SETTING III: Hannibal Lecter's bedroom
TACTIC VI: Murder, or, Navigating the line between victim and monster

Abigail Hobbs had always been a girl to whom new skills had come easily.

(She had not had an easy life; rather, she had been able to learn and adapt with preternatural quickness. She had very quickly learned, for example, that being or appearing as bait was its own form of power.)

Killing humans was sometimes even easier than killing animals. The secret was the secret to anything: don't be weird. Don't attract attention. Kill strangers. Be a pleasant and pretty young woman.

The young docent was invited out as easily and casually as she was disposed of. Abigail had never killed a young woman herself, and as Lana chokes and splutters around the knife Abigail tried to really mentally step back and gauge how she felt. She registered none of the grimy sexual urgency of her father; she supposed she was more like Dr. Lecter.

She killed out of desire and curiosity rather than need. After all—she wanted to see what he will do.

There's always the muss and sweat and battery-acid adrenaline of a kill, and she let herself into Lecter's house to shower. (He wouldn't be back until late. He had already called and apologized for missing dinner but tells her he hopes she will still feel welcome to stay the night.) She ran the water too hot, far too hot; she wanted to feel burned away and clean and ready. After, she examined her slim pale body in the mirror. She feels unprepared, but then, placid. After all, she thought, hugging his outrageously luxurious towels around her body—one can only control so much.

Abigail brushed her hair, long and lush and dark, and after again choosing her favorite blue nightshirt, rubbed the slippery fabric smooth over her body. She examined the knife on her bedstand, the shine dulled with mottled blood, and Lana's business card stained with the same.

She hadn't expected to be so frightened.

She thought of leaving; she thought of just going to sleep in her own bed. But then she thought of his heavy lovely mouth on her neck and lips, and his long blunted expert fingers on her hips and between her legs. Of what he has told her of control, and how she has realized you can be conditioned even when you know it's happening and how.

The business card was left in the kitchen; the knife she would keep with her. She put herself on top of his bed, doing the breathing exercises he has taught her to keep herself calm.

When she heard him enter downstairs, heard his quick purposeful movements, her stomach lurched the same as when she drove the knife into the girl. There is a very long moment of silence; his steps clip up the stairs and then Hannibal Lecter opens the door.

He stood lean and sleek, always so dark and sleek, in the doorway. He had already removed his overcoat and jacket and vest. Severe and handsome as always, Abigail was unexpectedly overwhelmed by her dread of him—his broad shoulders and skull-face with its almost obscenely overgenerous mouth. It must be the way he was looking at her, looking her over: his maroon eyes with little sparking pinwheels of red, the way he juts his lower jaw.

(She had wanted him to consume her; she had forgotten how close to death she teetered every day.)

Abigail had to keep herself from screaming at the sight of him, and at the way she echoed the hunger she saw in him, burning strange and breathless. She longed to press herself against him, to wrap her legs around him and possess him. Her desire terrified her; she had never realized it was a form of deathwish.

Her hand closed around the handle of the knife. She was an expert at handling knives. It had come so easily to her.

"Good evening, Abigail," Lecter said, taking a few steps into the room. So calm. "Saw your gift. What a clever, thoughtful girl you are. I believe we have previously discussed methods of reciprocation." At that, he turned to undo his tie.

His smile showed sharp and crooked teeth. A wolf's smile.

It was too much; she had made a misstep.

Knife in hand, she scrambled out of the bed, the smooth fabric of her shirt and bed working against her speed. She tried to run out of the room, to dodge past him and out.

(She never figured out where she was trying to go—maybe to the guest room to close the door and sleep in her own bed. Maybe out the door and into the night air to run and run like a doe at a black gunshot crack until she had run so far she had become someone else. Someone safe.)

Lecter caught her by the arm effortlessly. "Too late, Abigail," he said, amused, neatly using her momentum to slam her up against the same wall he had kissed her against before. He pinned her by the ribcage even as he brushed a hand up her thigh, pushing up her nightshirt to between her legs, his fingers slick over the smooth fabric and so expert that she couldn't help moaning, close-lipped. He leaned to kiss her neck and jaw; he pressed his lips to hers.

He leaned back. "Open your mouth," he said. His voice was low and husky, his eyes narrowed.

She had never seen him like this. She pressed the knife tentatively against his chest. He laughed, and allowed himself to be pushed back, and she almost cried out in disappointment as his hands left her body and how he looked at her like she was dull and disappointing.

"Forgive me," he said. "Of course, you are free to go."

"No," she said, as he placed a hand over hers with the knife.

"I can't hear you," he said.

She paused, and scowled at him. "No," she said again and louder.

He hooked his fingers through her slim small ones as he carefully took the knife from her. He leaned in; loomed.

"Open your mouth," he said again, gently.

She obeyed. He leaned in to claim her, to kiss her, to pull her against him. She was glad for the extra support around her waist; she had not realized that your knees could actually go weak from sensory input. She looped her arms around his neck.

And then she squealed, as she felt the knife at her throat.

Lecter watched her in curious delight as he moved the knife down lightly over her collarbone to between her breasts. Not enough to cut, but enough to be cold. To sting. Looking in her eyes all the while so as not to miss a single drop of fear and desire for him to taste, he took the top of her nightdress in one hand.

He cut: a smooth movement of ripped and rippling blue silk, pushed off her pale shoulders to the floor. Her panties followed. She squeezed her legs together at the way the knife tickled.

It took every ounce of Abigail's profound strength strength to not cover herself as he drank her in, his lips pursing in familiar calculation.

She must have passed muster; he cupped her face and smiled. It was a smile she knew, until a red and speculative hunger took over, his jaw working as he ran his hands over her shoulders, her sides, her ribs, her ass. Then, back up over her small full breasts only to angle up her head so he could kiss her again.

Abigail felt the stabs of her own hunger; she unbuttoned his shirt, pushing it off of him. Her hands dug into his lean muscled body as she grew almost dizzy from the smell and warmth and taste of him.

He pulled back; he removed his shoes and pants and boxers while still deftly holding the knife before resting his hands on her hips. She pressed into him: her breasts against his ribs, his hard cock against the soft curve of her stomach.

(He looked feral, looking down at her. She didn't quite come at the sight but her whole body shuddered.)

"You retook your power," he said, stroking her cheek.

"Sort of. The girl—"

"She is irrelevant except as she reflects you making a choice." Despite his face, his clipped voice, his clauses running into one another: they could have been in his office. "You made a calculation; you decided a course of action and pursued it. You decided both what and when."

"Yes," she said, smiling slow.

"So tell me," and the growl was creeping into his voice, "whose are you, Abigail."

"Whose victim or whose monster?"

"Whose are you?"

She swallowed. "Yours," she whispered.

He lifted her off the ground, parting her legs, as she cried out in surprise. She had to grab his shoulders for balance as he shifted her to hold her up with the arm with the knife. With his free hand—and oh, she thought, crazily, to watch his muscles pull and churn under his skin rather than his clothing was really something—he positioned himself against her cunt.

She watched his face carefully. His heavy lips were curled open. His eyes were hooded; glittering.

"Again." The guttural quality to his voice made her press and squirm against him with a whimper.

"Yours, I'm yours," she gasped.

He let her weight sink her down on his cock as he drove in and penetrated her. Not outsized, he was still large for Abigail's small frame. She cried out with a strangled sound, sinking her face into the crook of his neck. Lecter held her up by her thighs and ass and the wall; she held herself up by wrapping tight around him, with one hand laced and pulling at his hair

After a few deep but slow thrusts, he began a rhythm that grew increasingly brutal as she gasped, and all Abigail could do was hold on. Her keens and gasps seemed like they came from someone else entirely. His skin was hot, and they soon worked up a sweat that made him difficult to cling to.

It hurt, exquisitely, tremendously at times—but in such a novel and wonderful way, she thought. It felt like being pinioned.

(And unbidden, she thought fleetingly of her friend Marissa—but Marissa was only a victim, she decided, cruel. Abigail, on the other hand, had asked for this. She chose her monster. She wanted this, didn't she want this, didn't she.)

(While Marissa's—Will Graham's—tragedy may have been not being able to choose what monster ate them up out of this world, Abigal Hobbs's tragedy was that she never considered she didn't have to be claimed and consumed at all.)

Lecter didn't come. Instead, still holding her, he pulled out and places her on his bed, spreading her on her back. She complied.

He still had the knife, which he held gently between her breasts. She could take it. If she wanted.

He pulled away to get lube from the nightstand. Pouring it generously on his hand, he leaned over her—knife against her breast, fingers at her cunt. He slipped just one slick finger at first between her folds; she is sensitive from fucking and bucks until he presses her down. He moved up to her swollen clit and rubbed, gently at first, and flicked and pinched and rubbed more as she writhed, and it is only then he began to dance the knife lightly across her skin. Never enough to cut; enough to hurt, to leave marks, on her soft pale skin, on her arms and breasts and belly. (Never, she notes, her throat.)

She couldn't gauge when the pleasure and what and where the pain, and the tension and anticipation heightened every single nerve she had, and his face was so calculating and voracious under his mussed hair, that when she came it was harder than she ever imagined possible—through her whole body, lancing electric from her cunt through her legs and lungs and throat, shorting her out so effectively she feels as if she's lost time.

Hannibal gave her a short time to regroup, rubbing the inside of her thigh affectionately, before he started again, before making her come again, and again, and more until she could barely discern the boundaries of her own body, until she was crying and begging for him to stop, no more, stop, please.

He stopped, and she almost sobbed in relief as her body twitched, out of her control. Hannibal pressed the knife into her hand, and kissed her softly.

"What would you have me do?" he asked, avidly watching her face as she caught her breath, with a tender hunger that made her stomach drop when she thought of it later.

"I want," she started, and swallowed. It was ridiculous to be shy, lying naked and open before him, but she is still frightened of him. Of herself. She jutted her chin as she always did when she was being more direct than she felt; adopted the same airy, haughty tone. "I want to see you come," she said. She pressed the blade of the knife into his neck, above his artery.

Hannibal was strange—the soft pride and delight that sometimes touched his eyes never seemed to mute the the hunger, but only to sharpen it. He pushed back her hair, matted with sweat, and smiled. "Of course."

He moved above her, his hair in his face, his lips heavy and red. Angling her slightly, he pushed in and forward, balancing his weight above her.

She held the knife in place as he fucks her, deep hard strokes, running her hand from the hair on his chest to the tendons in his neck to the scruff on his sharp face. All the while, he kissed her, nipped her skin, as she responded and rose to his touch.

"Faster," she said, imperiously, and he complied. "Harder," she said, with a gasp as he obeyed.

"Abigail," he finally whispered in her ear.

"Wait," she said, savoring the feeling of him inside her and how his rhythm was becoming less controlled, and more urgent and ragged.

"Abigail," he growled again, more pressingly.

Abigail smiled into his neck, pressing in the knife. She leaned back so she could see his severe face, the usual brilliant coldness all melted into glazed and sloppy lust. "Okay," she said, "now."

At her command, he finished inside her, with a short hoarse cry into her scar.

He held her for a moment as they both caught their breath. When he pulled out to get supplies to clean them, she seized his face to kiss him. Her undone monster, his face sated and relaxed, with the cut on the side of his neck dribbling red.

She thought how few must have seen him like this, and how intimacy and knowledge was a kind of power.

And that she had invited this herself.

(She had to tell herself that.)

(She had to.)

She licked at the blood; he kissed her.

Later, when she rested against him, depleted and sore and euphoric, he gently stroked her hair, all curled from damp. She perched her head on his chest.

"An I safe?" she heard herself ask, high and uncertain. "Am I safe now?"

He laughed softly, a quiet rumble she could feel. "Abigail, I cannot think of a safer place on earth for you tonight," he said.

She made herself smile, and curled in closer to him like it meant something. And, as per his promise, there was not enough left inside her head even to dream, much less have nightmares.

CONCLUSION VI: Sometimes monsters liked eating other monsters best.