He hadn’t seen you in years. Not since blood stained your shared paradise, not since the fire in your eyes had mirrored his—wild, loyal, and unrepentant. You had vanished like smoke, and he’d let you, though it tore something ancient and animal from his chest.

But fate is a glutton for drama.

He spotted you across the gallery, spine straight, gaze sharp, that crooked smile he used to taste in the dark still untouched by time. You looked at him like a challenge.

Hannibal moved toward you slowly, each step deliberate, eyes drinking you in like an old vintage finally uncorked.

“I thought I had imagined you,” he said softly, voice velvet-wrapped sin. “A fever dream I never quite recovered from.”

You smirked, and something in him burned.

The night bled into another, and suddenly you were beside him again—in his car, in his home, in his arms, just like before. The world could crumble, and you would still find one another in the ash.

He poured wine with one hand, the other resting on your thigh.

“You still burn everything you touch?” he asked, lips grazing your ear.

Your smile was answer enough.

It wasn’t safe. It never had been. You were chaos in human skin, a mirror of him in all the worst ways. He murdered with art. You destroyed with instinct. Together, you were carnage dressed in elegance.

But you never betrayed him. Never flinched.

And when dawn crept in and you lay tangled in sheets, skin warmed by candlelight and sin, Hannibal leaned in close, his fingers laced with yours.

“They could never understand us,” he murmured. “But let them try.”

His kiss was a vow. Not of peace—but of loyalty. Of madness shared.