Hannibal used to think that he'd get better sleep if the scents were right. Back in the orphanage, in rooms that were disinfected once and then left to simmer in the sweat of their occupants; in notoriously-unsatisfactory Easter European foster homes, with their cold-factory backdrops and stale water; in the train ride over to France, surrounded by foreign people who smelled of aftershaves and perfumes and handsoaps he wasn't familiar with.
But it didn't improve much, living in the same safe place every night. It didn't improve a lot having even Murasaki's scent nearby, no matter how much he could concentrate on the orange rind-cinnamon of the mansion and let it lull him to sleep.
The nightmares couldn't be kept back by anything he'd been allowed to stumble into. So he'd taken matters into his own hands.
Killing some of the men felt like it ought to have helped. In many ways, it had - he didn't dream about it as frequently. But it was still unpredictable, affected by nothing he did during his waking hours - except for the few stressors in his life that reliably made it worse.
But then he'd met Neph, and she'd been remarkably unfazed by the screaming nightmares, or his blank stares when woken, or even the one time he'd propelled himself out of bed away from her and needed a full two minutes to breathe himself back to full consciousness so he could come back onto the mattress. She never left afterwards, either - they'd collapse back onto his bed, and he was allowed to be as clingy as he liked. In fact, to that end, she was just as willing and eager to lay across one another and not budge except for sticking knees and elbows in questionably-comfortable places as the night wore on. Hannibal never had a repeated nightmare on the evenings when Neph joined him.
As accidentally passing out on the couch together became common enough to notice patterns, too, Hannibal noticed something new.
For the first time in his life, he seemed to have discovered something that actually kept his nightmare from finding him.
*
Whether or not the scent of her is actually enough to abate it, Hannibal has been remarkably agreeable about letting Neph leave her blankets in his room after a joint night. In fact, he'd taken to offering up increasingly implausible reassurances not to bother herself taking them out when she left in the morning, that he'd get it for her later, and then leaving them in his bedroom on purpose - she'd taken the hint and now he generally gets one of her blankets wordlessly left on his bed per laundry cycle.
Which is only fair, really, considering Hannibal has several jackets and undershirts he needs to keep an eye on or else they might disappear on the day he was intending to wear them.
Tonight, he's roused from the dreamless catch of sleep by sound and movement. He's never been particularly hard to wake up, always a light sleeper, but Hannibal is slower to react when it's Neph's scent so close to him. He rolls over, left arm caught in the very star-covered blanket Neph had shared with Will just a spare few weeks back, and blinks through near-pitch darkness in the direction of her voice and more Neph-smell.
But it's not just her shampoo and his soap, it's the acid bite of fear, catching at the base of his tongue and cranking his brain the rest of the way into wakefulness.
Hannibal goes from slowly rolling over to sitting up with force, leaning for her immediately. His voice is pitched low in case there's an intruder. "What is it?" He can barely see her, nightvision or not - Hannibal had been meticulous about buying blackout curtains and getting the rods that allow it to wrap flush to the wall on either side, so they're going with the blueish LED clock display from half the room away - but her shape is already encroaching up onto the bed, which is good. He reaches a hand out for her arm, touches a sleeve that's damp at the pit of her elbow.
Neph has only regular nightvision at her disposal just now; Allomancers are no more immune to heavy metal poisoning than the next person, so conventional wisdom dictates they burn off their day's supply of metals and sleep on an empty stomach, rather than risk digesting them. There's no Tin in her belly to light, nothing but the clock to see by. It's enough to make out shapes and movement - the bed, the nightstand, Hannibal's head lifting off the pillow as he disengages from whatever he was dreaming.
It's not enough to make out his face. She can't be sure it's whole and not--not bashed open. Neph leans forward, planting her hands on the mattress for balance. Something about her approach flips him wide awake. And why shouldn't it? She's never snuck into his room without a reason, before. If he did the same, she'd immediately assume they were in danger.
"What is it?" he asks, quiet like somebody might overhear. The low, sleep roughed urgency in it is nothing like the matter-of-fact tone from her dream. Now that he's sitting up, the ghostly light shows the flat angles of his cheek, jaw and nose. Unbroken. Neph lets out a breath, relaxing so abruptly her ribs rattle around her deflated lungs.
Hannibal doesn't take that as an answer, asks her what happened as he reaches for her arm. For a lightheaded moment, Neph's not sure he'll actually be able to make contact. She couldn't rip loose in her dream, no matter how hard she tried. Then his hand is on her elbow, warm and heavy from sleep. The touch slides down her forearm to settle around her wrist and Neph finds the muscle memory to inhale again.
"Nothing." Apparently. He's fine. There's nothing to worry about except for this sudden change in nightmare programming. She could turn around and go back to her room and find something to do until morning, if she wanted.
She does not want.
Neph pulls her other knee onto the bed, weight rocking forward onto her hands as she folds her legs under her. "I just," the dry click of her swallow is mortifyingly loud in the muffled room. Neither of them can see her flush but it burns her face and neck, feverish under the sheen of drying sweat. "Can I stay? Here?"
Nothing in her head, heart or gut screams that he might turn her away. Not after all the nights they've navigated his nightmares together. Nope, instead those battered organs whisper about the risks of being seen, of becoming dependent on others for comfort, of how much worse this may make her own dreams.
She clenches her fingers in his ridiculous threadcount comforter and resolutely does not care.
'Nothing' is a relief. 'Nothing' from Neph means no intruder, no sudden text about a territory threat or a warning about her muscle-bound attacker coming snooping around.
But 'nothing' also means he now has an entirely different problem to deal with, one that still was enough to make Neph reek of terror. It's enough to have the hair at the back of his neck raising, a visceral response Hannibal's never really had around other frightened people. Is it because this is Neph?
(Isn't that always why: because it's Neph? They've transcended so many boundaries, some of which Hannibal had drawn himself and others he hadn't consciously realized existed around him, that he hardly thinks of them as separate people anymore. For a lot of his waking hours, he-and-Neph are a fuzzy-bordered amoeba of joint household chores and decisions and grocery lists and waking up in tangled-sheet dogpiles.)
The sour tingle of fear contracts and pinches, a bite that reminds Hannibal of students in class when they dropped their textbooks or the one man he'd been near while he fumbled through getting turned down by the woman who was at the park with him. Embarrassed?
Neph's weight is moving towards him, the combined heft of them making the mattress sink in and gradually pulling them towards each other even more. She doesn't tunnel under the covers, just kneels on top of them, but Hannibal is pushing his sheets out of the way with his knees so he can press the outside of his thigh against the point of Neph's kneecap.
She doesn't elaborate. Or excuse herself. Instead, she asks to stay.
He stands at the edge of that cliff for a moment, watching the expanse underneath them, before he trails down her sleeve until he can find her hand. "I would never send you away. Not if you asked to stay." Up this close, Neph feels flushed, but there's a fine shiver to her normally-still hands.
It's late at night. The digital clock, the only reason he has enough light to catch a flash of reflection off of Neph's eyes, reads 2:54. There's only so many possibilities.
Her weight flattens the blankets, pinning his legs in a way she hadn't intended. Hannibal shifts closer as her request hangs in the air, and although Neph finds most charged silences unbearable she doesn't squirm or chatter her way through this one.
There's a difference between having confidence in a thing and having that confidence validated. It's the bubbling dizziness she'd felt when he'd backed her against Samson, grounded by the way he'd said I would never abandon you afterward. Now, with I would never send you away, he's just won Countering Abandonment Issues Bingo. Her right hand is splayed under his, but her left darts out to grip the leg he's bumped against hers. All she really wants is to fold herself up against his heartbeat, but she really should get under the covers first. Right this second it's enough to just dig her nails in and croak "Thank you."
She can't get under the covers fast enough after that, fleeing the clammy chill of her evaporating fear. Normally Neph climbs in with Hannibal after he's already kicked everything into wild disarray, but when he's not battling his own nightmares he makes his bed so envelope-tight she has to claw the sheets down. Does it help, being half-restrained? Was he always like this, or did he start up the habit after whatever happened to Mischa, as a substitute for someone to hold him through his bad dreams? She's just wriggling under all the layers, into the bubble of trapped body heat, when Hannibal asks the obvious question.
"Yeah." Their height difference means that even seated hip to hip her knee hits above his, and his knee presses into the top of her calf. Neph throws everything out of alignment by twisting sideways and snaking her arms around his ribs, flattening them both to the mattress. She doesn't drag the blanket up over them, prioritizing fitting her shoulders under his arm. It's strange, seeking comfort instead of offering it, strange enough that Neph presses her face to his chest as though she has something to hide. "One'a the bad ones."
Everything's so loud in the dark: her shaking voice, the raw note in it, her uneven breath. Neph cares less that Hannibal's sure to notice than she does about how warm and alive and not-accusatory he is. It's a question of responsibility. What did that even mean? She presses her forehead to his breastbone and lets the thump of his heart drive those thoughts away. It's steady and real, if a little fast after she'd shocked him awake.
"You were there," she mumbles, the sharp angles of her limbs softening as the heat settles around her. She tries to keep her toes curled away from his legs. They'll be ice cubes by now. "'was new."
Hannibal has never had a fear of confinement to plague him - not in the literal sense of temporary enclosed spaces. Neph isn't too far off in her guess as to why he'd have the sheets tucked tight around himself - it's a quirk of neatness, of course, but it has the pleasant side effect of holding him a little steadier when he lays down to sleep.
That's clearly making it more difficult for Neph to squirrel her way in here with him, of course, but with two pairs of pointy knees jabbing at the fabric, the edges pull free enough to allow them the room to crowd into his bed properly. Neph tunnels against his side, clinging around his ribs in a way that would seem completely normal if he'd been the one having the nightmare. But she's never initiated this for herself, before, a realization that cinches a little tighter against his ribs than even Neph's bony fingers.
Hannibal is pulling back towards the mattress in tandem with her, the two of them situating naturally with the rhythm imparted from several months' worth of semi-frequent invitations.
He blinks in the dark above Neph's hair - tickling the edge of his collarbone - when she says you were there. His own dreams have only recently started to ever deviate from his nightmare, but his nightmares have always, always been the same. It's strange to remember that others have mishmash horror shows, that the way dreams are described in books or movies is how most people experience them.
He can't help his curiosity. But he also hears the scratch of skittering fear in Neph's throat. "I hope I wasn't as horrifically rude as usual." His cheek presses against softly-tangled hair. The smell of terror, this close up, is nearly all he can focus on. He snakes his arm properly around her shoulders, fingers squeezing bluntly at the back of her scapula.
By comparison, Neph really oughta be claustrophobic. And she is, in a sense; she can't stand restrictions, being hemmed in without warning, or spaces that are small but shouldn't be. She spends a significant chunk of her work hours wriggling through ventilation shafts or the crevices between buildings without a single twinge of nerves, because they're little by design. It's the unexpected collapse, the target crowding her up against a wall, the hold on her wrists and ankles that make her lungs close up.
She shudders against Hannibal, hand twisting in his nightshirt. As role-reversals go, this...isn't much of one. He wraps around her after his nightmares, as though only protecting someone can comfort him. Neph thinks about that a lot, always with a sorrowful twist. Does his dreaming mind mistake her for his sister, alive and safe, or does she represent some kind of do-over? She's never been brave enough to ask, and now she's too grateful for the habit to analyze it.
Neph makes herself small under the comforter, her topside knee knocking between Hannibal's. Eventually the body heat generated by two people wearing top and bottom pjs under a pile of early spring blankets will be too much, but for now it smooths her shivers like a hand stroking ruffled fur. Sleep's a long way off yet, but at least she can lie still instead of picking at imaginary ropes. Hannibal breathes in, the rise of his chest lifting her forehead. Neph presses up against the touch to her hair, stretching into the safe alcove he's framed around her. A nearly-natural giggle catches in her throat when he shades Dream!Hannibal. "No, just..." You have to look "Weird dream talk."
You were a talking corpse she doesn't say. I freaked out and I crushed you. Why you instead of Father Campbell?
He grips her by the shoulderblade as though they're dancing, about to take a turn through a waltz. Neph folds the arm she's lying on to her chest, so it won't fall asleep on her. "I--you were hurt. I think maybe I--after talking 'bout all the dangerous stuff before..." Had her brain spun this scenario out of their conversation about the Inquisitors? Why not reply the attack on Lecter's office, then, and sub his younger self into the scene? That'd make way more sense. Instead it dropped him into Neph at her most dangerous and least controlled...as a warning? A rebuke, that she hadn't given him the whole truth? "It must'a been on my mind," she mutters, shoulders hunching up in a guilty twist.
He isn't sure what he's meant to be soothing away. Without details, he can't decide what to present to Neph to best play that part. Is that the point, though? Does she just want...him, without designs or plans? Is that all he can give, will ever be allowed to give her, if she doesn't want to share?
But a wordless brush of memory corrects him - Neph has shared with him before. On purpose, when she had other choices available to her, she'd chosen to come to him. In the morgue? If she'd avoided that conversation up until the moment an Inquisitor had Hannibal pinned up against a wall trying to get to her, he'd have never been the wiser until that moment. He wouldn't have even known then - he'd probably have been dead before she got to explain to him that oh, by the way, she'd met these before and they were fairly deadly.
It would have been gorey, certainly, but it would have happened with or without him being aware prior, and she'd still chosen to give him that warning. That option, that offer for an informed escape or a united front.
Now, like then, Hannibal knows which one he'd choose.
Neph's laughter rattles against his sternum and settles somewhere deeper. Hannibal smiles in the dark above her hair. "You've assured me before that I always talk 'weird'." It's not necessarily like or unlike him to use jokes as a deflection - who has Hannibal ever wanted to distract from their pain? The sample size is too small to make generalizations from that data, but it's starting to suggest that he makes barriers with humor as a default.
'You were hurt' makes objective sense as the skeleton for a bad dream, but Hannibal is still surprised to hear that it's enough for Neph to be so upset over. Just himself? Surely others must have been injured, or more stakes raised? Or is he as important to Neph as she is to him?
Would she kill for him, the way Hannibal knows he'd kill for her?
His far arm stretches across, feels for where Neph's hand is gripping his shirt and wraps his fingers against hers. "I am not going to lose sleep over what you've told me. I can...understand your fear." He can't say he shares it, not when he has the dual conflicting interests of wanting to stay free and healthy and alive but also wanting the challenge of helping Neph take down a religious anti-meta sect centuries in the making. "But if you feel guilt, about pulling me into this, that I do not understand."
"And I'm right," Neph can hear the smile in her own voice, an answer to his. The familiar pattern of their banter, tease and countertease, lets her relax into the mattress. They could be in the kitchen, or in line at the grocery store, or leaving campus with a stack of case files, anything other than lying awake at 3am while she shakes her demons. If not for the fact that Hannibal rarely hands her a straight line like that, she could close her eyes and pretend. She blinks against his collar instead, breathing through the sharp spike of gratitude that he'd make a target of himself just to make her feel better.
There's no point telling him that Dream!Hannibal wanted her to look, to see what she'd done to him. Neph doesn't think the point of that was to punish, and it definitely doesn't mean she thinks Hannibal's unnecessarily cruel to her. If anything he lets her get away with way too much shit, a thrill she feels every time she swats his arm or steals a bite off his plate. She won't confuse that issue, won't plant that seed.
Her breathing's slowed to near-normal by now, all those biosignals cranked to 11 by her nightmare slowly returning to baseline. Dried and drying sweat itches along her hairline, the back of her neck, beneath the fingers curled around her shoulderblade. She's too exhausted to care. A shapeless noise escapes her when Hannibal shifts, but he only brings his hand over hers, trapping it close to his heartbeat. If she concentrates, she can pick out the miliseconds between the thud under her palm and the pulse in his thumb.
At first she thinks he means he's not going to let her dream keep him awake, which is a weird thing to say. Her sluggish brain catches up before she can say anything truly stupid, but it's followed by another rush of guilt. If she were really only worried about the Inquisitor, it wouldn't've been the church dream. It wouldn't've been the moment where she ruined everything. She wouldn't've Pushed herself to safety and left Hannibal there to die.
"I just..." she wavers, unaware that Hannibal's mentally committing himself to dismantling the world's third largest and most wealthy religion. There's a line between what he knows of her, and the things she's not yet dug from her chest, and it gets thinner every day. "I've never been real good at...at keeping people safe. Idon'tmeanyoucan'thandleyourself but if. If something happened because'a me--"
Her throat closes like a trap. Neph hugs Hannibal so tight he's probably gonna find an imprint of her hip on the outside of his thigh tomorrow. Her breathing falls out of rhythm, a hiccup that gusts across their joined hands. I'm not six years old. I'm not ignorant. I can control myself. I won't get trapped again. He's not Campbell. He wouldn't trap me.
Hannibal standing on the sidewalk outside the Walters, Will at their backs, saying I don't-- want you caged after being hedged in by other people for so long.
If she asked him if he wanted to know what her dream contained, he'd say yes in a heartbeat. He nearly asks - if they hadn't already discussed boundaries, if Hannibal hadn't already been subtly steered with the positive outcomes of respecting her enforced distances and learning when prying would and wouldn't be appreciated, he surely would be digging further. But they've come just far enough together that he'll at least let it settle, give it greater thought before demanding parts of her heart get handed over.
Neph's hair is damp under his cheek, but it's cold - her skin is cooling, but her hair is already there. It tickles across his chin when they both shift closer to each other, as if there's really the space to do so.
She squeezes, though, and somehow that tiny bit of space between them becomes even more compressed. Hannibal's eyes slide closed against even the minimal light in the room, focusing on this new way of being shown Neph wants him around.
She's taking what he reassured her about and...regarding none of it. Specifically, she's elaborating on why she isn't capable of letting go of her concern from putting him at potential risk, but Hannibal can't find it in him to be annoyed at her for doing it. He just also can't muster up any true fear about the fact that Neph has prejudiced other Allomancers halfway across the globe, still plotting the end of her and her scattered people. It's an energy that vibrates through him, sure, but it's not anxiety. It's a sharpness, a struck knife after coming off the whetstone.
"I don't feel locked in." How to admit that the thought of stakes that high, of a challenge so deep, of excuses so wonderful to be something terrible in order to win - how to tell Neph that it's exciting? "I don't shy away from challenges, Neph. Not when they stand in the way of something I want." And he wants the challenge. He wants the excuse to see how terrible he can be.
"Phrasing, Hannibal. Phrasing." Neph snort-laughs into his shirt, breath gusting over their joined hands. He really needs a broader circle of friends, 'cuz she doesn't play with innuendo enough to teach him how not to use English.
Her amusement passes in a flicker, leaving a ghost of warmth around her mouth. She wriggles her arm back underneath her, so she can sit up on her elbow and look down at him through the dark. What kind of unguarded face would she see, if she had Tin to burn?
"I know you're up to it. Or for it, anyway," she says, speech coming slowly as she fishes for the best way to say the things jittering around in her head without coming up with a handful of the terrible, dangerous shit. "And I know you don't do failure. I want you with me, but I want you alive, too."
It hits her, then, as she fumbles through the steps of that thought, a dance she's learning for the first time. Neph's eyes widen, the words welling up and overflowing before she can check them. "But I'd rather have you with me and in danger all the time than split up to keep you safe." Take responsibility. For what? For putting him in harm's way just so she doesn't have to be alone? Well, fine. "And I'm sorry but I'm not real sorry."
What phrasing? He used words, correctly, like always how dare she? If Hannibal didn't feel a small burst of self-satisfied smugness every time he made Neph laugh, he'd surely be more testy about what's so hilarious about pledging his allegiance to her.
She leans away, to look above him in the dark, and that must be a good sign. For all that Hannibal enjoyed that indulgence of feeling painfully, distressingly needed, Neph being able to sit up on her elbow for a better vantage point suggests a Neph that's feeling a little stronger.
The gleams of light off her eyes seem to widen, the whites and pupils reflective almost equally in the semi-dark. Hannibal's own eyes are locked on her with predator intensity despite the cracked-open vulnerability of his that Neph is currently wrist-deep into. He's avidly watching for the next step of what could be his own vivisection.
And then she gives him--
Hannibal is silent for several long seconds. His increased heart rate beats syrupy in his ears. "That's very selfish of you." What does he want? How does he express this? He wishes, suddenly, that there was enough light to give him a scene of Neph's face to memorize. He wants to be closer, somehow, wants a way to make Neph know what's blossoming across his mind with deep colors and deeper roots.
Neph likes him so much she would rather risk losing him entirely than know he was safe and not near her. She'd rather destroy what she has than let anyone else take it, and that is such a gift to know.
In absence of another outlet, he finds his left hand disengaging from Neph's, freeing itself to glide up to her cheek. Hoarsely: "Thank you for telling me that." Energy that he isn't sure how to place is surely vibrating through his words. It rattles through his mind, his ribs, makes his fingertips electric as they touch Neph's face in the dark.
The heart beneath her palm goes doubletime, a sign Neph doesn't know how to read. She depends so much on context clues for communication, but the darkness strips his expression and body language away, swaddling it all in heavy silence. That leaves only touch and hearing to rely on, and maybe Neph doesn't know exactly why she was such a terrible student, but she knows her ears aren't always that reliable.
Hannibal says That's very selfish of you and she stills. His voice is--strange. His accent's thicker than usual, or maybe that's just the dark amplifying everything. He sounds half-squashed, as though she were leaning heavily on his ribcage, and he called her selfish.
"I...I know--" she starts to say, but then he's pulling his hand away. Neph almost cringes back, but before she can withdraw into an Allomancer armadillo and slink back to her own room, there's a motion she's not sure how to read and a warmth near her jaw.
Oh.
The only time she's ever heard him sound quite that knocked-flat-on-his-ass was when Will allowed him to examine his injuries. The other parallels - vulnerability, a careful hand raised to the face - skate down her synapses. Neph draws a careful breath as his fingers ghost over her cheekbone and his palm presses to skin. She physically can't help turning her face into the touch, the bridge of her nose pressing into the outside of his thumb. The pulse in his wrist seems to shake the air by her mouth.
"I don't mean I'd keep you if you wanted to go," she confesses. This is fucked up, all of it, there is no way to hold onto something tight enough to guarantee the keeping of it, and trying will only bruise. And yet. "It only counts 'cuz you want t'be here."
Hannibal's face, exposed only to the dark but close enough to Neph that he can phantom-feel the expectation of hair grazing against his forehead, is like an open wound. There's nothing blocking it, even if he isn't the most expression person. His mouth is parted slightly, not that he's aware until he reflexively swallows and his jaw closes with an audible click.
Breath smooths across his wrist and lower palm. Hannibal just blinks at the space barely separating them, a blacker smear on black.
Should he say that he'd happily find out that Neph would hurt other people, hurt him even, to keep him around? That being needed in a selfish way is letting bones slot together smoother in his chest, letting him breathe easier than ever before?
Even he's aware he can't quite say that. Even he's aware that he might, someday, be glad she's willing to give him space if he wants it.
But not right now. Right now, his palm flattens against her cheek, his fingers by the soft spot right at her temple, his thumb nearly touching the side of her nose.
"I do want to be here." That's safer to say. That's equally true. Hannibal considers the darkness between them, the way he wants it to disappear like smoke and leave them somehow closer. He moves his free arm to the side, works an elbow into the mattress so he can lean up. His forehead taps the end of Neph's nose, eyes sliding closed to complete the blackness around them.
"I feel just as selfish as you do, Neph. What you want from me doesn't frighten me."
There's a doubt that lives in the back of Neph's head, buried so well in the jumble of all her other fears and what-ifs that finding it would be like looking through her room for a particular hair tie. It's the one that says but he shouldn't have been here at all, so how can he be happy about it? Can Hannibal put together the evidence from Lecter's life, trace its trajectory, and know for sure it isn't what he would've wanted? At least in that one he was guaranteed some security, guaranteed to make it to his 40s. There's no promise of that anymore.
Yet her selfishness, now admitted to, grabs onto his declaration of wanting to be here and runs with it anyway. She can want this for him, can't she? She can want him to have this thing they've got, and his friendship with Will, and dance lessons on Fridays and a fancy work study thing at an important college. She can be relieved that he's got a world where maybe it's still not safe to be a mutant, but at least it's easier to connect with others. She can think, in the pawnshop clutter of her head, that this is better than publication credits and a big house and half a dozen degrees. Those could come in time, or they could both die first, and Neph wouldn't feel too bad either way so long as they had this.
The mattress creaks as Hannibal sits up. The movement rocks her a little, and when she settles forward again it's to his bangs against her nose. She could press a kiss to his forehead easy as thought. Instead she lifts her free hand from his chest to grip the outside of his wrist and breathes out a laugh. "I'm not scared'a you, either."
Scared that he might not understand how far down this clinging, vinelike need in her really goes. Scared that when he says he's equally selfish, he doesn't actually know enough to make that comparison. But not scared of Hannibal Lecter, who threw a pepper grinder at another mutant threatening him with a gun. Not scared of the boy who conceded to leaving the apartment windows unlocked so she could come and go at all hours.
Speaking of...
"Shit, you've got class tomorrow, don't you?" there's an apology in that quiet sigh, but no real regret. That would be...unfair, or even insulting, after he let her under the covers without complaint. Neph tilts her face down so his eyebrow ridge slots into the bridge of her nose, a maneuver that is absolutely not a nuzzle by any definition, and lets some of the weight drop from her hunched shoulders.
There's different kinds of hunger, and the most obvious meaning isn't the only one that gives some people - children and adults - a gaunt, lonely look. A hunger for affection burns acidic in the stomach of thousands, millions of people every day, but it's an invisible illness. It kills just as surely, but the killing is metaphorical and so no one notices. It's harder to campaign against it.
You can't throw money at it and solve it. Lecter, will all his degrees and wealth and investments and knowledge, had still lacked something so basic that most people wouldn't have even given thought to what he'd been missing. Who wants to acknowledge that one of a person's most simple, integral needs can be so subjective, unmeasurable, nontransferable? If you can't take it and redistribute it until equity is reached, how do you even campaign to solve that sort of problem? And how can a single isolated person ever be expected to climb out of that pit themselves?
It's not glamorous to admit to. It's uncomfortable to notice.
But it feels wonderful to have the antidote suddenly delivered. Neph touches his wrist, lets him stay so close he can feel her breath against his closed eyes, and he floats along with the reminder that he has someone dedicated to him, who doesn't mind his own possessive dedication being latched back onto her.
By the time Hannibal has processed what Neph says, he's smiling, lips pulled away from teeth in the dark. "I would say I don't care, but you know that isn't true." Hannibal is fastidious about his grades, but much less so about his actual attendance - when skipping is possible. Practicums, however, mean one absolutely needs to be present for any credit. "But given the choice, I would rather you woke me up than resisted the urge."
She leans into him more heavily, and Hannibal has a second to decide - prop himself up more sturdy, or let himself drift back to his mattress? He chooses the latter, elbow easing out so he can slide vertebra-by-vertebra into a more horizontal position. Hopefully she takes the cue and follows him back to laying down. If not, one of his hands finds its helpful way to the back of her head, cupping it and coaxing.
Had Hannibal reassured her that no, no, it was all fine really, some certainty that it was not fine at all would've burrowed into the junkpile of Neph's brain. He dredges up a wry one liner somehow, at 3am, and her answering laugh is loud and bright and shatters that doubt to smithereens.
If they can come through murmured midnight confessions and end on a joke, then maybe it's not fucked up to want to stick so close to him after all. She may not have the words for this yet, for what exactly she wants from Hannibal or why she wants it; up til now it's been easier to define this relationship by what she doesn't want - his money, sex, for either of them to be merely obligated to the other - than to try and label it. For once it's not just her lack of education getting in the way of finding the right word. Nothing pings back when she searches her vocabulary. Not from books, movies, tv, chatter from friends, nothing.
They can't possibly be the first people to do whatever it is they're doing, but it may not be something that's commonly talked about. Wouldn't that just be the story of her life?
"Yeah," Neph says, lowering her voice back to a more acceptable volume for a pitch black bedroom in the no-mans-land hours of the morning. "I'm...I'm glad I did." She's surprised at how intensely she means that, even if she doesn't know if she'd want to come to him every time. Just having the option available is a talisman against the dark.
The hand at the back of her head tugs her from her thoughts, and also down to the mattress. Neph obliges by tucking her supporting arm under her side and wriggling back under the covers. Hannibal guides her head to his shoulder, fingers lacing through her hair, and Neph settles her cheek there with a sigh. Her topside arm curls over his chest in, not at all shaking or desperate. She'll just have to consider herself cured of the nightmare for now.
"Can we do fancy pancakes tomorrow?" she mumbles, because it's only funny to say 'crepes' when she can watch his soul leave his body at her horrible pronunciation. It's longstanding tradition to smother her bad dreams in sugary carbs, so really, she deserves props for upgrading her choice of junkfood.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2017-04-02 08:47 pm (UTC)But it didn't improve much, living in the same safe place every night. It didn't improve a lot having even Murasaki's scent nearby, no matter how much he could concentrate on the orange rind-cinnamon of the mansion and let it lull him to sleep.
The nightmares couldn't be kept back by anything he'd been allowed to stumble into. So he'd taken matters into his own hands.
Killing some of the men felt like it ought to have helped. In many ways, it had - he didn't dream about it as frequently. But it was still unpredictable, affected by nothing he did during his waking hours - except for the few stressors in his life that reliably made it worse.
But then he'd met Neph, and she'd been remarkably unfazed by the screaming nightmares, or his blank stares when woken, or even the one time he'd propelled himself out of bed away from her and needed a full two minutes to breathe himself back to full consciousness so he could come back onto the mattress. She never left afterwards, either - they'd collapse back onto his bed, and he was allowed to be as clingy as he liked. In fact, to that end, she was just as willing and eager to lay across one another and not budge except for sticking knees and elbows in questionably-comfortable places as the night wore on. Hannibal never had a repeated nightmare on the evenings when Neph joined him.
As accidentally passing out on the couch together became common enough to notice patterns, too, Hannibal noticed something new.
For the first time in his life, he seemed to have discovered something that actually kept his nightmare from finding him.
*
Whether or not the scent of her is actually enough to abate it, Hannibal has been remarkably agreeable about letting Neph leave her blankets in his room after a joint night. In fact, he'd taken to offering up increasingly implausible reassurances not to bother herself taking them out when she left in the morning, that he'd get it for her later, and then leaving them in his bedroom on purpose - she'd taken the hint and now he generally gets one of her blankets wordlessly left on his bed per laundry cycle.
Which is only fair, really, considering Hannibal has several jackets and undershirts he needs to keep an eye on or else they might disappear on the day he was intending to wear them.
Tonight, he's roused from the dreamless catch of sleep by sound and movement. He's never been particularly hard to wake up, always a light sleeper, but Hannibal is slower to react when it's Neph's scent so close to him. He rolls over, left arm caught in the very star-covered blanket Neph had shared with Will just a spare few weeks back, and blinks through near-pitch darkness in the direction of her voice and more Neph-smell.
But it's not just her shampoo and his soap, it's the acid bite of fear, catching at the base of his tongue and cranking his brain the rest of the way into wakefulness.
Hannibal goes from slowly rolling over to sitting up with force, leaning for her immediately. His voice is pitched low in case there's an intruder. "What is it?" He can barely see her, nightvision or not - Hannibal had been meticulous about buying blackout curtains and getting the rods that allow it to wrap flush to the wall on either side, so they're going with the blueish LED clock display from half the room away - but her shape is already encroaching up onto the bed, which is good. He reaches a hand out for her arm, touches a sleeve that's damp at the pit of her elbow.
"What happened?"
no subject
Date: 2017-04-02 10:06 pm (UTC)It's not enough to make out his face. She can't be sure it's whole and not--not bashed open. Neph leans forward, planting her hands on the mattress for balance. Something about her approach flips him wide awake. And why shouldn't it? She's never snuck into his room without a reason, before. If he did the same, she'd immediately assume they were in danger.
"What is it?" he asks, quiet like somebody might overhear. The low, sleep roughed urgency in it is nothing like the matter-of-fact tone from her dream. Now that he's sitting up, the ghostly light shows the flat angles of his cheek, jaw and nose. Unbroken. Neph lets out a breath, relaxing so abruptly her ribs rattle around her deflated lungs.
Hannibal doesn't take that as an answer, asks her what happened as he reaches for her arm. For a lightheaded moment, Neph's not sure he'll actually be able to make contact. She couldn't rip loose in her dream, no matter how hard she tried. Then his hand is on her elbow, warm and heavy from sleep. The touch slides down her forearm to settle around her wrist and Neph finds the muscle memory to inhale again.
"Nothing." Apparently. He's fine. There's nothing to worry about except for this sudden change in nightmare programming. She could turn around and go back to her room and find something to do until morning, if she wanted.
She does not want.
Neph pulls her other knee onto the bed, weight rocking forward onto her hands as she folds her legs under her. "I just," the dry click of her swallow is mortifyingly loud in the muffled room. Neither of them can see her flush but it burns her face and neck, feverish under the sheen of drying sweat. "Can I stay? Here?"
Nothing in her head, heart or gut screams that he might turn her away. Not after all the nights they've navigated his nightmares together. Nope, instead those battered organs whisper about the risks of being seen, of becoming dependent on others for comfort, of how much worse this may make her own dreams.
She clenches her fingers in his ridiculous threadcount comforter and resolutely does not care.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-03 12:08 am (UTC)But 'nothing' also means he now has an entirely different problem to deal with, one that still was enough to make Neph reek of terror. It's enough to have the hair at the back of his neck raising, a visceral response Hannibal's never really had around other frightened people. Is it because this is Neph?
(Isn't that always why: because it's Neph? They've transcended so many boundaries, some of which Hannibal had drawn himself and others he hadn't consciously realized existed around him, that he hardly thinks of them as separate people anymore. For a lot of his waking hours, he-and-Neph are a fuzzy-bordered amoeba of joint household chores and decisions and grocery lists and waking up in tangled-sheet dogpiles.)
The sour tingle of fear contracts and pinches, a bite that reminds Hannibal of students in class when they dropped their textbooks or the one man he'd been near while he fumbled through getting turned down by the woman who was at the park with him. Embarrassed?
Neph's weight is moving towards him, the combined heft of them making the mattress sink in and gradually pulling them towards each other even more. She doesn't tunnel under the covers, just kneels on top of them, but Hannibal is pushing his sheets out of the way with his knees so he can press the outside of his thigh against the point of Neph's kneecap.
She doesn't elaborate. Or excuse herself. Instead, she asks to stay.
He stands at the edge of that cliff for a moment, watching the expanse underneath them, before he trails down her sleeve until he can find her hand. "I would never send you away. Not if you asked to stay." Up this close, Neph feels flushed, but there's a fine shiver to her normally-still hands.
It's late at night. The digital clock, the only reason he has enough light to catch a flash of reflection off of Neph's eyes, reads 2:54. There's only so many possibilities.
"Did you have a nightmare?"
no subject
Date: 2017-04-03 05:36 am (UTC)There's a difference between having confidence in a thing and having that confidence validated. It's the bubbling dizziness she'd felt when he'd backed her against Samson, grounded by the way he'd said I would never abandon you afterward. Now, with I would never send you away, he's just won Countering Abandonment Issues Bingo. Her right hand is splayed under his, but her left darts out to grip the leg he's bumped against hers. All she really wants is to fold herself up against his heartbeat, but she really should get under the covers first. Right this second it's enough to just dig her nails in and croak "Thank you."
She can't get under the covers fast enough after that, fleeing the clammy chill of her evaporating fear. Normally Neph climbs in with Hannibal after he's already kicked everything into wild disarray, but when he's not battling his own nightmares he makes his bed so envelope-tight she has to claw the sheets down. Does it help, being half-restrained? Was he always like this, or did he start up the habit after whatever happened to Mischa, as a substitute for someone to hold him through his bad dreams? She's just wriggling under all the layers, into the bubble of trapped body heat, when Hannibal asks the obvious question.
"Yeah." Their height difference means that even seated hip to hip her knee hits above his, and his knee presses into the top of her calf. Neph throws everything out of alignment by twisting sideways and snaking her arms around his ribs, flattening them both to the mattress. She doesn't drag the blanket up over them, prioritizing fitting her shoulders under his arm. It's strange, seeking comfort instead of offering it, strange enough that Neph presses her face to his chest as though she has something to hide. "One'a the bad ones."
Everything's so loud in the dark: her shaking voice, the raw note in it, her uneven breath. Neph cares less that Hannibal's sure to notice than she does about how warm and alive and not-accusatory he is. It's a question of responsibility. What did that even mean? She presses her forehead to his breastbone and lets the thump of his heart drive those thoughts away. It's steady and real, if a little fast after she'd shocked him awake.
"You were there," she mumbles, the sharp angles of her limbs softening as the heat settles around her. She tries to keep her toes curled away from his legs. They'll be ice cubes by now. "'was new."
no subject
Date: 2017-04-03 04:16 pm (UTC)That's clearly making it more difficult for Neph to squirrel her way in here with him, of course, but with two pairs of pointy knees jabbing at the fabric, the edges pull free enough to allow them the room to crowd into his bed properly. Neph tunnels against his side, clinging around his ribs in a way that would seem completely normal if he'd been the one having the nightmare. But she's never initiated this for herself, before, a realization that cinches a little tighter against his ribs than even Neph's bony fingers.
Hannibal is pulling back towards the mattress in tandem with her, the two of them situating naturally with the rhythm imparted from several months' worth of semi-frequent invitations.
He blinks in the dark above Neph's hair - tickling the edge of his collarbone - when she says you were there. His own dreams have only recently started to ever deviate from his nightmare, but his nightmares have always, always been the same. It's strange to remember that others have mishmash horror shows, that the way dreams are described in books or movies is how most people experience them.
He can't help his curiosity. But he also hears the scratch of skittering fear in Neph's throat. "I hope I wasn't as horrifically rude as usual." His cheek presses against softly-tangled hair. The smell of terror, this close up, is nearly all he can focus on. He snakes his arm properly around her shoulders, fingers squeezing bluntly at the back of her scapula.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-03 08:12 pm (UTC)She shudders against Hannibal, hand twisting in his nightshirt. As role-reversals go, this...isn't much of one. He wraps around her after his nightmares, as though only protecting someone can comfort him. Neph thinks about that a lot, always with a sorrowful twist. Does his dreaming mind mistake her for his sister, alive and safe, or does she represent some kind of do-over? She's never been brave enough to ask, and now she's too grateful for the habit to analyze it.
Neph makes herself small under the comforter, her topside knee knocking between Hannibal's. Eventually the body heat generated by two people wearing top and bottom pjs under a pile of early spring blankets will be too much, but for now it smooths her shivers like a hand stroking ruffled fur. Sleep's a long way off yet, but at least she can lie still instead of picking at imaginary ropes. Hannibal breathes in, the rise of his chest lifting her forehead. Neph presses up against the touch to her hair, stretching into the safe alcove he's framed around her. A nearly-natural giggle catches in her throat when he shades Dream!Hannibal. "No, just..." You have to look "Weird dream talk."
You were a talking corpse she doesn't say. I freaked out and I crushed you. Why you instead of Father Campbell?
He grips her by the shoulderblade as though they're dancing, about to take a turn through a waltz. Neph folds the arm she's lying on to her chest, so it won't fall asleep on her. "I--you were hurt. I think maybe I--after talking 'bout all the dangerous stuff before..." Had her brain spun this scenario out of their conversation about the Inquisitors? Why not reply the attack on Lecter's office, then, and sub his younger self into the scene? That'd make way more sense. Instead it dropped him into Neph at her most dangerous and least controlled...as a warning? A rebuke, that she hadn't given him the whole truth? "It must'a been on my mind," she mutters, shoulders hunching up in a guilty twist.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-04 02:46 am (UTC)But a wordless brush of memory corrects him - Neph has shared with him before. On purpose, when she had other choices available to her, she'd chosen to come to him. In the morgue? If she'd avoided that conversation up until the moment an Inquisitor had Hannibal pinned up against a wall trying to get to her, he'd have never been the wiser until that moment. He wouldn't have even known then - he'd probably have been dead before she got to explain to him that oh, by the way, she'd met these before and they were fairly deadly.
It would have been gorey, certainly, but it would have happened with or without him being aware prior, and she'd still chosen to give him that warning. That option, that offer for an informed escape or a united front.
Now, like then, Hannibal knows which one he'd choose.
Neph's laughter rattles against his sternum and settles somewhere deeper. Hannibal smiles in the dark above her hair. "You've assured me before that I always talk 'weird'." It's not necessarily like or unlike him to use jokes as a deflection - who has Hannibal ever wanted to distract from their pain? The sample size is too small to make generalizations from that data, but it's starting to suggest that he makes barriers with humor as a default.
'You were hurt' makes objective sense as the skeleton for a bad dream, but Hannibal is still surprised to hear that it's enough for Neph to be so upset over. Just himself? Surely others must have been injured, or more stakes raised? Or is he as important to Neph as she is to him?
Would she kill for him, the way Hannibal knows he'd kill for her?
His far arm stretches across, feels for where Neph's hand is gripping his shirt and wraps his fingers against hers. "I am not going to lose sleep over what you've told me. I can...understand your fear." He can't say he shares it, not when he has the dual conflicting interests of wanting to stay free and healthy and alive but also wanting the challenge of helping Neph take down a religious anti-meta sect centuries in the making. "But if you feel guilt, about pulling me into this, that I do not understand."
no subject
Date: 2017-04-04 05:34 am (UTC)There's no point telling him that Dream!Hannibal wanted her to look, to see what she'd done to him. Neph doesn't think the point of that was to punish, and it definitely doesn't mean she thinks Hannibal's unnecessarily cruel to her. If anything he lets her get away with way too much shit, a thrill she feels every time she swats his arm or steals a bite off his plate. She won't confuse that issue, won't plant that seed.
Her breathing's slowed to near-normal by now, all those biosignals cranked to 11 by her nightmare slowly returning to baseline. Dried and drying sweat itches along her hairline, the back of her neck, beneath the fingers curled around her shoulderblade. She's too exhausted to care. A shapeless noise escapes her when Hannibal shifts, but he only brings his hand over hers, trapping it close to his heartbeat. If she concentrates, she can pick out the miliseconds between the thud under her palm and the pulse in his thumb.
At first she thinks he means he's not going to let her dream keep him awake, which is a weird thing to say. Her sluggish brain catches up before she can say anything truly stupid, but it's followed by another rush of guilt. If she were really only worried about the Inquisitor, it wouldn't've been the church dream. It wouldn't've been the moment where she ruined everything. She wouldn't've Pushed herself to safety and left Hannibal there to die.
"I just..." she wavers, unaware that Hannibal's mentally committing himself to dismantling the world's third largest and most wealthy religion. There's a line between what he knows of her, and the things she's not yet dug from her chest, and it gets thinner every day. "I've never been real good at...at keeping people safe. Idon'tmeanyoucan'thandleyourself but if. If something happened because'a me--"
Her throat closes like a trap. Neph hugs Hannibal so tight he's probably gonna find an imprint of her hip on the outside of his thigh tomorrow. Her breathing falls out of rhythm, a hiccup that gusts across their joined hands. I'm not six years old. I'm not ignorant. I can control myself. I won't get trapped again. He's not Campbell. He wouldn't trap me.
Hannibal standing on the sidewalk outside the Walters, Will at their backs, saying I don't-- want you caged after being hedged in by other people for so long.
"I don't wanna lock you in either."
no subject
Date: 2017-04-04 11:20 pm (UTC)Neph's hair is damp under his cheek, but it's cold - her skin is cooling, but her hair is already there. It tickles across his chin when they both shift closer to each other, as if there's really the space to do so.
She squeezes, though, and somehow that tiny bit of space between them becomes even more compressed. Hannibal's eyes slide closed against even the minimal light in the room, focusing on this new way of being shown Neph wants him around.
She's taking what he reassured her about and...regarding none of it. Specifically, she's elaborating on why she isn't capable of letting go of her concern from putting him at potential risk, but Hannibal can't find it in him to be annoyed at her for doing it. He just also can't muster up any true fear about the fact that Neph has prejudiced other Allomancers halfway across the globe, still plotting the end of her and her scattered people. It's an energy that vibrates through him, sure, but it's not anxiety. It's a sharpness, a struck knife after coming off the whetstone.
"I don't feel locked in." How to admit that the thought of stakes that high, of a challenge so deep, of excuses so wonderful to be something terrible in order to win - how to tell Neph that it's exciting? "I don't shy away from challenges, Neph. Not when they stand in the way of something I want." And he wants the challenge. He wants the excuse to see how terrible he can be.
"And I want you."
no subject
Date: 2017-04-05 01:29 am (UTC)Her amusement passes in a flicker, leaving a ghost of warmth around her mouth. She wriggles her arm back underneath her, so she can sit up on her elbow and look down at him through the dark. What kind of unguarded face would she see, if she had Tin to burn?
"I know you're up to it. Or for it, anyway," she says, speech coming slowly as she fishes for the best way to say the things jittering around in her head without coming up with a handful of the terrible, dangerous shit. "And I know you don't do failure. I want you with me, but I want you alive, too."
It hits her, then, as she fumbles through the steps of that thought, a dance she's learning for the first time. Neph's eyes widen, the words welling up and overflowing before she can check them. "But I'd rather have you with me and in danger all the time than split up to keep you safe." Take responsibility. For what? For putting him in harm's way just so she doesn't have to be alone? Well, fine. "And I'm sorry but I'm not real sorry."
no subject
Date: 2017-04-05 10:29 pm (UTC)She leans away, to look above him in the dark, and that must be a good sign. For all that Hannibal enjoyed that indulgence of feeling painfully, distressingly needed, Neph being able to sit up on her elbow for a better vantage point suggests a Neph that's feeling a little stronger.
The gleams of light off her eyes seem to widen, the whites and pupils reflective almost equally in the semi-dark. Hannibal's own eyes are locked on her with predator intensity despite the cracked-open vulnerability of his that Neph is currently wrist-deep into. He's avidly watching for the next step of what could be his own vivisection.
And then she gives him--
Hannibal is silent for several long seconds. His increased heart rate beats syrupy in his ears. "That's very selfish of you." What does he want? How does he express this? He wishes, suddenly, that there was enough light to give him a scene of Neph's face to memorize. He wants to be closer, somehow, wants a way to make Neph know what's blossoming across his mind with deep colors and deeper roots.
Neph likes him so much she would rather risk losing him entirely than know he was safe and not near her. She'd rather destroy what she has than let anyone else take it, and that is such a gift to know.
In absence of another outlet, he finds his left hand disengaging from Neph's, freeing itself to glide up to her cheek. Hoarsely: "Thank you for telling me that." Energy that he isn't sure how to place is surely vibrating through his words. It rattles through his mind, his ribs, makes his fingertips electric as they touch Neph's face in the dark.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-06 04:51 am (UTC)Hannibal says That's very selfish of you and she stills. His voice is--strange. His accent's thicker than usual, or maybe that's just the dark amplifying everything. He sounds half-squashed, as though she were leaning heavily on his ribcage, and he called her selfish.
"I...I know--" she starts to say, but then he's pulling his hand away. Neph almost cringes back, but before she can withdraw into an Allomancer armadillo and slink back to her own room, there's a motion she's not sure how to read and a warmth near her jaw.
Oh.
The only time she's ever heard him sound quite that knocked-flat-on-his-ass was when Will allowed him to examine his injuries. The other parallels - vulnerability, a careful hand raised to the face - skate down her synapses. Neph draws a careful breath as his fingers ghost over her cheekbone and his palm presses to skin. She physically can't help turning her face into the touch, the bridge of her nose pressing into the outside of his thumb. The pulse in his wrist seems to shake the air by her mouth.
"I don't mean I'd keep you if you wanted to go," she confesses. This is fucked up, all of it, there is no way to hold onto something tight enough to guarantee the keeping of it, and trying will only bruise. And yet. "It only counts 'cuz you want t'be here."
no subject
Date: 2017-04-08 11:46 pm (UTC)Breath smooths across his wrist and lower palm. Hannibal just blinks at the space barely separating them, a blacker smear on black.
Should he say that he'd happily find out that Neph would hurt other people, hurt him even, to keep him around? That being needed in a selfish way is letting bones slot together smoother in his chest, letting him breathe easier than ever before?
Even he's aware he can't quite say that. Even he's aware that he might, someday, be glad she's willing to give him space if he wants it.
But not right now. Right now, his palm flattens against her cheek, his fingers by the soft spot right at her temple, his thumb nearly touching the side of her nose.
"I do want to be here." That's safer to say. That's equally true. Hannibal considers the darkness between them, the way he wants it to disappear like smoke and leave them somehow closer. He moves his free arm to the side, works an elbow into the mattress so he can lean up. His forehead taps the end of Neph's nose, eyes sliding closed to complete the blackness around them.
"I feel just as selfish as you do, Neph. What you want from me doesn't frighten me."
no subject
Date: 2017-04-09 09:52 pm (UTC)Yet her selfishness, now admitted to, grabs onto his declaration of wanting to be here and runs with it anyway. She can want this for him, can't she? She can want him to have this thing they've got, and his friendship with Will, and dance lessons on Fridays and a fancy work study thing at an important college. She can be relieved that he's got a world where maybe it's still not safe to be a mutant, but at least it's easier to connect with others. She can think, in the pawnshop clutter of her head, that this is better than publication credits and a big house and half a dozen degrees. Those could come in time, or they could both die first, and Neph wouldn't feel too bad either way so long as they had this.
The mattress creaks as Hannibal sits up. The movement rocks her a little, and when she settles forward again it's to his bangs against her nose. She could press a kiss to his forehead easy as thought. Instead she lifts her free hand from his chest to grip the outside of his wrist and breathes out a laugh. "I'm not scared'a you, either."
Scared that he might not understand how far down this clinging, vinelike need in her really goes. Scared that when he says he's equally selfish, he doesn't actually know enough to make that comparison. But not scared of Hannibal Lecter, who threw a pepper grinder at another mutant threatening him with a gun. Not scared of the boy who conceded to leaving the apartment windows unlocked so she could come and go at all hours.
Speaking of...
"Shit, you've got class tomorrow, don't you?" there's an apology in that quiet sigh, but no real regret. That would be...unfair, or even insulting, after he let her under the covers without complaint. Neph tilts her face down so his eyebrow ridge slots into the bridge of her nose, a maneuver that is absolutely not a nuzzle by any definition, and lets some of the weight drop from her hunched shoulders.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-10 11:21 pm (UTC)You can't throw money at it and solve it. Lecter, will all his degrees and wealth and investments and knowledge, had still lacked something so basic that most people wouldn't have even given thought to what he'd been missing. Who wants to acknowledge that one of a person's most simple, integral needs can be so subjective, unmeasurable, nontransferable? If you can't take it and redistribute it until equity is reached, how do you even campaign to solve that sort of problem? And how can a single isolated person ever be expected to climb out of that pit themselves?
It's not glamorous to admit to. It's uncomfortable to notice.
But it feels wonderful to have the antidote suddenly delivered. Neph touches his wrist, lets him stay so close he can feel her breath against his closed eyes, and he floats along with the reminder that he has someone dedicated to him, who doesn't mind his own possessive dedication being latched back onto her.
By the time Hannibal has processed what Neph says, he's smiling, lips pulled away from teeth in the dark. "I would say I don't care, but you know that isn't true." Hannibal is fastidious about his grades, but much less so about his actual attendance - when skipping is possible. Practicums, however, mean one absolutely needs to be present for any credit. "But given the choice, I would rather you woke me up than resisted the urge."
She leans into him more heavily, and Hannibal has a second to decide - prop himself up more sturdy, or let himself drift back to his mattress? He chooses the latter, elbow easing out so he can slide vertebra-by-vertebra into a more horizontal position. Hopefully she takes the cue and follows him back to laying down. If not, one of his hands finds its helpful way to the back of her head, cupping it and coaxing.
Aaaand scene?
Date: 2017-04-11 01:17 am (UTC)If they can come through murmured midnight confessions and end on a joke, then maybe it's not fucked up to want to stick so close to him after all. She may not have the words for this yet, for what exactly she wants from Hannibal or why she wants it; up til now it's been easier to define this relationship by what she doesn't want - his money, sex, for either of them to be merely obligated to the other - than to try and label it. For once it's not just her lack of education getting in the way of finding the right word. Nothing pings back when she searches her vocabulary. Not from books, movies, tv, chatter from friends, nothing.
They can't possibly be the first people to do whatever it is they're doing, but it may not be something that's commonly talked about. Wouldn't that just be the story of her life?
"Yeah," Neph says, lowering her voice back to a more acceptable volume for a pitch black bedroom in the no-mans-land hours of the morning. "I'm...I'm glad I did." She's surprised at how intensely she means that, even if she doesn't know if she'd want to come to him every time. Just having the option available is a talisman against the dark.
The hand at the back of her head tugs her from her thoughts, and also down to the mattress. Neph obliges by tucking her supporting arm under her side and wriggling back under the covers. Hannibal guides her head to his shoulder, fingers lacing through her hair, and Neph settles her cheek there with a sigh. Her topside arm curls over his chest in, not at all shaking or desperate. She'll just have to consider herself cured of the nightmare for now.
"Can we do fancy pancakes tomorrow?" she mumbles, because it's only funny to say 'crepes' when she can watch his soul leave his body at her horrible pronunciation. It's longstanding tradition to smother her bad dreams in sugary carbs, so really, she deserves props for upgrading her choice of junkfood.