I Owe You Not a Kindness || Hannibal Rising AU || CLOSED

quitethehumanitarian:

        Dinner. Of course. Hannibal hadn’t realized the time, caught up in his drawing as he was. The food served in the dining hall was never particularly appealing, anyway, nor was the prospect of spending half an hour surrounded by the other children - but he was hungry, and trying to sneak food away to eat elsewhere had gotten him writing lines after classes and a cut lip from the fist of the caretaker who’d found him making contact with his teeth.

        To the dining hall it was, then. Hopefully whomever Graham’s friends were were similar in temperament to him; Hannibal had no interest in making friends with them, but it seemed reasonable to spend meals with his roommate and he didn’t want that to involve any forced close proximity to the less considerate of the boys.

        Not that he had ever seen Graham with a particularly large group of friends in the first place, the times he’d seen him around the school. All the better, then. He gave a quick nod, brushing charcoal dust off on his uniform trousers - they were black anyway, and he didn’t particularly care for them - as he followed Graham to the door, close by his side.

       The answering nod was surprising as he had fully expected the other boy to turn him down. Hannibal had always seemed to prefer to keep to himself whenever given the chance. Surprising or not, the acceptance of his offer made his lips twitch upward as led the way to the dining hall.

       Walking side by side with someone without having to shy away was a pleasant change, though he kept his arms as close to his body as possible, flinching slightly whenever their arms happened to brush against each other.

       Will came to an abrupt stop, his hand coming out to clutch the other boy’s sleeve tightly to halt him when he spotted a group of boys. Unfortunately, said boys seemed to have made it their mission to terrorize him at every chance they saw. One of their group had been the one to rip his book apart.

       "Let’s go another way,“ he urged, tugging at Hannibal’s sleeve. It was always a matter of hoping that the gang of boys didn’t notice him before he could slip away. And the last thing he wanted to do was to drag his roommate into a confrontation with them.