#anyway there's nothing more dangerous & all-consuming than the need/desire to be understood <3

[kaziklubaby]

Charles Smith x Fem!reader

Title: Let love conquer your mind, Warrior.

Chapter: 1/?

[Chp 2] [Chp 3]

Words: 1.5k

Pairings: Charles Smith x Fem!Reader

Warnings: none.

Summary: Love comes in all forms, reaches all ways and conquer all hearts. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. 

But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.

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There was something about Charles Smith that you couldn’t quite understand yet, something in those eyes that you still couldn’t grasp exactly. He had this aura of serenity around him, but sometimes it seemed more like an armor, since nothing appeared to cut through it, and you weighted if it was even possible to really touch him.

Whenever he was at the camp, you would stay near him, but not enough so he wouldn’t notice the longing in your eyes for him, the sad hunger that was ever increasing. Why couldn’t you talk to him about it? Your heart screamed, much like the cracked song of the dark raven in the night – forever broken and shattered into a thousand pieces – but oh! How quickly it would sew itself again before the mere image of him. Sometimes, you would walk past him so you could capture his scent in the wind, like the smell of rain that just reached the ground, with citrus notes of plants he carried with him.

All so perfect, and as all things divine, so forbidden – you thought.

You shook yourself out of your thoughts, realizing suddenly that you had been away from reality for too long, too long for anyone supposed to be on guard. You signed, too much daydreaming wouldn’t get you anywhere. Unrequited love seemed like a disease for you, consuming your inner self in a slow burn. That’s when you saw Karen coming in your direction.

- That’s the end of the shift for you - she said as you handed the gun to her - You could use some sleep, Y/N.

-Could be worse – you said.

-Well, it always can.

You have been riding with them gang for a very short time, almost a month, so you hadn’t had the proper time to get to know anyone, and your secluded personality didn’t help much on the matter, since you often wandered alone.

Alone. Like the day Charles found you.

You lived alone, in a cabin in the woods, almost like a witch or a cursed child, no one would ever enter so deep in the forest, much less encounter you. Always excluded from all things human. But, as it came to be proved, you were not alone that night.

It was a beautiful full moon, and animals still lingered in the fields, bathing on the pale light of the night. You were tracking a wapiti, a very shy one that would always run at the minor sound of your footsteps. In a particular moment you had the creature just in the position you wanted, so you stretched your bow, ready for the kill, but something hit the animal before you. You only heard the sound when it was to late, an arrow, but not yours, cut through the night sky.

And there was him. Like a type of illusion of the full moon that rested as a lamp in the night. His long dark hair, copper skin, a huge body that moved in surprising silence, a perfect hunter. No, much more like a perfect killer.

Usually, you wouldn’t let yourself be seen, nor even would be heard, and most of the times you would kill a person so close to your quarters if they decided to stay for too long. But not him. There was something different about him, about the way he carried himself.

You stood up, leaving your hideout, and he saw you as much as you saw him. You allowed yourself to get lost in his eyes, even if only for a brief moment. They were like the black pearls you saw once in Saint Denis, deep and full of restrained sorrow.

The feeling you had that moment lingered with you, and you thought that he was somehow your equal.

Soon, his voice filled the silence between you two.

- Was this your hunt?

- Yes – you said, plain and simple. Your voice raspy, for you had not made any regular sound in the last few days.

That was when you met Charles, and after a while, he offered you to come with him to the camp.

“A girl living in the woods? A forest can hold many dangers” – he said.

- I can fend for myself. – you said.

- I can see that. – there was no sarcasm in his words, and for that you were grateful. The last thing you needed was a man telling what you can or cannot do. – But still, one can always come across dire situations.

- What are you? Some kind of outlaws?

- You can say that, but we’re what we make ourselves.

- Why did you join them? – you asked, poking the fire with a stick.

- I’ve been alone for a long time. That wasn’t for me anymore.

The subject drifted after that, almost as if it had reached their limit.

He understood solitude though, and how loneliness catches up with you. As he cooked the hunt on the fire, you two talked about good hunting places, and how, sadly, that place would soon be conquered by civilization. It was easy to talk to him.

But, nothing about that mattered to you.

If civilization would come, you would stand proud against it. What really made you think about his proposition was the fact that loneliness already had you by the neck. It was time to move on, even if that scared you more than wolves, bears or civilization itself. You couldn’t live in the past forever, nor you could hide from it.

- Would they accept an outsider?

- We’re all outsiders – Charles explained – and for what I could see about them, they wouldn’t let a girl in your situation behind.

Now, you secretly desired that you had stayed behind in the woods. Now, what haunted you was by far worse than solitude or wild animals. It was the crippling desire never to be fulfilled.

-Y/N! – someone called you, a voice too familiar that made you twist your insides.

You turned to see Charles preparing Taima.

- What are you doing? - you said.

- We need food. Fancy a little hunt?

- Yes! - you said with a little too much enthusiasm

He smiled. And you stood there, looking at it. It was a rare thing when he smiled, but when he did, it was much more precious.

- What you’re waiting for? C’mon.

You prepared your horse.

- What are we hunting? – you asked as you mounted your horse.

- Deer. – he said – then, we don’t need to go too far.

- I saw a couple of them north of here. We should start there – you said.

-Fine by me.

The ride was a quiet one. It was a blessing as much as it was a curse. Usually, you enjoyed silence, even more, when you already had enough on your mind, but being with Charles, all you wanted was to hear his voice, which complicated things. There was a moment when all you were was pure wanting. You wanted too much.

But soon a real problem appeared. You had ridden all over the area and no sign of anything remotely edible. Someone must have scared the animals away.

-Guess we gotta keep looking – he said.

The night soon fell on the land, and you didn’t find anything to catch, so Charles set the camp while you joined dry wood for the fire. You were never the type of person that could control yourself for long, too impulsive they said. You silence always meant that you had nothing to say, but when you had something to say, it would be said. There was something about you that made you incapable of holding your feelings secret, and were more propitious to explode at any given moment if the limit was reached. Almost like dynamite.

And maybe, that was your moment. Your limit. Whatever had to be, it would be. No one was around if things turned sour, at least. If it once was forbidden, or wrong, now all you could think was that you couldn’t care less. Even so, fear pumped in her veins. The past was still present in your memories.

It was without thinking. One moment Charles said how beautiful the night was, and in the next one, you said: “but you’re better than all these things”.

-Why you say that?'

-Because you’re amazing anywhere you go. – your voice was calm, almost a whisper, like a confession to a lover never to be.

He looked at you, puzzled by your words, and then looked at the fire burning. The silence suddenly washed over you, but not without bringing you relief above all else. You felt free, at last.

-You know… – he said, after a while – life’s always confused me, I don’t feel like I understand it very much, or my place in all of this. But you make sense to me. This makes sense to me. I guess it’s what matters.

You kept waiting for him to say another word, but it didn’t come. You saw how the fire danced in his eyes, and all the wildness and pain were but a memory. A thing that he watched within and apart from him.

So, you stood up, and seated beside him. It was a cold night, anyway. He lifted his arm and cradled you against him. Sometimes, there was no need for words. Both silently watching the fire conquer the wood, in the same way as the pain of the past that you kept within yourself was conquered by his presence.

You sighed, inhaling his scent. Time to close your eyes

[zacharybosch]

Playing God - chapter 5

in which something else is served for dinner

chapter 1: tumblr / ao3

chapter 2: tumblr / ao3

chapter 3: tumblr / ao3

chapter 4: tumblr / ao3

read Playing God chapter 5 below or on AO3

“You, uh… You got any more of that steak?”

Will had not been able to stop thinking about the meal he’d shared with Hannibal, brooding over it late into the evening for the past several days. All reasonable people were in bed at such a late hour, but of course Hannibal picked up the phone when Will called. Hannibal was not reasonable people.

“I’m so sorry Will, but I believe we ate the last of it.” Will could hear the smile in Hannibal’s voice, the smug, satisfied curl of it. “But if you wanted to come round, I’m sure I could find something else for you to eat.”

“Isn’t it a little late?”

“Not for you.”

Hannibal’s ‘something else to eat’ turned out to be himself. Will should’ve seen it coming; in fact, he had seen it coming, the numerous other times throughout his life when people had tried to pull a similar stunt. But Hannibal seemed to have an uncanny ability to blind Will in a way no-one else had ever quite been able to.

It sounded so simple and easy when Hannibal said it. Just a quick bite, an innocent little taste. For a few seconds Will even allowed himself to believe it, before common sense came crashing back into his brain.

“I can’t. They’ll know.”

“I won’t tell if you won’t,” Hannibal said, as if this were all just some amusing game.

“It’s not just that. I’ll be different. Warmer, brighter, stronger. I’ll look alive. They take measurements with every feeding. Next time I come in, they’ll see something’s different. They’ll know.”

Jack had, in fact, already dropped some very unsubtle hints that Will should bite Hannibal if he thought it would help ensnare him. But Jack didn’t know the full extent of Will’s rules around feeding, and why they were there in the first place. Like everything else surrounding Will, it was a need-to-know basis, and Will’s Keepers had decided that Jack didn’t need to know. They told Jack that there was to be no feeding under any circumstances, and assumed that would be enough, not counting on Jack masterminding a secret entrapment plan and deciding that the “no feeding” rule probably wasn’t that important.

But Will knew how important it was. It wasn’t the blood itself that was the problem; he drank pretty much every day and didn’t crave more than what he was given. What he craved was the heat of it pumping fresh from the source, a warm body pressed against his, and the choice to take one sip and be done or drain a person dry. That was what the no feeding rule was about: it wasn’t about feeding at all. It was about Will’s self-control, and ensuring he wouldn’t be in a situation where it would undoubtedly fail.

Hannibal was so willing, and he didn’t even realise what it was that he was really offering himself up for. Or perhaps he did, and that was the thrill of it, the thought that Will could drink him entirely.

“I could lose control,” Will said. “I could kill you.”

“I know.”

“It doesn’t frighten you?”

“No.”

“It should. It frightens me.”

“I’ve not yet heard a ‘no’, Will. Tell me no and I’ll not ask again.”

Will moved his mouth and found that the word wouldn’t come out. He was so ready to sink his teeth in, could feel the strain in his jaw as he fought to keep his fangs from extending. If they came out, it was all over.

Jack knew the dangers. Will had tried his best to explain why every single part of his plan was a bad idea, and Jack had listened carefully and then pushed forward with it anyway, convinced it was the only way to get results. He wanted a quick play and a neat end to the very un-neat situation he’d put Will in.

Hannibal wanted to draw Will more closely to him, and to experience the thrill of having death itself eating out of the palm of his hand. So to speak.

And what did Will want? Will just wanted to bite.

Perhaps everyone could have what they wanted.

“Go sit on the sofa,” Will said, looking anywhere but at Hannibal’s gleeful face. “You need to be able to hide the bite mark, so before you even think about asking, your neck is completely out of the question. Take off your jacket.”

Hannibal obeyed without question, and Will sat down heavily next to him. He was really going to go through with it. He hadn’t had willing blood for… he didn’t want to think about how long it had been. “I’ll do it on your arm, inside the elbow. Just don’t roll your sleeves up too far for the next few weeks, okay?”

“Understood,” Hannibal said. He began to unfasten the cuff of his sleeve, but Will stopped him before he could reveal more than an inch of wrist.

“How attached are you to this shirt?”

“I would have little trouble obtaining a replacement.”

“Okay. Good. There needs to be as little skin-to-skin contact as possible, so I’m going to bite you through the shirt.”

“Is that really necessary, or is it due to your own personal hang-ups?”

Will levelled Hannibal with a withering look. “Stop talking about things you know nothing about. It’s for your own safety, and mine.”

With no further ceremony, Will took up Hannibal’s arm and bit down into the yielding flesh. Hannibal hissed and jerked his arm involuntarily, but Will just tightened his grip and sucked. He’d become so used to his clinical subsistence appointments, the tube pressed directly down his throat and the anaemic, joyless trickle of blood, that he’d forgotten how good it felt to have hot, rich, free-flowing blood flooding his mouth, salty and metallic and messy.

The heat swept through Will’s body like fire over gasoline. He could feel his bones strengthening, his skin thickening, sparks racing across neurons and nerve-endings. The fabric of Hannibal’s shirt sleeve was becoming soaked, and it was in the way of the only thing that mattered in that moment, so Will tore it open. The first hungry press of his lips against Hannibal’s slick, blood-dark skin felt like biting into the heart of God himself.

Will was vaguely aware of something at the very edge of his consciousness, an alarm or sudden movement or something else that didn’t matter to him at all. He began to move bodily over Hannibal, caging him in with arms and legs, biting deeper, sucking harder…

And then suddenly Will was on his back on the floor, head swimming and pinprick stars clouding his vision.

***

Will found Hannibal in the downstairs bathroom. He had replaced his ruined shirt with a clean sweater, and was carefully applying neat strips of tape to the edges of a bandage. The sink was splashed with pink.

“I should’ve taken you seriously,” Hannibal said, not looking up from his bandage.

“Yes, you should. I’m not going to apologise. I tried to warn you.”

“But I’m glad I disregarded your warnings. You were breathtaking.”

“That was nothing.”

“I can only imagine what kind of savagery you must be capable of. Such possibilities I never dared dream.”

“Maybe you won’t have to imagine. If I told you I was going to kill you, I don’t think you’d try and stop me.”

Hannibal looked positively starry-eyed, staring at Will in the mirror. “Never.”

“It’s easy to give yourself up for death. No consequences.” Will crowded into Hannibal’s personal space, pressed his chest into Hannibal’s shoulder and continued low into his ear, “You’d die for me, but would you let others die in your place?”

Hannibal said nothing, just watched Will’s reflection in the mirror as he pointedly let his gaze drop to the fine skin of Hannibal’s neck.

“What if I told you I was going to kill someone else, would you stand aside and let it happen? If I was to kill a friend, a colleague?”

“Yours, or mine?”

“Is the distinction important?” Will said, barely more than a whisper breathed into the shell of Hannibal’s ear.

“Perhaps.”

Will said nothing for a long moment. He’d known murderers, serial killers, too many violent people to mention; the common thread that ran through them all was the desire to be acknowledged and congratulated for their power and cunning. Dismissal was unbearable. Will had already decided that presenting the meat as evidence wasn’t viable, for a variety of flimsy reasons that he didn’t want to look at too closely, so in the absence of any other evidence, getting Hannibal to confess was his only option.

He stepped away abruptly and said, “You don’t even know what it is you’re saying. You have no idea.”

And there it was, the irritation flickering over his face, there and gone again. Hannibal wouldn’t be so stupid as to come out with it right now and say that actually, yes, he knows exactly what he’s talking about because he’s killed however many hundreds of people in a variety of fun and clever ways. But the desire to do so had undoubtedly crossed his mind, and that was good enough for now.

After that, it was almost too easy. The slight bruise to Hannibal’s ego left him wanting to prove something, and Will took full advantage. Blood-drunk as he was, even after only a small amount, Will let the vestiges of his human persona slip away as the wave of his vampire nature rose up to consume him.

It was a simple thing to stalk back over to Hannibal, to turn his body so his back pressed against the sink, to hold him hard and kiss him harder and murmur against his lips that there were so many things he could tell Hannibal, so many delights and horrors spanning his long life, but he didn’t give his stories out for free and wouldn’t Hannibal give him something in return?

Hannibal could’ve said anything, up to and including a full, detailed confession, and Will wouldn’t have heard it. The mere act of asserting himself, of caging someone in and knowing that in that moment he held the entirety of their life in his hands, gave Will such a heady rush that all he could think about was the next move he needed to make in order to get Hannibal more pliant, more willing, more ready to offer himself up.

But he didn’t have to think about it very hard. If it were anyone else, Will would’ve called it a pathetic, desperate display; but on Hannibal, the act of sinking to his knees was so sweetly submissive, so uncomplicated in desire and intention, that Will couldn’t help but place his hands on Hannibal’s face, cradling his cheeks, stroking his lips.

I don’t even need to turn him, his teeth are sharp enough already, Will thought to himself, and then stopped. Had the thought of turning Hannibal already occurred to him? And why was he even entertaining the idea? But then Hannibal’s hands were on him, gripping him through the fabric of his trousers and tugging at his waistband, and Will couldn’t remember what he was thinking about, couldn’t remember why he was here, couldn’t remember the last time someone had done this for him.

Will put a hand on the back of Hannibal’s neck. Hannibal’s mouth was impossibly hot, and Will could feel it burning him even through the layers of fabric that still separated them. When Hannibal did eventually peel Will’s clothes away and applied his mouth directly, it felt just like it did when Will had put his mouth on Hannibal; that same sudden fiery rush, like being engulfed in a great wall of flame. And Will knew that the feeling would never let up: no matter how long Hannibal stayed down there on his knees, taking Will’s cock into his mouth, the sensation would never lessen. It was always going to be the absolute most, the very edge of what Will could handle, like his mind and body were constantly shattering into a thousand tiny pieces, over and over.

Will had been revered as a god a small handful of brief and brutal times throughout his life, but he had never truly felt like a god until Hannibal was kneeling before him. It wasn’t about greed or control or power; fearful scrambling and sycophantic devotion had never done much to excite Will or curry his favour. It was Hannibal’s simple, lucid decision to bend before him, to anticipate what Will wanted and to deliver it perfectly, to honour him as one god bowing to another.

It was a feeling that was shared between them. Will’s shattered, gasping pleasure stoked the fire in Hannibal, and spurred him on to open his mouth further, to take more of Will inside himself; he’d finally found someone to sit beside him at the top of the food chain, and now he was going to eat him.

Hannibal let his teeth drag against Will’s cock, harder than any human would’ve enjoyed, but Will’s eyes rolled to the back of his head and he began to move, fucking into Hannibal’s mouth, meeting every downward swallow with an upward thrust. He was breathing again, heavy and ragged, and Hannibal thrilled to think that Will was breathing at all, but specifically breathing like that, because of him.

“Fuck, Hannibal, fuck, I’m gonna--” Will pulled his cock from Hannibal’s mouth and jerked it roughly with his own hand. Hannibal remained where he was, mouth open and tongue dripping. He pressed his tongue against the shaft of Will’s cock and his rapidly moving fingers, then dragged it along the length in a hot, wet stripe. Will screwed his eyes shut and came, spilling himself like a baptism all over Hannibal’s lips and tongue and teeth.

They stayed there for a while, Hannibal panting on the floor with Will stood over him, grasping the sink for balance. Eventually, Will lowered himself until he was level with Hannibal, and slowly, purposefully, swiped two fingers through the come that was still splattered over Hannibal’s mouth.

“Will--” Hannibal began, but Will shoved his fingers into Hannibal’s mouth, and whatever he was about to say was forgotten.