#he has been KNOWN to be a snake and a ruthless journalist

[lithiumache]

people being like “oh i hope they also make trent crimm canonically queer” my friend blessed are those who have eyes and see. just look at him

[victorineb]

Bloodletting

An omegaverse fic for @hannigram-a-b-o-library​‘s Reverse Bang, featuring vampires, reunited lovers, and lots and lots of blood. Huge thanks to @idontfindyouthatinteresting​ for the inspirational artwork and idea, and to @desperatelyseekingcannibals​ for coming onboard as co-writer to save my hopelessly blocked self. All the love to both you guys 💖💖💖

---

“So you want me to tell you the story of my life?” Will asks, silhouetted by hazy golden light from the large windows of Hannibal’s office, an edge of red staining him where the sun filters through the drapes.

“Not all of it,” comes Freddie’s reply. He can tell she’s smirking without having to look. “Just start from when you met Hannibal Lecter. You are clearly very close. Is that usual for a psychiatrist and his patient?”

Will doesn’t respond, merely lifts an eyebrow at her, at which she smirks.

Will huffs and turns back to the window, a smile playing across his lips. As if she even knows what she’s asking. He has to admit that his only reason for agreeing to this interview is for his own amusement. It is always a pleasure to watch Freddie’s misplaced confidence that she has the upper hand. But he hadn’t expected her to go straight for the throat.

“Whatever you wish to tell me,” she encourages.

“I see,” Will prevaricates.

He turns to look at her. She’s made herself comfortable in her chair, dictaphone in hand and note pad on lap. Intending to capture absolutely everything.

She doesn’t have to attempt discretion this time round. Not like the last time she’d been in this office, with her cover story and polite persona, thinking she could easily dupe some fussy shrink into giving up the goods on Will and the Stammets case. As Hannibal had told him after - unethical, even for a tabloid journalist.

Though, in truth, Hannibal’s irritation came mostly from the spanner she’d thrown into their plans. For she had seen the painting, carelessly left poking out of its packing box. That had piqued her interest all the more, turning her from a mere nuisance into a potential threat, and she had hounded Will until he had, so she believed, given up and granted her demand for an interview.

An interview, and some answers as to why Hannibal Lecter owned a clearly timeworn painting of himself together with an unstable FBI profiler who had only recently become his patient.

And so now she sits once again in Hannibal’s office, having been graciously allowed the space for their tête à tête, the cat that got the cream after all.

“Do you mind?” she asks, holding up the recording device and tipping it towards him as if asking for consent. As if she wouldn’t use it anyway, regardless of his agreement.

“You’d need a lot of tape for my story,” Will replies, drily, ignoring her question.

“It’s all digital these days, Mr Graham.” Freddie smiles that snake-like smile of hers, truly believing that she’s the predator in the room. “So, let’s get started.”

Will strolls slowly over and takes the chair opposite her. Hannibal’s chair, usually.

“Where should we start?” she asks, pleasant and patient and completely false. “Perhaps you could tell me a little about yourself.”

“All right then, since you asked. I’m a vampire,” Will says, cocking his head and waiting for her reaction, holding her gaze. It’s clear that she’s trying desperately not to roll her eyes.

“Funny,” she replies with a raised brow. But as his expression remains unchanged, hers sobers and she asks, “You mean this literally, I take it?”

“Absolutely.”

Freddie glares at him.

“Mr Graham, I appreciate your leaning into the crazy angle but if you’re going to waste my time-”

Will sucks in an unneeded breath and lets out a sigh. “You want to know how I met Hannibal.”

“Please,” she replies, firmly.

“How I met him this time, anyway,” Will clarifies and her eyes narrow again.

She settles in to listen to him anyway.

---

Will Graham is something of a legend amongst the students of the FBI Academy, known by all as brilliant, demanding, and intense. Rumour has it that if you have the temerity to ask a spontaneous question during one of his lectures he will eviscerate you with nothing more than a few cutting words and a scowl. And his ruthlessness with a red pen is enough to strike fear into even the most confident and diligent of students — the papers they receive back bear a striking resemblance to the crime scenes he lectures on, stained with red in cruel, ruthless slashes. All this perhaps explains why the halls of the Academy are currently clearing at an exaggerated rate, as students fling themselves out of the path of Professor Graham as he storms down the hallways towards his office. Or perhaps it’s just the look on his face that suggests he might finally have flipped, the way certain cruel rumours say he inevitably would, one day.

It is the unhappy fate of one student to have chosen this moment to visit Professor Graham’s office, a foolish thing in any case, as Will has no office hours scheduled for this day. He is loitering just outside Will’s door, leaning against the wall with his phone in hand, completely unaware of the unhinged professor stalking towards him until they are inches from each other. In fact, the student – name of Miller, Will thinks – only becomes aware of his professor’s presence by his scent, that weird, unsettling mix of alpha and omega that means no one ever knows what designation Graham is, or likes to be in close quarters with him for too long. Miller can never understand why the Professor doesn’t wear scent blockers; at least then he might avoid the hisses of freak that follow everywhere he goes.

Then again, Will Graham is exactly the kind of stubborn asshole who’d enjoy making people feel uncomfortable.

Miller looks up into the blue eyes of his professor and squeaks, an embarrassing noise that he immediately attempts to cover up with a cough.

“What?” Professor Graham growls, actually growls, a rumble of irritation that would rival any alpha in rut.

The boy squeaks again and stares, petrified, at his teacher.

“Intelligent commentary as usual, Miller.”

The kid flees and Will watches him skid down the corridor without a backward glance. He sighs, and scrubs a hand down his face. He’ll make it up to Miller somehow, give him easy credit for something. Will stares into nothingness for a moment longer and then slides into his office and closes the door firmly behind him. That little performance should have ensured no one will bother him for the rest of the day. Possibly the week. Will leans back against the door and finally allows the smile he has been holding back to burst onto his face.

The bone arena of my skull, he thinks, rolling his eyes. His beautiful boy has not changed, then, still as pretentious and as annoyingly brilliant as ever.

Hannibal Lecter.

Will’s grin broadens. His fangs ache.

--- 

Later, he stands in the middle of a field, regarding Hannibal’s field kabuki, and wonders if he should feel offended. Patronised, at least. Apparently Hannibal believes that Will needs some help to see the Shrike and has gifted him some perspective.

Really, Will has no idea how to feel. Hannibal’s art has always been beautiful and this is no exception – shows, in fact, that his boy has progressed far beyond even the skill he had developed under Will’s watchful eye (and doesn’t that come with a dull ache, the knowledge that Hannibal did not spend the years apart pining, but continued to pursue his pleasures with the singular focus that Will had never liked directed at anything but himself). But it also suggests that Hannibal has not learned the lessons Will had hoped he would. Asked him to.

That is… disappointing, in a way Will finds unmooring, forcing him to step away from the scene, pretending overwhelm and upset in order to placate Jack. Childishly, he snaps out some retort about Jack preferring Dr Lecter’s opinions to his own and storms off, shaking his head at the daddy issues he thought he’d long shaken off. Hannibal’s getting to him, as he always knows how. He takes one last backwards look at the tableau, sees the tenderness in it, not for the girl, but for him. Its black tines curve upwards to the sky and the points meet and melt into the sparkling sunlight.

It is a beautiful gift.

--- 

Will smells him before he knocks. Scent-blockers do nothing to mask him, not from Will. He suspects he could freeze Hannibal in ice, or seal him in plastic and still he would find that scent, maddening and delicious. Still, he makes the good doctor wait, taking his time to slide out of the motel bed and stretch his muscles into wakefulness, before flinging open the door. The sunlight blinds him for a second, his eyes still sensitive to it even after all these years, and then there is Hannibal, smile on his face, food inevitably in hand.

“Good morning, Will,” he says, and the bastard has the gall to sound amused. He always did enjoy unsettling Will. “May I come in?”

Will raises an eyebrow. “You need to ask?”

“It’s only polite. You know how I abhor rudeness.”

Will hums, unimpressed. “Where’s Crawford. You didn’t eat him, did you?”

Hannibal smiles, close-mouthed, no teeth. “Agent Crawford is deposed in court. The adventure will be yours and mine today.”

Will sighs, lets his shoulders sag, turns away into the darkness. Hannibal takes this as the invitation it’s meant to be, stepping over the threshold, closing the door gently behind him. The second he does, Will is on him, shoving him against the wall, one hand around his throat, lifting, lifting until his arm is at full stretch. Hannibal’s feet dangle above the floor. He appears wholly unconcerned, looking down at Will with a serene expression and adoration lighting his eyes.

“I told you to stay put until you were summoned,” Will growls.

“And so I did, until I was.”

Will flexes his hand around Hannibal’s neck, feeling it ripple under his grip. “All right, what loophole has your clever little brain come up with this time?”

Hannibal grins, delighted by Will’s disdain. “You did not specify that it must be you who called. Jack Crawford summoned me to help the noble ranks of the FBI, I could not find it in myself to refuse. That he specifically wished me to support a gifted yet troubled profiler by the name of Will Graham was a mere technicality, albeit a happy one.” Hannibal slides his arm up and over Will’s and rests his hand on Will’s cheek. “And it was truly happy, Will.”

It’s an old trick and one Will is hard-pressed to resist. Soft words and soft touches, Hannibal’s always known how to wriggle under his skin.

He tries not to let Hannibal see the effect it still has on him but there’s no hiding the fact that his grip loosens a little. Nor that the smile it pulls from Hannibal makes Will want to kill him, or kiss him. He’s never quite sure.

“I ought to put my teeth in your neck right now,” Will snaps, trying to wind up his anger once more.

Hannibal, though, knows exactly the wrong – or right – response, smiling down at Will as he tells him, “I have missed your mark on me. I wept the day the last one faded.”

Will’s nose twitches for a moment, taking in Hannibal’s scent and finding little of his own evident there. Every instinct tells him to do just as his alpha suggests, but he doesn’t wish to give the petulant child the satisfaction.

“I don’t find you deserving.”

“You will.”

Will lets it go. Hannibal’s right, after all; this was never intended to be a permanent separation, just a few years to remind his boy of his priorities. And he’s been planning their reunion proper since the moment he caught Hannibal’s scent in the halls of the BAU.

Truth be told, he’s been planning it – in the abstract at least – ever since the first Ripper murder dropped, years ago. But he isn’t going to let Hannibal know that, not yet. And he certainly isn’t going to reward his bad behaviour without making him work for it first.

“All right, you can stay. Show me what you brought for breakfast.”

Will drops Hannibal unceremoniously on his feet and Hannibal reaches down to collect the bag he brought with him, unflustered, unfazed, as though nothing had just happened. Will watches as the alpha delicately removes the containers of food he has brought, setting them on the table like the offering they are.

When Hannibal takes a seat, Will does so too. He deigns to offer Hannibal nothing but a cool gaze as this old, familiar scene plays out like it has so many other times.

“Hardly a suitable offering,” Hannibal demurs as Will’s mouth twitches. “Or sufficient.”

The momentary glance between them then is an acknowledgement. Hannibal is aware that Will hasn’t fed in quite some time. A fine shiver passes over Will at the memories of them feasting together, before, in circumstances quite different from this. He feels his control slip ever so slightly at the thought of what Hannibal might have brought, his eyes following his alpha’s elegant hands closely as they set out their meal.

“A little protein scramble; eggs and sausage,” comes the familiar refrain.

“Used up all your creativity on unnecessary theatrics, none left over for the leftovers?” Will asks, forking his share onto a plate, deliberately uncouth, and trying not to drool at the scent. It isn’t exactly his preferred source of nourishment – nor Hannibal’s, to be sure – but Hannibal can do things with even such plain fare that just the memory of his kitchen has, on occasion, caused Will to kick himself for leaving.

“I elevated those parts of her that were worthy of it; the rest I did with what I could.”

“And here I thought you were just catering to my plebeian tastes,” Will says, looking up from under his lashes with a sneer.

“I do not recall your tastes ever being less than exquisite. Save perhaps that time in Constantinople.”

“Matthew,” Will says on a sigh, momentarily submerged in their shared memories. “He had such potential, a shame he had no control over himself.”

“I never liked him,” Hannibal sniffs, flicking out his napkin and setting it on his lap.

“You never liked any of the strays I brought home,” Will counters. “I wonder where he is now.”

“I should have killed him,” Hannibal glowers, and Will can’t help the swell in his chest at the reaction, even as Hannibal settles back into eating as though nothing has been said. Perhaps Will should have let Hannibal kill Matthew, but there is something pleasing still about having denied him. He has to admit to enjoying Hannibal’s still-piquant jealousy over that particular event.

It’s not the time to bask though, so Will decides to move on from this teasing and clears his throat.

“I give lectures on you, you know.” He watches Hannibal’s pupils dilate and rolls his eyes. “Yeah, thought you’d like that.”

“I will not deny that I always enjoyed being the focus of your attention. And I think that it would not be inaccurate to say that the opposite was true as well.”

“Yeah, well, that was the problem, wasn’t it? Your distraction.”

“My disobedience.”

“Stop. It was never that. Don’t make me out to be some cruel master,” Will snaps, unimpressed by Hannibal’s attempt to play the victim.

“Are you not? You may have preferred to dress us up as equals but the control was always and ultimately yours.”

“Really, alpha?” Will hisses.

“Really, sire.” Hannibal touches a hand to his throat, smooth, unmarred skin a lie and an insult to them both. Will longs to remedy it. He had always been so diligent about maintenance in the past. Instead, he takes another bite of his food, just to watch the way Hannibal watches him.

It seems clear to Will that despite his intentions, there is no avoiding this conversation. Even if he hadn’t intended to have it here and now. Hannibal is here. Now. 

Will swallows his bite and places down his fork with a deliberate click, a movement that Hannibal notes with a raised brow but doesn’t comment on.

“I was three hundred years old when I met you.” Will knows Hannibal doesn’t need reminding. Their meeting is seared into both their minds. Will, an omega of thirty when he had been sired, had been selective for those three hundred years in regards to who he would sire himself. They had been few, and mostly for the sake of power orstrategy, rather than any great desire to keep them with him.

And then there had been Hannibal. A beautiful young nobleman bent on vengeance for his murdered family. They had encountered each other as Hannibal’s search brought him to the final murderer, by then a vampire of Will’s acquaintance.

Will is still unsure, all these centuries later, justwhy he agreed to help the young upstart, other than Hannibal being Hannibal and refusing to take no for an answer. He’s only a little clearer onhow he wound up allowing the alpha to seduce him so thoroughly. Will might have been irritated by the human, albeitgrudgingly impressed by his prowess as a killer and his passion for revenge, but Hannibal was beautiful and wild and utterly self-possessed. It tickled Will’s ego to let him attempt a courtship. He just hadn’t expected it to work.

“We had centuries together, Hannibal. And then you got distracted.” Will spits the word, imbuing it with the betrayal that still burns in his veins.

Hannibal’s eyes narrow for a moment, and Will knows what he’s thinking despite his tense silence. That it wasn’t his decision to separate them. That perhaps if Will had expressed his displeasure instead of exiling Hannibal without discussion, they could have worked things out. That they didn’t have to spend so many years estranged, alone, suffering heats and ruts that would always synchronise regardless of their distance, all for the sake of unfounded jealousy and petty resentment.

The thought makes Will wince, and his glare at Hannibal makes clear that he doesn’t want to hear anything from his mouth on that subject. And so Will brings them back to the point, Hannibal – amazingly, uncharacteristically – taking his scolding without riposte.

“We had a good thing in Florence, and then you got so caught up in playing cat and mouse with Pazzi that you lost focus. You, and your ego, were distracted to the point of endangerment.” Will tries not to growl the words; his ire will do no good.

Hannibal’s jaw clenches at the truth.

“And so you have tortured me with the denial of your presence for decades,” he grits out, finally.

“I wanted you to learn your lesson. I said I would let you return when I was ready to deal with you.”

“Are you ready now, Will?”

“Does it matter?” Will asks, with a poison-sweet smile. “You’ve forced my hand.” He picks up his fork and resumes eating the remnants of Hannibal’s gesture.

Hannibal’s smile returns, despite Will’s harsh words. Pleasure at being back in Will’s company, and being allowed to feed him in this way, apparently outweigh any fears of imminent rejection. In truth it’s enough to inflame Will’s desire for his alpha anew, that feeling of being the only thing in existence that matters. Not that he’s about to allow said alpha to see that. Will swallows and looks at Hannibal with a stern expression.

“What do you want, Hannibal?”

“Only the pleasure of your company,” comes the reply, all pleasant and proper and precision- engineered to piss Will off.

“You’ll spend another thirty years without it if you don’t cut the crap.”

If anything, Hannibal’s smile only broadens at this and Will unexpectedly finds himself hoping for his lips to part, to allow him a glimpse of fang. “Impossible boy,” Will says and it has the desired effect, Hannibal’s lips skinning back to reveal the points of his teeth. Will sighs, and aches for them in his neck, and says nothing.

Instead, Hannibal fills the silence with exactly what Will had expected. “I have but one request.”

“Of course you do.”

“Come to my table, allow me to make you dinner, permit me one conversation. I could live a very long time on one conversation.”

“You can live a very long time regardless.”

“Without you, it is mere existence.”

Will stops, his fork halfway to his mouth, and raises his eyebrows at Hannibal. “That was excessive, even for you.”

“Perhaps. The truth often is.”

Will hums and there is a lull before Hannibal rejoins.

“You know, Will, Jack sees you as a fragile little teacup, the finest china. Only used for special guests.”

Will’s chuckle is genuine and lightens his chest. As does Hannibal’s clear appreciation at having triggered that amusement. Will sits back in his chair with a sigh, smile still lingering. He missed this. Missed having an equal.

“How do you see me?” Will can’t help asking.

“My beginning and my end. My everything.”

Will’s chest aches and he bites back the words that try to claw out of his mouth, the admission he feels the same, that he’s been lost for so long, that Hannibal is the missing part of his soul (assuming he still has one). Instead, Will hums again before replying, cool and apparently unaffected.

���One dinner.” He forks the last of his food into his mouth and speaks as he chews. “To prove yourself to me again.”

Hannibal smiles and nods his agreement.

--- 

Later, sitting in front of the Hobbs’ front door, Will steals a glance at Hannibal and rolls his eyes.

“What are you smiling at?” he asks, not quite conjuring the detached disinterest he’s aiming for.

Hannibal, who might as well be purring with delight, takes a moment to consider, his eyes roving the homestead before them, denying Will the whole of his attention. It needles, just as it’s supposed to, bright little points of irritation biting their way out from under Will’s skin.      

Will huffs, a release of pressure. “I got a criminology degree, you know. A good one, too, could have gone for the doctorate but…” He shrugs, one-shouldered and easy.

“Been there, done that?” Hannibal inquires. Will shoots him a smile, small but fond, acquiescent. “I did know,” Hannibal continues, returning to Will’s earlier remark. “I have even read your monograph. You were always fascinated by the creepy crawlies.”

“Says the man obsessed with cochlear gardens.” Will watches Hannibal let him have that and then, in for a penny, asks, “What did you think of it?”

“Your writing has improved greatly since I last read any of it. You have mastered your old weakness for the run-on sentence.”

“Damned with faint praise,” Will says, waiting Hannibal’s teasing out.

“You know what an imago is?”

“A flying insect.”

Hannibal smiles, soft lines by his mouth that will never grow any harsher. He knows Will knows that is not the answer he was looking for but he will indulge his sire’s intransigence. “An imago is an image of a loved one, buried in the unconscious, carried with us all our lives.”

“An ideal.”

“The concept of an ideal. Reading your book brought me as close to my ideal as I have been these last several decades. Still, it was only a concept, trapped and pinned to the page with its colour fading and its lifeblood drained.”

“Remind me never to ask you for a blurb on anything I publish,” Will says, burying himself under humour while the creak of his voice betrays him. “We should go,” he adds, unprepared to deal with the extent of Hannibal’s wanting him, even as he recognises the same urge building anew inside himself.

“Indeed,” Hannibal answers but neither of them move. “Was there something else?”

“What were you up to in that office?” Will asks, needing some kind of forewarning. He knows Hannibal did something, his antics with the box files deliberately obvious. And his alpha always did have a troublesome habit of setting things in motion out of idle curiosity. Just to see what would happen.

“I suppose we will find that out together,” Hannibal says, infuriatingly.

Will briefly considers punching him in the   but he does have a job to do. He exits the car, stalking off towards the house and leaving Hannibal to follow or not as he may. The sound of the passenger door opening and closing provides the answer to that and Will doesn’t bother to look back, instead steeling himself to deal with Garrett Jacob Hobbs’ no-doubt polite but unconvincing front-door deflections.

Or not.

Will’s head snaps towards the door, beyond which he can hear the sounds of struggle, sense the outflowing of blood. He makes to sprint for the house but manages only a couple of steps before the front door is opening and the shadow of a man is pushing a bloodied, struggling woman into the light. The door slams and Will catches the woman – presumably Mrs Hobbs – in his arms. She is bleeding, bleeding, bleeding and Will’s vision is red, his eyes large and greedy as he goes to his knees under the deadweight of departing life. He pulls in a great breath of copper and fear and feels a fang slice his lip, shudders at the spark of pain, an echo of the agony beneath him. He can taste that pain as he tongues his lip, as he gazes into the woman’s shuttering eyes and he wants more of it. It’s been so long, he’s left it so long…

“Will.”

Hannibal. He shifts the woman so Hannibal can have access too. A life extinguishing in his arms and Hannibal at his side. This is right, this is how it always should be, this is-

“Will.” Hannibal’s voice is hushed, gentle but insistent. He places a finger beneath Will’s chin and lifts it until Will’s eyes are forced to lift and look at him. “You have a job to do, mustn’t forget.”

“Don’t you want to…” Will begins, hazy through the cloud of hunger that has enfolded him. He blinks. He knows Hannibal is right, and yet the instinct is almost too strong to resist. Why is it so hard to resist? Will whines, pained and overwhelmed. 

“My love,” Hannibal says, stroking Will’s hair with such easy familiarity that Will cannot help but lean into it. “I have wanted nothing more for so many years but I think you wouldn’t thank me for it when the FBI arrives.”

“Wouldn’t I?” Will hisses.

Hannibal pauses at that, regards Will thoughtfully. “Have you been waiting for me to come and rescue you all this time, sire? From undeserving masters who use you like a dog in the endless pursuit of justice and you with no reason to leave? You who has razed cities to the ground, drained kings of their lifeforce, been a god of blood and terror, have you been hiding, waiting, craving for a reason to live again?”

Will whines again and does not deny it.

“Will.” Hannibal says it on a breath and his hand tightens in Will’s hair. “We have been foolish, haven’t we?”

Will can only nod.

Hannibal is right. He should have swallowed his stupid fucking pride and told Hannibal to stay. Should have kept him by his side at all times, through all ages, ‘til the end of everything. Should have circled the world with him, well-fed and well-loved, and then done it a thousand, thousand more times. Instead, he is shivering and famished on the doorstep of some dismal human killer, wracked with hunger of every imaginable kind, punished by his self-pitying refusal to feed more regularly.And now, despite his great age, the mere presence of his alpha is causing primal instincts to surface. He can feel it rising in Hannibal too,the instinct to come back together, to renew their bond;it’s almost strong enough for Will to beg for them to leave now, to be away from this farce of an existence, no note, no explanation.

Hannibal’s presence there is cause both for his weakness and his strength, as he pulls himself together as best he can.

Hannibal looks down at the body in his arms and for a moment Will’s unbeating heart gives a phantom spark. He can already taste her blood in Hannibal’s mouth. But then Hannibal moves away and takes the body with him, freeing Will from its weight.

“Go and play the hero,” Hannibal tells him, nodding at the front door, “and afterwards we will begin again.”

--- 

Somehow, Will finds himself inside the Hobbs’ front door, bracing himself against the hallway as he gropes for any trace of composure. He has his gun up, his eyes darting to the sides to check for activity, but he knows where he’s going. The stench of fear and panic is sharp in his nostrils and he follows it like the bloodhound rumour would paint him as.

Into the kitchen, then, ducking into the doorway and the sudden feeling of steel through his heart. He staggers, more from shock than pain, and grabs the door jamb for support, slicking it red. The knife is warm inside him, painted with another’s blood, and uncomfortable as Will’s body attempts to reject it. He looks up, into cold blue eyes that sparkle with triumph and then dull into confusion and fear as Will grasps the knife’s hilt and slides it from his body with a little groan of relief.

“Do you see?” he asks the bewildered Garret Jacob Hobbs, letting the blade fall from his shaking fingertips to clatter on the ground, the sound cacophonous in the stricken silence of the kitchen. Even the child lying on the floor has grown quiet, her life leaving her in great gouts; like mother like daughter.

“Monster,” Hobbs rasps, poised between fight and flight.

“Takes one to know one,” Will hisses, then lifts his gun and puts every bullet he has into the pathetic creature before him.

Hobbs is shoved back into the corner by the   of Will’s shots and drops to the floor in a ragged heap, wet noises bubbling up from his throat. Will doesn’t pay him any further attention – he will die in that corner unwatched and unheard – instead folding to his knees beside the girl exsanguinating on the floor. Her breath is shallow but still there and Will clasps his hand around her neck, thinking to stem the flow despite the likely uselessness of the gesture. Her father used the same move on her as he did on her mother – uninspired – a deep cut to the neck, opening the carotid so her blood would be pushed out, fast and forceful, her young, healthy heart speeding her death along. An attempt at mercy, Will supposes, but a pointless one. She will still die in pain and confusion, life snatched from her by a man who should have lived to protect her.

“So easy to take a life, so hard to save one,” Hannibal remarks from the doorway. Will lifts his head, shaking, overwhelmed, suffused with blood and death and desperation. He’s covered in it, not an inch of him spared, and he looks up at Hannibal through glass blooming with crimson. Hannibal looks back at him and, without another word, crouches at the girl’s other side and gently replaces Will’s hand with his own.

“This won’t save her,” he murmurs, as Will’s knees finally give out from him and he slumps into a heap, still trembling and panting for air he doesn’t need. Even now, human instinct is still buried inside him, the urge for survival seeking out every last route, even the pointless ones.

Will shudders as he looks at the girl. A mere child.

A child. And his body burns. 

“Hannibal, fuck, can you smell it?”

“Yes,” comes the reply, Hannibal not looking up from his examination of the damage to the girl’s throat, “you are in heat.”

“The blood, the fucking… there’s so much of it and…” Will trails off, whining.

“And your alpha is here,” Hannibal finishes for him, clinical and matter-of-fact, belying the need Will knows he is feeling.

Will is panting, sweating.

He should have fed. He shouldn’t have let Hannibal so close. He shouldn’t have agreed to help Jack. So many recriminations litter his path to this point, and none of them matter now.

Not with the girl bleeding out before them, and his whole body screaming for Hannibal to take him and knot him for the first time in decades, not when Will can barely focus on anything beyond the three of them.

“What?” Will looks up, tries to focus, realising Hannibal had said something.

“I asked if you want me to save her, Will?”

Will blinks, looks down at the girl, blinks again.

“She could be ours. We could be her fathers.” Hannibal’s words sound encouraging though his tone is matter of fact. “Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted? A family? Let me give it to you Will. Let me make this future for us.”

Will winces and clasps his abdomen as a sharp pain strikes. His nostrils are filled with the scent of his would-be daughter’s blood. Could-be daughter. She’s choking on it, her eyes almost unseeing as her life continues draining inexorably from her.

An almost hysterical chuckle breaks from Will’s lips.

“Will she be your Claudia?”

Hannibal’s smile is soft, amused. “And which of us do you see as the scoundrel Lestat?”

Will finds a smile of his own, somehow. “Both. Neither. Can we just be ourselves?”

Hannibal looks like he would very much like to reach over and touch Will but he keeps his hands tight around the girl’s throat. “We certainly can try. But the point still stands. Do you want her, Will?”

“Yes,” the word escapes him like a cry.

Will seizes with longing and arousal as Hannibal’s fangs reveal themselves. He watches as he takes the near lifeless body into his arms and sinks his teeth into her, as Will sank his own into Hannibal so many centuries ago.

The girl convulses slightly as the last of this life flows from her and puts up no resistance as Hannibal nicks his wrist with a fang and streams a little of his blood down her throat. Will considers doing the same but it’s not necessary – Hannibal is his and she is Hannibal’s, the connection will flow through them all, it’s inescapable.

She will be nothing more than a husk now. At least, for a little while. Her new life will come with time and they will find her when it does. Hannibal will be drawn to her essence when she revives and will take her from whatever morgue or grave she has been stowed in.

And then they will be a family.

The thought sends another sharp pain through Will, his womb contracting with need.

“Hannibal.”

The alpha looks up and lets the girl slip from his arms, back into the pool of her own blood.

Will’s body cries out to be taken. So it is damn near excruciating when Hannibal simply raises a brow and tuts.

“You really should take better care of yourself, Will. Had you eaten as you should…”

Hannibal trails off when he hears Will’s desperate snarl.

“Hannibal,” Will growls.

Hannibal flinches, succumbing to the effect of his sire’s heat on him, helpless no matter how righteous he tries to seem.

Jolting into movement, Hannibal pulls Will to him and lifts him in his arms, getting to his feet in one smooth motion as though Will weighs nothing. The scent of Hannibal’s oncoming rut serves only to make Will’s womb clench all the harder, for his slick to run all the freer.

They are dripping with blood.

The little they had been flecked with from Mrs Hobbs, and the splatter on Will from shooting Garrett Jacob Hobbs, was nothing compared to the blood of their daughter. The Hobbs’ daughter once, but now – and forevermore ��� Will and Hannibal’s.

Will cries out as his body shakes through a painful tremor, instincts driving him to create new life inside him like a good omega, regardless of those organs having been rendered defunct and useless since the day and hour he was made.

“Breed me…” Will growls, trying not to whimper.

To which Hannibal sucks in a sharp breath and replies, “Claim me.”

Will trembles, and grins.

Trailing thick globules of blood, Hannibal carries Will from the kitchen, and towards the stairs. At that, Will can’t help a smirk. With backup doubtless on the way, Will can’t argue with the desire for privacy but Hannibal could have easily removed them to another room on the ground floor of the house. Instead, of course, Hannibal carries him to a bedroom and lays him gently on the soft blankets like a new bride.

Such a careful, caring action, deliciously at odds with the animalistic glean in Hannibal’s eyes that shows exactly how close the alpha is to descending into his rut.

And indeed, any restraint is gone in moments as Hannibal begins to tear at Will’s blood- soaked shirt. When it is shredded enough to fall apart, Hannibal crawls over Will like the predator he is, and lowers his mouth to Will’s right nipple.

Blood has soaked through to skin and Hannibal whines his pleasure as Will’s body contorts with need.

He needs to be naked, he needs Hannibal inside him.

But there is something else in this. Something in Hannibal sucking the blood from his chest, the girl’s blood. Their daughter.

The sight of it solidifies something within Will, a familial bond between the three of them. This will join them together irrevocably. Irredeemably. This is the promise of their future. The promise that he will never separate them again.

“Alpha…” Will gasps and wriggles and finally Hannibal pulls back.

His eyes are wide and feral, pupils dilated,

the expression Hannibal only wears when he’s killing or fucking. No, more than that, the one he only ever wears when he’s with Will, with his mate.

Will trembles at the sight. Has he ever understood what it means to be in love before this moment? How could he have? How could he have felt this and ever pushed Hannibal away?

“Mine,” Hannibal growls, moving back, ripping Will’s pants from him and throwing them away. They hit the wall next to the bed with a wet thunk, leaving a bloody impact stain.

Will tries to reach for Hannibal’s clothes, but it’s too late for that now.

He’s hazy, unfocused on anything but Hannibal’s scent.

But this is nothing compared to Hannibal’s loss of control. His rut is completely upon him now, vicious and unyielding until he knots his mate.

Hannibal pushes Will’s hands away. With motions quicker than even Will can follow, he reaches out and grabs Will’s throat, pulling him close enough to nose at the healed mating scar.

Oh, how Will hates that they heal this way.

It’s not a new regret, he has felt it every time they’ve renewed their claim on each other, but it’s all the more profound this time for how long it has been, how completely time has eradicated the proof of their bond.

Will whimpers as Hannibal pulls back and uses his grip to manipulate Will onto his front. He collapses to the bed when Hannibal releases him, but drags himself quickly onto all fours as he knows he must. As instinct drives him to in order to receive his alpha’s seed.

The sound behind him is unmistakable, Hannibal ripping open his exquisitely- tailored pants with no attempt to otherwise undo them.

“Stay,” he growls, an order and a plea, his hand now gripping the back of Will’s neck, forcing him down as he slides in tight against Will’s ass.

It’s only when the tip of Hannibal’s cock presses against his entrance that Will is aware of exactly how wet he is. Even for a heat, the slide is almost frictionless as Hannibal slips into him for the first time in decades, burying himself to the hilt.

The alpha pauses for a moment, shaking.

And Will wonders what is to come. They have never been so long between matings and now Hannibal has given him a child. Will shudders. Whatever is next, he wants it all.

There is some pain as Hannibal’s grip tightens on his neck, but it’s quickly soothed by the comfort of the alpha blanketing over his back, only the tattered remains of their clothes between them. He fucks Will hard. Harder than Will can remember.

And even with that, it is loving.

Hannibal’s grip loosens and he strokes over Will’s faded mating mark, before leaning in to nuzzle at it. Graze it with his fangs.

“Please, Hannibal.”

“Mine,” Hannibal grunts again and then sinks in his teeth.

Will comes.

He’s not sure if it lasts moments or days as his body drags Hannibal closer, further inside himself. He can feel the press of Hannibal’s knot against him but, beyond that, everything is dreamlike.

He is lost. There is nothing else but Hannibal’s body sliding in and out of his own.

It might last hours, Will can’t tell. He drifts in sensation, basks in their closeness, wishes that eternity could be nothing but this. But then Hannibal cries out as he pushes his knot into Will, and Will’s body locks around it, triggering another climax, this time for both of them.

Hannibal’s teeth are in his neck again, biting deeper.

Deeper.

“Enough, Hannibal,” Will commands in that voice that he so rarely wishes to use. The voice of a master over that which it has sired.

Still Hannibal grips, his tongue moving over flesh a moment longer, and Will wonders for a moment if it will be necessary to use force to settle his alpha. Hannibal’s remarkable discipline does not always extend to his indulgence in Will and they have sometimes come to blows before Hannibal’s control re-establishes itself. Will tenses slightly, in readiness for a fight but then Hannibal is pulling back, releasing. Collapsing.

Hannibal falls to his side and takes Will with him, his hips still pumping.

Both addled with pleasure and relief, Hannibal continues to fill Will with every drop of his seed, until they both black out from the exertion of their continued climaxes.

If time hadn’t lost meaning before, it has now.

Will has no idea how long has passed since they tied.

It’s still light out, but Will can’t be sure if they are even on the same day.

The initial haze of his heat has lifted, sated for now by the mating bite. Still, he will not be truly satisfied until he’s returned it.

Hannibal murmurs and then is awake.

He growls and Will shushes him gently.

He growls again, pushes up against Will and Will pulls away, seed spilling from him in the wake of Hannibal’s softened cock. This only brings another snarl from the rutting alpha, at which Will turns and snaps his fangs.

“Damn greedy boy. Insatiable boy. Behave and I’ll give you what you want.”

Hannibal proves his point by humping his now hard- again cock against Will’s thigh.

As quick as Hannibal had been before, Will pushes the alpha to his back and sinks down on his twitching member.

Hannibal’s growling fades into a howl and he almost doubles over, baring his teeth and snapping at Will.

Will chuckles, and smooths Hannibal’s hair back from his sweat -damp face.

“Oh, Hannibal. Always so beautiful in your rut. I have missed this.”

Hannibal’s lip twitches, his fangs exposed, when Will leans down into a biting kiss. He doesn’t know if the blood he tastes is his own or Hannibal’s as they catch fangs in each other's lips. He doesn’t care to know.

Will begins to rock gently, working Hannibal’s knot up. It swells quickly, and Will is glad that their bodies are reacting with such speed given that they won’t be alone for long. In fact he’s surprised they haven’t already been happened upon. Perhaps it’s a sign that not much time has passed at all.

“Remember this time, dear boy,” Will whispers, hovering above Hannibal’s lips before sliding his mouth down to Hannibal’s neck. “Remember it like the first time. Like every time.”

When Hannibal whimpers, Will sinks in his teeth.

And that’s all the alpha needs to howl once more and resume his impossible task of impregnating his omega. His sire.

Will sighs and lets Hannibal ravish him.

Lets him work through his rut.

For now, at least.

They have so much time ahead of them now.

--- 

“Will!” Jack’s voice is quickly followed by a heavy rapping on the bedroom door.

Will shakes his head, pulling himself from the muggy feeling of a heat temporarily sated by knots and bites. He’d passed out after their last round, straddling Hannibal’s hips, still securely knotted despite having collapsed face first onto the alpha’s chest.

He blinks and turns his head to the door, raises a brow.

“What do you intend to do?” Hannibal asks, casually curious, on his back with his arms crossed above his head. His knot pulses with his words.

Will squirms pleasantly at the sensation but keeps looking in the direction of the disturbance a moment more. Then he turns his head slowly, a sweet smile just for Hannibal bursting across his face.

“I intend to do nothing more than see just how you get us out of this mess. And you will get us out, Hannibal, because immediately after you do, I am taking you to my home, sating your rut, and then never letting you out of my sight again.”

Hannibal grins and calls out, in a professional tone that feels foreign in this intimate setting. 

“Jack, this is Hannibal. I respectfully ask that you don’t come in.”

“Doctor Lecter? What the hell is-”

“I will write a full report for you, but suffice to say, Will was unexpectedly overcome. The adrenaline and shock of the experience, of the deaths downstairs, has driven his body into heat. A perfectly natural, if rare, side effect for an omega in these circumstances.”

Jack murmurs something on the other side of the door that neither of them can quite make out. Likely something about how he understands how delicate omegas can be.

Will raises a brow at Hannibal. Follows it with a scowl.

Before either of them can say anything further, Jack replies again.

“I will have this room restricted until you are ready to leave.”

“Thank you, Jack.”

They can hear retreating footsteps and Will bites back a growl.

“I would be mad at you for pulling that misogynistic bullshit with my boss, if I thought for one moment you believed it. Or that I’d have to work with him much longer. I’m surprised you didn’t just invite him in for us to feast upon.”

“I didn’t think you’d want me to be so indiscreet. Though it’s not too late-”

“No,” Will growls.

Hannibal hums his agreement, then rocks his hips slightly and makes Will sigh at the feel of his knot still locked firmly within him.

“I will endeavour not to do anything rash. We’ll have to wait until we can steal Abigail away from the morgue. Once she’s fully recovered, we will start anew elsewhere.”

“Not Florence,” Will grumbles, clenching around Hannibal’s knot hard enough to make the alpha draw a sharp breath.

“No, not Florence,” Hannibal agrees, mouthing at the renewed mating mark on Will’s neck.

Will smiles, a happiness descending on him that he has missed all these years. Except now it holds the promise of so much more, all just waiting for the moment Abigail wakes in her bed to see her new fathers sitting beside her, each holding one of her hands. Ready to begin their life as a family.

--- 

“And here we are now,” Will ends, his hands spreading with a flourish.

“That’s it?” Freddie frowns, angry. “You really expect me to buy that?”

Will shrugs. “Up to you, Freddie. The evidence is all there, you just have to interpret it.”

She glares at him, clearly trying to decide just what kind of crazy he really is. Will thinks she’s this close to storming out of the room, off to write an exposé of his bizarre fantasies, when her eyes alight on his chest, which hasn’t risen for a breath for several minutes now. Her gaze widens into a full-blown stare and Will allows himself a smirk as he sees the wheels turning in her mind.

“You… you…” she stammers, before pulling herself together. Will always has admired her gumption. “You smell wrong, nobody could ever tell what you were until Lecter claimed you. And – wait, he did claim you, everybody saw the mark…”

She trails off as Will, smiling indulgently, lowers his shirt collar to reveal the smooth, unmarred flesh he’d allowed to regenerate (much to Hannibal’s heated protests) just for this moment.

Freddie’s pen drops to her lap and rolls off somewhere into the office, forgotten, as she raises a hand to her mouth. She leans forward, on the edge of her seat, as she scans the patch of skin which she had posted pictures of, bloodied and torn, just mere days previously. She looks as if she wants to touch; maybe she would have, if her attention hadn’t just been gripped by something new.

She peers into the darkening room and finally registers the boxes, the packing that has already begun in readiness for a new life, elsewhere. Her eyes snap to his, suddenly frantic. “That’s not the end. It can’t end there. Or, tell me something else, tell me about before, before meeting him this time.”

Will can’t help but smirk at how quickly her smug entitlement has melted into eagerness.

That, and the fact that she believes it all and yet apparently has developed no concerns for her safety.

He smiles at her, almost kind if not for the momentary flash of points behind his lips.

“For you, there is no more to tell. No more stories, Ms Lounds.”

“There has to be more… What people wouldn’t give to have your life! What I wouldn’t give!” Her eyes glow with the burning desire he has seen so many times before, so predictable in this type of human. Only one had ever surprised him… but then, Hannibal hadn’t really ever been human,not even as the young Lithuanian man who had looked into Will’s eyes and told him the bite could wait until he was ready.

“You agreed to this interview for a reason, didn’t you? Didn’t you?” she presses.

Will smirks.

“And what reason would that be?”

“To make me one of you. Another companion. You can see we are all alike, that I was meant to-”

Will cuts her off. “Ms Lounds, I can assure you, we are nothing alike.”

He laughs, a cruel chuckle, watching as she stands from her chair, places her hands on her hips, every bit the entitled brat.

“I’m not leaving here until-”

Will moves so swiftly from his chair to hers that he knows he is nothing more than a blur to her. And the fear in her eyes confirms it.

She shrieks as he looms over her, taking hold of her shoulders with a crushing grip as he growls at her.

“Is that what you want? To be one of the immortals?” he growls, enjoying the fear that grows in her eyes, replacing the passion of moments before. He leans in close and whispers, breath cool against her ear, “You’ll never be more than food to us.” And there it is, the difference between him and Hannibal, and the likes of Freddie Lounds. Her eagerness has been replaced by terror that marks her as fodder, not friend.

Freddie screams and, with a grin, Will lets her go.

He watches her run but he doesn’t need to follow.

He can hear as she comes to a sudden halt just beyond the door. And then he hears Hannibal croon words dripping with charm… and other, deadlier things.

“Ms Lounds, we’ve been remiss. I believe it’s about time my sire and I had you for dinner.”

[aion-rsa]

Salma Hayek in Savages is One of the Most Underrated Movie Gangsters

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“You thought I wouldn’t notice,” cartel boss Elena Sánchez (Salma Hayek) demands of her loyal caporegime Ludo (a physically and emotionally imposing Benicio del Toro). The brutal and effective killer does not defend himself when the head of his family, and boss of bosses, slaps him with the force of a bull whip. He doesn’t even flinch. That would mean death. Oliver Stone’s Savages may not be his most renowned mob movie offering, but Hayek’s drug lord is one of cinema’s most groundbreaking gangsters.

Stone is no stranger to iconic gangsters. He wrote the screenplay for Brian De Palma’s Scarface, which brought Al Pacino’s coke-fueled Cuban political asylum seeker, Tony Montana, into celluloid’s perennial rogue’s gallery. For his 2012 cartel twist of a gangster film, Savages, Stone let Hayek reset the template. Her Elena Sánchez is street smart, tech savvy and a wiz at business. Her venture is so cut-throat, her underlings sever heads in their enthusiasm. Sánchez commands that much loyalty. Her gang decapitates wayward members, rivals and other stray wolves to bring lambs into the fold. They capture the proceedings on video which they send as messages in introductory offers of hostile takeovers.

Our ostensible heroes in this environment are Ben (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Chon (Taylor Kitsch), who’ve been friends since high school. Ben went to Berkeley and took botany classes; Chon went into the military and took seeds. The latter’s tour of duty in Iraq left him seething with trauma but well-trained tactically. His tour in Afghanistan left him tactless, but introduced him to the finest marijuana in the known world. The pair now run a multimillion-dollar cani-business in the era when the plant was on the verge of becoming legalized on the West Coast. They, and their mutual live-in girlfriend O (Blake Lively), are idealists, using their new wealth to invest in philanthropy. Sánchez’s cartel wants them to join the “family.” It is a renowned and venerable matriarchy.

Sánchez’s enterprise is larger than Vito Corleone’s in The Godfather, but then she is a wise and tough-nurturing godmother. Nicknamed La Reina, the boss of the Mexican Baja Cartel doesn’t merely conquer her competitors, she destroys idealism. To get the thing she wants, Elena kidnaps the thing Ben and Chon love most, O. This is a talent, discovering the things which people most treasure. When Tom Hagen reported back to his don in The Godfather, the family father discerned the Hollywood bigshot Jack Woltz loved his prized racehorse more than any other thing on earth. He sent a message.

Elena’s most potent message is a niche-meme of sorts. While streaming live footage of O in tortuous circumstances, she cuts to an animation of O’s head popping off, leaving an ever-increasing stain of blood which ultimately covers the screen. That’s her horse’s head. This is a message movie and that’s “the word.”  Hayek is a versatile performer. She brought black comedy subtlety to her roles in The Faculty and Dogma; sensual earth tones to Frida; and romantic fantasy into Once Upon a Time In Mexico. She ratted out her gangster boss in Everly, but made her bones as an assassin in The Hitman’s Bodyguard. Hayek has also proven herself a master thief, stealing From Dusk Till Dawn with one scene which she shared with George Clooney, Quentin Tarantino, and a snake. In Savages, Hayek is allowed to be something female characters are routinely denied: ruthless, amoral, and savage.

Hayek presents a straightforward boss with strong family values. Elena Sánchez took over the cartel after the deaths of her husband and twin sons, but there is no room for irony for the Black Widow character. Hayek expertly balances public bravado and private sorrow. Elena is wise, like someone who paid attention to the lessons of different generations. Warnings about getting high on your own supply, and underestimating the other guy’s greed, would sound perfectly natural coming out her mouth. She’s the antithesis of her prisoner, whom she calls Ophelia after sensing the young woman exudes the need for a mother’s accumulated knowledge. Elena’s own actual daughter similarly rejects the past in the movie, but this is a gangster film tradition, sadly. Every mob boss wants their children to move into a thriving legitimate world. Elena says her daughter is “ashamed of me and I’m proud of her for it.”

The gangland dictator’s only vulnerability is her teenage daughter. It is also Elena’s strength. A mob godfather chalks blood up as an expense. Elena, the mother, is not only capable of doing anything for her children, but also justifying any action because it is done for her children. She only took over the cartel because her son was weak and would have been killed. This makes her character fearless.  

Regardless of the hard-bodied eye candy, Taylor-Johnson, Kitsch, and Lively are bland next to Hayek and del Toro, who see entitlement and philanthropy as disgusting conceits of wealth and soft privilege. Lively’s Ophelia is not a deep, William Shakespeare tragic figure. She’s Paris Hilton in a hemp halter top, a seeming trophy for the nouveau stoner rich. O neither shocks nor impresses the crime queen, whose got hideaways and mansions scattered internationally for whim or lam.

“There’s something wrong with your love story, baby,” wise mob boss Elena notes like she’s doling out favors at her daughter’s wedding. “They may love you but they will never love you as much as they love each other. Otherwise they wouldn’t share you, would they?” Their ménage a trois relationship is also seen as absolutely savage to del Toro’s Lado.

The Mexican gang think the gringos lack dignity, tradition, family, and honor. The Californians are appalled by the brutality of the narco-traffickers from south of the border where torture is a routine cost of doing the business. Local D.E.A. agent Dennis (John Travolta) puts his trust in graft. He skims profit from Elena, accepts bribes from her rival El Azul, as well as Lado, and Ben and Chon. Yet he is surprised when he gets bit on the hand at feeding time. “You stabbed a federal agent,” he moans as his faith is shaken in a scene reminiscent of the death of Mel Bernstein in Scarface. Sadly, it only expands Dennis’ jurisdiction.

It is noted in the film that Elena is counting on the reelection of a specific mayor to retain her power base in Mexico. Stone directed the 2009 documentary South of the Border, which presented the untold histories of leftist Latin American presidents. Savages, a commercial film, presents the cultural relationship between Anglo-Americans and Latinos in a way mainstream Hollywood films rarely attempt. Most of this is done through normalizing sequences which act as allegorical bridges, such as when Elena flips back and forth between English and Spanish when chastising Lado and the high-ranking cartel accountant Alex Reyes (Demián Bichir). She is as much a mob representative as when Lado greets Ben with a warm “Welcome to the barrio” as he lets him into his Tijuana hotel suite.

Elena brings an entirely new and unique reworking of the South American narco boss cliché. This is best illustrated with the most subtle of the film’s social commentary, delivered by del Toro, who’d previously won an Oscar for his role in the drug war film Traffic. When Lado drops by Dennis’ house, he’s backed by a landscaping crew packing chainsaws.

Savages is an adaptation of Don Winslow’s pulp fiction novel but only hints at the violence journalist Ioan Grillo wrote about in the book El Narco. The film is set in Southern California’s Laguna Beach, which is close to the province of the Sinaloa Cartel. The film says Elena heads the Baja Cartel, which has operated in the U.S. for years. Sandra Avila Beltran was known as La Reina del Pacifico, but Elena’s circumstances more loosely resemble Veronica Mireya Moreno “La Flaca” Carreon, the first known female leader of the Los Zetas gang of San Nicolas de los Garza near northern Mexico.

The authentic blend of known crime figures brings an immediacy to the character. Hayek’s realism registers subconsciously, adding shades to the gangster persona which blur into a real person. It also instills a real sense of peril. We worry about the antihero.

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But never forget, Elena is a badass. Savages reflects the violence of the then-ongoing drug wars in Mexico. It looks real and feels painful. The first shot the audience gets of the cartel is a blood-slicked concrete floor, headless bodies and decapitated heads, and Lado in a Lucha Libre freestyle wrestler mask. Elena’s crew is one of the most efficiently lethal in the business. Anything less is unacceptable. Lado calls in a debt on lost years from a former attorney by shooting him in both knee caps. He retires Esteban, the henchman who watched over Ophelia while she was in captivity, because he is too soft.

One thing which separates Savages from the many drug war genre films is how Stone mixes media. He artfully moves through visual formats, color schemes, black and white grit, webcam and cell-phone video pixelation, though all of this is restrained when compared with Natural Born Killers. In that film, the villains were strong but powerless, hurled by forces beyond their control. In Savages, Elena exudes authority. “We didn’t make you an offer to hear a counteroffer,” she explains confidently, turning the screw on mere offers you can’t refuse. “We made you a deal to which we expected compliance.”

Stone is as fascinated by power as he is repelled by it. Like many gangster and Stone films, the mobsters at the center of Savages are allegories. Stone took on financial criminals in Wall Street, and here Elena’s cartel is likewise a modern corporation of sorts, putting the squeeze on the little guy. It’s the same thing real-life Bronx bootlegger Dutch Schultz did when he took over the Harlem numbers racket. The Sánchez expansion is the same as when the Corleone family moved in on Las Vegas. Elena muscles in during negotiations, dropping golden parachutes with balloon interests, percentages, sliding scales over three years, and other buzz-killing business school collateral damage. Even as talks deteriorate, Sánchez keeps a cooler head than Tony Montana and is able to strategize in the long term.

Her operations are brazen. When negotiations aren’t being carried out via computer, business is conducted in public, under the protective shield of a small squadron of snipers. Her hackers are as expert as Ben and Chon’s. All of this was within state of the art, real-time operations, which further solidifies Sánchez’s bona fides. Stone spent 15 months of combat duty in Vietnam, and assigned Kitsch to train with a Navy SEAL advisor during filming. Blakely told Collider she “met a little girl who had been kidnapped by the Mexican drug cartel.  We met people in, of all areas, the marijuana field.” Hayek spoke with members of drug gangs.

“I actually talked to some people involved in the cartel that described, on two different occasions, women that have gotten quite high in the cartel,” Hayek told Collider.  “As a matter of fact, they are incredibly efficient, much more so than men… The women are actually colder. The guy gets angry and thinks he has to do something, and the women are not like that. They are all about the business. They’re not about the vendetta, or who is more macho. They’re about getting things done.”

Elena Sánchez gets things done, and she does it with style. This is a real gangster policy which goes all the way back to Arnold Rothstein, who cleaned up street thugs like Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky, put them in suits, and taught them which forks to use at dinner. Dutch Shultz laid out a small fortune to outfit his outfit in the latest fashion. In Dead End, Baby Face Martin (Humphrey Bogart) shows off his silk suit, tailor-made.  The gangsters in Sergio Leone’s mob masterpiece Once Upon A Time in America wore wingtip collars. In American Gangster, Denzel Washington’s Frank Lucas blows his cover to drape himself in a chinchilla coat.

Hayek set Elena’s style in stone, wearing the same diamond necklace and silken black wig in every scene. “These women know they are going to be an icon and they create a character,” she told THR.  “These women design themselves. They don’t want to be versatile. They want you to always remember them.”

Elena Sánchez may only remember Ben and Chon by their nicknames, “Nothing Personal” and “Eat Shit Caviar,” but Salma Hayek presents an unforgettable cinematic crime boss. Savages lives up to its title because Hayek cultivates the untamed natural state with unnatural ease. Sánchez knows enough not to keep too high a profile on “most wanted” lists, but as a gangster, she should never be underestimated.

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