Will plowed ahead like a ship set on its course, and Hannibal trailed unerringly in his wake, amused and patient. Whatever stormy thoughts rumbled through Will’s mind remained unspoken, but he bristled as blatantly as any hermit forced into interaction. A hint of Asperger’s made him ill-suited to social niceties, yet he had learned to play the game (when he wasn’t ignoring it wholly).
“Spanish pigs are lean, almost as lean as wild boar, and they are fed on a diet of acorns. Their meat takes on a subtle, rich flavor which pigs fed on an inadequate diet in confined conditions lack. There is also a matter of ethics,” Hannibal added casually. “I prefer knowing that the pig lived as natural a life as possible. What we put into our bodies has an impact on how we can expect them to perform.“
The wind was sharp, but Hannibal’s blood was northern, and the briskness only registered as pleasant.
"But you can judge the difference, or lack thereof, for yourself.”
Will’s fingers looked rough against the twine. Hannibal’s started to loosen the ties on his own bundle. One step behind, one beat out of rhythm.
“Your performance or his?” Will muttered. The analogy was infinitely transferable, and anything where the talking animal got eaten at the end was a pretty apt fable for life.
Will considered himself a quiet man subject to disjointed eruptions, feelings boxed into the pressure-cooker of circumstance, expectation or gaucherie. There would always be a deep vein of coded childishness in him, the taught temptation to tantrum so long as his work and dedication was nothing less than exemplary. But he’d also been living in the real world for almost a decade now – the gritty, rusted-out place where he was just one more run-down, almost-normal face; the sum of how much his muscles could lift rather than how aesthetically they could lift it.
Will let out the cold air in his lungs and folded the paper sharply back over the first glint of a bad bargain.
“I put on shoes, Mr Lecter."
