(Warning: If you haven't read the end of Hannibal this might not make much sense, and if you're iffy about said ending be aware, it stays true to the book. It's not very explicit, though, which might be either its saving grace or its doom.)

Before they do anything else, anything at all, they have to get Krendler out of the chair and into the garage before rigor mortis sets in. Whatever they choose to do with him, it'll be easier if he's lying straight rather than locked into a seated position for at least a day.

They each depart to their own rooms to change out of their formal wear and into something more suitable for the task. Clarice watches herself in the mirror as she disrobes. She notes the dilation of her pupils, the prominence of the gun powder trace on her cheek, the red and tender flesh of her breast when Dr Lecter left off suckling and began to bite. She almost expected blood to be dripping down, but though his teeth worried her skin they never pierced it.

She chooses the least expensive looking items, dark pants and a dark top, and it takes Dr Lecter longer to change than she expected because she's first into the kitchen. She leans against a work surface and stares at Krendler in his bloody funeral suit and the cross bow bolt still showing under his chin, his head slumped slightly with the now ill-fitting top covering his brains. Or what's left of his brains, not that he had much of those even to begin with, she finds she can casually think and smile as she thinks it. She's mildly curious if Krendler sustained a death erection, as men who die violently often do, as Pazzi did, though there's no chance to find out now and she wouldn't want to check even if there were.

She wonders idly what Krendler would think – back when what little brains he had were all in working order and he was capable of what passed, in him, for 'thinking' – if he knew that the only time she'd be curious about his prick was after he was dead. Well, Paul, of all the people I could have cut my teeth on, I'm oh so glad it was you.

Dr Lecter comes in wearing jeans and t-shirt, smiles at her and then turns to regard Krendler. He disappears to another area of the house, comes back holding a tarp, spreads it on the floor, dons latex gloves, picks up a pair of shears from somewhere and gets to work cutting the tape that secures Krendler to his chair.

After putting on her own gloves Clarice walks carefully through the house, pulling drapes off objects in order to parcel Krendler up for the short trip. Each pulled drape reveals hunting bronzes or various artistic depictions of a swan and a woman having, or about to have, intercourse. She vaguely recognises the scene from some Greek myth, Leda and the Swan.

She stares at a bronze of Leda lying back, one muscular leg raised to allow (or perhaps permit) her lover – rapist? fetish? – easier access, almost trapping him between her powerful thighs. The swan seems cowed, hesitantly raising its beak to her mouth. For a kiss? Clarice has never had much time for mythology, but the bestiality before her now, to saying nothing of the thought put into how it might actually be feasible, is arresting.

She walks back to the kitchen with her arms full of draping cloths, as Dr Lecter is peeling Krendler from his oaken throne and leaving a bloody stain on the wood. She wraps a cloth around the punctured throat to absorb any further blood, another around both parts of his head to hold them together, and Dr Lecter lowers Krendler to the tarp and cloths. They're able to strip the sticky funeral tux off, peel away the rest of the duct tape and pull the tux back onto Krendler as he was meant to wear it, fastened now at the back despite the gore.

The drugs as yet present in her bloodstream make Clarice woozy, but she can still easily help Dr Lecter get their parcel into the dark and cool of the garage.

"Like Thomas a Becket," she says, as they lay Krendler on the concrete with more care than she personally believes he deserves, alive or dead. "Or that monk who was hit in the head with a knife. Peter. Peter of Verona. He was a Dominican, wasn't he? The colour scheme fits, anyway."

Dr Lecter looks up at her from where he still kneels on the floor, his lips open as he realises what she's said. He smiles. "Perhaps our penitent should be on his knees when he's found, then."

She finds she likes that idea; Krendler on his knees, pleading with God for forgiveness he didn't deserve, that will never come. Or on his knees in a parody of something else entirely.

Yes. She likes that very much.

But that would mean pulling him out of the tarp and positioning him in such a manner that, when the rigor mortis set in, he'll stay like that for two days, and she wants nothing more to do with Krendler tonight now that she's set him down.

"Perhaps." She finds she has the courage to turn her back to Dr Lecter; she knows she's no longer meat, or Mischa.

It's been some years since Clarice Starling has had sex with anyone. It's been even more years since Dr Lecter has done the same. For all that he carefully stripped her when she was unconscious from the tranquilizers, for all that she offered him her breast and he took it, they're wary at first when it comes to touching each other.

Clarice is the first to move once the gloves have been stripped off and disposed of; when Dr Lecter turns back to her she reaches out and brushes a finger against his. He stiffens, and then lets his finger brush hers back.

She raises the finger from his hand to his mouth, the tip ghosting over his upper lip and down to the corner.

This is a mouth that has experienced many godly things and performed many demonic acts. It's a mouth that's savoured gourmet dishes and the finest wines, chewed and swallowed human flesh. Even through the drugs she remembers that this is the mouth that ripped off a nurse's lips and ate her tongue while the heart powering it never got above 85; this is a mouth that bit off a face and smiled a bloody grin. It's a mouth that had to be covered lest the thing behind it bite. It's a cruel mouth, and she remembers how it flayed her open to the bone and pulled her secrets out to gorge on.

It's also a mouth that healed the flayed wounds and reached inside to pull out her pain, a mouth with which her mouth shared perhaps the most glorious and satisfying meal of her life, a mouth that has given her more pleasure in the last few days than she has had in a long time.

All this passes in a blink and, drugged or not, it really takes very little for Clarice Starling to move forward and press her lips to those of Dr Hannibal Lecter. She doesn't linger on the feel of them but surges ahead and forces her tongue past like a dagger, squeezing between his teeth to touch his tongue. Such an attack hurts, of course, but it's worth it for the taste of him.

She's surprised him again, his eyes widen – she hasn't closed hers yet - and for a bursting heartbeat she muses if he'll snap his jaws shut and swallow what he bites off. Muses, but knows he won't, as she proceeds to return the pleasure his tongue gave her earlier.

He moves to taste her back. His teeth close over her, not enough to hurt, not enough to even stop the movement; it adds pressure and sends a thrill through both of them as they begin to fight. She brings her fingers up to his cheeks, he grabs her wrists but allows her to dig her nails in. His cheeks flex and bunch under her finger tips as they wrestle, as heads tilt and mouths part and meet again. He bites down harder and this time it is a little painful, but she returns the favour and there's more pleasure to be found in the pain.

His teeth are slow to release her tongue. They drag along the length of it to the very tip, nipping and biting down very gently now, pulling it a little way beyond her lips before finally letting go.

Neither of them uses their full strength; we already know well what Dr Lecter is capable of, and however drugged Clarice might be, she can still put up a fight. But they struggle in their efforts to experience what the other has to give. Clarice moves her hands up past his cheeks and into his hair, feeling his scalp. Dr Lecter buries his face in the point where Clarice's head becomes her neck, inhaling and nipping – not biting, he is not Francis Dolarhyde who needs to bite, he is Hannibal Lecter to whom taste and scent is everything. Blood beats in his temple under her palm (superficial temporal artery she thinks, as she feels it pulse beneath her) and her jugular presses up against his lips.

Clarice lets him have his way at first – she is Clarice Starling, who always seeks approval – but soon she grips his shoulders and pushes him away, because she is also a warrior and she will never sit back and let herself be used again.

Dr Lecter is not hard yet when she presses herself fully against him to bite at his lips, but his fingers and tongue are solid and strong enough. So are Clarice's legs, as she sits back on the dinner table they have somehow arrived at and opens them to let the monster in, wrapping them around his waist to keep him there. (There's every difference between sitting back and letting yourself be used, and sitting back and accepting what's due to you.)

They come to learn the flavour, scent and texture of every part of each other over the course of the night, as Paul Krendler stiffens and begins to deflate in the garage. No chance to arrange him in a show of penitence for when he's found, now, but Clarice and Dr Lecter find they really couldn't care less.

At length they're face to face again on their sides, on one of their beds. Clarice lifts her leg over Hannibal's hip and draws him into her, her heel in the small of his back as he returns to her mouth once more. He pauses, almost hesitant, before she pulls him close and he is enveloped by her again, twice over.

Her fingers fill the spaces between his; she tastes herself on his lips and breathes Hannibal in.

Agonizing to admit, but this is probably the first sex scene, of sorts, I have ever written. Between a psychotic cannibal and the woman he kidnapped, drugged and not quite brainwashed; what are the odds?

Thomas a Becket and Peter of Verona were indeed both martyred by having the tops of their heads sliced off. Peter, incidentally, is supposed to have survived for five days after the wound was inflicted. Sheeesh. Still, he had the quickest canonization in history, only about a year after he died, so that's all right.

The bronze that Clarice is so enthralled by is, I presume, a reproduction of this:

.

Harris certainly describes one of the bronzes as a reproduction of Donatello.

This is nowhere near perfect, and will probably be up for re-writing at some point.