right now. No one'll look twice at us getting out through there."
Hannibal hears the unspoken undercurrent there - so we won't make a scene, and you can leave whenever you want to get moving again. He nods, brief eye contact with Will - who is subdued and quiet by Neph's side, barely moving - and then attempting it again with Neph.
The urge to run hits her blood like a needle in the vein. Neph runs her fingers the rest of the way through her hair, drags her hands down either side of her neck and then back up over her face. Chafing. Scrubbing. She forces herself to stop before she starts clawing, to try and shove her hair back to rights. A gray shape moves between her and the pale afternoon light, and then there's a touch at her knuckles.
She doesn't flinch - the movement was too slow and deliberate for that - but she does take a sharp breath as she looks up. Even kneeling, Hannibal's taller than she is, forcing her to crane her neck. He might realize that, with the way he ducks his head and slides his hand forward to cup the back of hers. It's a chill touch that warms as he speaks, but she doesn't quite register his words, because this isn't the first time he's kneeled for her.
She'd been upset about that creeper, Pace, had tried to play it off since they were technically on a job at the time. But Dr. Lecter had noticed, and managed to wring more of the truth out of her than she'd ever intended. Instead of cutting her loose as a bad investment, he'd crouched down like this. You deserve to make that choice for yourself.
Neph stares at the boy in front of her now and thinks Oh, that's when I met you.
Her fingers unclench from her hair. The air goes out of her long and slow as she drops her hands and resettles them on her knee. Hannibal's hover above them until she manages a nod, shows she heard him. Even now she can lie well enough for that much.
Another movement to her left resolves into Will, dropping to the ground with a faint creak of denim and the familiar rustling of several layered sweaters. Neph blinks at him, her head tipping the tiniest bit - Hannibal she'd expected, but for Will to involve himself any further is...no, she doesn't know what that's all about, until he unfolds one of the museum maps and traces a clear escape.
"Oh," he's right. That'd be her assessment, too, if she were casing the place and plotting an exit through the sculpture garden. For a moment it's as though the three of them could be putting just such a plan together, seated in a lopsided triangle, map spread across their legs. Will has an agoraphobe's sense for avoiding crowds, Hannibal knows the art and she'd have the security and shielding all sorted out. It's a brief burst of fantasy, but it feels so nice that Neph folds it up and tucks it away like an old polaroid in a wallet. She forces herself to refocus on the cheaply printed map and the rooms Will points out. Samson probably went that way, or maybe he doubled through the 'Ancient World' galleries in the adjacent Center Street building. Will's proposed route is more direct, which makes it better in her mind, except: "But...we just got here. It's--" she looks back to Hannibal, brows pinching, "It's your birthday."
Frustration thrums through her alongside the restlessness. She ruined it. Or Samson did. But Samson's her problem, not Hannibal's, definitely not Will's, he shouldn't be allowed to fuck things up for them. Neph bites her lip and tips her head back, studying the open square of cottony sky above. The clouds hang low and heavy, but she wants nothing more than to be up there on that roof, scraping their undersides.
"You guys should stay," she says as she forces her gaze back down. "I'll--I can't, I gotta--I gotta run, I'm too--"
Words fail her, then, so she lifts a hand off her knee. It trembles in the air between the three of them, a too-visible weakness, nerves and fear and anger and spent adrenaline. Neph curls it into a fist a moment later, ears burning with more than just the cold.
Edited (edited for extra feels/possible foreshadowing) Date: 2017-01-22 08:42 am (UTC)
She isn't really here. Neph gets that look on occasion - a distant gaze, while memories are pressing over whatever she's actually looking at. Hannibal is never sure if it's her own private past or the parts that they'd shared that he just can't remember that brings it on. All he can do is keep speaking and then, afterwards, let the silence settle soft between them while she keeps gathering herself.
Hannibal's hand ends up falling down, petal-soft, onto the back of Neph's, all of them pressed down against one bony knee. He ends up watching her silently while Will, surprisingly, nudges close to her and gets a slightly more interactive response.
Offering her an immediate out was clearly what she instinctively wanted, but not what she thinks she deserves.
Strike that. As Hannibal watches her physically shrink and coil into herself, a spring gathering energy for its impending huge ricochet away, he realizes she does think she deserves to run away.
She just doesn't want to do it with them.
"I don't care about that." The words burn like coals on his tongue and he rushes to spit them out. "I couldn't care less about what day it is. What matters to me is you, Neph." And he doesn't know that he's walking into it again, this merging of past and present as he says more echoes of his older and lonelier self. All Hannibal knows is that the concept that the date of his birth needs to be happy in such a basic sense of the word tastes bitter, right now.
He wants closeness to what matters, no matter the date. And Neph is what's important right now, pale and exposed nerves right in front of him. He has the sense-memory of them pressed up against each other in his bed after one of his nightmares, of waking up with his hair stuck sideways on his scalp and her temple dug into his cheek, his own limbs wrapped around her. He wants that, right now. He wants to sink his teeth into what's made her unhappy and bring her its still-beating heart.
He wants, and he wants with a heated ferocity that strangles his voice. His hands silently return to grip both of Neph's this time, wrapping around their backs where she's curled them into fists.
Beside them, Will's hand twitches up and then, smooth and slow, easily avoided, he nudges against the outside of Neph's knee as well.
"Harder to sneak up on a group than on a single person," Will says, quiet like it might be easier to hear that way. His voice is even, face still. If Hannibal didn't know any better, wasn't familiar enough with him to see the deliberate way Will is toning himself down to seem less threatening and more soothing, Hannibal might even say he looked tired, or drunk - eyes at half-mast, gaze casually avoiding everyone else's faces.
And then Will swallows, and in that small bob is a real tremor, fear shaking out through his limbs and evaporating from his fingertips. "You're not 'too' anything, Neph. And neither of us wants to leave."
Will makes brief eye contact with him, then. Hannibal sees real fear flash there, anger left steaming in its wake. Hannibal has to blink the afterimages of it away.
It's instinctive, to lean in and close more of the small gap between the three of them. Hannibal speaks next into the gathering chill. "I will never abandon you, Neph."
Well I care, Neph almost scowls. Hannibal's been through more than his share of shit, and all the money and school in the world won't fix his nightmares. He should have good memories, needs them to brick up the holes she sometimes sees behind his eyes. She wants that for him, not to widen the gaps with her own issues. Her mouth thins unhappily when he discards that priority, but his hand presses down on hers like a coat over her shoulders, like gravity, and he says What matters to me is you.
'I need you'. 'You make me happy'. And now, 'you matter'. Neph never imagined getting used to statements like these, and now she has to wonder if she ever will. She stills under his hand, launch temporarily delayed as she fixes back on this time and place. On this Hannibal Lecter, her Hannibal, and his brandywine brown eyes. They'll wash out a little as he ages, she realizes, and he'll get a little better at veiling what's behind them from anyone trying to get a read. But maybe not from her. Not this time. Right now they burn with black hole intensity, that pull she's noticed before, and Neph nearly forgets her own center.
"I'm okay," she says, soft like snow. If he believes her, he doesn't show it, taking her other hand instead as if to squeeze the seriousness of his intent into her skin. One corner of her mouth hooks up in a crooked little smile. "Really, I...was gonna get my head straight and meet you at home."
It wasn't about running away from him, or Will. She needs to run, sometimes. For herself, for her sanity, for the sake of sharpening her edge. Running, moving, has been her way of coping for so long, of shedding the thoughts, memories and feelings that would otherwise gnaw her down to sinew and bone. Not only does it work, but she loves it. Loves the deafening rush of her blood and the sweet ache in her muscles, the temporary quiet calm in her own head. Nothing else ever flipped her off switch, even if the effects only lasted as long as her fatigue. As she turns her hands under Hannibal’s, brings them palm to palm with her fingers curled around his wrists, she wonders if she could lose herself in his compulsion just as well.
The whole point of being Mistborn is to have more options than other people. Still, she'd miss the wind-whipped freedom if he took it personal every time. If Hannibal could keep up with her, if she could share some of that fierce heart-pumping joy with him, would he understand? Would he let her go and trust her to come back, to come home?
But she's already conceded the run she'd wanted when she'd said she 'was' gonna. Will, perhaps noticing her slip, points out that it'd be smarter if they all went together. There's no warning note in his voice, but Neph still picks up some subtext. Some...worry. Because a strange guy got her alone and threatened her and now she's being twitchy about it? Because for all Will knows, that guy could be waiting to catch her on her own again? Or just because she went past 'twitchy' and straight into 'collapsing on the frosty ground' and he wants to make sure she's okay?
What did he see when he looked at her? What did he read from her? Neph has...so many questions. But he brushes his knuckles against her knee, inches from Hannibal's grip, and she makes an executive decision: she doesn't care. She slips her hand out from under Hannibal's and takes Will's, too. Gingerly, just curling her fingers around the first and second knuckles of his, but definitely a hold. Will would understand about the running, she bets.
"We'll be fine out there," she flashes Will a sidelong grin, in the hopes that his shifting gaze will catch it, "He knows what'd happen if there weren't security guards around to break up a fight."
I'll take you apart, she'd said. The simple words come back to her, along with the rush of anger she'd felt when she'd realized Samson's ploy to control her. Just let him try to catch her in an alley, or on a rooftop. The last Pewterarm to do so got buried under half a tenement building. Neph's not proud of what happened to Ryan, but already she knows she wouldn't spare a shred of guilt for Samson if he tried to blindside her again. And if he went for either of her friends...
He can try. Just let him. Let him put out the word she'd threatened him on behalf of someone he didn't recognize. Let them try to make a weakness of it. She just manipulated the extent of Pewter in another Allomancer's body, she'll find a way to manipulate Iron in their blood if they go for the people around her.
Hannibal leans into these thoughts, so close the steam of his words wreathes their heads. So close she hardly has to tilt her head back to meet his eyes, her own the depthless blue of a glacier crevasse. He's definitely pulling at her, exerting whatever non-mutation magnetism he has to make sure she's listening. Or maybe she's projecting, and it's just the force of those words that lock onto her brain. A promise. No, a vow? A lie, potentially. They've talked about this before, about unlucky and senseless loss, but even then he'd said he didn't think he'd 'willingly' leave her. This is more of the same, just using words that strike like bullets. Words like 'never', and 'abandon'. You don't know that Neph despairs, Don't promise me that. Hadn't she just told herself it was useless to worry about how she'd deal with it if Hannibal ever struck from some unidentified blindspot?
She's survived everyone who's ever left her behind, but she's not sure she could survive that. She's not sure she could survive believing him. Just the thought twists in her chest, bending her over her knees until her forehead leans featherlight on his cheek. "I--" believe you. I want to believe you. I'm afraid of you. I'm with you. I staked this place because you're here.
"Hey!" a sharp, male voice calls from the stone stairs. Neph's head flies up, and there's a security guard standing there with one hand braced on hip-radio. "What're you kids doing?"
A persona spreads over her face like quicksilver, glinting in the sun. She smiles, eyes crinkling, nose-wrinkle out in force. "Just checking the map! We got a little turned around but I think it's suit of armor time." Neph hops to her feet without letting go of either hand. Luckily she's short enough that this doesn't wrench their shoulders much.
The guard nods, probably sold by the map crinkling beside her boot. "That's to your left," he gestures with that radio, and moves along when Neph shouts her thanks. She looks back down at Hannibal, at Will, heart hammering behind her innocuous mask, and says, "I think that's our cue."
If he knew it was a conscious coping mechanism and not some martyr complex gone awry, of course he'd trust her to come back. Hannibal thrives with a codependent independence - a deep entangled root system that still allows for free movement up above the surface. Even his Aunt - the closest Hannibal had come to this kind of closeness after Mischa and prior to Neph - Hannibal had willingly left for months at a time to pursue his schooling.
They're not quite there yet, after all, but Hannibal's own coping mechanism is coming around the corner; losing himself completely to his own preferred fast-paced passion. His residency will have far less forgiving hours than even his current clinic work and schooling does. He'll be gone for literally more than a day at a time, sleeping at strange times (and possibly in strange places). How it'll effect his and Neph's relationship remains to be seen.
If he'll even keep with it - continue following in the prelaid footsteps he'd decided on both a few years before and also decades ago - still remains to be seen. But as he sees his future right now, that's part of it. And so is Neph.
So he gives it a short consideration, when she says she meant to just run off to calm down and then meet them at the apartment. But he's also glad it isn't up for debate. Because this isn't...just Neph getting angry and wanting to blow off steam. This is Neph, threatened by something Hannibal hadn't been aware had ever happened, shaken and surely with no one else she's any more likely to talk about it to.
Not that Hannibal is sure she will tell him. For all their proximity - and it gathers close to them now, Neph bending towards him and he instinctively curling inwards too - there aren't many vocalized secrets between them. Neph is almost always silent about the vulnerable parts of herself. Even the innocuous details from her past life are few and far between.
As nosy as Hannibal is, he's never taken it personally. But now he wishes he had...more. A flash of desire, as she leans forward and lets go of one of his hands. Hannibal watches her wrap fingers around Will's loosely, watches their point-line-point connection become a three-pointed one.
A triangle, perhaps?
Will blinks at Neph with wide eyes, pupils still blown from earlier. He looks startled and uncertain and suddenly very, very young.
Hannibal hasn't ever touched Will in a friendly way, only with the excuse of medical check-ups immediately following his head injury weeks ago, but there is a flutter of some of the protective desire that draws Hannibal's fingers to Neph's shoulder or cheek or knuckles when she looks forlorn - or even when they're both happy. There's a dull glow of inner contentment mixed with the sharp edge of worry, the kind that wants to spill over and touch someone else to reassure both parties.
Hannibal's eyes slide closed for a moment when Neph tilts her forehead against his cheek, and the last thing Hannibal sees are Will's dark blue eyes trained on him in turn, searching and lost and maybe a bit--
It's a word Hannibal has associated with himself for so long he can recognize it immediately in someone else. Is it because of that show of friendship from Neph, no matter how small? When was the last time someone reached out to Will that way, took such a clear chance that could backfire and hurt the newcomer instead of Will himself? Is it a sign at all of what might come if Hannibal decided to take that chance with Will?
Because what Hannibal saw in Will's face for that brief moment was hunger.
And then the security guard. Will snaps straight around, shoulders still hunched but spine erect, and Hannibal turns an annoyed glance back in the same direction. 'Suspicious adults interrupting important activities' is pretty high on his short list of pet peeves, at this point in time.
But Neph reanimates, mask thawing and fluidly taking on an appropriate demeanor for warding off an adult concerned that he's breaking up some sort of teenage shenanigans. Both Hannibal and Will rock a bit towards her when their arms get dragged up, but neither of them move until the guard is already heading back away.
Hannibal stands and strengthens their grip on each other, repositioning fingers so they slot together at this new angle. Will is staring down at the tenuous link between Neph and himself like he's afraid it might break. Hannibal catches his eyes straying to Neph and Hannibal's own hands, then back to his own, and then slowly ticking his wrist to a better angle so he can grip the outside of Neph's palm by wrapping his fingers around it. His own fingers are pressed tight against themselves in a sterile version of holding hands - there'll clearly be no interweaving of fingers - but Will watches this happening like he's giving it real serious thought and can hardly believe what he's seeing.
He doesn't snap out of it in time to offer any commentary on what's just happened, so Hannibal bumps his upper arm gently against Neph's shoulder and does instead. "Shall we, then?" Hand in hand, walking away from a waking nightmare of Neph's.
It's...a strangely appealing and unique birthday present.
She's been in Baltimore long enough, now, to have mapped about eighty percent of the city's rooftops. Neph can close her eyes and visualize the route she'd take as easily as she can call up the contents of their fridge. If she pushed herself, she could beat Hannibal and Will (if he came along) back to the apartment, even if they went by bus or subway.
But as Hannibal slots their fingers together, she lets go of the course she'd half-charted, wiping the slate clean of rooflines and window ledges. Maybe she'll double back some other time, test the feasibility just in case the Walters ever has something she wants. If she ran off now, after they'd both backed her, it'd be nothing but self indulgence. Worse, it might actually spit in the face of what Hannibal's offered.
Neph might not be able to bring herself to believe his promise, but she's pretty sure he meant it. People often seem to, at the time.
She puts that out of her mind, sets aside all thoughts of conditional support and affection to look back down at Will, who's adjusted his grip as though they're both wearing mittens. There's a crinkle on his forehead she hasn't seen before, almost-but-not-quite-worried as he studies their hands. A broiling surge of embarrassment fills her chest and singes her cheeks; should she...not have reached for him when he nudged her? Did she overstep again? Uncertainty bubbles up from under her 'no sir nothing suspicious to see here' mask, singes her cheeks pink, but why wouldn't he have let her hand slip away when she stood up, if he minded? Why would he take a surer grip? It must be...okay?
Hannibal tips into her, jolting her from that well-worn rut in her thoughts. Neph blinks at him, anxious lines smoothing away at the corners of her eyes. When she turns to Will again, her hesitance is more muted, less linked to this one thing. She gives his hand a light tug, silently urging him to his feet. "Yeah, I think so."
They wait for Will to collect the map and get his feet under him, then head for the armory. At first, the silence is wary, cautious, all of them on the lookout for a strike. Neph's pretty sure Samson came alone, knows he wasn't in town long enough to've made any serious alliances of his own, but Will and Hannibal have no reason to think the same. They don't know the guy, they know if he has any cranky friends, and they don't know much about how a blacklist scenario plays out (neither does Neph, really, but only because nobody's ever cut off a Mistborn on purpose). Neph stares straight ahead, past suits of armor and racks of halberds, gratingly aware that her reaction must've given them both a wonky impression of how dangerous Samson actually is.
She should've hit him. Nobody's all that scary with a broken nose and a few less teeth. Or maybe that's all the pointy metal talking. It's hard not to feel braver surrounded by an arsenal.
Will was right that there are fewer people in these galleries, but they still get more than their fair share of stares. Three kids trailing along hand-in-hand, paying little attention the actual exhibits, that's the sort of thing people notice. Neph tries not to think about what they must be thinking. She reaches for that untouchable carelessness Hannibal projects so easily, but it doesn't fit her quite the same. She's much better at being part of the background, or creating a character for the occasion. Layla, maybe? Even Elle can handle the occasional audience. Her grip tightens on the hands in hers, but then they're through the Ancient World nave, then the lobby, past the ticketing desk and back at street level.
Neph breathes out, the din of traffic and pedestrians and city life providing better cover than anything the hushed interior of a museum could offer. She might wonder if Samson came this way, but there are too many conflicting sounds and scents to bother trying, and that's as comforting an excuse as any to just dismiss him from her mind.
Or can she? The further they walk, the more the watchful tension dissipates, the more she figures everyone's minds must be turning back to what just went down. How much did Hannibal and Will overhear, and what did they make of it? Had Samson said anything really condemning? Neph's ability to recall conversations is pretty limited at the best of times, but she can't fish anything from the red haze of those moments. Was there anything there that might tip Will off? Would he say anything if he were suspicious? And--and that's not even getting to what they're probably thinking about how that fight got started in the first place.
Neph fights not to squeeze down or let go of their hands, not to make any outward signs, but her footsteps fall unusually heavy and her shoulders inch up. She doesn't want to answer these questions. She doesn't want this silence. The status quo is unbearable, teetering, but she's terrified of the fall.
Hannibal's blood was already singing with revenge, beating in his ears the closeness of Neph to himself. As they walk across the courtyard, he feels so alive and so warm that he can hardly believe the snow that dusts past them doesn't steam right off of his skin.
The chain of them gets some stares, something Hannibal neither relishes nor hates. He ignores the outside world completely, intent only on looking out for threats - something he can mostly relegate off to his sense of smell. He won't forget the musk-scratched kettle-car backfire scent of that boy. It would wake him out of a dead sleep, the scalp-itching awareness of the danger behind that scent is already so strong in his mind.
Whether or not the boy is dangerous - and Hannibal is aware that, no matter how dangerous he is, Neph simply must be more physically dangerous - he has some other hold over Neph. Or did. Still does, in the sense that she collapsed after he left and her heart is still clearly thud-thudding somewhere high in her throat. An emotional tangle is snarled in their shared past, one that he counted on Neph tripping over when they met up again. That's a barrier. That's...a mine, hidden from view, one Hannibal hadn't even known was in Neph's field.
How many other secrets does she have? Does she even think of them daily, or are they buried from everyone, even her? Does Neph consciously hide them from him? Would she continue to if he asked to learn about her?
He doesn't want to scare her away. As they press through the chilly January air and walk a familiar path towards the bus stop they got off at - even though Hannibal knows they'll be waiting at least twenty minutes for it, assuming it isn't late - Hannibal presses through his options like paging through a notebook.
It's jarring, then, that it's not his own meticulous sketching of the situation that breaks the silence.
"Neph." It's so soft but immediately shatters the silence between them. Once broken, Hannibal finds that even when he tilts just enough to glance across Neph and then Will, it's as if some manner of veil has been lifted.
It's difficult to see both of them at the same time, but Will isn't trying to drag behind. He's level enough that Hannibal can still see his face. His eyebrows are furrowed down, but his mouth softens the frown. There's movement at their hips, and Hannibal realizes that Will is experimentally shifting their joined hands - tilting them up a bit higher, as if reminding them that they're there. "You don't have to talk about it now if you don't want to. In public. Or so soon after." Will's mouth twitches, like he's willing to keep spilling out possible excuses for her, but the tide is kept at bay until he presses his mouth thin and earnest and keeps going.
Will's gaze keeps seeking the side of Neph's chin and cheek and, unless Hannibal's mistaken, her eyes. "But there was something there. If you want to talk about it-- I'll listen."
Will's eyes blink, almost sleepily, like he's coming out of a trance. His gaze catches Hannibal's for just a moment, and Hannibal feels as though he's being judged for worthiness. And then, in another first, Will speaks for Hannibal. "Both of us would, if that's what you wanted."
Hannibal's fingers curl protectively in around Neph's, and he finds with surprise that it's nice, to know that someone he cares about cares about the other. To know that Neph is cushioned on her other side by someone perhaps even better at reading her than Hannibal himself is - Hannibal feels no flash of jealousy, but like his own reach has been augmented. This isn't a contest, it's a-- a team effort.
The word 'family' echoes, turns to smoke, and that veil keeps him from speaking. All Hannibal can do is look at Neph and Will and nod.
The two boys are just tall enough - in different ways, Hannibal's 70% leg where Will's less of a stork - that Neph has to take a step and a half for each of theirs. It results in an awkward bobbing of their joined hands, but neither of them let go. Neither of them speak, either, though she's reasonably sure they're not doing it to torture her. They're not deliberately winding her up, waiting for her to snap...it just feels that way, a little bit.
The beginnings of a tension headache bloom at her temples and the nape of her neck. She's considering whether or not she can discretely pop her jaw when Will murmurs her name.
Neph's not the only one surprised, if the way Hannibal takes an extra-long step forward to look across her means anything (a small victory; he can't just doubletake right over the top of her head. Neither of them can.). Her head jerks toward Will automatically, gaze skittering across his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose. Is she avoiding his eyes to be polite, or to protect herself? She...doesn't really know. The last time he dipped his feelers in her thoughts, he nearly babbled himself into an extra-bad concussion. Neph hastily faces forward, scans the street, kicks out at a wadded up piece of newsprint as it blows by. Will doesn't give any sign that he's upset she's avoiding eye contact, just lifts their hands a little in, what, acknowledgement?
He presses on. Neph feels Hannibal's breath against her shoulder, ruffling her hair, as he keeps his head turned to watch. She doesn't dare try to check his expression. Would it be approving, discouraging, or that blank 'now what' look he sometimes gets when he's content to let baffling events play out? Would it be that hungry, wanting look, the one she dreads and anticipates in equal measure? What had Will called it? A void? And what was it he'd said - implied - about her? That she doesn't ask him direct questions or give him the chance to share, doesn't want to share herself in return.
You don't have to talk about it.
I'll listen. A needle of shame pierces her throat, hitches her breathing. For a wild second there, she hadn't been sure if the 'something' he meant was the story with Sampson or the question of how she has any authority to kick someone out of Baltimore. Neph almost stumbles on her extra half-a-step, then does it again when he loops Hannibal in on his offer. If he were asking about the bigger picture, and not about what happened to her, wouldn't he assume Hannibal already knew? How...unfair of her, underestimating him like that. Will's the one who offered her a quick and quiet way out of the museum. He's earned the benefit of her doubt. She's just so--she's all twisted up around this, now, spinning phantoms from shadows.
Hannibal squeezes her hand in silent agreement. Neph can't help but notice that he let Will speak for him, just now, dictate terms and conditions. If that's what you wanted. Hannibal's getting better, but he's still more likely to press on an opening if it appears, and he doesn't leave easy outs. He goes along with this anyway, either swept along by Will or badly unsettled by her behavior. Neph squeezes back with both hands, blunt nails digging into the outside of Will's palm and between Hannibal's knuckles. Her fingers are plenty long, she's just proportionally that much smaller than either of them.
Funny, Samson's had been just as outsized. Morbid interest drove her to test the spread of her fingertips against the bruises he left on her chest and thigh, a span that came up short. She would never've imagined herself willingly bracketed like this, back then, but she hadn't given it a second thought when they'd all stood up to leave the courtyard hand in hand.
"It's not what you're thinking," Neph winces. In a way, that's the problem. It's never as bad as everyone's ready to suspect, so what actually happened seems less legit, somehow. Then she remembers just who she's talking to, and turns thoughtful eyes on Will. "I mean. Probably. I dunno what you picked up. Maybe it's, um, exactly what you're thinking."
It's as much a question as a caution, and maybe that's why she lets their eyes catch. Will's are dark, heavily lidded, but Neph doesn't think for a second that he's being casual about this. It's just not there in his voice.
They don't really talk about what he can do - I'm not gonna be a goddamn oracle for you - and normally she puts it out her mind. Maybe she shouldn't've said anything; if he knows, if he plucked it out of her head, surely he wouldn't make her say it out loud. But what if it's rattling around in his brain like a wrecking ball? She doesn't want that, not to share it or inflict it.
It doesn't mean the same thing to him that it does to Hannibal. With a mind already so full of everyone else's impressions - their thoughts, their reflections, their disappointments - it's difficult for anything to keep feeling sacred. Hannibal clings to what he wants, lets all dissenting opinions roll off of him like oil over wings, but Will is soil that everyone else's roots grow through.
If there used to be something inside of him that craved anything better to call 'family', it's been eaten right out of the soil after so many years. Or maybe just the name has, just the audacity to call it what it rightfully is, because Will absolutely feels the pull to help others. To reach out for that connection, no matter how many times he's ended up with bitten fingers over it.
He feels Neph's distracted concern almost like a hand warding him off, but Will thinks...that might just be him. Neph doesn't ask him to stop, or lean away, just breathes surprised and stares like she didn't expect someone to comment on the half-healed wound she's been licking since they walked away from that confrontation. When her fingers squeeze into the side of his hand, Will actually lets his shoulders slope back down into something almost relaxed, because that's so clearly a permission.
'It's not what you're thinking.'
Bile-sour fills Will's mouth, and he only looks away briefly to swallow it back down. His eye contact returns, staring at the blue of Neph's, the way they're blown with guilt and uncertainty and the tremors of something Will actually and truly hasn't ever had to face before.
He's never been more aware of the difference between them - the gendered aspect of it, that is. It suddenly looks like a yawning gap, but when he reaches out across anyway he finds it must've just been a mirage, because he touches the other side and can begin clawing at the base of it. He still can't climb it, but he can scope the shape and size.
"I'm not about to argue-- degrees of trauma here." Will says, and even that hurts coming up, burns like getting sick. Her eye contact isn't by accident - it can't be, they're still relatively new to one another but they both know enough, she knows enough about him - and so Will...makes himself look. "That's not what hurting is about. It's not a comparison with other events that didn't happen."
And maybe his breath's picking up a little. Maybe there's shadows of his own experiences - not the same, but the same underlying narrative of not enough to excuse your reaction - that are what help push him to keep pushing for Neph. "It's about what did happen. And how you-- felt about it." His cheeks burn, self-conscious both to be saying those things out loud and at the thought of what he's going to need to do if Neph refuses this or he's entirely wrong. But he just can't--
He can't see what he thinks he's seeing and not say something. He just can't do it. So he squeezes Neph's hand in return, stomach tight and throat half-closed, and waits.
Will grimaces, though whether at her comment or something else he's picking up, Neph doesn't know. She thinks it must be her, because he doesn't confirm or deny any concrete knowledge of what happened to her. He goes for her attempt to shrug it off instead, a tactic Neph--can't say she appreciates. Her mouth flattens as she jerks her face away and forward.
"It is though," she mutters, shoulders bunching. "You gotta recognize the bullets you dodge. And when people get it wrong or think...think something happened when it didn't, that's not something you get to come back from."
Ben. Ben. Is she ever going to have a chance to make that right? He'd had his whole life uprooted 'cuz of her, and she never even got to apologize. The longer anyone goes without hearing news of him, the more convinced she is that the Inquisitors must've found him first. And now there's nobody but her to say what did or didn't happen between them, just a formal dismissal of charges and assholes like Samson snarling shit like Everyone knows you and Argus--
She shoves that away, buries it back under the rubble with all the other things she's done but can't change, way down deep where Will can't dig it up. He's not wrong, exactly, to say she's still hurting. Neph hates to admit it, but if anyone other than Samson had come at her with ugly accusations she'd've handled it differently. There's something wired wrong in her, now, after what happened between them. She doesn't like it but she can't begin to see how to untangle it, either. How is she no better now than when she was six, twelve, fourteen, lashing out with her abilities and complicating others' lives?
Maybe if people would stop coming at her first, she wouldn't have to.
Something did happen to her - Will's right about that, too. He doesn't exactly ask her how it made her feel, but the statement is open ended enough that it could be taken as a question. Hadn't Lecter asked her the same thing? What do you want to tell others? What would make you feel better? Or something like that. She was too tired and freaked out and painfully sore to remember it clearly, aside from the part where she totaled his kitchen in a childish display of temper. Neph cringes a little bit at the memory, but she's surprised to realize that the questions wrapped up inside it never really went away. She's even more surprised to realize that they've been niggling at the back of her mind ever since, accreting layers of thought like pearls.
What happened matters, because it's still affecting her. And how she feels about it matters, too, because those feelings direct her actions, push her to do things like stake territory and wield her Allomancy in new and startling ways. If she doesn't dig down on that, she won't ever be able to predict herself, she'll just keep reacting blindly and fucking things up.
"We worked together," she says, haltingly. "A couple'a times. Usually everybody else was older, so we were...friendly, kinda? That's what I thought, anyway, I guess he read it differently."
That's it, the part she just can't get her head around. How did she miss it? Was she putting something more out there? Is that a thing she does? When did he decide they ought to be something more than that, and why didn't he just try to talk to her about it first instead of tacking that decision onto her, too? Neph's right hand twitches in Hannibal's with the need to scrub at her mouth, rake at her hair. "There was this work party, and we were leaving, and--I din't see it coming so I didn't say 'no' fast enough and then there was a huge fight. That's all. That's what gets me. I should've seen it."
Neph drops her head back with an inarticulate growl of frustration. It's easier, a lot easier, to be angry and tired about this than to remember how scared and small she'd felt. She's Mistborn. It's almost not even allowed.
'That's not something you get to come back from' That...doesn't even make sense, not with what they're talking about right now. So what's Neph thinking about, if not this? Was there a-- a false accusation in her past, about her or someone she knew or--
Not relevant. Not something Will needs to dig at right now, because god knows neither of them needs him with just enough information that he's chasing possibilities into waking nightmares on his way home later.
So he visibly steels himself, draws himself inward as if wringing out the bad thoughts. But he's going to just have to let Neph go ahead and push the conversation back into the present - or the near-past, as it happens - and sure enough, she does. The description comes out in staccato hesitancy, frustration rusting off her words.
This, too, makes Will's stomach churn. Neph doesn't say it - doesn't even really look it, except for when he sees the way her other shoulder tenses like she wants to take that hand back from Marijus, presumably to fiddle with something - but it's not just annoyance. It's not just rage.
It's guilt. Or maybe more accurately, shame. It's a sour and uncertain thing, and it chips away at Will's ribs, makes them feel brittle as he forces himself to keep breathing through this.
It's not even easy to miss, really. Even if you just look at the words, she's dragging at the concept that she should've someone known it was going to happen. Like guys hitting on girls who aren't interested and then getting violent when there's a misunderstanding is just a fact that she should've known better active self-defense about.
It's another squeeze to Will's stomach when he thinks that maybe, that's kinda the impression that rolls off a lot of people in the news when they talk about this, too. The kinda people who talk about 'sexual assault' and 'bad decisions' with air quotes and follow it with concerns about football scholarships.
Marijus is radiating, off to the side, practically steaming with the force of an anger that quite frankly almost distracts Will away from the topic for a split second. But then he digs his heels in, because this is about Neph - Marijus is fine and welcome to have his own reaction, but Will can talk about it with him later (and since when did Will start organizing his friends' problems so he could personally help them with them, anyway?).
It's about Neph, not him or Marijus, and so Will sucks in some welcome icy January air, adjusts his hand in Neph's to hold hers a bit more tightly, and tries. "Has it-- ever occurred to you that if you didn't see his interest, and some ugly misunderstanding grew out of that... That he also fucked up by not seeing your lack of interest? At-- at literally no point in that did it sound like he was entitled to a fucking thing, because no one ever is.
"People get wires crossed all the time when they don't just use their words. Jumping-- jumping all over someone because you think you might've seen some interest, or whatever the hell he did, that's not-- Normal people don't do that, Neph. That's not on you to have gotten ahead of him making a shitty decision. That's on him for being a fucking moron from square one."
There's a blur of motion beyond Neph, Marijus's head ducking down to speak closer to Neph's ear. "'Didn't say 'no' fast enough'." He quotes, voice flat and eyes deadly. Will forgets to breathe, but Marijus isn't even looking at him. "That alone says it all. I've never known you to hesitate to make your interest or lack of interest quite clear, Neph. That he came at you so quickly is enough to say with certainty that he was in the wrong."
Will can't say he disagrees - thinks maybe even that Marijus had a better handle on how to untwist the story back out into a clear line of 'and here is where it got fucked up' - but he also has to look away from Marijus's face. Will settles for watching Neph again, eyes keen on hers.
Edited (woops bit at beginning missed coding) Date: 2017-01-26 11:11 pm (UTC)
This...might've been a mistake. She's not even sure she got the words out right, nevermind that they were understood. It was easier, almost, with Lecter. He hadn't actually been there to see her confront Samson, and he already knew about her abilities and other jobs. There was less tapdancing, except for the part where she came back to herself and realized she'd run to his house in the first place, where he asked her if she wanted to stay.
They never did get around to negotiating what that might mean. Now they never will. He'd been classically evasive about it and she hadn't had the courage or the energy to ask what he was really offering. That might bother her more, if she hadn't ended up living with some version of him anyway.
This version is furious. As she stumbled her way through the events of that night, Hannibal went stiffer and stiffer at her side. His hand in hers might as well be a prosthetic, as cold and motionless as it's gone. Their shoulders bump as they walk, Neph sort of rattling between the two boys, and it's like skidding against a wall. Her heart beats high and fast in her throat, even knowing that anger's not directed at her. It could still take her arm off, when it inevitably goes. She watches him from the corner of her eye, the part of her brain that endlessly spins contingency plans kicks into gear. There must be some way to redirect that rage away from herself, away from--
Will tugs lightly at her hand, gripping tighter despite her clammy palm. Neph turns her face a few degrees back toward him, watching from three-quarters. If he's angry, it's harder to read. She can't help but be wary, she doesn't know what Angry Will looks like or how he's likely to snap, and here she is stuck between him and Hannibal, the ticking bomb. But he only says in a very reasonable tone, That's not on you.
Neph winces, very well aware she'd said something pretty similar to him a couple months ago. It's a lot easier to dish out than it is to take.
"I know," it takes real effort not to say it to the sidewalk, but she manages to lift her head. "I know it's him but I still--it's not just him. There's others, y'know? S'not like it's never happened before, I just always got outta the way in time." With both her hands caught up, she invents a new fiddling method; her thumb taps an arhythmic staccato against Will's knuckles. "If I'm gonna make it out there I gotta be smart and see this stuff and I hate--I hate that I have to and I hate that I didn't that time."
That one slip planted doubt in her, a weed with roots gone too deep to pull up in one neat clump. She's been more paranoid since, quicker to assume ill intent. It's died down a little in the past, what, ten months, but she was still at peak anxiety when Hannibal half-accused her trying to kiss him. No fucking wonder she blew up.
Is he remembering that, too? Is that why he leans down to hiss in her ear? Neph jumps a little, her doubletime footsteps veering toward Will while her chin jerks back in Hannibal's direction. She might've expected the same kind of feral, bared-teeth rage he'd displayed when he thought Will's dad was responsible for beating his face in, but this...isn't that. It's the burn of dry ice, the methodical scrape of a whetstone over a blade, skin parting silently under a keen edge. It's murderously stunning and Neph can only be blindly grateful that it's for her, not because of her. His stare fills her entire field of vision. She has to remind herself to blink.
"I know he was," she says again. Her shoulder jostles Will's, bulkier and softer through their mutual layers, but she twists her wrist to scrape her fingernails down the back of Hannibal's hand. She drifts back to the middle, pupils constricting a little as she forces herself to zoom out on the rest of Hannibal's face. "I...when it happened I was just really freaked out and...tired. 'Cuz I thought I couldn't watch my back every fucking second, y'know?"
Relief, relief, she saw murder in his eyes and her knees went weak with relief. Neph ducks her head and swings their hands - all their hands - a little. "It's better now."
'There's others, y'know?' They'd brushed against this topic, before. When Neph had laid out her lack of interest in sex and still tagged the end of it with the general share that people don't take it well, that she's been hit on enough times to know it as a routine.
What's there to even say to an issue so wide that it can swallow someone's entire world for hours at a time? "I don't think that's something that's just you. Or even just him, or them. It's-- the whole system." The one that tells skinny young girls like Neph to watch over their shoulders when they leave their cars at night, and then puts in sitcom jokes about how women always visit public bathrooms in packs. The one that ends every unattractive-man-becomes-slightly-more-competent comedy film with them getting the girl like it was a vending machine transaction.
Will lets their shoulders bump against one another, everything muffled in winter layers, and keeps an eye on Neph instead of Marijus while she navigates his stiletto-knife anger. The danger radiating off Marijus, the capacity to hurt someone after enough planning to make it count, has images from true crime shows flashing in Will's mind. He sees that boy from earlier, face down with glassy eyes, a line of red coming from his temple, and Will squeezes Neph's hand and leans in closer, a chill shivering up his neck.
'It's better now.'
...Because she doesn't have to watch her back? Because she has other people to help her do that. Will almost sags with relief and embarrassment, nearly giddy with the idea that Neph is friendly enough with Marijus to look at his angry face and see a welcome promise and not a horror show she should back away from fast. His hand moves in Neph's, though, their arms arcing slowly when she swings them, and it slowly enters Will's mind that she might mean-- more than just Marijus, with that statement.
He lets their steps take him a foot's width closer to Neph, enough that shoulders bump again. He's gathering up the words necessary to reassure, or to thank, or to offer that promise officially himself as well - but then Marijus catches his attention once more.
Marijus, whose anger has simmered down enough to reveal a different kind of intensity. His shoulders are tight, his neck tilted forward, and his steps are shorter and more aggressive. He looks like an animal going against all natural instinct. "Would you like to head home on your own, then?"
The non sequitor of it has Will almost tripping over his own feet. It feels like a hunter releasing prey, so no wonder there's a strange dissonance radiating in the very air near Marijus, but what--
"I don't-- want you caged after being hedged in by other people for so long." Will feels the way this rips at something in Marijus, can feel it peel apart the ribs in his own chest, leave behind sticky pain in its wake. Marijus doesn't let go of things. He's unwavering in his desires and his possessiveness, to the point of being overbearing and beyond. Will would never have considered this sort of growth even possible, but here it is.
Potentially even ill-timed - Will has no idea if Neph actually wants space right now. She doesn't feel like she does, she isn't vibrating with flight like she was before, but Will just stares at Marijus without breathing and hopes that Neph gets the underlying message that Will can see, spelled out in the air between them all:
That Marijus cares for her, deeply enough that he's finally realizing the impact of letting people go. Instead of pursuing his own revenge - because Will can still see it, the plans for hurting that boy - he's interrupting everything to try and let Neph do what she needs to cope.
It's love, honestly. That's what Will sees, and it bowls him over. He's never seen anyone look at anyone else that way, in his life, and he knows the meaning of it only from bone-deep genetic memory that apparently a lifetime of neglect hadn't quite managed to leach out of him.
Will's nearly leaning his chin on Neph's shoulder, pulled in by the gravity of the other two, mouth open and unaware.
Lecter had said that, too. That it wasn't about her, wasn't about anything she could or couldn't do, that it was a system of fuckery perpetuated by entitled boys. A system no single person could be expected to dismantle or stop. Neph can acknowledge that, but she doesn't have to like the fact that it's an issue too big to get her arms around, dig her fingers into, and claw apart all on her own. She doesn't have to accept it any more than she resigned herself to shuttling around fostercare. Given the choice between safe acceptance and truly stupid risks, she batters herself against the latter like a moth on a lampshade.
Neph doesn't snap any of that at Will. The cringe that always lingers in his voice is out in full force, as if he know how unhelpful it is to say, to hear. It's not his fault she's been through this enough times to know the script. Maybe, if she hears it repeated often enough, she'll come up with some brilliant response that turns the whole thing over on its head. At least she got someone new thinking about it, looking at the system and reaching out to take her hand instead of turning away from it. That must count for something, she thinks, as Will pulls closer to her side.
Her other arm is stretched out a little further to Hannibal, a strained point of contact anchored by the desperate grip of their hands. She hasn't looked at him since as-good-as-admitting she trusts him at her back. His answering silence is river-dark and cold, rushing around her, pulling at her, but still she doesn't look. Say something, she urges as a muscle works at the corner of his jaw, visible in her periphery. Neph's not sure which of them she means. Say something.
When he does, it's not an acknowledgement. Not exactly.
Except that it is.
Will fumbles at her side, and Neph--stops. Hannibal's momentum and her hold on his hand pulls him around to face her, while Will practically trips into her back. She rocks forward a little, seeking out Hannibal's face, his eyes. Whites flash around the edges and his nostrils flare a little. She can never tell if that's a sign of nerves or active mutation, with him. A little frown crinkles her face, words poised on her tongue, go home? but before you said--, when he unlocks a door she hadn't realized existed.
Neph's face falls open. They're all three of them standing in the middle of the sidewalk, forcing people to part around them, but nobody says anything about the girl with one boy at her back and another staring her down like a reluctant penitent, her hands in both of theirs. That's a minor miracle right there. Another might be the clarity with which Neph hears what Hannibal means.
They've talked around it before. This uncertainty played unwelcome third wheel those first few months, when neither of them knew if she would (or should) stay, or leave him with his money and pick up her own life where she'd left off. How much did she owe him, and was it even about debt at that point? How much of their unity was sheer momentum? Where was the choice in any of it, if at all? If they'd met like this in another timeline, his or hers, peers without any convoluted temporal history, would they have been friends?
Neph, in typical go-with-the-flow, focus-on-the-present fashion, started to enjoy herself too much to question it. And then little changes became big ones, became a joint lease and dishtowels and staking territory and suddenly the beginning no longer mattered. Knowing she could leave at any time didn't mean she wanted to, not at all. But Hannibal--
--she hasn't made him any promises. Not out loud.
"You're not a cage," she says vehemently, a wind beating back the river. Her hand shifts in his so she's grasping it from below, fingers wrapped around his, her thumb pressed against the back of his knuckles. "You weren't ever a cage, you were--you are--"
The trouble with 'you' is, it's both singular and plural, something Neph has never tasted so clearly in her own mouth before. Were. Are. One person and two people who've been very different things to her at very different points in her life. All kinds of possibilities crowd her mouth, conclusions like safe, honest, trustworthy. Like home. All of them too much and not enough.
She is very, very bad at this. "I'm always glad to have you there. Here." Neph says, at length. It's not right. It's not perfect. It's not even really a promise. If she's very, very lucky, it might make sense, in context of what she thinks he's saying, and what he's just offered her.
Nobody's ever trusted her to come back, before. She's never given anyone reason to. It's a limit she finds she's eager to test. Her chin comes up, the hair on the back of her neck lifting and tickling where Will's breath stirs it. Somewhere in all of this he's drawn in close, but it doesn't trigger any crawly feelings. It's a steady press of warmth instead. "I think I'd like to go for a run," she says, threaded through with wonder. "Not, um, not from anybody. Just for me." A grin pops out of nowhere, from the ether, from the thing inside her that keeps putting one foot in front of the other. "I bet I beat you home."
This has depth. Cold rushing water beneath it, pitfalls and slippery sections Will hadn't been aware of until now, even with his 'gift'. Every word that Marijus ground out, every word that Neph manages to chip off herself to hand over, has a duality to it. The shine is too bright for Will to make out the shapes clearly, but he sees the shimmer, feels the smooth surface, tastes the promise behind everything.
They've gone through something, and maybe that's why they're both alone together, here in a part of the world neither of them is really from - Marijus from across an entire ocean, Neph apparently from different parts of the US.
Will feels like he can't quite do it justice, describing just what he sees in Marijus's eyes, but he's compelled to try.
Marijus is watching Neph like she's the only thing he's aware of, like his entire life has been eclipsed by this moment in time shared with her. All the ludicrous focus of Marijus's interest is contracted in Neph's direction, timeless and limitless and so heavy Will feels its pull like gravity, and it's not even for him. Will's mouth falls open, something too scared to feel hungry answering the call from Marijus's gaze, and Will is simultaneously glad for Neph and unsure how she can handle this.
It should feel far more foreign to watch a scene this intense unfold next to him. Being in forced close proximity to people's dramas has always been taxing at best, mortifying or terror-soaked at worst.
But this is like watching a natural landscape come into focus from the fog, or a storm coalesce. It's huge. Nearly limitless. Almost promises danger, but you lean in anyway, just to say you witnessed it.
Marijus is the one that looks caged right now, rigid and thrumming with energy, like he'd be pacing back and forth if he had the room at the end of his tether via Neph's hold on his wrist. Will thinks of a tiger in a zoo. "Alright." Marijus is clearly wrestling with something terrifying and unknown, and then all at once he just - steps forward and hugs Neph.
Will rocks back instinctively, giving them room, because now Marijus's arms are coming around Neph's thin shoulders, and Marijus is slim but not so much that it doesn't encroach on the lack of space that had existed a moment ago between Will and Neph. They make brief eye contact over Neph's shoulder, Marijus's face a hurricane, and then he tilts down into the downy parts of Neph's hair and mutters something into her ear.
Will's pretty sure he says "I don't think anything could ever cage you again, Nephele." He hadn't realized her name was short for anything similarly strange, had just assumed it was a brief nickname from nothing.
"I'll see you at the apartment." Marijus looks like he's holding himself together by threads. As Marijus pulls back away, holds Neph at a determined arms length, Will tilts back in, taps his free hand to Neph's wrist as a silent encouragement. But otherwise, this is-- this is about them, right now. Will's never been so content to be a silent observer.
Hannibal Lecter is a predator. Neph has always known this; she has a rabbit's keen sense of these things, a trait that's kept her alive more than once. She has never, in all the time or times she's known him, felt so certain that he would eat her alive if he could. He may not want to cage her, but the yawning whirlpool of his gaze says he wants to keep her, an undertow drawing inexorably at her ankles.
But Nephele is Mistborn. She's fog. She's a haze. She's the whole sky full of clouds, there's too much of her for even the deepest, angriest sea to contain except for the fragments she rains down at whim. It's not, she realizes, that she has her own deep well of gravity, it's that she's lighter than gravity. He can try to exert it, but she'll only slip through his fingers and envelop him, cool and calm or icy and stinging. She thinks he might know that, too.
A tiny smile shapes her mouth, crinkles her eyes, her only outward response to all that howling intensity. If she's affected by it, and she is, well...isn't that how it works? Ocean and sky, locked together, passing back and forth? Even her eighth-grade education covered the water cycle.
If Hannibal sees what she sees, if she's mirroring anything back at him, it sets him on edge. His mouth flattens out, his arm is extended almost as far as it can go without straining away from her, and she can feel tendons bunching under his skin. For a wild second she thinks he might tear away and storm off, counter to everything he's just said to her, but then he lunges in - 70% leg! - and folds her into a hug.
There's a scuff of sneakers on pavement as Will dodges out of the way, but Neph notices the sudden cold at her back more clearly. It only lasts a second, as she rocks onto her toes to stretch into the hug, her arms wrapping around Hannibal's ribs beneath his jacket. He'd stormed out of the museum without buttoning it up, overheated by nature and anger, and now she tucks herself into it by invitation. His scarf is a warm swath of truly hideous plaid against her cheek.
"I don't think anything could ever cage you again, Nephele," he says against her temple. Neph shivers and curls her hands over his spine as though she could grip it like bars on a window. He never calls her by her full name, not even when he's really pissed. That was always--
Hannibal pulls away as though yanked by force, before she can finish that thought or come up with anything in response. She doubletakes at him anyway, half-expecting to see someone else standing there, a little taller, a lot more plaid. It's only when she doesn't that her heart rate starts to dip towards normal.
He says he'll see her at the apartment (not home, never 'home' with him, which would sting if she didn't know they have totally different concepts of the term) but doesn't let go of her shoulders. His knuckles stand out white in her periphery, and there's still a flicker of it around the edges of his irises. It's an uncertainty of self she hasn't seen in him since he was little, when she'd told him he was a mutant. She does now what she might have done then, if she'd known him better - she rises back up on her toes and presses a quick, dry kiss to his cheek. The cold tip of her nose bumps his cheekbone. "Yeah you will," she says, all cocky certainty as she drops flatfooted again.
The warm to cold ratio flip flops again, her front all chilled but her back shielded from the winter breeze when Will steps in. She's turning even as he touches her wrist, belatedly realizing she had to drop his hand to hug Hannibal. It hadn't even occurred to her, then. Now she opens her mouth to apologize, but finds Will looking at her with an unusual...solidity. She catches his hand, and what falls out of her mouth is: "Thank you, Will. For--saying something, back there." For snarling at Samson for no reason other than he'd set himself up against her and Hannibal. "I'm sorry stuff got all weird."
It's a rueful apology, delivered with a sad and lopsided smile. The Weird is 100% her fault, even if he doesn't know it. Not even Hannibal really knows, for all that Neph's not sure why she's keeping it quiet. It just hasn't come up? There's never been a good time to say I'm one of seven people who can do what we do, whatever that means. Soon, maybe.
She doesn't try to hug Will or lean in to plant one on his cheek, but she squeezes his hand and wrinkles her nose at him and says, "Try not to let him do anything too suicidally stupid?" Because, look, she's not an idiot, she knows Hannibal has a dying man's thirst for revenge and a mind that tends toward elaborate games of Mousetrap. She wants them to get home safe, and that means no unnecessary dramatics. This is an unfair thing to put on Will Graham, but he's driven Hannibal to unusual behavior with the force of his stare alone, so Neph's willing to risk it.
Then she breaks away, not touching either of them for the first time in at least twenty minutes. What a weird thing to suddenly tally up in her head. Neph takes a step backward, toward the museum, a topographic map of Baltimore's rooftops rising in bumps and ridges on her mind. It'll be quicker to doubleback, and she was serious about beating them there. She wants dibs on the shower.
"Don't be late!" she grins, and then hop pivots and breaks down the sidewalk at a fast clip.
Will blinks at the kiss, sees it in startling echoed negative every time he closes his eyes, but it... It doesn't not fit, does it? Marijus looks alarmed for a heartbeat, like someone had just shown him a door where there had been only wall before, but in the aftermath he settles in a way Marijus hasn't since that boy showed up in the courtyard.
Neither of them relax - Neph is closer to it, but Neph has a razor-edge of attention that's all her own, too - but both of them seem more certain, like self-knowledge and some interpersonal bonds are all they need to patch themselves back up and keep going, keep going, until an uncertain future point when everything in the entire universe has been tugged to a stop.
--Now that he sees it in someone else, has to try to name it, Will realizes that it's not just his 'empathy disorder' or a surplus of mirror neurons, that this is actually an accurate reflection he's staring down.
Neph catches his hand and-- thanks him, actually thanks him, and Will finds his certainty for watching Neph and Marijus interact doesn't extend even slightly to what on earth anyone could ever see in himself. He's too stunned to deny anything coherently, too touched to jerk back away from her, just lets his fingers spasm against hers and stammers out. "I'll-- always say something. You're-- you're welcome. And it's fine." A flicker of real smile, a flash fire across his face. "I'm so used to it, I think I kinda prefer the weird shit, at this point."
It's clearly meant to be light-hearted, but Neph also isn't dumb to innuendo. Will knows there's a solid foundation of something very serious under that layer of jokingly asking him to keep an eye on her closest friend in the world. Will just nods, face falling into honest surprise and warmth. "I'll make sure he waits til we're back at your guys' place before he starts doxxing that kid, yeah. Promise."
He and Marijus turn as one unit to watch Neph flee down the street after that, back the way they came.
Which leaves Will and Marijus on the sidewalk, standing on either side of a sudden chilly gap.
Will surprises himself by moving first. His arm twitches and then falls back at his side, useless for reaching out physically, but the intensity of the two of them sings in his blood, vibrates under his skin. He can't remove the imagery of a hawk gently letting something slip back out of its talons, of Marijus taking that unexpected step towards trust.
What ends up spilling from Will's mouth, while his eyes are focused on the ground in front of himself, is a phrase he's never heard from anyone for himself. But it keeps ringing in his ears like struck metal. "I'm-- proud of you."
Marijus is an immovable post next to him for two, three heartbeats, and then he's lurching forward. A palm catches against the back of Will's head, fingers threading through his hair with familiarity Will can barely process, let alone explain. There's a thumb behind his ear across a pulsing vein, and their noses nearly touch. Their temples do touch, in fact that's the point of contact that seems to be why Marijus has tilted forward so far. Will thinks of Neph kissing Marijus's cheek just moments ago, and feels himself undeniably caught - a rushing tide dragging him back out to sea, with some hint as to direction but no way of knowing the depths he might be sucked down towards.
He's holding his breath. Will is holding his breath and he's letting this happen because he has no idea how to convince himself he isn't getting anything from the howling force that's demanding him, with more sincerity than anything Will's ever had directed at him before.
"Hannibal." At first, Will doesn't know how to place the whisper that makes the curls of hair by his right ear flutter. "My name is Hannibal."
Oh. Oh.
The hand across the back of his head doesn't twitch, Marijus - Hannibal - doesn't budge an inch, teeth nearly grazing the tip of Will's ear as he speaks. "I can't explain why you can't call me that in public, but I want you to know my name."
Will's hand comes up without thinking, knuckles going white immediately in his grip on Mar-- Hannibal's forearm. They stay like that, a tense and unsustainable statue, Will holding the arm of the hand that's gripping his head, the street traffic parting around them and giving occasional exasperated looks. Will ignores all of them, just trying to steady his breathing back into his own pattern instead of taking Hannibal's as his own.
They're on a cliff, and Will isn't sure what he could possibly offer - for escalating or de-escalating - without knocking them both off of it. He stays put, gradually feeling the tension tug at his bones, feeling desperation ring through him but with nowhere to put it. Hannibal makes a soft sound and, on instinct, Will turns to look at him, their noses barely brushing--
"Let's go."
Cold air rushes to the spot on the back of Will's head where Hannibal's hand was a moment ago. Hannibal is pulling back, firmly in his own circle of gravity all at once, and Will sways on the spot with dizzy relief.
"Okay," Will says, and then they're off, instinct letting them fall in step with each other but a new distance slowly settling in. They don't hold hands. Neither of them falsely reach or check for the other, they both just force forwards. Will wonders if Hannibal's ears are ringing as much as his own.
It's not until they've turned two corners that Will finds his voice fully.
"How the hell's she gonna beat us home by running?"
No one thinks to salt or sand the tops of buildings, transforming the winter roofscape into an obstacle course of sooty snow and slick ice. The combo slows her progress, especially since it's still full daylight and she can't go overboard on the Allomancy. Her new winter jacket - a navy wool peacoat with black fleece on the inside of the turned-up collar - doesn't allow her the range of motion she's used to from hoodies and windbreakers, and she doesn't want to ruin it by rolling her falls properly. So she's a little limited, here. She'd dressed to fit in at a museum, not for acrobatics.
Neph enjoys every second of it anyway. Her thin-soled sneakers grip shingles, concrete and tar-paper equally well, and Tin spots the telltale gleam of ice even in deep shadows. The cold air chaps her cheeks and scrapes away at her lungs, hollowing out all the things she might've wished to shout at Samson and leaving her free to fill up with something better. Every jump jars her knees and the palms of her hands are scraped pink and red from gripping ledges and eaves. She does not stop, propelling herself forward and over with her own strength and judicious dabs of Iron and Steel. Her blood roars through her body, pounding against the barrier of her skin, until she's so rooted in her own capacity that there's no need to think about judging steps, leaps or distances. Neph swings off pipes and hurtles over ten-foot gaps between alleys without ever thinking about any of it at all.
In fact, she manages not to think about anything until her toes touch down on the brick that makes up all the buildings in their neighborhood. Her innermost shirt is soaked with sweat, her exposed skin is simultaneously flushed and chilled, and her nose is a little drippy. Neph scrubs at it as she cuts her pace to an easier lope.
Actual thoughts start to seep in around the edges of physical discomfort, thoughts like how she doesn't know the first thing about holding down a territory, how she's never made a point of standing her ground before. Thoughts like whether or not to put that word out, or let her continued presence do the talking for her. Thoughts like making sure Samson abides by her edict and gets the fuck outta Baltimore in the next, oh, week. Thoughts like how she'd expected to feel slimier after dealing with him, but how the simple physical grossness of being sweaty and a little smelly just wiped that all away.
Thoughts of Samson, however, drag her back to what he'd said to her about Anansi and Loki, about Benkei.
Neph skids to a final stop on her own rooftop, breath coming hard, sweat dripping down the back of her neck. Someone once arranged a folding chair, a round glass-topped table, and a bucket full of gravel up here, and Neph's gotten in the habit of using them. She drops into the chair, wincing as her cold-and-damp sweater sticks to her skin, and fishes out her phone. She thumbs up Whatsapp.
did u seriously break samsons nose?
She doesn't really expect a reply right away. Allomancers keep weird schedules, and last she heard Benkei was also bouncing at a strip club outside of Bethesda. This time of afternoon, she could be asleep or just getting up. But a bubble filled with ellipses pops up almost immediately, prompting Neph to settle back in the chair in tense anticipation.
I fucking well did and I'd do it again. Comes the answer, closely followed by another ellipses-bubble. Why who told you? I thought he'd be too embarrassed to let it slip.
Neph chews on her lip, still breathing hard through her nose. Of course Benkei would assume this was grapevine stuff. Why would she ever think a Pewterarm would threaten a Mistborn twice? Because Samson thought he could bully Neph, because he thought she'd let her fear cage her. He was almost right. Neph picks at the keyboard with less than her usual nimble speed, but it's cold and her fingers are kinda numb.
he did. he tracked me down today
The response is almost instantaneous: I'LL BREAK HIS GODDAMN NECK. I WAS PRETTY CLEAR WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF HE FUCKED WITH YOU AGAIN THAT LITTLE COCKSTAIN.
Capslock all kinda blurs together in that quantity. Neph grips her phone and rereads it twice, something warm stirring inside that has nothing to do with physical exertion. Benkei's always been nice to her, she's always asked if Neph's doing okay, and they work well together. But she's also a bit older, four or five years, enough that her obvious concern had been unwelcome for a long time. Neph had felt like Benkei didn't think she could make it on her own, she'd resented that, but now...well, there's a lot of things out there to watch out for. Things Neph wouldn't wish on a younger girl, either.
thanks B but its fine. i guess A and L both cut him off too and he thought i made them do it
Benkei, having been in this game longer than Neph, immediately gets it. Damn, good for them. Even if they were just watching out for #1, that's decent of them.
Which were basically Neph's thoughts, too. decent of YOU to hit him for me
I am ALWAYS down for punching whiny boys who don't understand the word 'no'. Neph thinks, all in a flash, that those are some very lucky strippers in Bethesda, and then Benkei sends: Do you need backup? Or help hiding a body?
It really says something about her friends that that's everybody's first offer. Lecter'd asked her the same thing. She snorts, hesitates, then writes, no i just told him to gtfo Baltimore
She doesn't think Benkei will need that spelled out for her either, but the ellipses blink for a long stretch of minutes before the reply comes. Holy shit. You sure?
That's a question Neph suddenly suspects she's going to be asking herself a lot in the next few...whatevers. Weeks, months. Years? She can't even imagine herself at twenty, twenty one, never dared think more than a job or two ahead. But now, huddled in her nice new coat, sitting on the roof above her startlingly fancy apartment, with one of her aliases on a lease that could stretch all the way through Hannibal's residency, the future is a slowly whirling galaxy starred with too many possibilities to number. She could get lost in the thought, but she's an open sky. She encompasses, damn it.
yeah, long enough for it to count, anyway, she types.
Good for you too, then.
The smile that breaks over Neph's face almost splits her dry lip. She rubs a line of sweat off her forehead before replying, thanks Benkei. i'll be in touch. Then she pockets her phone, picks the roof door lock, and heads down the stairs. She could swing through one of their windows, but their apartment faces the street and, again: broad daylight.
With her snow delays and her text conversation, Neph's a little surprised to find that she did beat Hannibal (and maybe Will?) back to the apartment. It's a relief to have the place to herself, familiar surroundings promising safety and comfort and support in a way only a private space can. Neph hangs up her jacket, collects some clean clothes from her room, and heads to the bathroom so she can strip out of her sweaty layers and take advantage of the building's hot water supply.
She steps out twenty minutes later in a cloud of vaguely herbal steam (on the off chance Hannibal's still feeling huggy, she figured she'd use his soaps instead of her own aggressively candy-scented stuff), wearing an anonymous white tee that could be either hers or Hannibal's, she honestly doesn't know, and a pair of pajama pants that puddle around her heels. Neph ruffles a towel over her hair before draping it around her neck and cocking her head to listen for the sounds of someone else being home.
Hannibal doesn't do well with letting attachments go.
He has to frame it in a more palatable manner to accomplish it at all, in fact. While Will and he walk to the bus stop another nine blocks away, he tries to breathe around the panicked vacuum in his chest. While they pay and sit down (Will offers him the window seat, Hannibal takes it), he starts looking for anything available to patch up that hole with. While the bus rocks around corners and eases past pedestrians crossing the street at unwise moments, Hannibal decides he's going to look at this as a longer tether. Not the cutting of ties, but perhaps just more flexible ones.
Like a cat being tricked into eating vitamins by tucking them inside treats, Hannibal has to slowly chisel away what he's done until it's softened to a size and shape that doesn't interrupt the beating of his heart.
"I had this dog once."
Hannibal looks across at Will, who's been leaning fully into the back of his seat like he's tired, except Hannibal can see the antsy energy in his tapping right foot, the way he's checked and re-checked all his jacket pockets three times since they sat down ten minutes ago. "He ran off every other week. We got him a collar, but we couldn't afford to chip him, and he'd come back after a few days every time anyway."
Hannibal lets the pause sink in between them. "What happened to the dog?"
Will's staring down at his shoes, glasses pulled by gravity to the very end of his nose. They're balanced so precariously that Hannibal almost leans over to pull them back up when they hit a bump and he watches them shudder in place. "Didn't come back one week. Thought he got hit by a car."
"Did it?" The pronoun's reflexive for animals. Will might be frowning from that, or from the memory itself.
"No. Saw him again a year later, right before we moved. Bit thinner, but not hurt. Looked happy to see me. I didn't bother trying to get a collar back on him that time, he followed me home anyway. Stayed there in the yard for two weeks straight because my dad didn't want to let him back in the house after all the trouble last time from him." Will wipes the end of his nose, jostles his own glasses and ends up nudging them back up to a safer spot. "We ended up taking him to Montana with us."
Hannibal makes a soft sound, inquisitive. Will's face twitches with that pained, apologetic smile that comes out so often in conversations where comfort's been scraped off the walls.
"He never ran off again. Lived with me - us - til he died, three years later. Think he needed the reassurance that we'd let him be free when he needed to be."
Hannibal leans his temple against the window in the silence that follows. Halfway back to the apartment, Will leans across him to open it, with a muttered comment about needing fresh air. Hannibal spends the rest of the ride thinking of Will burying his old dogs alone in his backyards, of Neph flying over rooftops without him.
*
Neph beat them home, and she showered already. The steam-scent of hot water carrying soap perfumes laps against Hannibal when he opens the door, soft as ocean waves. His head tilts down the hall instantly, following the smell. "She beat us home."
Will blinks down the corridor with far less comprehension. "Did you hear her?"
"No." Will just stares at him, confused but not alarmed. Hannibal is far more interested by what could possibly cause the 'dawning comprehension' that slowly blossoms across his face as he kicks off his shoes onto the mat.
Hannibal, who sits down to methodically untie everything and hangs his jacket and scarf up in the closet before moving beyond the doorway, is what holds up a surprisingly-impatient Will. He's pacing in place, hands in pockets, wind breaker open but still hanging off his shoulders like he's got no intentions of removing it anytime soon.
A few steps further in, and it's clear that she's actually still showering - the soft pounding of water, changing pitch as someone moves underneath its stream, can be barely heard from around the bend and in the bathroom. So Hannibal leads them both into the kitchen, mind buzzing.
His hands are steady on the coffee machine, a silver-and-black contraption that likely cost more than all of Will's wardrobe combined. "Would you like any?"
"Uh, yeah." Will doesn't sit down. The silence is interrupted only with a bag rustling, the grinder buzzing, and then eventually by Hannibal taking a small risk. "Would you get mugs from that cabinet there?" He points, but doesn't move from his spot, as if he's far too busy fiddling with the water in the machine to budge.
It is a strange, energetic satisfaction to watch Will search through the cabinet and pull down three matching mugs. After a small pause, he actually takes a guess and opens two drawers without asking, pulling out three spoons when he successfully finds them.
It's Will whose head cocks first when the shower water stops being a background hum. He grows antsy again, as if unsure what will come through that door, and shifts the identical mugs and spoons around at least twice before Hannibal hears the bathroom door even open.
Hannibal's space-age coffee machine has a very distinctive gurgle. It just takes Neph a few beats to pick it out, against the steady drip-drip of water eking out of the showerhead behind her, the creaking of the pipes in the old walls. The fixtures are all new in this place, but the building's bones go back a ways.
There's at least one person in the kitchen. Two, maybe, with the drawers rattling counterpoint. Neph swabs the towel around inside her ear and follows the sounds. Her feet, overheated from the shower, leave steamy little footprints on the refinished hardwood.
"You're back," she says as she rounds the corner. That 'you' transforms into a plural mid sentence, when she clocks that it's both Hannibal and Will poking around the counters. Neph's only surprised that she's not surprised; she doesn't exactly have a frame of reference for this stuff, for the points in a friendship where it's normal to start hanging out in each others' spaces for non-emergencies. She thinks it might be a case-by-case thing, since she can't imagine wanting to chill at Will's apartment, especially not if his dad's gonna be around. Here, at least, the only awkwardness that might pop up is the stuff they carry around with them every day already. She quirks a smile at Will, a thank you and a good job not letting him get punched or initiate punching all in one. It's possible he won't catch all the subtleties, there.
Ear sufficiently dry, the towel flops back down around her neck. Neph steps onto the tile, grimaces at the cold, and hastily tip-toes her way over to the little rug in front of the sink. "There's coffee?"
Obviously there's coffee, but there's an equally palpable uncertainty in the air. Hesitation, hovering over everybody's shoulders. If she's learned anything from the past almost-year of living with Hannibal (proof she lacks that frame of reference: she went from babysitting the guy to moving in with him in the span of a year, and it's been like eight months since the living together thing started) it's to put on blinders and bull ahead through the Awkward. He appreciates it more often than he doesn't.
He knew she was here. He knew she was here literally this entire time, since he walked in the door.
So there's no reason for him to freeze in the middle of putting the half and half on the counter. There's no reason for everything in his body to stop for a moment when her voice rings out through their (!) kitchen.
But apparently there is still an ease to imagining things as opposed to actually experiencing them, and Hannibal wasn't as prepared as he thought he was for being confronted with the fact that he addressed such a wide, unspoken issue between Neph and himself and she's now...just back in their apartment. Not as if nothing happened - she's coming in with an air of enforced normalcy hanging just as heavy as the shampoo-steam cloud, but she's coming in as if it's something they can get past.
Hannibal remembers her pressing dry, chilly lips to his cheek, and the fact that he's done something she appreciates rings...surprisingly strange. He knows she likes him - they live together, he'd gotten the gist of what that meant somewhere between her spending two weeks of late nights arranging his paperwork with him and between their lease getting signed - but intentionally, knowingly giving her something that she needed is...different.
It's Will who breaks the silence, only looking over at Neph once he's done staring a bit openly and concerned at Hannibal's frozen posture. "Yeah. I didn't know you could need that many settings for coffee, but I'm assuming that's what came out of that machine." For all his fidgety pacing, now that he's gotten a good look at Neph - and he does actually spend a moment looking her up and down, not hiding it at all - he visibly relaxes against the counter.
Will nudges the mugs over a bit further, as if it wasn't clear what they're on the counter for, about the same time as Hannibal reanimates and finds he's capable of finally putting that half and half down near them.
"Did you have a nice run?" Hannibal asks, and he surprises himself that his voice doesn't feel stiff or forced. He's relieved, and it shows, even though his fingertips feel strangely numb and his ribs ache. He feels like he just ran the few miles back to their apartment and he's only just colliding with the exhausted endorphin rush at the tail of it.
Will just squints at them, like he's aware he's on the outside of an in-joke but he knows enough not to ask. He helps himself to the finished pot of coffee first, eyeing Hannibal with a telegraphed suspicion that has Hannibal smirking over at Neph.
The memory of hauling Hannibal, twelve years old and frozen mid-swing, off an older teen punches Neph right between the eyes. It's the sudden robotic shutdown, the way his whole body locks up halfway between one motion and the next, as though his clockwork springs ran down. He comes to a stop with hands and creamer a good six inches off the counter, and Neph can't help but stare.
(Mostly. After a quick beat, her eyes flick to Will, who is also definitely taking all this in. They don't make eye contact, but somehow Neph knows he noticed her looking, that he's acknowledging her, and that they're both a little worried. She wasn't aware it was possible to do all that without exchanging looks, but it's been a day for discoveries.)
Neph bites her lip. Should she not have taken him up on his offer? It wouldn't've cost her anything to ride the bus home with them and slip out for a run after dark. Nothing but this immediate heavy satisfaction sinking into her bones. She would have jittered her way through the rest of the day, she knows that. Does Hannibal? Can he possibly know what he made possible? If he hadn't said anything, she would've stayed. Would have let her guilt for involving them and leaving them in the dark tie her there, without ever thinking about it. The eddies of group dynamics have steered her life for so long, she's prone to letting them set her compass points.
She should explain all that to him. Later, after Will's gone, maybe. It's...not for Will, yet.
"It makes cappuccino, too," Neph says, falling into the rhythm of the tease with thoughtless ease. "If you want a mug that's half foam and seventy percent milk."
Will looks at her, and it's so openly gauging that she shuffles in place, tucking one ankle behind the other. Her pj pants swamp her legs, but she still feels like he's x-raying her scraped knees. Neph resists the urge to tuck her hands, palms clean but pink with abrasions, behind her back. She reaches out for one of the mugs instead, like he won't immediately notice. Hannibal whirs back to life, very probably saving her from a raised eyebrow at least.
"Yes!" she chimes, the uncomplicated glow of a good endorphin rush beaming from her face, from her whole body. Neph doesn't mean to unleash it all on Hannibal with her smile, but she...does, she absolutely does. It's a thank you and a I'm better now and a situation optimal all in one. "Much better'n bus funk!" His eyebrows tilt that fraction of an inch that she's learned means relief, or possibly acceptance, wistfulness without sadness. Neph presses her stinging palms against the cool ceramic and wonders what she ought to make of that.
She'll just have to ask him.
After coffee. Will makes a dubious noise over the pot, though whether at the brew or the two of them, Neph's not sure. It's enough to draw a glint of smug humor from Hannibal, who probably ground the beans by handcrank first and is breathlessly waiting (on the inside) for Will's reaction to the difference. Not that she'll admit there is a difference, but it's possible she might've, maybe, made a weird noise of her own the first time she tried fresh-ground beans. It's possible he won't ever let her live that down. Neph sniffs, but can't hide her own wriggling smile, so she turns hastily away with her cup held out for a pour.
He's glad he offered. He's glad she accepted, took that offer and used it right away. Hannibal wants to use the word challenged, instinctively thinks of someone seeing a new widened boundary and rushing into that portion as testing the resolve of whoever moved the fence, but as his heart climbs back out of his throat and feeling returns to the tips of his fingers, he can see that isn't it. That's not the entire picture.
Because Neph always could have just leapt over that fence. But she'd waited until Hannibal - said it was okay? He knows it's pretense, them staying together. It could be shattered by either of them at any moment, just like anything else in life, and now that it's been tested safely it's oddly comforting to know that she can run off and...
And come back home.
Will is watching the two of them, so relaxed that it's nearly suspicious - until Hannibal realizes it's his mirroring. Hannibal is relaxed, and Neph is beaming, and Will is seeing all of this and instead of turning tail and hiding himself away from all the emotions bleeding across the room, he's calmly stepping through that mess and - if appearances can be believed - enjoying himself.
Hannibal tilts in towards Neph, then, confident in that thank you in her smile, relieved at the fact that she looks uncomplicated in her own relief. For the moment, he can leave thoughts of revenge to the side.
Will is the one holding the coffee pot, and he pours out some for Neph next, leaving his own mug steaming on the counter. When he leans further across to pour some into Hannibal's mug - although Hannibal isn't holding it, seeing as Will and Neph are both arranged on the mug-portion of the counter - Will's mouth opens and his eyebrows meet. He watches Neph with confusion for a moment before his attention flickers to Hannibal and back again.
"Are you--" Will clears his throat, eyebrows raising back up as if he'd just startled himself. "You use the same shampoo." He says with forced calm, as if that, of all the things he's seen between Hannibal and Neph, is the one that doesn't make sense.
Or is he just surprised that he recognizes what Hannibal's shampoo smells like, when another person is wearing it? Hannibal now has to decide which one of those options he likes best, whether it feels nicer to be amused or flattered. "Sometimes." Hannibal had noticed Neph was wearing his - it's its own sort of flattery, but in a deliberate and kind way. They've discussed his aversion to certain strengths of scents often enough that he thinks he knows what that choice means, and he smiles as he reaches between Will and Neph to get to his coffee.
And then slots himself directly between them fully, leaning back against the counter despite the lack of room to do so. It's Will who moves, with a little sound of surprise, although he gets very far out of the way, under pretense of getting the half and half for his coffee.
Hannibal gives a small sigh, hip just barely touching the extra fabric of Neph's shirt. "Having it plain allows you to appreciate the flavors much better, Will."
"I'll take my chances." Said flatly while Will pours in enough cream than his coffee turns only a few shades darker than his own skin. And then, pointedly, no eye contact until the heartbeat afterwards, "Hannibal."
He hadn't said it on the bus ride back, as per Hannibal's request. Now, hearing his real name for the first time, Hannibal feels something warm rush down through the rest of him that has nothing to do with his coffee.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2017-01-20 02:10 am (UTC)But the boy (a name, he wants a name for this face, to know what they'll be destroying later) doesn't come forward to strike any of them. He doesn't run, either, but he stands there panting and looking like he's finally realizing that he's outnumbered and doesn't have any way of checking how much he may or may not be outclassed.
Neph has been vague about the true breadth of her powers, their depth. Hannibal knows some specifics, he knows she's more powerful and varied than her peers, but he's now realizing that means he has no idea how limited the other ones might be. What this one might or might not be capable of.
Hannibal stays put while Neph speaks, a blizzard just barely kept at bay by a locked door. But he can't help but watch the way blown pupils fixate, how her jaw tightens and ticks up just the barest amount, as she turns a general challenge at that boy into a command.
He knows about territories and the politeness that's involved. That's the exact excuse Neph had given for leaving that BnB apartment for hours the day after their argument - to go and make sure that no locals had noticed her display the night before and gotten nervous. There's some sort of honor system about not interrupting one another, and now apparently Neph is invoking it as something a lot less polite and a lot more fearsome.
If Hannibal is the point of a triangle beyond the boy and Neph, then Will makes it an awkward rhomboid, staggered further off behind and to the side of Neph. He looks uninterested in charging the newcomer, no matter how furiously his face is twisted, but Will keeps inching closer to Neph.
'No, what I can't do is go tell Anansi you didn't--didn't do what you did.' The implications there are ones that Hannibal doesn't want to explore without confirmation or denial from Neph. They're too serious.
But quite frankly, he feels willing to take that risk, cut their mutual losses, and decide what this kid's fate is going to be regardless of what Neph may or may not explain later.
Even as the newcomer is backing down - especially with Neph so righteous and proud to his right - Hannibal takes another few steps inward, mostly to shield his words from Will rather than loom. This boy is a spare few inches taller than him, about Will's height, and he's almost twice as broad as Hannibal himself is. Hannibal isn't looking to intimidate in any meaningful physical way. He stops well short of arm range.
And his voice continues to be calm and quiet. "I hope you're taking her seriously. I don't know your name yet, but I know your face. I hope I don't see it again anywhere near her." Said like a promise, his face serene fury.
Beyond him, Will has come up almost level with Neph's shoulder, half a foot from her. His attention is equally divided between Neph and the other two boys, expression tightly concerned.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-20 06:20 am (UTC)Then Hannibal steps past her, arms at his sides, composed and collected except for the glimpse she catches of his eyes and mouth. The restrained violence there sets her stomach tumbling, a small cascade of pebbles followed by a rockslide when he warns Samson away from her. When he follows her threats with his own, but because she made them first.
This isn't just backing her up, something she's somehow come to hope for from Hannibal, even if she wasn't yet at the point of expecting it. This is grabbing her problem by the ankles so its legs don't drag while she hauls it away. It's literally stepping up and putting himself in the middle of something she'd known, five minutes ago, she'd handle herself. Unasked, unanticipated, as though it were inevitable.
Neph--doesn't know how to handle that. With gloves on? Held at a safe distance? Cradled close to her chest? The buzzing from before, that spreading awareness that she is not an organism alone, but one plugged into a greater network, compresses to diamond stillness behind her sternum. It is sharp and raw and shining, too razor-edged too touch, too bright to look at. She stares at the back of Hannibal's head instead, Samson barely registering in her field of view. When Will draws up beside her, her wide eyes fall on him. For one accidental moment, their eyes catch, and her whole face blasting are you seeing this is this happening.
It must be, because Samson says, in the dead even voice of a Pewterarm who's lost count of how many bones he's broken. "I know yours, too. Best remember that."
"Samson," Neph barks, head snapping back around. Why is he still here? She should've anticipated it'd take some shoving to get him to back off - past evidence kinda bears that out. She reaches for Copper, compresses it to mirror smoothness and shoves it at him again. It's not as easy, this time, with only dregs guttering in her gut (she must've flared it hard, before, almost tapped it out). The wall doesn't go far, just enough to press against the red haze that had begun to seep from his body. He flinches. "I'll take you apart if you even think it. Get going."
She came on too strong, knows it the second his rage-bright eyes catch on hers, shift speculatively between her and Hannibal. Samson sucks in one last breath, Pewter coiled tight at his core, before he storms off down the path. There must be a second exit, an entrance into another wing of the museum.
Neph watches until she can't hear his footsteps, and then she lights Tin and strains extended senses after him. No echoes suggest he's doubled back, no crashing or banging indicates a tantrum just around the corner. The smell of him lingers in the air, a smell she hadn't realized she'd catalogued somewhere in her hindbrain. Her stomach heaves, but there's the dry iron scent of imminent snow to calm it, the cold frost of Hannibal's mouthwash, the cedar smoke of Will's aftershave lingering on the collar of his shirt, but not his skin. The urge to gag recedes, a little.
With Tin dismissed, Neph takes a deep breath. Then another. And another, until they're not so deep as they are short, sharp, and spiraling out of her control. She whirls away from the boys, all the careful, cautious composure she's been clutching flying apart at the seams. A burst of frenetic energy, of adrenaline and suppressed flight response, jangles her limbs. She stomps back to the two pillars and paces between them, wrenching herself back and forth and back again. One arm curls around her ribs, pressing against their heaving, while her other hand flattens over her mouth to catch and smother her steaming breath.
One final turn puts her back at her original pillar, and then her knees cut out. She folds to the ground, feet planted, knees up around her shoulders, hands reaching up to scrape her hair out of her pale face. "Shit." Neph gasps.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-21 01:02 pm (UTC)He and the boy turn as one back towards her. And then Neph threatens him, again, this time on Hannibal's own behalf.
His mouth stays open, lips falling a bit more slack, a small puzzled and wondering expression for the few beats until sound and motion start up again from the outsider. Hannibal doesn't even bother glancing back for the boy until he's been listening to him walk away for several seconds, and only then because it's nice, sometimes, to be able to watch someone retreat away from you.
Hannibal's been involved in plenty of confrontations over the years, and several of them had multiple players. It's just that everyone else has never been on his side during it. That's happened twice in his life - once with Murasaki, once with Neph. And now again with Neph, except Hannibal was the one who intervened into one of her fights.
Hannibal and Will. Will, who is watching Neph with restrained worry, forehead lined and mouth partially open with words he keeps not saying. He must see something before Hannibal does, because moments later is when Neph - changes.
She stalks away, breath puffing unevenly into the air. Hannibal follows her pacing with light footsteps, alarmed and surprised until he reconsiders what he's fairly certain he caught implied.
This likely isn't about - or not just about - the physical danger. This is about the emotional forces at work behind possible physical dangers. And with an ice-dunk of realization, Hannibal knows he wants to track this boy down. He's good at finding things, he could follow the boy like a bloodhound out of this place, sneak up behind him or even do it from a distance if he found an appropriate weapon. All Hannibal knows is he wants to kill him for how he's made Neph--
How he's made Neph feel.
Neph's here, though. Neph is feeling those things here and now.
And Hannibal realizes that, more importantly than revenge, he can't leave her. Even with Will hovering near her and then circling back towards Hannibal himself, Hannibal can't leave her alone right now.
Will's arm moves halfway towards Hannibal's hip in an aborted arc. "Can I have your copy of the map?" It's in Hannibal's back pocket, folded up. Neph had taken one too, had hidden it somewhere in her pockets and layers, but Will had shrunk away from the friendly greeter and avoided getting one. Hannibal takes it mechanically out and hands it over, Will accepting it with a nod and a bitten-off thanks, already turning away to glance over it.
Hannibal moves in just as Neph swears under her breath, vapor steaming in front of her face. It creates a film of moisture - soon to be ice - across her eyelashes and the edges of her hair where she holds it out of her face. "Neph," Hannibal says, voice-- He doesn't quite have the words for it. Braced, perhaps?
One hand comes out to press against the back of one of hers, right by her temple. "It's alright, you've won for now. He's left." Which is said with a certainty of his own - Neph might have been able to listen beyond anyone's realization that that was what she was doing, but Hannibal also can't smell him as strongly. He's gone, or at least so far out of the wind that he'd take a while getting back over to them.
Hannibal is crouched in front of her, one knee planted on the ground. Will comes seemingly out of nowhere on Neph's side, though, and sits smoothly down in one motion, jeans on cold stone. There's about half a foot of space between his leg and Neph's, and he doesn't lean into her line of sight to try to get her attention.
Instead, he presses the map between them, keeps it low to the ground and offers it up for her to look at if she'd like. "There's other entrances to and from the courtyard. The one to the right goes through an armory exhibit, there'll be a lot less people there than back through the Nepal thing that's big right now. No one'll look twice at us getting out through there."
Hannibal hears the unspoken undercurrent there - so we won't make a scene, and you can leave whenever you want to get moving again. He nods, brief eye contact with Will - who is subdued and quiet by Neph's side, barely moving - and then attempting it again with Neph.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-22 03:14 am (UTC)She doesn't flinch - the movement was too slow and deliberate for that - but she does take a sharp breath as she looks up. Even kneeling, Hannibal's taller than she is, forcing her to crane her neck. He might realize that, with the way he ducks his head and slides his hand forward to cup the back of hers. It's a chill touch that warms as he speaks, but she doesn't quite register his words, because this isn't the first time he's kneeled for her.
She'd been upset about that creeper, Pace, had tried to play it off since they were technically on a job at the time. But Dr. Lecter had noticed, and managed to wring more of the truth out of her than she'd ever intended. Instead of cutting her loose as a bad investment, he'd crouched down like this. You deserve to make that choice for yourself.
Neph stares at the boy in front of her now and thinks Oh, that's when I met you.
Her fingers unclench from her hair. The air goes out of her long and slow as she drops her hands and resettles them on her knee. Hannibal's hover above them until she manages a nod, shows she heard him. Even now she can lie well enough for that much.
Another movement to her left resolves into Will, dropping to the ground with a faint creak of denim and the familiar rustling of several layered sweaters. Neph blinks at him, her head tipping the tiniest bit - Hannibal she'd expected, but for Will to involve himself any further is...no, she doesn't know what that's all about, until he unfolds one of the museum maps and traces a clear escape.
"Oh," he's right. That'd be her assessment, too, if she were casing the place and plotting an exit through the sculpture garden. For a moment it's as though the three of them could be putting just such a plan together, seated in a lopsided triangle, map spread across their legs. Will has an agoraphobe's sense for avoiding crowds, Hannibal knows the art and she'd have the security and shielding all sorted out. It's a brief burst of fantasy, but it feels so nice that Neph folds it up and tucks it away like an old polaroid in a wallet. She forces herself to refocus on the cheaply printed map and the rooms Will points out. Samson probably went that way, or maybe he doubled through the 'Ancient World' galleries in the adjacent Center Street building. Will's proposed route is more direct, which makes it better in her mind, except: "But...we just got here. It's--" she looks back to Hannibal, brows pinching, "It's your birthday."
Frustration thrums through her alongside the restlessness. She ruined it. Or Samson did. But Samson's her problem, not Hannibal's, definitely not Will's, he shouldn't be allowed to fuck things up for them. Neph bites her lip and tips her head back, studying the open square of cottony sky above. The clouds hang low and heavy, but she wants nothing more than to be up there on that roof, scraping their undersides.
"You guys should stay," she says as she forces her gaze back down. "I'll--I can't, I gotta--I gotta run, I'm too--"
Words fail her, then, so she lifts a hand off her knee. It trembles in the air between the three of them, a too-visible weakness, nerves and fear and anger and spent adrenaline. Neph curls it into a fist a moment later, ears burning with more than just the cold.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-23 02:18 am (UTC)Hannibal's hand ends up falling down, petal-soft, onto the back of Neph's, all of them pressed down against one bony knee. He ends up watching her silently while Will, surprisingly, nudges close to her and gets a slightly more interactive response.
Offering her an immediate out was clearly what she instinctively wanted, but not what she thinks she deserves.
Strike that. As Hannibal watches her physically shrink and coil into herself, a spring gathering energy for its impending huge ricochet away, he realizes she does think she deserves to run away.
She just doesn't want to do it with them.
"I don't care about that." The words burn like coals on his tongue and he rushes to spit them out. "I couldn't care less about what day it is. What matters to me is you, Neph." And he doesn't know that he's walking into it again, this merging of past and present as he says more echoes of his older and lonelier self. All Hannibal knows is that the concept that the date of his birth needs to be happy in such a basic sense of the word tastes bitter, right now.
He wants closeness to what matters, no matter the date. And Neph is what's important right now, pale and exposed nerves right in front of him. He has the sense-memory of them pressed up against each other in his bed after one of his nightmares, of waking up with his hair stuck sideways on his scalp and her temple dug into his cheek, his own limbs wrapped around her. He wants that, right now. He wants to sink his teeth into what's made her unhappy and bring her its still-beating heart.
He wants, and he wants with a heated ferocity that strangles his voice. His hands silently return to grip both of Neph's this time, wrapping around their backs where she's curled them into fists.
Beside them, Will's hand twitches up and then, smooth and slow, easily avoided, he nudges against the outside of Neph's knee as well.
"Harder to sneak up on a group than on a single person," Will says, quiet like it might be easier to hear that way. His voice is even, face still. If Hannibal didn't know any better, wasn't familiar enough with him to see the deliberate way Will is toning himself down to seem less threatening and more soothing, Hannibal might even say he looked tired, or drunk - eyes at half-mast, gaze casually avoiding everyone else's faces.
And then Will swallows, and in that small bob is a real tremor, fear shaking out through his limbs and evaporating from his fingertips. "You're not 'too' anything, Neph. And neither of us wants to leave."
Will makes brief eye contact with him, then. Hannibal sees real fear flash there, anger left steaming in its wake. Hannibal has to blink the afterimages of it away.
It's instinctive, to lean in and close more of the small gap between the three of them. Hannibal speaks next into the gathering chill. "I will never abandon you, Neph."
no subject
Date: 2017-01-23 07:46 am (UTC)'I need you'. 'You make me happy'. And now, 'you matter'. Neph never imagined getting used to statements like these, and now she has to wonder if she ever will. She stills under his hand, launch temporarily delayed as she fixes back on this time and place. On this Hannibal Lecter, her Hannibal, and his brandywine brown eyes. They'll wash out a little as he ages, she realizes, and he'll get a little better at veiling what's behind them from anyone trying to get a read. But maybe not from her. Not this time. Right now they burn with black hole intensity, that pull she's noticed before, and Neph nearly forgets her own center.
"I'm okay," she says, soft like snow. If he believes her, he doesn't show it, taking her other hand instead as if to squeeze the seriousness of his intent into her skin. One corner of her mouth hooks up in a crooked little smile. "Really, I...was gonna get my head straight and meet you at home."
It wasn't about running away from him, or Will. She needs to run, sometimes. For herself, for her sanity, for the sake of sharpening her edge. Running, moving, has been her way of coping for so long, of shedding the thoughts, memories and feelings that would otherwise gnaw her down to sinew and bone. Not only does it work, but she loves it. Loves the deafening rush of her blood and the sweet ache in her muscles, the temporary quiet calm in her own head. Nothing else ever flipped her off switch, even if the effects only lasted as long as her fatigue. As she turns her hands under Hannibal’s, brings them palm to palm with her fingers curled around his wrists, she wonders if she could lose herself in his compulsion just as well.
The whole point of being Mistborn is to have more options than other people. Still, she'd miss the wind-whipped freedom if he took it personal every time. If Hannibal could keep up with her, if she could share some of that fierce heart-pumping joy with him, would he understand? Would he let her go and trust her to come back, to come home?
But she's already conceded the run she'd wanted when she'd said she 'was' gonna. Will, perhaps noticing her slip, points out that it'd be smarter if they all went together. There's no warning note in his voice, but Neph still picks up some subtext. Some...worry. Because a strange guy got her alone and threatened her and now she's being twitchy about it? Because for all Will knows, that guy could be waiting to catch her on her own again? Or just because she went past 'twitchy' and straight into 'collapsing on the frosty ground' and he wants to make sure she's okay?
What did he see when he looked at her? What did he read from her? Neph has...so many questions. But he brushes his knuckles against her knee, inches from Hannibal's grip, and she makes an executive decision: she doesn't care. She slips her hand out from under Hannibal's and takes Will's, too. Gingerly, just curling her fingers around the first and second knuckles of his, but definitely a hold. Will would understand about the running, she bets.
"We'll be fine out there," she flashes Will a sidelong grin, in the hopes that his shifting gaze will catch it, "He knows what'd happen if there weren't security guards around to break up a fight."
I'll take you apart, she'd said. The simple words come back to her, along with the rush of anger she'd felt when she'd realized Samson's ploy to control her. Just let him try to catch her in an alley, or on a rooftop. The last Pewterarm to do so got buried under half a tenement building. Neph's not proud of what happened to Ryan, but already she knows she wouldn't spare a shred of guilt for Samson if he tried to blindside her again. And if he went for either of her friends...
He can try. Just let him. Let him put out the word she'd threatened him on behalf of someone he didn't recognize. Let them try to make a weakness of it. She just manipulated the extent of Pewter in another Allomancer's body, she'll find a way to manipulate Iron in their blood if they go for the people around her.
Hannibal leans into these thoughts, so close the steam of his words wreathes their heads. So close she hardly has to tilt her head back to meet his eyes, her own the depthless blue of a glacier crevasse. He's definitely pulling at her, exerting whatever non-mutation magnetism he has to make sure she's listening. Or maybe she's projecting, and it's just the force of those words that lock onto her brain. A promise. No, a vow? A lie, potentially. They've talked about this before, about unlucky and senseless loss, but even then he'd said he didn't think he'd 'willingly' leave her. This is more of the same, just using words that strike like bullets. Words like 'never', and 'abandon'. You don't know that Neph despairs, Don't promise me that. Hadn't she just told herself it was useless to worry about how she'd deal with it if Hannibal ever struck from some unidentified blindspot?
She's survived everyone who's ever left her behind, but she's not sure she could survive that. She's not sure she could survive believing him. Just the thought twists in her chest, bending her over her knees until her forehead leans featherlight on his cheek. "I--" believe you. I want to believe you. I'm afraid of you. I'm with you. I staked this place because you're here.
"Hey!" a sharp, male voice calls from the stone stairs. Neph's head flies up, and there's a security guard standing there with one hand braced on hip-radio. "What're you kids doing?"
A persona spreads over her face like quicksilver, glinting in the sun. She smiles, eyes crinkling, nose-wrinkle out in force. "Just checking the map! We got a little turned around but I think it's suit of armor time." Neph hops to her feet without letting go of either hand. Luckily she's short enough that this doesn't wrench their shoulders much.
The guard nods, probably sold by the map crinkling beside her boot. "That's to your left," he gestures with that radio, and moves along when Neph shouts her thanks. She looks back down at Hannibal, at Will, heart hammering behind her innocuous mask, and says, "I think that's our cue."
no subject
Date: 2017-01-24 01:10 am (UTC)They're not quite there yet, after all, but Hannibal's own coping mechanism is coming around the corner; losing himself completely to his own preferred fast-paced passion. His residency will have far less forgiving hours than even his current clinic work and schooling does. He'll be gone for literally more than a day at a time, sleeping at strange times (and possibly in strange places). How it'll effect his and Neph's relationship remains to be seen.
If he'll even keep with it - continue following in the prelaid footsteps he'd decided on both a few years before and also decades ago - still remains to be seen. But as he sees his future right now, that's part of it. And so is Neph.
So he gives it a short consideration, when she says she meant to just run off to calm down and then meet them at the apartment. But he's also glad it isn't up for debate. Because this isn't...just Neph getting angry and wanting to blow off steam. This is Neph, threatened by something Hannibal hadn't been aware had ever happened, shaken and surely with no one else she's any more likely to talk about it to.
Not that Hannibal is sure she will tell him. For all their proximity - and it gathers close to them now, Neph bending towards him and he instinctively curling inwards too - there aren't many vocalized secrets between them. Neph is almost always silent about the vulnerable parts of herself. Even the innocuous details from her past life are few and far between.
As nosy as Hannibal is, he's never taken it personally. But now he wishes he had...more. A flash of desire, as she leans forward and lets go of one of his hands. Hannibal watches her wrap fingers around Will's loosely, watches their point-line-point connection become a three-pointed one.
A triangle, perhaps?
Will blinks at Neph with wide eyes, pupils still blown from earlier. He looks startled and uncertain and suddenly very, very young.
Hannibal hasn't ever touched Will in a friendly way, only with the excuse of medical check-ups immediately following his head injury weeks ago, but there is a flutter of some of the protective desire that draws Hannibal's fingers to Neph's shoulder or cheek or knuckles when she looks forlorn - or even when they're both happy. There's a dull glow of inner contentment mixed with the sharp edge of worry, the kind that wants to spill over and touch someone else to reassure both parties.
Hannibal's eyes slide closed for a moment when Neph tilts her forehead against his cheek, and the last thing Hannibal sees are Will's dark blue eyes trained on him in turn, searching and lost and maybe a bit--
It's a word Hannibal has associated with himself for so long he can recognize it immediately in someone else. Is it because of that show of friendship from Neph, no matter how small? When was the last time someone reached out to Will that way, took such a clear chance that could backfire and hurt the newcomer instead of Will himself? Is it a sign at all of what might come if Hannibal decided to take that chance with Will?
Because what Hannibal saw in Will's face for that brief moment was hunger.
And then the security guard. Will snaps straight around, shoulders still hunched but spine erect, and Hannibal turns an annoyed glance back in the same direction. 'Suspicious adults interrupting important activities' is pretty high on his short list of pet peeves, at this point in time.
But Neph reanimates, mask thawing and fluidly taking on an appropriate demeanor for warding off an adult concerned that he's breaking up some sort of teenage shenanigans. Both Hannibal and Will rock a bit towards her when their arms get dragged up, but neither of them move until the guard is already heading back away.
Hannibal stands and strengthens their grip on each other, repositioning fingers so they slot together at this new angle. Will is staring down at the tenuous link between Neph and himself like he's afraid it might break. Hannibal catches his eyes straying to Neph and Hannibal's own hands, then back to his own, and then slowly ticking his wrist to a better angle so he can grip the outside of Neph's palm by wrapping his fingers around it. His own fingers are pressed tight against themselves in a sterile version of holding hands - there'll clearly be no interweaving of fingers - but Will watches this happening like he's giving it real serious thought and can hardly believe what he's seeing.
He doesn't snap out of it in time to offer any commentary on what's just happened, so Hannibal bumps his upper arm gently against Neph's shoulder and does instead. "Shall we, then?" Hand in hand, walking away from a waking nightmare of Neph's.
It's...a strangely appealing and unique birthday present.
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Date: 2017-01-24 03:01 am (UTC)But as Hannibal slots their fingers together, she lets go of the course she'd half-charted, wiping the slate clean of rooflines and window ledges. Maybe she'll double back some other time, test the feasibility just in case the Walters ever has something she wants. If she ran off now, after they'd both backed her, it'd be nothing but self indulgence. Worse, it might actually spit in the face of what Hannibal's offered.
Neph might not be able to bring herself to believe his promise, but she's pretty sure he meant it. People often seem to, at the time.
She puts that out of her mind, sets aside all thoughts of conditional support and affection to look back down at Will, who's adjusted his grip as though they're both wearing mittens. There's a crinkle on his forehead she hasn't seen before, almost-but-not-quite-worried as he studies their hands. A broiling surge of embarrassment fills her chest and singes her cheeks; should she...not have reached for him when he nudged her? Did she overstep again? Uncertainty bubbles up from under her 'no sir nothing suspicious to see here' mask, singes her cheeks pink, but why wouldn't he have let her hand slip away when she stood up, if he minded? Why would he take a surer grip? It must be...okay?
Hannibal tips into her, jolting her from that well-worn rut in her thoughts. Neph blinks at him, anxious lines smoothing away at the corners of her eyes. When she turns to Will again, her hesitance is more muted, less linked to this one thing. She gives his hand a light tug, silently urging him to his feet. "Yeah, I think so."
They wait for Will to collect the map and get his feet under him, then head for the armory. At first, the silence is wary, cautious, all of them on the lookout for a strike. Neph's pretty sure Samson came alone, knows he wasn't in town long enough to've made any serious alliances of his own, but Will and Hannibal have no reason to think the same. They don't know the guy, they know if he has any cranky friends, and they don't know much about how a blacklist scenario plays out (neither does Neph, really, but only because nobody's ever cut off a Mistborn on purpose). Neph stares straight ahead, past suits of armor and racks of halberds, gratingly aware that her reaction must've given them both a wonky impression of how dangerous Samson actually is.
She should've hit him. Nobody's all that scary with a broken nose and a few less teeth. Or maybe that's all the pointy metal talking. It's hard not to feel braver surrounded by an arsenal.
Will was right that there are fewer people in these galleries, but they still get more than their fair share of stares. Three kids trailing along hand-in-hand, paying little attention the actual exhibits, that's the sort of thing people notice. Neph tries not to think about what they must be thinking. She reaches for that untouchable carelessness Hannibal projects so easily, but it doesn't fit her quite the same. She's much better at being part of the background, or creating a character for the occasion. Layla, maybe? Even Elle can handle the occasional audience. Her grip tightens on the hands in hers, but then they're through the Ancient World nave, then the lobby, past the ticketing desk and back at street level.
Neph breathes out, the din of traffic and pedestrians and city life providing better cover than anything the hushed interior of a museum could offer. She might wonder if Samson came this way, but there are too many conflicting sounds and scents to bother trying, and that's as comforting an excuse as any to just dismiss him from her mind.
Or can she? The further they walk, the more the watchful tension dissipates, the more she figures everyone's minds must be turning back to what just went down. How much did Hannibal and Will overhear, and what did they make of it? Had Samson said anything really condemning? Neph's ability to recall conversations is pretty limited at the best of times, but she can't fish anything from the red haze of those moments. Was there anything there that might tip Will off? Would he say anything if he were suspicious? And--and that's not even getting to what they're probably thinking about how that fight got started in the first place.
Neph fights not to squeeze down or let go of their hands, not to make any outward signs, but her footsteps fall unusually heavy and her shoulders inch up. She doesn't want to answer these questions. She doesn't want this silence. The status quo is unbearable, teetering, but she's terrified of the fall.
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Date: 2017-01-25 03:31 am (UTC)The chain of them gets some stares, something Hannibal neither relishes nor hates. He ignores the outside world completely, intent only on looking out for threats - something he can mostly relegate off to his sense of smell. He won't forget the musk-scratched kettle-car backfire scent of that boy. It would wake him out of a dead sleep, the scalp-itching awareness of the danger behind that scent is already so strong in his mind.
Whether or not the boy is dangerous - and Hannibal is aware that, no matter how dangerous he is, Neph simply must be more physically dangerous - he has some other hold over Neph. Or did. Still does, in the sense that she collapsed after he left and her heart is still clearly thud-thudding somewhere high in her throat. An emotional tangle is snarled in their shared past, one that he counted on Neph tripping over when they met up again. That's a barrier. That's...a mine, hidden from view, one Hannibal hadn't even known was in Neph's field.
How many other secrets does she have? Does she even think of them daily, or are they buried from everyone, even her? Does Neph consciously hide them from him? Would she continue to if he asked to learn about her?
He doesn't want to scare her away. As they press through the chilly January air and walk a familiar path towards the bus stop they got off at - even though Hannibal knows they'll be waiting at least twenty minutes for it, assuming it isn't late - Hannibal presses through his options like paging through a notebook.
It's jarring, then, that it's not his own meticulous sketching of the situation that breaks the silence.
"Neph." It's so soft but immediately shatters the silence between them. Once broken, Hannibal finds that even when he tilts just enough to glance across Neph and then Will, it's as if some manner of veil has been lifted.
It's difficult to see both of them at the same time, but Will isn't trying to drag behind. He's level enough that Hannibal can still see his face. His eyebrows are furrowed down, but his mouth softens the frown. There's movement at their hips, and Hannibal realizes that Will is experimentally shifting their joined hands - tilting them up a bit higher, as if reminding them that they're there. "You don't have to talk about it now if you don't want to. In public. Or so soon after." Will's mouth twitches, like he's willing to keep spilling out possible excuses for her, but the tide is kept at bay until he presses his mouth thin and earnest and keeps going.
Will's gaze keeps seeking the side of Neph's chin and cheek and, unless Hannibal's mistaken, her eyes. "But there was something there. If you want to talk about it-- I'll listen."
Will's eyes blink, almost sleepily, like he's coming out of a trance. His gaze catches Hannibal's for just a moment, and Hannibal feels as though he's being judged for worthiness. And then, in another first, Will speaks for Hannibal. "Both of us would, if that's what you wanted."
Hannibal's fingers curl protectively in around Neph's, and he finds with surprise that it's nice, to know that someone he cares about cares about the other. To know that Neph is cushioned on her other side by someone perhaps even better at reading her than Hannibal himself is - Hannibal feels no flash of jealousy, but like his own reach has been augmented. This isn't a contest, it's a-- a team effort.
The word 'family' echoes, turns to smoke, and that veil keeps him from speaking. All Hannibal can do is look at Neph and Will and nod.
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Date: 2017-01-25 07:45 am (UTC)The beginnings of a tension headache bloom at her temples and the nape of her neck. She's considering whether or not she can discretely pop her jaw when Will murmurs her name.
Neph's not the only one surprised, if the way Hannibal takes an extra-long step forward to look across her means anything (a small victory; he can't just doubletake right over the top of her head. Neither of them can.). Her head jerks toward Will automatically, gaze skittering across his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose. Is she avoiding his eyes to be polite, or to protect herself? She...doesn't really know. The last time he dipped his feelers in her thoughts, he nearly babbled himself into an extra-bad concussion. Neph hastily faces forward, scans the street, kicks out at a wadded up piece of newsprint as it blows by. Will doesn't give any sign that he's upset she's avoiding eye contact, just lifts their hands a little in, what, acknowledgement?
He presses on. Neph feels Hannibal's breath against her shoulder, ruffling her hair, as he keeps his head turned to watch. She doesn't dare try to check his expression. Would it be approving, discouraging, or that blank 'now what' look he sometimes gets when he's content to let baffling events play out? Would it be that hungry, wanting look, the one she dreads and anticipates in equal measure? What had Will called it? A void? And what was it he'd said - implied - about her? That she doesn't ask him direct questions or give him the chance to share, doesn't want to share herself in return.
You don't have to talk about it.
I'll listen. A needle of shame pierces her throat, hitches her breathing. For a wild second there, she hadn't been sure if the 'something' he meant was the story with Sampson or the question of how she has any authority to kick someone out of Baltimore. Neph almost stumbles on her extra half-a-step, then does it again when he loops Hannibal in on his offer. If he were asking about the bigger picture, and not about what happened to her, wouldn't he assume Hannibal already knew? How...unfair of her, underestimating him like that. Will's the one who offered her a quick and quiet way out of the museum. He's earned the benefit of her doubt. She's just so--she's all twisted up around this, now, spinning phantoms from shadows.
Hannibal squeezes her hand in silent agreement. Neph can't help but notice that he let Will speak for him, just now, dictate terms and conditions. If that's what you wanted. Hannibal's getting better, but he's still more likely to press on an opening if it appears, and he doesn't leave easy outs. He goes along with this anyway, either swept along by Will or badly unsettled by her behavior. Neph squeezes back with both hands, blunt nails digging into the outside of Will's palm and between Hannibal's knuckles. Her fingers are plenty long, she's just proportionally that much smaller than either of them.
Funny, Samson's had been just as outsized. Morbid interest drove her to test the spread of her fingertips against the bruises he left on her chest and thigh, a span that came up short. She would never've imagined herself willingly bracketed like this, back then, but she hadn't given it a second thought when they'd all stood up to leave the courtyard hand in hand.
"It's not what you're thinking," Neph winces. In a way, that's the problem. It's never as bad as everyone's ready to suspect, so what actually happened seems less legit, somehow. Then she remembers just who she's talking to, and turns thoughtful eyes on Will. "I mean. Probably. I dunno what you picked up. Maybe it's, um, exactly what you're thinking."
It's as much a question as a caution, and maybe that's why she lets their eyes catch. Will's are dark, heavily lidded, but Neph doesn't think for a second that he's being casual about this. It's just not there in his voice.
They don't really talk about what he can do - I'm not gonna be a goddamn oracle for you - and normally she puts it out her mind. Maybe she shouldn't've said anything; if he knows, if he plucked it out of her head, surely he wouldn't make her say it out loud. But what if it's rattling around in his brain like a wrecking ball? She doesn't want that, not to share it or inflict it.
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Date: 2017-01-25 04:32 pm (UTC)It doesn't mean the same thing to him that it does to Hannibal. With a mind already so full of everyone else's impressions - their thoughts, their reflections, their disappointments - it's difficult for anything to keep feeling sacred. Hannibal clings to what he wants, lets all dissenting opinions roll off of him like oil over wings, but Will is soil that everyone else's roots grow through.
If there used to be something inside of him that craved anything better to call 'family', it's been eaten right out of the soil after so many years. Or maybe just the name has, just the audacity to call it what it rightfully is, because Will absolutely feels the pull to help others. To reach out for that connection, no matter how many times he's ended up with bitten fingers over it.
He feels Neph's distracted concern almost like a hand warding him off, but Will thinks...that might just be him. Neph doesn't ask him to stop, or lean away, just breathes surprised and stares like she didn't expect someone to comment on the half-healed wound she's been licking since they walked away from that confrontation. When her fingers squeeze into the side of his hand, Will actually lets his shoulders slope back down into something almost relaxed, because that's so clearly a permission.
'It's not what you're thinking.'
Bile-sour fills Will's mouth, and he only looks away briefly to swallow it back down. His eye contact returns, staring at the blue of Neph's, the way they're blown with guilt and uncertainty and the tremors of something Will actually and truly hasn't ever had to face before.
He's never been more aware of the difference between them - the gendered aspect of it, that is. It suddenly looks like a yawning gap, but when he reaches out across anyway he finds it must've just been a mirage, because he touches the other side and can begin clawing at the base of it. He still can't climb it, but he can scope the shape and size.
"I'm not about to argue-- degrees of trauma here." Will says, and even that hurts coming up, burns like getting sick. Her eye contact isn't by accident - it can't be, they're still relatively new to one another but they both know enough, she knows enough about him - and so Will...makes himself look. "That's not what hurting is about. It's not a comparison with other events that didn't happen."
And maybe his breath's picking up a little. Maybe there's shadows of his own experiences - not the same, but the same underlying narrative of not enough to excuse your reaction - that are what help push him to keep pushing for Neph. "It's about what did happen. And how you-- felt about it." His cheeks burn, self-conscious both to be saying those things out loud and at the thought of what he's going to need to do if Neph refuses this or he's entirely wrong. But he just can't--
He can't see what he thinks he's seeing and not say something. He just can't do it. So he squeezes Neph's hand in return, stomach tight and throat half-closed, and waits.
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Date: 2017-01-25 09:07 pm (UTC)"It is though," she mutters, shoulders bunching. "You gotta recognize the bullets you dodge. And when people get it wrong or think...think something happened when it didn't, that's not something you get to come back from."
Ben. Ben. Is she ever going to have a chance to make that right? He'd had his whole life uprooted 'cuz of her, and she never even got to apologize. The longer anyone goes without hearing news of him, the more convinced she is that the Inquisitors must've found him first. And now there's nobody but her to say what did or didn't happen between them, just a formal dismissal of charges and assholes like Samson snarling shit like Everyone knows you and Argus--
She shoves that away, buries it back under the rubble with all the other things she's done but can't change, way down deep where Will can't dig it up. He's not wrong, exactly, to say she's still hurting. Neph hates to admit it, but if anyone other than Samson had come at her with ugly accusations she'd've handled it differently. There's something wired wrong in her, now, after what happened between them. She doesn't like it but she can't begin to see how to untangle it, either. How is she no better now than when she was six, twelve, fourteen, lashing out with her abilities and complicating others' lives?
Maybe if people would stop coming at her first, she wouldn't have to.
Something did happen to her - Will's right about that, too. He doesn't exactly ask her how it made her feel, but the statement is open ended enough that it could be taken as a question. Hadn't Lecter asked her the same thing? What do you want to tell others? What would make you feel better? Or something like that. She was too tired and freaked out and painfully sore to remember it clearly, aside from the part where she totaled his kitchen in a childish display of temper. Neph cringes a little bit at the memory, but she's surprised to realize that the questions wrapped up inside it never really went away. She's even more surprised to realize that they've been niggling at the back of her mind ever since, accreting layers of thought like pearls.
What happened matters, because it's still affecting her. And how she feels about it matters, too, because those feelings direct her actions, push her to do things like stake territory and wield her Allomancy in new and startling ways. If she doesn't dig down on that, she won't ever be able to predict herself, she'll just keep reacting blindly and fucking things up.
"We worked together," she says, haltingly. "A couple'a times. Usually everybody else was older, so we were...friendly, kinda? That's what I thought, anyway, I guess he read it differently."
That's it, the part she just can't get her head around. How did she miss it? Was she putting something more out there? Is that a thing she does? When did he decide they ought to be something more than that, and why didn't he just try to talk to her about it first instead of tacking that decision onto her, too? Neph's right hand twitches in Hannibal's with the need to scrub at her mouth, rake at her hair. "There was this work party, and we were leaving, and--I din't see it coming so I didn't say 'no' fast enough and then there was a huge fight. That's all. That's what gets me. I should've seen it."
Neph drops her head back with an inarticulate growl of frustration. It's easier, a lot easier, to be angry and tired about this than to remember how scared and small she'd felt. She's Mistborn. It's almost not even allowed.
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Date: 2017-01-26 11:10 pm (UTC)Not relevant. Not something Will needs to dig at right now, because god knows neither of them needs him with just enough information that he's chasing possibilities into waking nightmares on his way home later.
So he visibly steels himself, draws himself inward as if wringing out the bad thoughts. But he's going to just have to let Neph go ahead and push the conversation back into the present - or the near-past, as it happens - and sure enough, she does. The description comes out in staccato hesitancy, frustration rusting off her words.
This, too, makes Will's stomach churn. Neph doesn't say it - doesn't even really look it, except for when he sees the way her other shoulder tenses like she wants to take that hand back from Marijus, presumably to fiddle with something - but it's not just annoyance. It's not just rage.
It's guilt. Or maybe more accurately, shame. It's a sour and uncertain thing, and it chips away at Will's ribs, makes them feel brittle as he forces himself to keep breathing through this.
It's not even easy to miss, really. Even if you just look at the words, she's dragging at the concept that she should've someone known it was going to happen. Like guys hitting on girls who aren't interested and then getting violent when there's a misunderstanding is just a fact that she should've known better active self-defense about.
It's another squeeze to Will's stomach when he thinks that maybe, that's kinda the impression that rolls off a lot of people in the news when they talk about this, too. The kinda people who talk about 'sexual assault' and 'bad decisions' with air quotes and follow it with concerns about football scholarships.
Marijus is radiating, off to the side, practically steaming with the force of an anger that quite frankly almost distracts Will away from the topic for a split second. But then he digs his heels in, because this is about Neph - Marijus is fine and welcome to have his own reaction, but Will can talk about it with him later (and since when did Will start organizing his friends' problems so he could personally help them with them, anyway?).
It's about Neph, not him or Marijus, and so Will sucks in some welcome icy January air, adjusts his hand in Neph's to hold hers a bit more tightly, and tries. "Has it-- ever occurred to you that if you didn't see his interest, and some ugly misunderstanding grew out of that... That he also fucked up by not seeing your lack of interest? At-- at literally no point in that did it sound like he was entitled to a fucking thing, because no one ever is.
"People get wires crossed all the time when they don't just use their words. Jumping-- jumping all over someone because you think you might've seen some interest, or whatever the hell he did, that's not-- Normal people don't do that, Neph. That's not on you to have gotten ahead of him making a shitty decision. That's on him for being a fucking moron from square one."
There's a blur of motion beyond Neph, Marijus's head ducking down to speak closer to Neph's ear. "'Didn't say 'no' fast enough'." He quotes, voice flat and eyes deadly. Will forgets to breathe, but Marijus isn't even looking at him. "That alone says it all. I've never known you to hesitate to make your interest or lack of interest quite clear, Neph. That he came at you so quickly is enough to say with certainty that he was in the wrong."
Will can't say he disagrees - thinks maybe even that Marijus had a better handle on how to untwist the story back out into a clear line of 'and here is where it got fucked up' - but he also has to look away from Marijus's face. Will settles for watching Neph again, eyes keen on hers.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-27 02:39 am (UTC)They never did get around to negotiating what that might mean. Now they never will. He'd been classically evasive about it and she hadn't had the courage or the energy to ask what he was really offering. That might bother her more, if she hadn't ended up living with some version of him anyway.
This version is furious. As she stumbled her way through the events of that night, Hannibal went stiffer and stiffer at her side. His hand in hers might as well be a prosthetic, as cold and motionless as it's gone. Their shoulders bump as they walk, Neph sort of rattling between the two boys, and it's like skidding against a wall. Her heart beats high and fast in her throat, even knowing that anger's not directed at her. It could still take her arm off, when it inevitably goes. She watches him from the corner of her eye, the part of her brain that endlessly spins contingency plans kicks into gear. There must be some way to redirect that rage away from herself, away from--
Will tugs lightly at her hand, gripping tighter despite her clammy palm. Neph turns her face a few degrees back toward him, watching from three-quarters. If he's angry, it's harder to read. She can't help but be wary, she doesn't know what Angry Will looks like or how he's likely to snap, and here she is stuck between him and Hannibal, the ticking bomb. But he only says in a very reasonable tone, That's not on you.
Neph winces, very well aware she'd said something pretty similar to him a couple months ago. It's a lot easier to dish out than it is to take.
"I know," it takes real effort not to say it to the sidewalk, but she manages to lift her head. "I know it's him but I still--it's not just him. There's others, y'know? S'not like it's never happened before, I just always got outta the way in time." With both her hands caught up, she invents a new fiddling method; her thumb taps an arhythmic staccato against Will's knuckles. "If I'm gonna make it out there I gotta be smart and see this stuff and I hate--I hate that I have to and I hate that I didn't that time."
That one slip planted doubt in her, a weed with roots gone too deep to pull up in one neat clump. She's been more paranoid since, quicker to assume ill intent. It's died down a little in the past, what, ten months, but she was still at peak anxiety when Hannibal half-accused her trying to kiss him. No fucking wonder she blew up.
Is he remembering that, too? Is that why he leans down to hiss in her ear? Neph jumps a little, her doubletime footsteps veering toward Will while her chin jerks back in Hannibal's direction. She might've expected the same kind of feral, bared-teeth rage he'd displayed when he thought Will's dad was responsible for beating his face in, but this...isn't that. It's the burn of dry ice, the methodical scrape of a whetstone over a blade, skin parting silently under a keen edge. It's murderously stunning and Neph can only be blindly grateful that it's for her, not because of her. His stare fills her entire field of vision. She has to remind herself to blink.
"I know he was," she says again. Her shoulder jostles Will's, bulkier and softer through their mutual layers, but she twists her wrist to scrape her fingernails down the back of Hannibal's hand. She drifts back to the middle, pupils constricting a little as she forces herself to zoom out on the rest of Hannibal's face. "I...when it happened I was just really freaked out and...tired. 'Cuz I thought I couldn't watch my back every fucking second, y'know?"
Relief, relief, she saw murder in his eyes and her knees went weak with relief. Neph ducks her head and swings their hands - all their hands - a little. "It's better now."
no subject
Date: 2017-02-02 04:14 pm (UTC)What's there to even say to an issue so wide that it can swallow someone's entire world for hours at a time? "I don't think that's something that's just you. Or even just him, or them. It's-- the whole system." The one that tells skinny young girls like Neph to watch over their shoulders when they leave their cars at night, and then puts in sitcom jokes about how women always visit public bathrooms in packs. The one that ends every unattractive-man-becomes-slightly-more-competent comedy film with them getting the girl like it was a vending machine transaction.
Will lets their shoulders bump against one another, everything muffled in winter layers, and keeps an eye on Neph instead of Marijus while she navigates his stiletto-knife anger. The danger radiating off Marijus, the capacity to hurt someone after enough planning to make it count, has images from true crime shows flashing in Will's mind. He sees that boy from earlier, face down with glassy eyes, a line of red coming from his temple, and Will squeezes Neph's hand and leans in closer, a chill shivering up his neck.
'It's better now.'
...Because she doesn't have to watch her back? Because she has other people to help her do that. Will almost sags with relief and embarrassment, nearly giddy with the idea that Neph is friendly enough with Marijus to look at his angry face and see a welcome promise and not a horror show she should back away from fast. His hand moves in Neph's, though, their arms arcing slowly when she swings them, and it slowly enters Will's mind that she might mean-- more than just Marijus, with that statement.
He lets their steps take him a foot's width closer to Neph, enough that shoulders bump again. He's gathering up the words necessary to reassure, or to thank, or to offer that promise officially himself as well - but then Marijus catches his attention once more.
Marijus, whose anger has simmered down enough to reveal a different kind of intensity. His shoulders are tight, his neck tilted forward, and his steps are shorter and more aggressive. He looks like an animal going against all natural instinct. "Would you like to head home on your own, then?"
The non sequitor of it has Will almost tripping over his own feet. It feels like a hunter releasing prey, so no wonder there's a strange dissonance radiating in the very air near Marijus, but what--
"I don't-- want you caged after being hedged in by other people for so long." Will feels the way this rips at something in Marijus, can feel it peel apart the ribs in his own chest, leave behind sticky pain in its wake. Marijus doesn't let go of things. He's unwavering in his desires and his possessiveness, to the point of being overbearing and beyond. Will would never have considered this sort of growth even possible, but here it is.
Potentially even ill-timed - Will has no idea if Neph actually wants space right now. She doesn't feel like she does, she isn't vibrating with flight like she was before, but Will just stares at Marijus without breathing and hopes that Neph gets the underlying message that Will can see, spelled out in the air between them all:
That Marijus cares for her, deeply enough that he's finally realizing the impact of letting people go. Instead of pursuing his own revenge - because Will can still see it, the plans for hurting that boy - he's interrupting everything to try and let Neph do what she needs to cope.
It's love, honestly. That's what Will sees, and it bowls him over. He's never seen anyone look at anyone else that way, in his life, and he knows the meaning of it only from bone-deep genetic memory that apparently a lifetime of neglect hadn't quite managed to leach out of him.
Will's nearly leaning his chin on Neph's shoulder, pulled in by the gravity of the other two, mouth open and unaware.
no subject
Date: 2017-02-03 01:29 am (UTC)Neph doesn't snap any of that at Will. The cringe that always lingers in his voice is out in full force, as if he know how unhelpful it is to say, to hear. It's not his fault she's been through this enough times to know the script. Maybe, if she hears it repeated often enough, she'll come up with some brilliant response that turns the whole thing over on its head. At least she got someone new thinking about it, looking at the system and reaching out to take her hand instead of turning away from it. That must count for something, she thinks, as Will pulls closer to her side.
Her other arm is stretched out a little further to Hannibal, a strained point of contact anchored by the desperate grip of their hands. She hasn't looked at him since as-good-as-admitting she trusts him at her back. His answering silence is river-dark and cold, rushing around her, pulling at her, but still she doesn't look. Say something, she urges as a muscle works at the corner of his jaw, visible in her periphery. Neph's not sure which of them she means. Say something.
When he does, it's not an acknowledgement. Not exactly.
Except that it is.
Will fumbles at her side, and Neph--stops. Hannibal's momentum and her hold on his hand pulls him around to face her, while Will practically trips into her back. She rocks forward a little, seeking out Hannibal's face, his eyes. Whites flash around the edges and his nostrils flare a little. She can never tell if that's a sign of nerves or active mutation, with him. A little frown crinkles her face, words poised on her tongue, go home? but before you said--, when he unlocks a door she hadn't realized existed.
Neph's face falls open. They're all three of them standing in the middle of the sidewalk, forcing people to part around them, but nobody says anything about the girl with one boy at her back and another staring her down like a reluctant penitent, her hands in both of theirs. That's a minor miracle right there. Another might be the clarity with which Neph hears what Hannibal means.
They've talked around it before. This uncertainty played unwelcome third wheel those first few months, when neither of them knew if she would (or should) stay, or leave him with his money and pick up her own life where she'd left off. How much did she owe him, and was it even about debt at that point? How much of their unity was sheer momentum? Where was the choice in any of it, if at all? If they'd met like this in another timeline, his or hers, peers without any convoluted temporal history, would they have been friends?
Neph, in typical go-with-the-flow, focus-on-the-present fashion, started to enjoy herself too much to question it. And then little changes became big ones, became a joint lease and dishtowels and staking territory and suddenly the beginning no longer mattered. Knowing she could leave at any time didn't mean she wanted to, not at all. But Hannibal--
--she hasn't made him any promises. Not out loud.
"You're not a cage," she says vehemently, a wind beating back the river. Her hand shifts in his so she's grasping it from below, fingers wrapped around his, her thumb pressed against the back of his knuckles. "You weren't ever a cage, you were--you are--"
The trouble with 'you' is, it's both singular and plural, something Neph has never tasted so clearly in her own mouth before. Were. Are. One person and two people who've been very different things to her at very different points in her life. All kinds of possibilities crowd her mouth, conclusions like safe, honest, trustworthy. Like home. All of them too much and not enough.
She is very, very bad at this. "I'm always glad to have you there. Here." Neph says, at length. It's not right. It's not perfect. It's not even really a promise. If she's very, very lucky, it might make sense, in context of what she thinks he's saying, and what he's just offered her.
Nobody's ever trusted her to come back, before. She's never given anyone reason to. It's a limit she finds she's eager to test. Her chin comes up, the hair on the back of her neck lifting and tickling where Will's breath stirs it. Somewhere in all of this he's drawn in close, but it doesn't trigger any crawly feelings. It's a steady press of warmth instead. "I think I'd like to go for a run," she says, threaded through with wonder. "Not, um, not from anybody. Just for me." A grin pops out of nowhere, from the ether, from the thing inside her that keeps putting one foot in front of the other. "I bet I beat you home."
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Date: 2017-02-04 04:10 am (UTC)They've gone through something, and maybe that's why they're both alone together, here in a part of the world neither of them is really from - Marijus from across an entire ocean, Neph apparently from different parts of the US.
Will feels like he can't quite do it justice, describing just what he sees in Marijus's eyes, but he's compelled to try.
Marijus is watching Neph like she's the only thing he's aware of, like his entire life has been eclipsed by this moment in time shared with her. All the ludicrous focus of Marijus's interest is contracted in Neph's direction, timeless and limitless and so heavy Will feels its pull like gravity, and it's not even for him. Will's mouth falls open, something too scared to feel hungry answering the call from Marijus's gaze, and Will is simultaneously glad for Neph and unsure how she can handle this.
It should feel far more foreign to watch a scene this intense unfold next to him. Being in forced close proximity to people's dramas has always been taxing at best, mortifying or terror-soaked at worst.
But this is like watching a natural landscape come into focus from the fog, or a storm coalesce. It's huge. Nearly limitless. Almost promises danger, but you lean in anyway, just to say you witnessed it.
Marijus is the one that looks caged right now, rigid and thrumming with energy, like he'd be pacing back and forth if he had the room at the end of his tether via Neph's hold on his wrist. Will thinks of a tiger in a zoo. "Alright." Marijus is clearly wrestling with something terrifying and unknown, and then all at once he just - steps forward and hugs Neph.
Will rocks back instinctively, giving them room, because now Marijus's arms are coming around Neph's thin shoulders, and Marijus is slim but not so much that it doesn't encroach on the lack of space that had existed a moment ago between Will and Neph. They make brief eye contact over Neph's shoulder, Marijus's face a hurricane, and then he tilts down into the downy parts of Neph's hair and mutters something into her ear.
Will's pretty sure he says "I don't think anything could ever cage you again, Nephele." He hadn't realized her name was short for anything similarly strange, had just assumed it was a brief nickname from nothing.
"I'll see you at the apartment." Marijus looks like he's holding himself together by threads. As Marijus pulls back away, holds Neph at a determined arms length, Will tilts back in, taps his free hand to Neph's wrist as a silent encouragement. But otherwise, this is-- this is about them, right now. Will's never been so content to be a silent observer.
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Date: 2017-02-04 07:03 am (UTC)But Nephele is Mistborn. She's fog. She's a haze. She's the whole sky full of clouds, there's too much of her for even the deepest, angriest sea to contain except for the fragments she rains down at whim. It's not, she realizes, that she has her own deep well of gravity, it's that she's lighter than gravity. He can try to exert it, but she'll only slip through his fingers and envelop him, cool and calm or icy and stinging. She thinks he might know that, too.
A tiny smile shapes her mouth, crinkles her eyes, her only outward response to all that howling intensity. If she's affected by it, and she is, well...isn't that how it works? Ocean and sky, locked together, passing back and forth? Even her eighth-grade education covered the water cycle.
If Hannibal sees what she sees, if she's mirroring anything back at him, it sets him on edge. His mouth flattens out, his arm is extended almost as far as it can go without straining away from her, and she can feel tendons bunching under his skin. For a wild second she thinks he might tear away and storm off, counter to everything he's just said to her, but then he lunges in - 70% leg! - and folds her into a hug.
There's a scuff of sneakers on pavement as Will dodges out of the way, but Neph notices the sudden cold at her back more clearly. It only lasts a second, as she rocks onto her toes to stretch into the hug, her arms wrapping around Hannibal's ribs beneath his jacket. He'd stormed out of the museum without buttoning it up, overheated by nature and anger, and now she tucks herself into it by invitation. His scarf is a warm swath of truly hideous plaid against her cheek.
"I don't think anything could ever cage you again, Nephele," he says against her temple. Neph shivers and curls her hands over his spine as though she could grip it like bars on a window. He never calls her by her full name, not even when he's really pissed. That was always--
Hannibal pulls away as though yanked by force, before she can finish that thought or come up with anything in response. She doubletakes at him anyway, half-expecting to see someone else standing there, a little taller, a lot more plaid. It's only when she doesn't that her heart rate starts to dip towards normal.
He says he'll see her at the apartment (not home, never 'home' with him, which would sting if she didn't know they have totally different concepts of the term) but doesn't let go of her shoulders. His knuckles stand out white in her periphery, and there's still a flicker of it around the edges of his irises. It's an uncertainty of self she hasn't seen in him since he was little, when she'd told him he was a mutant. She does now what she might have done then, if she'd known him better - she rises back up on her toes and presses a quick, dry kiss to his cheek. The cold tip of her nose bumps his cheekbone. "Yeah you will," she says, all cocky certainty as she drops flatfooted again.
The warm to cold ratio flip flops again, her front all chilled but her back shielded from the winter breeze when Will steps in. She's turning even as he touches her wrist, belatedly realizing she had to drop his hand to hug Hannibal. It hadn't even occurred to her, then. Now she opens her mouth to apologize, but finds Will looking at her with an unusual...solidity. She catches his hand, and what falls out of her mouth is: "Thank you, Will. For--saying something, back there." For snarling at Samson for no reason other than he'd set himself up against her and Hannibal. "I'm sorry stuff got all weird."
It's a rueful apology, delivered with a sad and lopsided smile. The Weird is 100% her fault, even if he doesn't know it. Not even Hannibal really knows, for all that Neph's not sure why she's keeping it quiet. It just hasn't come up? There's never been a good time to say I'm one of seven people who can do what we do, whatever that means. Soon, maybe.
She doesn't try to hug Will or lean in to plant one on his cheek, but she squeezes his hand and wrinkles her nose at him and says, "Try not to let him do anything too suicidally stupid?" Because, look, she's not an idiot, she knows Hannibal has a dying man's thirst for revenge and a mind that tends toward elaborate games of Mousetrap. She wants them to get home safe, and that means no unnecessary dramatics. This is an unfair thing to put on Will Graham, but he's driven Hannibal to unusual behavior with the force of his stare alone, so Neph's willing to risk it.
Then she breaks away, not touching either of them for the first time in at least twenty minutes. What a weird thing to suddenly tally up in her head. Neph takes a step backward, toward the museum, a topographic map of Baltimore's rooftops rising in bumps and ridges on her mind. It'll be quicker to doubleback, and she was serious about beating them there. She wants dibs on the shower.
"Don't be late!" she grins, and then hop pivots and breaks down the sidewalk at a fast clip.
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Date: 2017-02-04 06:16 pm (UTC)Neither of them relax - Neph is closer to it, but Neph has a razor-edge of attention that's all her own, too - but both of them seem more certain, like self-knowledge and some interpersonal bonds are all they need to patch themselves back up and keep going, keep going, until an uncertain future point when everything in the entire universe has been tugged to a stop.
--Now that he sees it in someone else, has to try to name it, Will realizes that it's not just his 'empathy disorder' or a surplus of mirror neurons, that this is actually an accurate reflection he's staring down.
Neph catches his hand and-- thanks him, actually thanks him, and Will finds his certainty for watching Neph and Marijus interact doesn't extend even slightly to what on earth anyone could ever see in himself. He's too stunned to deny anything coherently, too touched to jerk back away from her, just lets his fingers spasm against hers and stammers out. "I'll-- always say something. You're-- you're welcome. And it's fine." A flicker of real smile, a flash fire across his face. "I'm so used to it, I think I kinda prefer the weird shit, at this point."
It's clearly meant to be light-hearted, but Neph also isn't dumb to innuendo. Will knows there's a solid foundation of something very serious under that layer of jokingly asking him to keep an eye on her closest friend in the world. Will just nods, face falling into honest surprise and warmth. "I'll make sure he waits til we're back at your guys' place before he starts doxxing that kid, yeah. Promise."
He and Marijus turn as one unit to watch Neph flee down the street after that, back the way they came.
Which leaves Will and Marijus on the sidewalk, standing on either side of a sudden chilly gap.
Will surprises himself by moving first. His arm twitches and then falls back at his side, useless for reaching out physically, but the intensity of the two of them sings in his blood, vibrates under his skin. He can't remove the imagery of a hawk gently letting something slip back out of its talons, of Marijus taking that unexpected step towards trust.
What ends up spilling from Will's mouth, while his eyes are focused on the ground in front of himself, is a phrase he's never heard from anyone for himself. But it keeps ringing in his ears like struck metal. "I'm-- proud of you."
Marijus is an immovable post next to him for two, three heartbeats, and then he's lurching forward. A palm catches against the back of Will's head, fingers threading through his hair with familiarity Will can barely process, let alone explain. There's a thumb behind his ear across a pulsing vein, and their noses nearly touch. Their temples do touch, in fact that's the point of contact that seems to be why Marijus has tilted forward so far. Will thinks of Neph kissing Marijus's cheek just moments ago, and feels himself undeniably caught - a rushing tide dragging him back out to sea, with some hint as to direction but no way of knowing the depths he might be sucked down towards.
He's holding his breath. Will is holding his breath and he's letting this happen because he has no idea how to convince himself he isn't getting anything from the howling force that's demanding him, with more sincerity than anything Will's ever had directed at him before.
"Hannibal." At first, Will doesn't know how to place the whisper that makes the curls of hair by his right ear flutter. "My name is Hannibal."
Oh. Oh.
The hand across the back of his head doesn't twitch, Marijus - Hannibal - doesn't budge an inch, teeth nearly grazing the tip of Will's ear as he speaks. "I can't explain why you can't call me that in public, but I want you to know my name."
Will's hand comes up without thinking, knuckles going white immediately in his grip on Mar-- Hannibal's forearm. They stay like that, a tense and unsustainable statue, Will holding the arm of the hand that's gripping his head, the street traffic parting around them and giving occasional exasperated looks. Will ignores all of them, just trying to steady his breathing back into his own pattern instead of taking Hannibal's as his own.
They're on a cliff, and Will isn't sure what he could possibly offer - for escalating or de-escalating - without knocking them both off of it. He stays put, gradually feeling the tension tug at his bones, feeling desperation ring through him but with nowhere to put it. Hannibal makes a soft sound and, on instinct, Will turns to look at him, their noses barely brushing--
"Let's go."
Cold air rushes to the spot on the back of Will's head where Hannibal's hand was a moment ago. Hannibal is pulling back, firmly in his own circle of gravity all at once, and Will sways on the spot with dizzy relief.
"Okay," Will says, and then they're off, instinct letting them fall in step with each other but a new distance slowly settling in. They don't hold hands. Neither of them falsely reach or check for the other, they both just force forwards. Will wonders if Hannibal's ears are ringing as much as his own.
It's not until they've turned two corners that Will finds his voice fully.
"How the hell's she gonna beat us home by running?"
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Date: 2017-02-04 11:50 pm (UTC)Neph enjoys every second of it anyway. Her thin-soled sneakers grip shingles, concrete and tar-paper equally well, and Tin spots the telltale gleam of ice even in deep shadows. The cold air chaps her cheeks and scrapes away at her lungs, hollowing out all the things she might've wished to shout at Samson and leaving her free to fill up with something better. Every jump jars her knees and the palms of her hands are scraped pink and red from gripping ledges and eaves. She does not stop, propelling herself forward and over with her own strength and judicious dabs of Iron and Steel. Her blood roars through her body, pounding against the barrier of her skin, until she's so rooted in her own capacity that there's no need to think about judging steps, leaps or distances. Neph swings off pipes and hurtles over ten-foot gaps between alleys without ever thinking about any of it at all.
In fact, she manages not to think about anything until her toes touch down on the brick that makes up all the buildings in their neighborhood. Her innermost shirt is soaked with sweat, her exposed skin is simultaneously flushed and chilled, and her nose is a little drippy. Neph scrubs at it as she cuts her pace to an easier lope.
Actual thoughts start to seep in around the edges of physical discomfort, thoughts like how she doesn't know the first thing about holding down a territory, how she's never made a point of standing her ground before. Thoughts like whether or not to put that word out, or let her continued presence do the talking for her. Thoughts like making sure Samson abides by her edict and gets the fuck outta Baltimore in the next, oh, week. Thoughts like how she'd expected to feel slimier after dealing with him, but how the simple physical grossness of being sweaty and a little smelly just wiped that all away.
Thoughts of Samson, however, drag her back to what he'd said to her about Anansi and Loki, about Benkei.
Neph skids to a final stop on her own rooftop, breath coming hard, sweat dripping down the back of her neck. Someone once arranged a folding chair, a round glass-topped table, and a bucket full of gravel up here, and Neph's gotten in the habit of using them. She drops into the chair, wincing as her cold-and-damp sweater sticks to her skin, and fishes out her phone. She thumbs up Whatsapp.
did u seriously break samsons nose?
She doesn't really expect a reply right away. Allomancers keep weird schedules, and last she heard Benkei was also bouncing at a strip club outside of Bethesda. This time of afternoon, she could be asleep or just getting up. But a bubble filled with ellipses pops up almost immediately, prompting Neph to settle back in the chair in tense anticipation.
I fucking well did and I'd do it again. Comes the answer, closely followed by another ellipses-bubble. Why who told you? I thought he'd be too embarrassed to let it slip.
Neph chews on her lip, still breathing hard through her nose. Of course Benkei would assume this was grapevine stuff. Why would she ever think a Pewterarm would threaten a Mistborn twice? Because Samson thought he could bully Neph, because he thought she'd let her fear cage her. He was almost right. Neph picks at the keyboard with less than her usual nimble speed, but it's cold and her fingers are kinda numb.
he did. he tracked me down today
The response is almost instantaneous: I'LL BREAK HIS GODDAMN NECK. I WAS PRETTY CLEAR WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF HE FUCKED WITH YOU AGAIN THAT LITTLE COCKSTAIN.
Capslock all kinda blurs together in that quantity. Neph grips her phone and rereads it twice, something warm stirring inside that has nothing to do with physical exertion. Benkei's always been nice to her, she's always asked if Neph's doing okay, and they work well together. But she's also a bit older, four or five years, enough that her obvious concern had been unwelcome for a long time. Neph had felt like Benkei didn't think she could make it on her own, she'd resented that, but now...well, there's a lot of things out there to watch out for. Things Neph wouldn't wish on a younger girl, either.
thanks B but its fine. i guess A and L both cut him off too and he thought i made them do it
Benkei, having been in this game longer than Neph, immediately gets it. Damn, good for them. Even if they were just watching out for #1, that's decent of them.
Which were basically Neph's thoughts, too. decent of YOU to hit him for me
I am ALWAYS down for punching whiny boys who don't understand the word 'no'. Neph thinks, all in a flash, that those are some very lucky strippers in Bethesda, and then Benkei sends: Do you need backup? Or help hiding a body?
It really says something about her friends that that's everybody's first offer. Lecter'd asked her the same thing. She snorts, hesitates, then writes, no i just told him to gtfo Baltimore
She doesn't think Benkei will need that spelled out for her either, but the ellipses blink for a long stretch of minutes before the reply comes. Holy shit. You sure?
That's a question Neph suddenly suspects she's going to be asking herself a lot in the next few...whatevers. Weeks, months. Years? She can't even imagine herself at twenty, twenty one, never dared think more than a job or two ahead. But now, huddled in her nice new coat, sitting on the roof above her startlingly fancy apartment, with one of her aliases on a lease that could stretch all the way through Hannibal's residency, the future is a slowly whirling galaxy starred with too many possibilities to number. She could get lost in the thought, but she's an open sky. She encompasses, damn it.
yeah, long enough for it to count, anyway, she types.
Good for you too, then.
The smile that breaks over Neph's face almost splits her dry lip. She rubs a line of sweat off her forehead before replying, thanks Benkei. i'll be in touch. Then she pockets her phone, picks the roof door lock, and heads down the stairs. She could swing through one of their windows, but their apartment faces the street and, again: broad daylight.
With her snow delays and her text conversation, Neph's a little surprised to find that she did beat Hannibal (and maybe Will?) back to the apartment. It's a relief to have the place to herself, familiar surroundings promising safety and comfort and support in a way only a private space can. Neph hangs up her jacket, collects some clean clothes from her room, and heads to the bathroom so she can strip out of her sweaty layers and take advantage of the building's hot water supply.
She steps out twenty minutes later in a cloud of vaguely herbal steam (on the off chance Hannibal's still feeling huggy, she figured she'd use his soaps instead of her own aggressively candy-scented stuff), wearing an anonymous white tee that could be either hers or Hannibal's, she honestly doesn't know, and a pair of pajama pants that puddle around her heels. Neph ruffles a towel over her hair before draping it around her neck and cocking her head to listen for the sounds of someone else being home.
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Date: 2017-02-07 05:22 pm (UTC)He has to frame it in a more palatable manner to accomplish it at all, in fact. While Will and he walk to the bus stop another nine blocks away, he tries to breathe around the panicked vacuum in his chest. While they pay and sit down (Will offers him the window seat, Hannibal takes it), he starts looking for anything available to patch up that hole with. While the bus rocks around corners and eases past pedestrians crossing the street at unwise moments, Hannibal decides he's going to look at this as a longer tether. Not the cutting of ties, but perhaps just more flexible ones.
Like a cat being tricked into eating vitamins by tucking them inside treats, Hannibal has to slowly chisel away what he's done until it's softened to a size and shape that doesn't interrupt the beating of his heart.
"I had this dog once."
Hannibal looks across at Will, who's been leaning fully into the back of his seat like he's tired, except Hannibal can see the antsy energy in his tapping right foot, the way he's checked and re-checked all his jacket pockets three times since they sat down ten minutes ago. "He ran off every other week. We got him a collar, but we couldn't afford to chip him, and he'd come back after a few days every time anyway."
Hannibal lets the pause sink in between them. "What happened to the dog?"
Will's staring down at his shoes, glasses pulled by gravity to the very end of his nose. They're balanced so precariously that Hannibal almost leans over to pull them back up when they hit a bump and he watches them shudder in place. "Didn't come back one week. Thought he got hit by a car."
"Did it?" The pronoun's reflexive for animals. Will might be frowning from that, or from the memory itself.
"No. Saw him again a year later, right before we moved. Bit thinner, but not hurt. Looked happy to see me. I didn't bother trying to get a collar back on him that time, he followed me home anyway. Stayed there in the yard for two weeks straight because my dad didn't want to let him back in the house after all the trouble last time from him." Will wipes the end of his nose, jostles his own glasses and ends up nudging them back up to a safer spot. "We ended up taking him to Montana with us."
Hannibal makes a soft sound, inquisitive. Will's face twitches with that pained, apologetic smile that comes out so often in conversations where comfort's been scraped off the walls.
"He never ran off again. Lived with me - us - til he died, three years later. Think he needed the reassurance that we'd let him be free when he needed to be."
Hannibal leans his temple against the window in the silence that follows. Halfway back to the apartment, Will leans across him to open it, with a muttered comment about needing fresh air. Hannibal spends the rest of the ride thinking of Will burying his old dogs alone in his backyards, of Neph flying over rooftops without him.
*
Neph beat them home, and she showered already. The steam-scent of hot water carrying soap perfumes laps against Hannibal when he opens the door, soft as ocean waves. His head tilts down the hall instantly, following the smell. "She beat us home."
Will blinks down the corridor with far less comprehension. "Did you hear her?"
"No." Will just stares at him, confused but not alarmed. Hannibal is far more interested by what could possibly cause the 'dawning comprehension' that slowly blossoms across his face as he kicks off his shoes onto the mat.
Hannibal, who sits down to methodically untie everything and hangs his jacket and scarf up in the closet before moving beyond the doorway, is what holds up a surprisingly-impatient Will. He's pacing in place, hands in pockets, wind breaker open but still hanging off his shoulders like he's got no intentions of removing it anytime soon.
A few steps further in, and it's clear that she's actually still showering - the soft pounding of water, changing pitch as someone moves underneath its stream, can be barely heard from around the bend and in the bathroom. So Hannibal leads them both into the kitchen, mind buzzing.
His hands are steady on the coffee machine, a silver-and-black contraption that likely cost more than all of Will's wardrobe combined. "Would you like any?"
"Uh, yeah." Will doesn't sit down. The silence is interrupted only with a bag rustling, the grinder buzzing, and then eventually by Hannibal taking a small risk. "Would you get mugs from that cabinet there?" He points, but doesn't move from his spot, as if he's far too busy fiddling with the water in the machine to budge.
It is a strange, energetic satisfaction to watch Will search through the cabinet and pull down three matching mugs. After a small pause, he actually takes a guess and opens two drawers without asking, pulling out three spoons when he successfully finds them.
It's Will whose head cocks first when the shower water stops being a background hum. He grows antsy again, as if unsure what will come through that door, and shifts the identical mugs and spoons around at least twice before Hannibal hears the bathroom door even open.
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Date: 2017-02-08 01:34 am (UTC)There's at least one person in the kitchen. Two, maybe, with the drawers rattling counterpoint. Neph swabs the towel around inside her ear and follows the sounds. Her feet, overheated from the shower, leave steamy little footprints on the refinished hardwood.
"You're back," she says as she rounds the corner. That 'you' transforms into a plural mid sentence, when she clocks that it's both Hannibal and Will poking around the counters. Neph's only surprised that she's not surprised; she doesn't exactly have a frame of reference for this stuff, for the points in a friendship where it's normal to start hanging out in each others' spaces for non-emergencies. She thinks it might be a case-by-case thing, since she can't imagine wanting to chill at Will's apartment, especially not if his dad's gonna be around. Here, at least, the only awkwardness that might pop up is the stuff they carry around with them every day already. She quirks a smile at Will, a thank you and a good job not letting him get punched or initiate punching all in one. It's possible he won't catch all the subtleties, there.
Ear sufficiently dry, the towel flops back down around her neck. Neph steps onto the tile, grimaces at the cold, and hastily tip-toes her way over to the little rug in front of the sink. "There's coffee?"
Obviously there's coffee, but there's an equally palpable uncertainty in the air. Hesitation, hovering over everybody's shoulders. If she's learned anything from the past almost-year of living with Hannibal (proof she lacks that frame of reference: she went from babysitting the guy to moving in with him in the span of a year, and it's been like eight months since the living together thing started) it's to put on blinders and bull ahead through the Awkward. He appreciates it more often than he doesn't.
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Date: 2017-02-08 02:59 am (UTC)So there's no reason for him to freeze in the middle of putting the half and half on the counter. There's no reason for everything in his body to stop for a moment when her voice rings out through their (!) kitchen.
But apparently there is still an ease to imagining things as opposed to actually experiencing them, and Hannibal wasn't as prepared as he thought he was for being confronted with the fact that he addressed such a wide, unspoken issue between Neph and himself and she's now...just back in their apartment. Not as if nothing happened - she's coming in with an air of enforced normalcy hanging just as heavy as the shampoo-steam cloud, but she's coming in as if it's something they can get past.
Hannibal remembers her pressing dry, chilly lips to his cheek, and the fact that he's done something she appreciates rings...surprisingly strange. He knows she likes him - they live together, he'd gotten the gist of what that meant somewhere between her spending two weeks of late nights arranging his paperwork with him and between their lease getting signed - but intentionally, knowingly giving her something that she needed is...different.
It's Will who breaks the silence, only looking over at Neph once he's done staring a bit openly and concerned at Hannibal's frozen posture. "Yeah. I didn't know you could need that many settings for coffee, but I'm assuming that's what came out of that machine." For all his fidgety pacing, now that he's gotten a good look at Neph - and he does actually spend a moment looking her up and down, not hiding it at all - he visibly relaxes against the counter.
Will nudges the mugs over a bit further, as if it wasn't clear what they're on the counter for, about the same time as Hannibal reanimates and finds he's capable of finally putting that half and half down near them.
"Did you have a nice run?" Hannibal asks, and he surprises himself that his voice doesn't feel stiff or forced. He's relieved, and it shows, even though his fingertips feel strangely numb and his ribs ache. He feels like he just ran the few miles back to their apartment and he's only just colliding with the exhausted endorphin rush at the tail of it.
Will just squints at them, like he's aware he's on the outside of an in-joke but he knows enough not to ask. He helps himself to the finished pot of coffee first, eyeing Hannibal with a telegraphed suspicion that has Hannibal smirking over at Neph.
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Date: 2017-02-08 03:52 am (UTC)(Mostly. After a quick beat, her eyes flick to Will, who is also definitely taking all this in. They don't make eye contact, but somehow Neph knows he noticed her looking, that he's acknowledging her, and that they're both a little worried. She wasn't aware it was possible to do all that without exchanging looks, but it's been a day for discoveries.)
Neph bites her lip. Should she not have taken him up on his offer? It wouldn't've cost her anything to ride the bus home with them and slip out for a run after dark. Nothing but this immediate heavy satisfaction sinking into her bones. She would have jittered her way through the rest of the day, she knows that. Does Hannibal? Can he possibly know what he made possible? If he hadn't said anything, she would've stayed. Would have let her guilt for involving them and leaving them in the dark tie her there, without ever thinking about it. The eddies of group dynamics have steered her life for so long, she's prone to letting them set her compass points.
She should explain all that to him. Later, after Will's gone, maybe. It's...not for Will, yet.
"It makes cappuccino, too," Neph says, falling into the rhythm of the tease with thoughtless ease. "If you want a mug that's half foam and seventy percent milk."
Will looks at her, and it's so openly gauging that she shuffles in place, tucking one ankle behind the other. Her pj pants swamp her legs, but she still feels like he's x-raying her scraped knees. Neph resists the urge to tuck her hands, palms clean but pink with abrasions, behind her back. She reaches out for one of the mugs instead, like he won't immediately notice. Hannibal whirs back to life, very probably saving her from a raised eyebrow at least.
"Yes!" she chimes, the uncomplicated glow of a good endorphin rush beaming from her face, from her whole body. Neph doesn't mean to unleash it all on Hannibal with her smile, but she...does, she absolutely does. It's a thank you and a I'm better now and a situation optimal all in one. "Much better'n bus funk!" His eyebrows tilt that fraction of an inch that she's learned means relief, or possibly acceptance, wistfulness without sadness. Neph presses her stinging palms against the cool ceramic and wonders what she ought to make of that.
She'll just have to ask him.
After coffee. Will makes a dubious noise over the pot, though whether at the brew or the two of them, Neph's not sure. It's enough to draw a glint of smug humor from Hannibal, who probably ground the beans by handcrank first and is breathlessly waiting (on the inside) for Will's reaction to the difference. Not that she'll admit there is a difference, but it's possible she might've, maybe, made a weird noise of her own the first time she tried fresh-ground beans. It's possible he won't ever let her live that down. Neph sniffs, but can't hide her own wriggling smile, so she turns hastily away with her cup held out for a pour.
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Date: 2017-02-08 01:49 pm (UTC)Because Neph always could have just leapt over that fence. But she'd waited until Hannibal - said it was okay? He knows it's pretense, them staying together. It could be shattered by either of them at any moment, just like anything else in life, and now that it's been tested safely it's oddly comforting to know that she can run off and...
And come back home.
Will is watching the two of them, so relaxed that it's nearly suspicious - until Hannibal realizes it's his mirroring. Hannibal is relaxed, and Neph is beaming, and Will is seeing all of this and instead of turning tail and hiding himself away from all the emotions bleeding across the room, he's calmly stepping through that mess and - if appearances can be believed - enjoying himself.
Hannibal tilts in towards Neph, then, confident in that thank you in her smile, relieved at the fact that she looks uncomplicated in her own relief. For the moment, he can leave thoughts of revenge to the side.
Will is the one holding the coffee pot, and he pours out some for Neph next, leaving his own mug steaming on the counter. When he leans further across to pour some into Hannibal's mug - although Hannibal isn't holding it, seeing as Will and Neph are both arranged on the mug-portion of the counter - Will's mouth opens and his eyebrows meet. He watches Neph with confusion for a moment before his attention flickers to Hannibal and back again.
"Are you--" Will clears his throat, eyebrows raising back up as if he'd just startled himself. "You use the same shampoo." He says with forced calm, as if that, of all the things he's seen between Hannibal and Neph, is the one that doesn't make sense.
Or is he just surprised that he recognizes what Hannibal's shampoo smells like, when another person is wearing it? Hannibal now has to decide which one of those options he likes best, whether it feels nicer to be amused or flattered. "Sometimes." Hannibal had noticed Neph was wearing his - it's its own sort of flattery, but in a deliberate and kind way. They've discussed his aversion to certain strengths of scents often enough that he thinks he knows what that choice means, and he smiles as he reaches between Will and Neph to get to his coffee.
And then slots himself directly between them fully, leaning back against the counter despite the lack of room to do so. It's Will who moves, with a little sound of surprise, although he gets very far out of the way, under pretense of getting the half and half for his coffee.
Hannibal gives a small sigh, hip just barely touching the extra fabric of Neph's shirt. "Having it plain allows you to appreciate the flavors much better, Will."
"I'll take my chances." Said flatly while Will pours in enough cream than his coffee turns only a few shades darker than his own skin. And then, pointedly, no eye contact until the heartbeat afterwards, "Hannibal."
He hadn't said it on the bus ride back, as per Hannibal's request. Now, hearing his real name for the first time, Hannibal feels something warm rush down through the rest of him that has nothing to do with his coffee.
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