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They can meet only rarely, when the vividness of their lives merges into a dusky grey. These moments live in the in-between, that space where mortals make their more ambiguous choices. There, Hannibal and Will meet, and discuss, and come away from the table with a decision in hand.

Will is goodness, despite himself. ‘Good’ is not ‘nice,’ or ‘kind,’ or ‘gentle.’ Mortals irritate him, confound him. He exists solely in the choices , regardless of the circumstances., and so he is too familiar with self-righteousness and smugness. Even the scum of the earth can manage a spark of goodness, from time to time. Will sees everyone, in turn. He prefers the accidental goodness to the ill-motivated. 

Hannibal is evil, although he dislikes the term. He has asked Will, time and time again, not to refer to him as such. It was he who named them, who sought out something new to call themselves, when they are together like this. Other gods have multiple names across cultures. Why not them?

Hannibal lives within the wrong choices, decisions made of selfishness, of rage and hate. But he also lives within smaller matters. A lie is a lie is a lie, after all, even if it is told to spare someone’s feelings. A fight can start out as self defense, until malice and anger make it revenge.

And those are the spaces where they meet. Those grey-areas, those uncertainties. It is not for them to decide where people go; that is left to Death. They merely do the tallies, and some choices are less clear than others.

Will steps forward, through decisions and ideals, and allows himself into their kitchen. They have built a home here, in the in-between, even if they can only merge their wings when the decision calls for it. 

The kitchen is Hannibal’s. Without him, Will simply doesn’t eat. He doesn’t exist. He makes himself formless, and flits from choice to choice. 

For Hannibal, Will builds a body, firm and strong, clad in a style of casual suit he knows Hannibal prefers, the navy nearly black. He watches, as Hannibal appears before him, already bent over a cutting board. 

“Murder,” Will tells him.

“Perhaps,” Hannibal says. “No need to rush to any firm decision just yet. The roast is still cooking.”

“Hardly a decision when the act has been committed,” Will replies with a shrug. “Murder happened, our business is why.”

“Our business is adding a tally to one side or another,” Hannibal counters, amused, looking up from his work. “For another god to later weigh a heart against a feather.”

Will snorts and shakes his head, but doesn’t argue. It’s pointless to argue with Hannibal; they are, by their very virtue, equals in all senses, exact counterpoints to each other.

“Wine?” he asks instead.

“Already breathing,” Hannibal gestures behind himself to the decanter on the kitchen island, and Will approaches it with a hum, taking two glasses down from the shelf beside. He pours them each more than would be proper, were they human, and sets Hannibal’s down beside him as he himself moves to rest his hip against the counter.

“Why is it that you’re always here before me?”

“Something about bad decisions coming quicker than good ones,” Hannibal grins, sharp teeth on show, and Will snorts again, taking a long sip of wine. It is due to Hannibal’s peculiarities that they share wine, and food, and a space together at all. More often than not entities such as them just flit by each other, a decision made about another decision in the space between seconds before they split once more.

But not them.

Not anymore.

Although, if Will were honest with himself, Hannibal is a bad decision he can’t seem to find in himself to regret.

“Murder,” he repeats, crossing his arms over his middle and holding his wine glass in a way he knows irritates Hannibal. “Almost a murder suicide. Seems fairly clear cut.”

Hannibal’s knife comes down with a satisfying thunk at Will’s last word, and Will rolls his eyes. He’s certain Hannibal picked up his dramatic mannerisms only in the last few centuries or so, since the revival of dramatic performance in the western world. Though by Hannibal’s own account, he’d spent some time in the east long before venturing near enough for he and Will to cross paths.

“Is it?” He asks mildly, his fingers caressing the knife handle, almost lovingly. Will has seen him sharpen them by hand, even though this house only exists when they blend together and make it so. “It seems to me as though she had no other choice.”

“There’s always another choice,” Will reminds him. “You, and me, and a thousand others besides.” Will is made of choices; he can see all the better paths the mortal might have taken, paths that would have led her somewhere better.

“Pressure,” Hannibal suggests, scraping vegetables into a pan. “External and within. Mounting, day by day.”

They don’t need to have these conversations. They exist in that limitless space within a fraction of a second; they can merge, share their thoughts, and separate, decision made, in less time than it takes an atom to split. 

But Hannibal has always been odd, among their kind, even before he grew limbs and sharp teeth and introduced Will to the miracle of physical touch . He has always wanted to draw things out, soaking up his time with Will. It fascinates and frustrates Will in equal measure; he cherishes his time with Hannibal, but he does want to do his job.

“She had time to think about it,” Will says. “Days. Weeks. She was already leaving, bags packed. He never saw her coming. You can’t argue self-defense when it was premeditated.”

“Would you start the sauce?” Hannibal asks, in an even tone that suggests he didn’t hear Will at all, though of course, Will knows Hannibal remembers everything he’s ever said. “My dear, you are always so quick to jump to conclusions. Haste is bad for digestion.”

Will sighs, drinking down his wine in one deliberate swallow, and sets the glass aside. Turning, he reaches up for the pots hanging above their heads, taking down one small enough to serve them. When he holds his hand out, a knife is placed into it. He knows that just a twitch of his hand, a flick up of the blade, and he’ll cut Hannibal. In their world, this world they have created together, they exist as though they were mortals; bodies that theoretically age, skin that theoretically bleeds, hearts that theoretically beat.

He takes the knife.

“He tried to stop her,” Hannibal points out, sliding over an onion for Will to chop, some cloves of garlic already peeled. “He tried to stop her without knowing it would hurt them both. She was driven to it.”

“She planned.”

“She planned to leave,” Hannibal agrees. “Not to kill. Passion fuelled her.”

“Passion,” Will spits the word, taking a clove of garlic and setting it to his board, the flat of the knife holding it down as he strikes it with the heel of his hand. The scent fills the kitchen, aromatic and familiar, sharp and warm. Will tosses the crushed garlic into the pot and takes up another. “Excuses. Hannibal, the fact of the matter is she murdered a human being, and failed to murder herself.”

“Saved herself a rough hearing in the process,” Hannibal murmurs, amused. He pours a little oil into the pot Will’s tossing garlic into and turns on the heat. “You know we’re rarely called in for suicide cases.”

Will shrugged, but didn’t argue. That was true enough.

For a few minutes they work in companionable silence, Will chopping onion too fast for tears to come on, and Hannibal ducking down to check the roast in the oven. When he stands again, he leans close and buries his nose in Will’s hair, taking a deep, satisfying breath. Will’s smile comes unbidden, and after he drags his knife along the board, finely cubed onion falling into the pot, he turns and faces him.

He thinks of the first time they’d tried this.

“She was remorseful,” Will murmurs, eyes hooded, down to look at Hannibal’s lips where he stands so close. “Immediately.”

“She chose to remain,” Hannibal adds, just as quietly, and brings a hand up to tuck his knuckles against Will’s cheek. “And pay penance in life. Should that not speak for something?”

“It’s not for us to judge the choices she made after,” Will reminds him. “Only the one we’ve been called to. Her later actions will be weighed against each other on the journey beyond, but they have to be tallied individually first.”

“An archaic system,” Hannibal muses. They’ve argued about this before. For Hannibal, every single choice should be weighed together, a lump sum. Perhaps he would have done well to be created a true Judge, rather than a lesser god of Choices. 

For Will, good choices are a simple decision. Yes or No, tallied on behalf of good, or sent on to a being like Hannibal to mark as his own. 

For Hannibal, this grey area they find themselves living in should apply to all lives, equally. And perhaps he is right.

But that is not the job they’ve been given.

It doesn’t matter. Hannibal isn’t likely to come to a decision until Will has eaten, and sated other hungers as well. Hungers he was never meant to have, and so they come on stronger and wilder than a mortal’s, too much for him to handle when he has spent so many eons not yearning. Will can already feel the urges boiling up under the surface, brought on simply by creating and inhabiting this body. 

Will licks his lips.

“Garlic’s burning,” he says, smiling when Hannibal sighs deeply and steps aside, enough for Will to turn and tend to the food. Food they don’t need, food that doesn’t exist.

He adds tomatoes to the sauce, chopped peppers, seasoning, fresh herbs. He hums when Hannibal takes the roast out and sets it down, peeling open the foil to see within. It smells delicious. It always does.

Sauce finished, Will sets the table, taking up his empty wine glass as he passes it and filling it up once more. Behind him, Hannibal busies himself with presentation, arranging vegetables around the meat, plating the sauce for them to use as they wish. Will already knows the food will wait, it isn’t the hunger he needs sated right then, he already knows that Hannibal will complain, that it will all be lies.

Hannibal’s hunger lingers around him like perfume, Will’s noticed. The smell distracts him endlessly when they’re not here.

He waits for Hannibal to set the heavy platter down, waits for him to adjust and straighten the cutlery, the plates, the napkins, and finishes his second glass of wine.

Two steps take Will to Hannibal, one hand already reaching for his tie, the other moving up to cup his face. Two breaths between them before their lips meet and they meld into each other.

Will has long walked among humanity, has long witnessed the concept of love, and the wars waged in its name. He has also witnessed the power it brings, the strength it summons, the passion it fuels.

And none of that knowledge comes close to capturing just how overwhelming it is to be kissed by Hannibal.

The food will keep. It will neither chill nor wither, no matter how long they neglect it. They exist outside of time, outside of mortal concepts like rot and age. Even this room, this house , is nothing more than them, and they have power over all within it. They have merged, truly merged, blending together to share their knowledge until it is impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. Every time they come together, Will grows more and more certain that one day, they will not survive the separation.

Close. Closer . Will can never help but to want more. He wants to connect with Hannibal in every way he knows how, not just the spiritual. Hannibal is infuriating, sometimes entirely too much for Will to bear, but he is also that soft, warm feeling that creeps up his spine and rests over his shoulders like a blanket.

There’s no rule against it, it’s just that none before them have ever seen fit to try it. Leisure time is an understood concept, but often underutilized. Why stop to examine a fellow god when they could continue examining mortals, instead?

They are, in this, entirely unique, together . Will falls backwards and suddenly the table behind him is a bed, sprawling and soft. 

“You worked hard on that,” Will says softly. 

“It will keep.”

It will not be the same meal, no matter how perfectly Hannibal remakes it, and Will knows how important the authenticity is to Hannibal. But Hannibal seems content to ignore it, for now, in favor of the smooth column of Will’s throat. 

They combine.