youwill | 🍴 ( 014 ) spam

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[Spam for Will]

[He wakes very early. Something is changed, he can tell that almost before he opens the door. He can certainly tell when the small - robotic? - dog tries to take his leg off at the ankle. A solid kick allows him to retreat, to arm himself.

How much easier this would be, if his scalpel was where it ought to be. Instead, he palms a butter knife, good, polished silver, and holds its blade against his forearm. When he ventures out again, he's ready.

He was supposed to be ready.

It's some time before he returns, his head swimming with buried thoughts, buried plans. The mushrooms he finds in their cool, dark hiding place, the cappuccino machine and his tea pot forced to work in tandem. He plans ahead in such fragmented pieces that he's not entirely sure of the path from a to b to c, only that he accomplishes and moves forward, succeeds and proceeds.

He reaches Will's room, pauses just beyond the cell, adrift on a sea of scents and sensations. When he enters, it's on silent feet, tea pot held carefully in hand, one towel folded beneath it. It's noiseless when he sets it down, but when it comes to waking his friend, he pauses, hovering over the other man's bed instead. This is not appropriate. He must say something or leave.]

Will.

[It's nearly a whisper, soft but strong, nearly urgent. Trust. Honesty. He's come with a trade.]

[Open Spam]

[There is blood under his fingernails. He's not sure where it came from, only that he can feel it gush and dry and flake. His fingertips brush his palms around the knife and the duller ends of metal. Metal sharpened against metal. His mind cycles through all the words for it before settling on the only one that matters. Cutlery.

He smiles at his joke, and strides - no, stalks - down the hall. Which hall? He's lost count. He's searching, or hunting, or chasing or being chased; clarity shifts in and out of focus as he moves, an animal used to its stomping grounds, an animal that has finally been given the room to hunt. He is hunting now, hair out of it's usual careful slick back and falling across his eyes. He took off his tie at some point, realizing how much more useful it could be wrapped around someone else's throat than his own. His collar is half unfurled, the top two buttons torn: he is less put together even than his return from Ville de Rachat.

Both occasions were freeing, in their way. Underground, there were no eyes to track him, no judgement but his own.

Now, there is no judgement.

He walks like he is following something, someone. A flutter of a dress, the flash of soft curls, a carefree smile. He shifts, not quite man and not quite animal, but something more and less and hungry.]

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[ It's enough to wake him - easy to, when he's been breathing in this gas nearly his entire slumber.

He comes to with a jerk of his limbs, braced and ready at once - breathing labored, sweat coloring the front of his shirt, his pupils even constrict when he looks up towards the source of the sound. The thing is, he's stopped expecting things around here. It doesn't leave him so unprepared in the wake of strange things coming his way. It doesn't leave him so unprepared for the sight of Hannibal Lecter looming over him in his sleep, easy as breathing. ]

I smell -

[ Something. Tea? With a heel of his hand pushed into one of his eyes, he starts to really come to, sitting up and peering Hannibal over with a new kind of defensiveness to both his gaze and his tone. It's unfamiliar. He doesn't like it. ]

How long have you been standing there?

[Yes, Hannibal thinks, when he first speaks. The scent of sweat is heavy in his nose, sweat and snow and the strange way hair clings to shampoo. He blinks, and leans back as he sees Will wake.

The butter knife is still in his hand, but he doesn't think of driving it down through Will's eye. He holds it against his forearm and steps back to hover a hand over the tea pot.]

A moment.

[Minutes, maybe. Several, maybe. No - only a moment. He will not lose his sense of time and direction.]

I'm afraid I've come to ask a favor.

[ He could have killed him, easily, as could have most of everyone here - he's vulnerable in his sleep, this room, which is probably lucky that more often than not he finds himself unable to actually actively sleep. "Lucky," depending on the definition.

Will's eyes flicker to the butter knife and then to the tea pot. He scrubs at his face again, watching carefully as he can those hands moving over to the tea pot at his side. He really did. He brought him tea. Hospitality in return for -

Whatever he wants. ]

Entailing?

[ He doesn't mind favors. Favors tend to come with consequential favors in return. Hannibal asking for one is an entirely different beast. ]

An exchange.

[He knows the pattern, still understands the dialogue.]

I find myself ill equipped for what has come to face us today.

[he hears them almost distantly, like someone else is speaking. Other words rise up in his thoughts, filling the silent parts of his mind as his internal palace crumbles.

Presume not that I am the thing I was.]

[ "You're unequipped?" he wants to ask, because there are very few scenarios that Will can imagine - bound to his own crucifixion, wrists slit open, a prophetic crown of thorns atop his head - in which Hannibal would be unprepared.

It makes him stand, the gas permeating his system and surging through his veins already - he may have just woken up, but now he is truly awake, sharper in the eyes and standing to gain himself some of that height advantage, even keel with Hannibal. ]

What's out there?

[ He asks first, and his eyes do shift to the door, open, no screams, no sounds of horrors outside. He wonders. ]

I'm not certain yet.

[It's a lie. He's wandered through a good deal of the Barge in the early morning, in the mostly empty spaces, breathing poison and seeing clips of things past repeating over and over.]

It seems a carnival has come to town.

[A dangerous one goes unsaid. It is the Barge, after all.

With a smooth gesture, he turns the knife in his hand, holding it up between them. Not an offer, but a gesture, a revealing.]

My scalpels have been removed from my office. I would feel...safer with something closer to that sharpness.

A dark carnival.

[ He knows the implication and feels the need to crack the joke regardless, ruffling at his hair thoughtfully and peering down at the butter knife. ] I don't - I don't have anything, no weapons. [ He's not even sure how Hannibal kept the butter knife, to be honest; innocuous in anyone else's hands but Will just has a fine idea of what it might feel like plunged into his lower viscera.

He's moving past Hannibal and more towards the rack of shabby clothing towards the corner of his room. If he's going to be dealing with Hannibal and sharp objects this early, it's going to be dressed. ]

And what do you want from me? [ Curiously, subtly not keeping his back to him but with the veil of helpfulness regardless. ]

[Hannibal does not get in the way; he turns to watch, though. A predator drawn to movement, judging whether or not it is a risk, or prey, or worthwhile at all. He turns the knife, long fingers twining about it, over and over before he forces himself to tuck it against his forearm again.]

You have the raw materials.

[He sets the butter knife down carefully, delicately at a not-quite-perfect angle with the tea pot. Then he gestures to Will's bed.]

May I?

[Asking is more a trial than he expected it to be.]

[ This must be how Hannibal feels when he's conducting one of his - utmost of experiments, toying with someone else's life and watching with that small, curve of a subtle smile regarding his results. Will, too, has a puzzled sort of look to his expression, eyeing the legs of his bed and starting to draw conclusions.

It's just a bed. It's not his bed. It's just a bed, it's hardly that. It's a cot, and Will eyes Hannibal over for a long few seconds before he shrugs a shoulder. Sure. Why not?

Conduct his own experiment. ]

Desperate times. [ He quips, and tugs a sweater on once he's disposed of the sweaty t-shirt. That leaves him in his boxers, still, but it's better than nothing, and he's interested in that caffeination. ]

I don't have a weapon.

[ He adds uselessly, eyes narrowing as he makes his way towards the door and peers down the hallway outside while Hannibal needs to do whatever he needs to do. Funhouse mirrors line the walls, but little else indicates trouble. Here, he's learning to know better. ]

[Hannibal wastes no time from the moment he sees that shrug, turning to lip Will's mattress and pushing it back, letting it fall behind the bed. He examines it quickly, touching plans and poles, feeling for weak joints. Impossible to get away with in a monitored cell: guards would already be at the door. But here, the guards are not trained, and rarely watchful.]

Desperate times.

[He repeats the quip as he rises from his crouch. A moment later, he slams his foot down against a joint. Once, twice, he kicks it four times before it breaks free. When it does, he looks over his shoulder to find Will staring out at the mirrors, breathing in the same thing he's been breathing for hours in his sleep. Hannibal smiles.]

Wrap a sweater around your hand, and break one of the mirrors.

[ The sound startles him more than it should, a harsh crack against metal and the screech of the frame against the cement - expected, but not necessarily something he's prepared for.

Everything is amplified today, sounds louder, double meanings behind words, something in that smile he recognizes and should know better. He feels sharp and aware, and without hesitation he wraps that ruined t-shirt around his hand and takes a few tentative, barefoot steps out into the hallway.

No one around, but the funhouse mirror is something else entirely. His impression is left taller, wavering, pitch black in color and growths start sprouting upward into the shape of unmistakable antlers. With vehemence, it means Will does just as Hannibal says and breaks the mirror - it's not that he's necessarily a willing participant so much as he knows he needs the weapon.

And he doesn't want to see the consequences of this mirror in particular. Something's wrong. Something's off. But he has a shard nearly the length of his forearm, sharp and dangerous when he turns back to the room, eyes fixated on Hannibal as he pads his way back inside. ]

These weren't here before. [ Useless, of course they weren't. ] What else is out there?

[ And what in the hell is Hannibal planning? ]

[It sounds different in Hannibal's ears. Metal screams like people, like children, high pitched and frightened. He kicks, kicks, rewrites the sounds in his mind. It shouldn't be difficult - it shouldn't be a problem at all. In some small, brief moments of clarity, when he stops to catch his breath and lift his prize, he feels as though his control is slipping away between his fingers, sand pulled out during the tide. It sparks a cold sweat along the back of his neck - and a moment later, it's gone altogether.

He watches Will walk outside, closes the distance to the bars where he can begin shaping and sharpening his weapon. Where he can keep a close eye on the other man.

He doesn't smile at the obvious statement: he waits for the correction, listening to the metal sing and the glass break.]

A carnival.

[He could leave it at that, force Will to discover the rest for himself. He's tempted.]

Use the shirt as a handle.

[It's a formidable knife, but easy to break: Hannibal wants something sturdier.]

There are piranhas on level three. It's quite flooded.

Other people?

[ Have they gone mad, do they feel these pricklings of something new and something terrified, fixated and too too sharp as he does?

He doesn't care about piranha. He does particularly care about what's going on regarding these other levels, that's impossible not to, but paranoia is making him jumpy, maybe too much to seek them out. Not unless he's properly armed. If Hannibal's in a fervor as much as he is -

Will knows he's not in danger of Hannibal, not yet. Not if he hasn't killed him yet, but there's something different, something off. Almost manic in his actions, comparatively, with that same damned cool exterior, but he can see it. He can see it in the fervor with which Hannibal sharpens that metal against his door, scrapes one of his bed legs into a sharp edge.

A makeshift machete. Certainly better than Will's shard of glass. He almost thinks of doing the same. If Hannibal's preparing in the way he is - Will looks back at his sad, three-legged cot and back to the other man in question.

Under question he should say, because the next one comes out a bit darker, curious and brittle at the same time. ]

Going hunting?

[The way Will asks tells Hannibal everything. Brittle words, easily snapped, easily bent, easily molded. Broken, shattered, devoured. The scrape, scrape, scrape pauses for a moment as Hannibal stares at his new weapon, lifting his eyes slowly to Will's face again.]

I am not a hunter.

[The thought makes him almost giddy, pleased at the irony. Words can be so fragile.

Garret Jacob Hobbs was a hunter, and he is not like Garret Jacob Hobbs. He is....more. He has always been more, he will always be more, and the facade of pretending otherwise is growing tiresome.]

Will you fish?

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