Chapter Text
Will awakes to moonlight streaming in through wrought iron windows paned with old, distorted glass. It exacerbates the dream-like effect of the dark. More so than the misplaced age of the room's rotting wooden furniture and its cold stone, carved out of time. He is under covers upon covers, heavy things of thick wool and fur that guard against the cold of the estate, especially now with winter creeping in ever closer.
His first concern upon waking is that he is waking alone. Even in a dreamer's state, Will is so rarely alone anymore. His hands travel under the sheets to the space beside him — now empty — where he feels the warmth still trapped in the linen. Expert enough in midnight awakenings, he does not bother to check the time before he pulls himself up, bare feet to chilled stone ground. The fur throw is separated from his bedsheets and thrown over his shoulders before he finds the matches in the bedside to light a candle stick - old-fashioned and historical, like everything else at Castle Lecter.
With the small flame to guide him and the fur on his shoulders, he wanders. He wanders, but is not lost; they have been at the castle for some time now, and Will's explorations have been far more proactive than Hannibal's. Hannibal already has the turns and corners memorized from a time long ago and he uses the knowledge for avoidance. There are places on these grounds where he cannot safely go, shadows which cling to him too closely to be safe. It makes Hannibal raw; it makes him very small and sometimes Will looks at him and sees a little boy, curled in on his own darkness.
The FBI won't look for them here. All the demons and the danger are their own.
Will wanders and with each step imagines himself to be Hannibal. It's thinking he can slip into with ease now and he lets it direct him upstairs and along stretching hallways. There are passages dark enough he has to lead himself along the wall, feeling the groves and cracks and dust under his fingertips as he walks past. The stone retains chill like nothing else, he's learned.
He finds Hannibal where he expects him to be, a windowsill with a nook to sit upon, to look outside out over the graves in the dark. Hannibal hasn't been to the graveyard yet. Will knows he won't, so Will takes it upon himself to clear out some of the overgrowth, to upkeep the one headstone he knows matters.
"Did I wake you?" Hannibal says as Will approaches, putting the candlestick down on the ledge of the window.
"I've lost the habit of sleeping alone. Won't you come back to bed?"
Hannibal is silent for a moment, his outline less severe in the dark.
"I can find no solid footing here," Hannibal says.
"I'm your footing."
Hannibal's lips quirk at this, before he turns to look at Will proper, ''Am I satisfying your curiosity, cruel boy?"
"Do you regret our circumstances? Handing me the reigns?"
He shakes his head, pulls Will closer to him and onto his lap.
"How could I regret a fact of nature? That I am yours as you are mine grants me solace. As the seasons and all cycles do in their inevitability."
"It frightens you, too."
Sitting against him, he can feel how Hannibal stills. It is a moment where his eyes darken in consideration, a reminder that Will now sits with him behind the veil.
After that moment, he says, "Yes."
Will takes a sharp breath in. The sentiment stirs in him something still indescribable. He awards the admission with arms wrapped gently around his neck, and a kiss that distracts from all the graves.
five months prior
They are suspended over the roiling Atlantic until they aren’t; until Will pulls them over a soft earth edge and tips them into air and ocean. Hannibal lets him. Hannibal, under his touch, is pliable; not a word he'd ever thought to associate with the man. Will has always been the more malleable one, but during the fall they are both weightless - a moment of perfect togetherness - until they hit the ocean, and then suddenly they are separate again, discontinuous and sinking stones.
Were it not for how tightly Will’s embrace had wrapped itself around Hannibal, he would have lost him. The tides were larger than them and sought to pull them apart and to beat them against rock until they could finally rest. Will didn’t let them. He clung on despite sinking, despite Hannibal’s shut eyes, and despite the fact that this is what he wanted.
It is his innate instinct to struggle against death. It is Hannibal’s voice inside his head: suicide is the enemy, he says. Will, were it not for the water in his lungs and the cutting of his palms against the rocks, would scold himself. He thought he had trained himself out of the habit of thinking in Hannibal’s voice.
Wills thinks in his own voice suicide is the enemy, and believes it less, but still manages to pull them towards the shore until they are washed up in blood and seafoam. Hannibal is slipping in and out of consciousness, eyes rolling back into his head as Will attempts to keep him upright, if only to keep sand out of his wounds.
“We have to keep walking,” Will says.
The moment they had arrived at that house, a countdown had begun. The FBI would surely arrive sooner rather than later. There is blood, spit, and seawater dribbling out of Hannibal’s mouth, and he struggles to form words, leaning against Will’s form.
“There are more houses further along the beach,” Hannibal says. Will nods, and walks for both of them. The adrenaline of almost-drowning had made swimming, kicking, floating and dragging all automatic; happening with very little conscious thought and, instead, animal effort. The walk along the beach is different; slow, constant steps forward and ache, now that blinding impulse has passed.
Will chose this, so he walks, hoisting Hannibal up against him tighter whenever he looks close to passing out. Wet sand sinks under their feet as they trudge, sticky wounds and sea salt getting caught between their skin and under their clothes.
The first house they arrive at isn't a house, not really. It is a boating shack nestled into the rocks at the curve of a trail back up into the cliffs. Inside, the only thing they find of proper use is running water, some jackets, and a first aid kit under the sink filled mostly with empty band-aid wrappers. Will scavenges and then rinses the blood off of them as best he can, with Hannibal laying on the cot in the singular room.
"We can't stay here long," Will says, and in his own voice he can hear a tinge of panic; it is that he has never seen Hannibal so pale before, so unresponsive. He had, over the years, seen Hannibal shrug off a great number of wounds, but Will realizes now, never a bullet. Hannibal, too, had taken the brunt of the fall. Will worries.
"We'll need to find a car," Will says. "They'll find our blood and think we’re dead. That'll buy us time." Perhaps the footage on the Dragon's camera captured their fall. It would be lucky, and exactly what they need.
"They may be half-correct in that assumption," Hannibal says, eyes shut closed as if to prevent further expense of energy.
"You're not going to die," Will says. "I won't let you. I won't do this alone."
Eyes still shut, Hannibal smiles, "Then we must close this wound quickly." His hand is pressed along the side of his stomach, where the bullet he had taken passed through him cleanly. Will has a vague memory of the minor surgery needed to remove the bullet he took in the shoulder, in Florence, that had gotten caught in his muscle. He wonders if this bullet hit any organs, if there will be any fixing it.
"You can talk me through it once we find supplies."
A veterinarian, or a small family practice, would be their best bet. Places that closed after five and on the weekends.
"Then I will endeavor to keep conscious until then," Hannibal says.
"Do more than endeavor," Will says, keenly aware of how petulant he sounds. Hannibal, even in this state, notices it. He opens his eyes to look at Will and, with his free hand, cups his face gently.
"I may not keep the night," he says with severity, but somehow seeming unbothered by the fact. His lips are still curled into a half-smile, likely still riding the high of adrenaline, of the fact that in dragging them to safety, Will has made a choice other than death.
"If you don't keep, then neither will I."
"Come now. Suicide is the enemy, Will."
A surge of emotion hits him and topples over his exhaustion. He leans his head forward and rests his cheek on Hannibal’s chest.
“I threw us off a cliff, so I'd say it's a little late for that. I thought you would be angrier about it.”
"To be the flint and wick, consumed in the process of your becoming? I can think of far worse fates. I suspected you would do something of the sort."
Of course he did. Few knew Will as well as Hannibal, and fewer still bothered to consider him to such an extent.
"You let me," Will says.
"You entrusted our fate to sea," Hannibal says, voice raspy with blood and exhaustion, "I could not deny you that."
"I suspect there's very little you would deny me, at this point."
Hannibal tenses under him, a miniscule tautness in his muscles. Will shifts, to take his weight off the more wounded of the two of them. Hannibal's hand moves to stroke through Will's hair.
"You once told me that rebirths could only ever be symbolic. Do you still feel the same?"
Will notes the change of subject. He notes how Hannibal remembers in such detail their conversations of three years past. Will remembers, too. He sits up once more and holds Hannibal's pensive gaze, shakes his head.
"The ocean now sounds to me like a mother’s voice," Will says quietly.
Hannibal's responding smile is prideful. It fills Will with a strong longing; the moon to his tides.
They steal a car, and break into a small family clinic where Hannibal walks Will through the process of draining and closing wounds. Will's hands don't shake, but the anxiety in his head is a constant static. Hannibal performs surgery on himself as best he can before he passes out and after that it's up to Will to take care of their evidence and bio-waste.
Their best bet while Hannibal is weak like this is to be invisible. He cleans up after them meticulously and the money he steals from the lockbox under the reception desk is negligible - a small enough sum that they would suspect employee theft rather than a break in, but it’s enough for Will to buy them new clothes and pay for a motel room four hours out from the cliff side.
The first day at the motel, Hannibal barely wakes. They share a bed and Will figures out how to set up an IV bag on his own. While he worries over Hannibal and washes their wounds out periodically, he keeps the news playing constantly in the background. It's an old TV set that doesn't ever get the resolution right and is prone to cable static, but that lets him watch the Jack Crawford press conference on day two, when the FBI can no longer deny their reckless action and once the outrage has reached its peak.
Jack insists the FBI will continue to seek evidence, to track down all leads, and concretely close the case. When Kate Purnell speaks after him, she insists the case is already closed, and that Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham are believed to be dead, along with Francis Dolarhyde. The amount of blood, combined with footage found on the scene, made it very unlikely that either survived. For now, efforts were concentrated around recovering their bodies out of the Atlantic.
All said to uproarious questions from reporters and idle gossip from the news anchors. Hannibal was asleep for that too, and Will would have liked his opinion.
Hannibal wakes enough to speak somewhere in the middle of the night, between day two and three. Will is already up, as he barely sleeps during this time. The fear had kept him up. He could too easily imagine waking up next to a corpse, so he spent the dark hours planning on how best to take his own life if that is to be the case.
"How long has it been?" Hannibal asks and Will tells him, along with all the other details of his care. He does not mention his vivid imaginings of slit wrists.
"Your wound is still inflamed. I keep cleaning it out, but there's been pus…"
"You've done very well, considering the circumstances," Hannibal says, but the words slur, and he's still pale, even in the dark. Will can tell. "I patched up what I could with the surgery, but if there's an infection that's spread, there will be little to do about it."
Will's hands grip at the sheets. "No."
"Will -"
"No. Tell me what needs to be done. I already told you, you can't die." The last sentence is spit out like a command and he is aware only after what a ridiculous thing it is to say. Hannibal sighs before leaning his head back. There's a smile made soft with affection as he looks up at Will.
"Then I shall not," he says, as if Will's word was law, as if Will's desire was a thing that could halt sepsis and fever. It should not be comforting; Will has worried over his temperature and discoloration enough to know recovery is still uncertain, to know that they were still far from clear.
It still releases something in Will, though, and the breath that escapes him is defined by its ease. Hannibal tugs Will down into him, letting him settle with his cheek pressed into his chest, as if this is something they've always done.
It feels strange to think they haven't always been like this, attached skin to skin.
Their motel room has discolored yellow wallpaper. The sheets are scratchy and the tub is green enamel. They spend most of their time there inside, except for Will’s early morning ventures out to smuggle complementary breakfast back to their room or to make the very occasional supermarket trip.
In their room, Will plays nurse. For two weeks, this is their life post-fall. It is not what Will expected, when he fantasized about their life together - when he allowed himself such exercises, which was more often than he'd like to admit. Things happened much faster in his mind, with more opulence and with more violence, but he finds his bloodlust momentarily tempered by Hannibal's care. Just as he finds so many doubts and angers quieted with worry.
He cannot say he minds it. Hannibal, whether because of the fatigue or the weakness or perhaps because of the changing influence of the Atlantic, is very tender during this time. He gives Will instructions regarding his treatment with the utmost gentleness and allows Will to maneuver him, to clean him, to feed him. At night Will curls into his side, cheek to chest. Will begins to know the edges and cut of Hannibal's wound intimately, as well as the way his unconscious body relaxes, vulnerable.
The late night fantasies that keep him up veer away from suicide completely. Instead, he imagines digging his fingers in-between Hannibal’s stitches. Sometimes he imagines they are so close they should always be like that - inside of each other’s muscle and gore. Sometimes in his dreams he turns over to find they’ve already fallen into each other’s skin, melted, attached by cords of sticky flesh at their stomach.
Will still sleeps lightly, and he awakens from these dreams at the first sliver of early morning. Hannibal doesn’t, though Will expects that isn’t typical and rather a side effect of healing. Half-asleep still, his hand comes to stroke at Hannibal’s chest lightly, following the even rise and fall of his breathing. His touch travels across the curve of him, down to where the bullet wound remains covered. It no longer has that infectious heat to the touch - an excellent sign - so Will lets his hand rest there.
Distantly, he wishes there was no shirt or bandage separating them. He wishes it was his bare palm against the gash. It strikes him once more that Hannibal is uniquely vulnerable here. If Will wanted to, it would be no consequence to hurt him, or even kill him. He wonders why Hannibal isn’t more worried about that, but then again, Hannibal has already died once for Will. He has died and been reborn and lived, all at his whim.
Lazarus in love. Will slips his hand under Hannibal’s shirt, to finger around the edge of the bandage, feeling at where the adhesive is coming off the skin. He picks, as if it was his wound to pick at.
Hannibal shifts slightly, but doesn’t push him away or tell him to stop.
“Good morning,” he says, voice thick and accented with sleep, “Entertaining yourself?”
Will hums noncommittally.
“You’ve taken well to nursing,” Hannibal says, “Did you never consider it as a career?”
Will huffs a laugh, “I think most would find my bedside manner lacking.”
“I wouldn’t,” Hannibal says, words breathed into Will’s hair. The medical tape comes off and Will is able to slip a careful finger under the gauze. He shouldn’t, not without washing his hands, and not with Hannibal doing so much better already, but the temptation is too great. The tip of his finger glides around the stitch, around the raw, healing flesh.
Hannibal tenses and sucks in a breath. Satisfaction gathers in a pool inside of Will’s belly.
“Psychopaths are attracted to medical fields because of the power it allows them over life and death,” Hannibal says. Wills catches his meaning.
“I’m not a psychopath, Dr. Lecter.”
“But perhaps you can understand the appeal.”
Perhaps he can. He sits up, moving his hand off the stitches, to look down at Hannibal.
“How many times have you had me like this?” Will asks.
“How?”
“Helpless,” Will says, “unconscious. You could have done whatever you wanted to me.”
Hannibal considers him, taking a moment to formulate his response.
“Several times, at the beginning of our relationship. When your seizures were at their worst. And before your imprisonment to plant the evidence.”
The words still cause something old and scabbed over to ache. He knows by asking he is reopening lesions within himself.
“Is the thought more or less violating now that you’ve been on the other side of that dynamic, so to speak?” Hannibal asks.
“It’s still not the same, I’m not inducing anything,” Will says, “Nor am I hiding.”
Hannibal nods, “I tried to obscure myself from you, with little to no avail in the end.”
“Did you ever touch me while I was like that?”
Will almost can’t believe he’s asked, but it is a question suited for the surreal hours of dawn, when neither of them is yet fully pulled out of dreaming.
“No, I didn’t. Have you desired to touch me while I’m unconscious?”
Hannibal picks up on things quickly. He can make jumps about Will’s thoughts that others can’t. Will has never known a closeness like that and it is somehow more violating to him than the ear down his throat, than the unconsciousness. The discussion is unsavory and his long-learned propriety still rises in revulsion; he averts his eyes.
"Yes. No. It's not about that. Not really."
"Of course," Hannibal agrees, "It's about trust."
"Do we trust each other?"
"If that is a useful paradigm for you, we could."
"Am I to believe you have my best interests at heart?"
Hannibal lips curl upward, "I always have, even through our disagreements. My hope is that we will reach an understanding with each other about what our best selves are."
Everyone is seeking continuity with others, since the moment they are forcibly separated from the flesh of their mother and made to be alone. It still frightens Will that he may reach that with Hannibal, and fear above all things makes him rude.
"I think it was more than just a disagreement," he spits, before mentally taking a step back, a breath.
"Transformation comes with an annihilation of the previous self. It may hurt. But it is in the leftover void that grace can slip through. Grace seeks empty spaces."
But was it all necessary? Hannibal once said he didn’t require a sacrifice.
"Are we seeking grace?"
Hannibal's expression softens, and it's in the deepening brown of his eyes, in the ease of his brow.
"Your very presence affords me a great deal of divinity, Will."
It causes those aching soresinside of Will to hurt more, to become overstimulated and then topple within him. Hannibal brings out emotions in him he thinks people were not meant to feel. He reaches out and touches his chest, and the warmth of his skin and the beat of his heart ground him back to earth where his love makes him feel out-of-body.
The arithmetic of their losses and betrayal will always be such an inconclusive thing. They are reborn with a void to fill.
"I'll redress your wound," Will says, as if this is a comparable confession.
Their days continue to pass in a slow drag, pulled taut by paranoia. Will still listens to the news all day, even as their story falls out of vogue. That day the headline was a passion crime in New York: well-known newly weds, a murder-suicide. The man was moderately famous, but Will didn't watch enough movies to recognize him and didn't care.
"Seems we are not interesting enough to keep their attention for very long," Hannibal says.
"Young love sells more," Will says sarcastically, and Hannibal laughs.
They kill a significant amount of time this way. The small, often empty lobby of the motel has books, but none that really interest Hannibal. They are used paperbacks with missing covers that tell stories of gauche romance and generic violence. They read these to make fun of them, and because they have little else to do.
They speak often about their plans for the future and they make confessions. How and where they should lie low. They discuss the lingering thrill of slaying the Dragon, with Will avoiding promises about its repetition. It is too overwhelming a thing to commit to, now that the impulse has once again passed.
Hannibal's strength returns in notable increments. One morning he wakes before Will and can wash his wound himself and get them breakfast. Though he is happy to see Hannibal strong - he needs Hannibal strong - there is a part of him that mourns the loss.
He tries to hide it away like the unseemly thing it is, his desire to have Hannibal so reliant, but it is too much to ask for Hannibal not to catch it.
"Would you like to help me wash, tonight?" Hannibal asks in the evening.
Will has helped Hannibal through all his tasks. There are no longer any qualms between them about nudity or touching. Hannibal, who must sleep on his back due to his injury, has awoken with Will pressed against him half-hard, fantasizing about fingering his open wound. They are two halves of a whole, continuous thing, but they have not kissed.
Hannibal is in love with him, if the complexity of sentiment is to be stripped to simplicity. Will thinks he feels something like that for Hannibal, but it is far too grand, far too ugly, and the word feels useless. They have not kissed, because he thinks Hannibal is waiting for him to make the first move.
"I'll help you," Will says and follows Hannibal to the motel sink. There, Hannibal strips off his shirt and hands Will all of their supplies. Will went through the steps efficiently, neither of them flinching as Will touches the knots of his stitches. He can see, however, how Hannibal's pupils dilate in interest.
When he spots the reciprocity of his desire, it overwhelms him. It makes him want to lean in and away in equal measure. Despite this period of weakness, Will has not forgotten how quickly Hannibal bares teeth.
"These should come out soon," Will says.
"So should the sutures on your cheek," Hannibal says.
Will nods, pressing down on the bullet wound with enough pressure that Hannibal gasps. He thinks about kissing him there while they maintain eye contact, while Hannibal looks at him like he's the loveliest thing that could have walked into his world.
It breaks a certain thread of self-control in him.
He begins to touch in earnest. With his touch, he catalogues all of Hannibal, like these are pieces that are owed to him. Across his chest and over his shoulders and up and down his back. Will cannot help how his head leans forward to rest against bare chest. Hannibal returns the touch, an arm around Will, but it's hesitant.
What's less hesitant is the way his nose falls into the crook of Will's neck to breathe in deep, as if to memorize the scent there, a gasp of pleasure escaping him as he does. Will wonders how long exactly he's been waiting to do that, if he ever does it while he sleeps. Will does.
Will pulled back eventually, but only to get the cut covered once more, before wrapping his arms again around Hannibal's back.
"No other cuts that are stinging?"
"All healing," Hannibal confirms.
Hannibal is littered with scars. Some from before the Dragon, that Will doesn't know the stories behind. He feels the raised groves of healed skin as his hands wander and when his hands pass close to the nape of his neck is when he feels the largest of them.
"What is that?" Will asks.
Hannibal raises an eyebrow, "Surely you've seen it before."
"You should have seen your back when we first got here.”
It was molted black, yellows, and reds, all shifting and inseparable color, from having taken the brunt of their fall off the cliff. It was near impossible to make out the shape of the scars on Hannibal's back then.
"Turn around," Will says, and Hannibal does so.
Now Will can make out the circular brand perfectly, the crest and its lettering having lost their distinctiveness with time and poor healing. He traces the lines with a sustained pressure.
"Verger?" Will whispers. He doesn't mean to sound as affected as he does.
"Mason's last parting gift. He took great pleasure in reminding me I was livestock to him. Personally, I found his attempts a bit heavy-handed."
A picture begins to form in Will's head - Hannibal being kept in the pigsty, tied up and degraded. They likely would have wanted to brand his face, but needed a backup in case Will's didn't work for the transplant.
He's silent for a moment too long and Hannibal turns around to look at him.
"You're reconstructing the crime scene," Hannibal says. Will's nod is shaky, warring with a boiling anger that is both late and misplaced. It seems to confuse Hannibal, "I didn't think it would upset you so much."
"He hurt you. He marked you," Will says.
"He did. We should never forget our scars, nor who gave us the best of them."
"Mason Verger doesn't deserve -" he stops himself before he can say something untoward about the honor of it. Instead, he says, "Mason Verger doesn’t deserve to be remembered. He doesn't deserve to mark you in that way."
Hannibal stares at him a long moment and it’s a stare that tells Will he's looking through to the back of his skull.
"But you do," Hannibal says, "Do you resent I do not have more visible proof of your existence on my body? Sweet boy, you must know you've already marked me in every way that matters."
Not every way, Will thinks.
Hannibal covers Will's hand with his own and brings it to the vertical scar that travels up his wrist. It is a faded white color, dismissible.
"And what of these?" Hannibal asks.
"I didn't do that," Will says.
“What was Matthew Brown but a knife? Your knife, pointed forward towards vengeance?”
Hannibal calls out the darkest urges in him, makes him think selfish, possessive thoughts. Makes him desire the impossible; to be the only thing that's ever happened to Hannibal. He throws out the thought quickly, the way he does all unpleasant associations that threaten to taint him too deeply.
"Don't retreat back into yourself," Hannibal says, reaching out to cup the unscarred side of his face, "you were about to make a demand of me. I would hear it."
"Enabling me is a good way towards codependency."
"We're far past that. I am you and you are me. Now tell me."
Will took a shuddering breath, eyes falling closed. It is heady. It is dangerous.
"My first instinct was that I wanted to cut over it. Cross out his name."
Hannibal hums, "Would you like to?"
"God, no," Will says, "I'm not going to cut over a burn."
"But you'd like to cut over something else then?"
"I don't actually need it in writing. I know you're mine, and Mason is dead."
Hannibal nods, gently parting from Will’s hold.
"Likely for the best,” he says, returning to his nighttime routine, “scarification there would interfere with how you currently seem to enjoy me best."
"Oh? And how is that?"
A cheeky smile plays across Hannibal's face before he says, "Why, flat on my back, of course."
Will laughs and doesn’t deny it.
With Hannibal's healing, plans get set forth into motion. They move their location more often. Short on money and wanting to interact with the public as little as possible, they take to squatting in vacation houses, making themselves comfortable in other people's homes. In Maine, there was no shortage of attractive and isolated cabins at the edges of lakes and forests. Hannibal is happy to have a kitchen, and Will is glad for the access to the outdoors.
It is in their stolen cabin they make plans. Hannibal makes a call, and then some more calls, and gains access to an off-shore account the FBI wasn't able to find, kept under alias upon alias. With the money — withdrawn from a Western Union in cash — they decide to buy a boat. Will is confident in his sailing, and it seems the safest way to get out of the country without having to risk checkpoint passes. Hannibal doesn't have the same unlimited resources he had his previous time on the run. Nor does he have the same elaborate, concrete plans.
Hannibal continues to improve and Will, still ever vigilant of his recovery, tests his stamina with morning walks; first three, then five, and now eight miles at a time. That day they walk along the edge of the lake by their cabin, and there Hannibal outlines to Will what resources he does have available: the offshore account, still with more money than Will has ever had to his name, and an apartment in France that once belonged to his uncle, but was currently owned by Chiyoh.
"Chiyoh's not using it?"
Hannibal shakes his head. There is a healthy, ruddy color on his cheeks from being outside, and his breath fogs up in the cold air. "Once I was in prison, I signed a good portion of my remaining assets to her. This includes money she likely used to start a new life elsewhere."
"If Jack still has any sway at the FBI, that apartment is likely under supervision."
"Most likely," Hannibal agrees, "However, I do not doubt my ability to find us accommodation in any city we should choose."
Roman and Lydia Fell were wealthy, disliked, with little family or friends to notice their disappearance. Hannibal was being reckless at the time, seeking the spotlight, leaving bodies and self-destructively pushing his luck. It would not be like that this time, Will knows. They buried their death drives at the bottom of the ocean, and now both had something to lose.
"What about the estate in Lithuania?" Will asked.
Hannibal tenses, a feeling in the air, "Would the FBI not watch that as well?"
Will shrugs, "I never told them about it. It's not on any records."
Hannibal stops their leisurely pace, Will stopping too to find Hannibal's gaze unreadable.
"Was it to spare me the scrutiny, or yourself?"
"Is there a difference?"
Hannibal's lips curl upward, blank and calculating expression giving way to that heavy adoration that escapes him so often. Will wonders how he ever missed it.
Hannibal walks back up to Will, standing close enough that Will briefly imagines leaning in for a kiss.
"I would not have us start our new life among ghosts," Hannibal says softly.
"We're always going to have ghosts, Hannibal."
"Perhaps," he says, and suddenly Will is filled with the urge to have Hannibal see the firefly in the dungeon, to sit in the dark past with him, and to have Hannibal in the ways Hannibal has had him - inside his mind and wounds. He thinks it would be intimate, therapeutic, but he can feel how the idea unsettles Hannibal.
He drops the subject for now, "I'm cold," he says, "and hungry."
Hannibal smiles at him and they make their way back to the cabin as the sun sets. Hannibal cooks them dinner, with his returned vigor and with the pleasure of having the proper facilities after three years of confinement. Will is proud to see him strong, happy to have the anxiety of almost losing him unravel and allow him a clear head.
The meat is store-bought. They've talked, again, but not enough, and Will's person suit has been stitched to him for so long it is still strange to be out of it. Will has many different thoughts on that. There’s a learning curve to the veil coming down.
He hasn’t mentioned Bedelia, though he feels the need to take his revenge on her like a hunger. Hannibal had been too sick and the gift of presumed death was not one to squander. Besides, if Bedelia still had any of the wits Will knew her to have, she would be long gone by now, regardless of their death in absentia.
If he voices that desire, there would be no taking it back. So, he doesn’t.
For now, they eat dinner in the little cabin that is not theirs, that has pictures of a husband and wife on the mantelpiece, her cross stitch hanging on the wall and his rain boots at the front door. There was a thin layer of dust when they first got there, but everything, though sorted away neatly in its place, was worn with obvious use. Organized, but lived in - Will knows they spend months at a time there when they do.
Will likes the area; the woods remind him of Wolf Trap. He wishes they could stay there without killing the couple. He likes the version of them he imagines in his head, that can't have children but have their hobbies and have each other, and have grown accustomed to the long silences present in so many years of marriage.
When he finds a woman's perfume in the bathroom, one that smells of sweet lilac, it makes him think of Molly. Thoughts of her and Wally caused an unpleasant sinking in Will’s mood. He missed them, but more than that, he was angry at not feeling them to be an irreparable loss. Had he returned to them, it would have been stilted, cold, and resentment would have begun to breed uncontrollably. Will is tired of being disliked.
He is tired of being disliked, but it’s still difficult to accept the price of love might be death. Despite it all, he never wanted his family harmed. That causes a deep chill and anger no matter how much time passes. He thinks of this as Hannibal feeds him, as they settle into bed together. A marital bed with no touching. While they lie there, Will stares at the back of Hannibal’s head and wonders when he will demand a change to their stasis.
When he dreams, it’s of the back of Hannibal’s head. There are antlers bracketing them apart. When he wakes, the space beside him is empty.
They can't stay in the cabin forever, so Will takes to the boatyard. It is not difficult to find someone looking to sell; it is a small-time fishing town, marked by considerable traffic in and out. In the end, he is directed by a local to another local: an old man with a white beard who avoids eye contact and smells of tobacco and sea salt.
Will pays in cash and haggles only a little. The old man is worried about the boat's maintenance, which Will assures him he has experience with. It's his prized possession, but he would be moving down to Austin to live with his daughter next week and couldn't take it with.
"I won't take to it," he tells Will. "I'm too used to being alone and by the sea," he says as he counts the bills a third time and makes a show of holding them up against the sun. It's a cloudy day, and it doesn't do very much, but Will says nothing.
The boat, in a lot of ways, feels like the old man; with scuff marks along its side, and lots of aged parts that have kept due to meticulous care. Will, too, had sold his boat after Hannibal's imprisonment. Used all the money from that and selling the house in Wolf Trap to pack up and move somewhere new. Somewhere he had never been, and where it was easier to compartmentalize and become someone else. Someone who fixed boat motors for a living and could chat up the pretty baseball mom who smiled at him from across the park, with the little boy who asked to pet the dogs.
It was nice, but in the end Will didn't take either.
The boat is loaded up with supplies, Hannibal having bought all sorts of condiments and pots and pans to stock a kitchen, and more clothes for both of them. All the essentials they'll need for the three-week journey across the Atlantic. Will isn't too worried about cabin fever, though he suspects they will reach a point where the personal carnage will have no choice but to overflow. It’s Will’s carnage, those tender spots that belong to Hannibal, that he created. It’s okay if he touches; Hannibal's touch, his presence, has historically been something Will leans into always, even when it hurts.
They'll come in through France, staying clear of Paris, they had decided. Hannibal knew French, so did Will passingly, and they could choose freely where to go from there. Perhaps not Italy, but the old continent had many other reaches for them to explore. Will still often thought about Castle Lecter, the way he thought about Hannibal's bullet wound - a morbid itch. But he hadn't brought it up again.
Hannibal was taking the move in stride. Will felt strangely sad about leaving behind the cabin, making the bed, and leaving the quilt back as they found it. There is something sad too, about leaving the country where he had lived his whole life; where he was born and where he had expected to die.
"You look quite solemn, dear Will," Hannibal says as they prepare to sail out. They haven't had a full day of sunshine their entire time in Maine and that day, in particular, was windy and dark with clouds.
"Goodbyes are always difficult. I feel like I've been making them for weeks now."
"You've spent your entire life here. It is momentous to leave."
"I feel oddly like I have unfinished business."
"We do have unfinished business," Hannibal says, "and unkept promises."
Ah, there they are, Will thinks: Hannibal’s teeth.
He sighs as he fumbles with the main sail, preparing their departure. "You don't really mean to go after Alana, do you?"
"Not now, of course, our immediate survival is far more important to me. But perhaps in the distant future. Once we've settled and once they've forgotten us."
"She doesn't deserve that," Will says, "Besides, I thought you liked Margot."
"I do like Margot. I wouldn't harm her nor the child."
He ties a knot for the sail, looks back at Hannibal with raised eyebrows, "Just leave her widowed then. Nothing personal."
"It isn't," Hannibal says.
Will huffs a disbelieving laugh and, done with the needed handiwork for now, walks over to him. The boat is ready to depart and there is a rough wind that pushes Hannibal's growing hair out over his eyes.
Will resisted the urge to brush it out with his fingers."I wonder if someone killed me, whether you would find it personal then."
Hannibal pulls a face; a frown and grimace. Will sorts it away as a victory. Like that, they set off. Will can navigate well on his own, having undertaken this journey before, but Hannibal is a quick study and when Will asks his assistance, he takes to the task efficiently, asking the right questions and carefully observing Will's own strategies.
Once they are steady and out on the waves, Hannibal tugs at an underlying thread of their previous conversation.
"I often wonder if being my jailer would appeal to you," he says.
He wondered if Hannibal would bring it up. The wording of it rubs against Will wrong, no matter his part in Hannibal's previous imprisonment it aligns him too closely with Alana, and denies them layers of truth.
"No, it wouldn't actually," Will says, a confession forming on his lips as he looks out on the sea, "But I do often feel the need to possess you."
When he turns to look at Hannibal, he is not surprised to find his amused expression.
"Relationships come with these sorts of negotiations. Laying boundaries over one another."
“My desire makes me irrational and contradictory,” Will says, “Makes negotiating complicated.”
"I feel similarly. But that extremity of emotion need not be something we shy away from, I’ve come to realize. It can be a revelatory experience. Or something to enjoy for its own sake."
"Now you sound like a romantic."
A smile cracks wide on Hannibal's face; an expression overly fond.
"If I do, it is because you make me so," Hannibal says. His hand comes to rest on the nape of Will's neck, holding his gaze for a moment before speaking again.
"You needn't worry about Alana, Will."
With that, Hannibal removes his hand, and steps back, walking away into the cabin. Will feels as if he's been handed a gift. As if he is holding a knife with no handle, sharp against his palms. It is a heady sensation.
Will isn’t sure what to make of it. He isn’t quite sure if he believes it.
There are some topics Hannibal is not comfortable talking about. His past has always been one, but between them there are other landmines;wounds that sting when exposed to open air. Will's wife and son are one. Abigail is another. Will's anger is a latent thing; not as fiery as it once was.
He could never bring himself to kill Hannibal without killing himself. Could not imprison him without aching. Will's old grudges ache too, ache and echo, and it is difficult to square away the helplessness of those memories with the person he has been reborn as. Just as it is sometimes difficult to square away the Hannibal who bares his neck, who loves him, as the one who would have seen his family slaughtered.
Will has known for some time that they are one and the same.
He has much time to think about it as they settle once more into domesticity on the boat. Will fishes for fresh food and at night, they keep four-hour watches to make sure everything stays smooth. Alone, it was never a problem for Will to subsist on naps; it's what he did on land, anyway.
The watch shifts are practical, but Will regrets no longer sharing a bed with Hannibal. They still manage, in mid-day naps and at the intersection of the watch. They are confined to the small space of the cabin and the deck, isolated by the expanse of the ocean, and yet Will still feels the need to be closer. Sometimes he thinks the answer to this desire is sex, other times he thinks the answer lies in the past, in how they've hurt each other. In those wounds that ache.
Alone, Will has more nightmares. The sort where he thrashes, where his breath comes quicker and the terror is a vice around his neck. The past is in his dreams. Abigail climbs over the empty bed and her hand on his chest is heavy, like a rock, and denies him movement.
When he awakes, there's a storm outside. It had been in the forecast and is expected, not meant to be anything other than rain. The boat still rocks uncomfortably as Will lays with his grief. The clock informs him he's only slept two hours when he forces himself out of the bed at the far back of the cabin. He gets up to find Hannibal even through the raw feeling.
For a very long time this was his habit; at the first wave of overwhelming emotion Will would go to Hannibal. Hannibal was his port in the storm until he wasn't, until he found the sea was too deep to anchor in. Will wonders if he hasn’t yet learned that lesson.
He finds Hannibal standing, a mirror held in one hand as he inspects the recently recovering wound on his side. The stitches on Will's face had come out on the second day of sailing. Hannibal's had come out the day after. Will had taken scissors to surgical thread, tugging and releasing healed skin. It was simple, and something Hannibal could have done himself, but he let Will do it.
Will finds those same scissors, still lying around. He takes them in hand as he approaches Hannibal from behind, pressing the edge of the blade against the circular burn on his back. Hannibal stills at the touch, but does not look back.
“Change your mind, Will?”
Will hums noncommittally, dragging the scissors across the raised skin and observing how it sometimes gets caught against the movement of the blade. Hannibal lets out a sharp breath when Will stops.
He expects it to be from fear, perhaps. Lack of trust that Will does not mean to hurt him, but when Hannibal turns around to face him his pupils are blown in a way that speaks closer to desire.
Will presses the blade against the wound on his side; this time, pushing against his stomach and leaving an indent in the flesh. It’s not enough to cut, but Will enjoys the way Hannibal seems hyperaware, tense. Poised for something.
“Tell me what’s on your mind,” Hannibal says, held still against the scissors.
“Nothing,” Will says, and then backtracks, “I dreamt of Abigail.”
Suddenly, the blade is pressing just enough that a drop of blood pools on a break of Hannibal’s skin. Will pulls away immediately, but Hannibal quickly catches him by the wrist. The scissors fall out of his hand, clattering loudly onto the floor.
Hannibal is looking at him with this intense, inscrutable expression. They sway with the rocking of the boat.
“There’s something to reopening old wounds,” Hannibal says.
“I have had a consuming preoccupation with it, recently,” Will admits. His grief is still close to the surface. He is brought out of it by a clap of thunder outside, by Hannibal’s firm grip on him.
Will avoids eye contact and Hannibal is the one who speaks again: “Do you still fantasize about killing me?”
This question, against all odds, relaxes Will. It is familiar territory for them. He tries to bury his bad dream and instead focuses on Hannibal.
“You know I don’t want you dead. Not anymore.”
“The ocean made that choice for you.”
“And I made every choice that followed.”
“So no more thoughts of your hands, my neck?”
Will cannot voice this complexity of feeling yet. Not when he barely understands it himself. It is that it’s easier for him to forget how he’s been hurt when they are both hurting. But it is not quite that either. It’s about how pain has always been a common tongue between them.
With a gentle pull, he moves himself out of Hannibal’s grip, reaching over to the first aid supplies that Hannibal already had spread out on the table of the galley.
“You know, you've asked me that question so many times and I've never thought to ask it in return,” Will says, finally, as he wipes down the minor cut.
Hannibal tilts his head in consideration, watching as Will presses gauze against him until the bleeding stops. “Have I thought about killing you?”
Will regrets his phrasing of this question. It reminds him too acutely that Hannibal has made attempts before. Some of those, more traumatic than others.
“In the beginning, I mean. When we first met, did you have fantasies?”
There is blankness to Hannibal’s expression when he is formulating a proper answer. Will recognizes it then.
“The moment I met you I knew you were singular. I resolved I wouldn't attempt to kill you unless I had no other choice,” Hannibal says diplomatically.
“You mean if therapy didn’t stick.”
Another head tilt. Will thinks back to those first meetings. Hannibal’s attraction to him was so palpable and yet difficult to accept. Quite suddenly, he can imagine being Hannibal, infatuated, and plagued by artistic visions he kept under lock.
Will huffs a breath, “You did think about it.”
“Purely as an aesthetic exercise, I assure you. I was often so struck by your beauty I thought it needed to be encased in glass. I thought death might become you, was taken in the way an artist is by pure marble.”
A snort escapes him. He shouldn’t be oddly flattered, but he is.
Hannibal smiles the way he always does when he’s able to get a laugh out of Will, barely contained and genuine, before saying, “Of course, you are most enthralling the way you are. Alive and untamable.”
Will hums, still unbelieving. “And cruel?”
“Do you think yourself cruel? I see you as rather righteous.”
“If I hurt you, would that be righteous? I don’t want to hurt you, Hannibal.”
Hannibal hums, before maneuvering around Will to pick up a mug of tea, which had been left abandoned on the table. After a moment of comfortable silence, Hannibal speaks again.
“Do you know of Saint Angela of Foligno? Seeking a transcendental and often erotic union with God, she would meditate on the suffering of Christ. In vivid detail, she would imagine how the nails had driven the flesh of his hands and feet to be caught in the wood. Fixating on those bits of lacerated flesh.”
The image presents itself in Will’s head poignantly. It calls back fantasies that were once well-loved and titillating.
Will swallows, “An aesthetic exercise?”
“And a mystical one,” Hannibal agrees. “I find the two often overlap. Angela would reach a point of ecstasy and pure connection with God in her meditations. She described meeting God in a dark and empty void.”
“Alone with God?”
“Yes.”
Their eye contact is an intense thing.
“Do you still think about God when you think about killing?” Will asks and Hannibal smiles behind his cup.
“When we killed the Dragon, my only thoughts were of you.”
It is spoken like something holy. It is spoken like a love confession. Will adds it to their ever-growing pile. But then Hannibal smiles, shakes his head, hands Will the cup of tea.
“Go rest some more,” Hannibal says, “I can stay up a few more hours.”
Hannibal is strong again. It means he’d like to take care of Will now. Will resists. Will wishes Hannibal would kiss him so he wouldn’t have to.
In the end, Will goes back to bed.
More time passes atop the currents, at the mouth of the Atlantic, moving steadily closer to land. Closer to islands and continental masses where they can anchor for the night and there is no need for shifts or separateness, though Hannibal continues to keep his polite distance. But the dreams do not stop.
Three nights in a row, he dreams of Abigail. Usually the same dream, where she sits atop of him like a heavy weight, but once a dream where he heard her screams and cries on the other side of Wally’s bedroom door. These things blur together, his different children; dreams are nonlinear like this. They are upsetting.
They prod at him. Will continues on with a sort of anxious energy that burns under his skin seeking release; when they settle for the night, Will feels the need to poke because Hannibal despite all his talk, despite the vows exchanged by way of the sea, is distant.
At first, it was perhaps out of decorum. But as Hannibal retreats, Will suspects otherwise. It is hard to say what started what; if Hannibal pulls away because of Will’s worsening mood or vice versa. All Will knows is that it feeds into each other and there is nothing more frustrating than sharing such a small space with someone and being unable to reach them.
Over dinner, his mood has sunk the way it does come night. After dinner he has gone silent, while they sit side by side on the deck, Hannibal pouring them each a glass of wine. He asks Hannibal: "Will we be husbands? Our aliases. I imagine we'll need them, wherever we go."
"It would be the most believable. Is it displeasing to you?"
“We already share a bed,” Will says. He means it to be slightly accusatory. He means it to ignite change.
“We do,” Hannibal says carefully.
"What worries me is that perhaps I’ve misinterpreted you."
"Will, I want you each and every way you would have me."
Will feels himself frown, before he can attempt to hide it, "Well, you've been keeping a respectable distance."
"I am endeavoring to avoid any unwelcome advances," Hannibal says after a sip of wine, "We have undergone a drastic change. With my convalescence, with our travel, I don't believe you've had proper time to grieve the life you've lost."
"You've never given much thought to my grief before," Will says, and it comes out angrier than he expects it to. He surprises himself with the rawness.
Hannibal, usually so unflappable, does let slip a flash of emotion, but something that Will can't place. It's difficult to concentrate on it while Will is distracted by his own rising ride of upset.
"Have you felt your mood fluctuating more than usual?"
"Are we back in therapy, Dr. Lecter?" Will says, and suddenly is reminded quite frustratingly, again, of Alana, and her resolution that Will was too unstable to date. The frustration, the wine, loosens his tongue. "Did you not sleep with Bedelia? You were husband and wife, too."
Hannibal tilts his head.
"I did," Hannibal says, “Does it bother you?”
Will stands as a flash of anger too hot hits him. He begins to pace around the deck of the boat. Hannibal stands, a mirror to his steps and a shadow.
“You’ve always liked to hurt me,” Will says, the words spilling out with an uncomfortable genuineness to them.
“Is it not the same with you? Does it not go both ways?”
“No. There are some things that are harder to overlook.”
That old rage rises in him like waves. It is useless to attempt to tally their trespasses against each other, but there are some that will weigh eternally, like Abigail, and that makes all the smaller ones harder to swallow too.
It will always hurt Will to think of their daughter. It will always hurt to think he left them in a pile of carnage and took Bedelia as a replacement bride. It hurts, it still hurts, and this is what it all comes back to. Will is still meat and compassion is still inconvenient.
“I don’t know,” Will says, hands coming to hold himself against the wind of the open deck, hands moving in anxious movement.
Suddenly, Hannibal is pulling Will by the elbow, turning him around to look at him in a firm movement.
“Speak.”
“I don’t know! Sometimes you disgust me. More than that, I make myself sick.”
“It is too late to look away now. Three years, I waited for you,” Hannibal says, as Will gives a half-hearted attempt to wrestle out of his grip, “Three years, in which you took a wife.”
“Yeah, and we had sex too. Does that bother you, Dr. Lecter?”
A spark of animal fury flashes in Hannibal’s eyes, and suddenly Will thinks he might snarl. Instead, he does something Will is not expecting: he pushes. He pushes and Will tips over the edge of the deck and into the cold water.
The cold is a shock to his system. Will buoys up immediately in a gasp of air, kicking out. Once he rubs the water out of his eyes, he sees Hannibal still on the boat, at the very least looking shocked and appalled at his own actions.
“That may have been impulsive,” Hannibal says.
Quickly, he leans over the edge of the stationary boat to offer Will help back up. When Will grips Hannibal’s offered hand, it’s easy to pull his full weight down into the water, too. Hannibal tips over with minimal effort. When he falls into the water, it is in an unpleasant and freezing splash.
With both of them now floating together in soaked clothes, Will releases a pleased huff. Hanibal strokes his own wet hair out of his eyes, catching his breath and no doubt acclimating to the temperature much quicker than Will.
“We are not communicating,” he says.
“Yeah,” Will agrees, suddenly deflated. Then quieter, sadder, “Why are you so distant?”
Hannibal frowns. “You have yet to define the parameters of what our life will be. It worries me.”
Will processes that, and as he does, Hannibal swims closer. Will can now read the extreme hesitancy in all his movements, as he reaches out to Will to hold him against him as they float, an arm wrapping around his waist.
“I was never allowed to touch before,” he says.
“You never asked,” Will says, “We touched while you were sick. After the fall. When you remembered yourself, we stopped.” Hannibal looks regretful.
The price of their touching has always been quite steep.
After a moment or two, Hannibal asks, “Would you ever say to me ‘Stop. If you loved me, you’d stop’?”
Hannibal’s anxieties click clear in Will’s mind. They are parallel to his own, in a way. It is a fear of repetition; of being hurt in the same way he has already been hurt.
Will thinks on his question. All the scars Will has, the lines of blades and bullet wounds that mar his body, they were as painful as it was to see Hannibal imprisoned. To be cut away from something so essential. He wonders if Hannibal feels the same.
Will grips onto Hannibal tighter, shakes his head.
“Our distance,” Will breathes out, suddenly overwhelmed, “makes me nauseous. I just want you with me. All of you.”
They are pressed completely against each other, nothing but moonlight reflecting off the water to light the scene, but this close, it is easy to see how Hannibal’s pupils dilate. Will feels Hannibal’s relieved breath on his cheek before his lips. Hannibal leans in and kisses him, first on the junction of his jaw, and then on the corner of his lips.
Will is the one who leans in to kiss him properly. He tastes like seawater and chill and it is fitting. It is a relief. Their lips move against one another smoothly, for all the hesitance in the build up like this is where they are always meant to be: mouth against mouth.
When they pull apart, Will takes in the dark of the Atlantic through his lidded and satisfied eyes. The chill is familiar and the inky void oddly comforting. Will thinks of Angela and God and the empty space in which they found each other.
“It feels like we’re the only people on the planet,” Will says, “Just you and me.”
“Is the thought discomforting?”
“Somewhere between inevitable and terrifying.”
A crooked smile plays on Hannibal’s face, “Like death,” he concludes.
“Or like being born,” Will says.
“The two are inextricably linked.”
“We have to stop throwing each other in the ocean.”
Hannibal leans in, kisses the ocean off of his lips, “Tit for tat. But you feel better, do you not?”
Will nods. The adrenaline was a relief, and the exertion of floating has tired him out. When they climb back onto the boat, their wet clothes are heavy and unpleasant. When they are apart, it allows the chill to come back into their bones, so Will does not let them part. As they strip off their layers and reveal skin to each other, they stay touching, hands straying and traveling and attempting to catalog what they have been missing this whole time.
The clothes stay on the floor; Will and Hannibal fall into bed.
It is intense without any rushed scrambling. Their greatest concern is keeping pressed against each other at as many points as possible. Will’s arm stays wrapped around Hannibal’s neck to hold him close, to keep them cheek to cheek. By now he knows the slope and expanse of Hannibal’s back and chest, the hair, the scars, the warmth. What they have now is hips to hips. Legs that can tangle.
Hannibal’s touches are paced, Will’s thrusts are shallow, and there is something about the slow indulgence of it that makes it all the more severe. Will’s orgasm sneaks up on him from nowhere, made longer by Hannibal’s mouth against his.
It is perfect. It is inevitable.
When they clean up afterward, washing the salt, sweat, and semen off of themselves and replacing the sheets, they hold each other like they were meant to. They are still docked for the night, so they may sleep together with no worries about sailing the ocean.
In the dark of the room, Hannibal speaks, “You quell something within me.”
Confessions, confessions. They sate each other.
“I hope you have found your own anxieties similarly quieted,” he says. Then, “If there are things you want of me, I want you to demand them.”
Will considered that for a moment.
“You keep saying that. Do you mean it?”
Pressed so close together, any sort of minuscule tension is felt in shifts in flesh and muscle. Hannibal tenses, almost imperceptibly, but he looks at Will head on. As if rising to meet a challenge.
“You know I do.”
Will knows, quite suddenly, what he wants.
“I think we should go to the castle. In Lithuania.”
He knows he has caught Hannibal off guard. “...You have traversed its grounds. You know what pains of mine lie buried there. I never planned on returning.”
“I know.”
“Then why?”
Will nuzzles into Hannibal’s neck and lets his hand fall down to Hannibal’s stomach, to that wound on his side that Will has watched and worried over and has even come to love.
“Call it my preoccupation with old wounds.”
His finger dips into the crevice.
Then, he adds, “I think it would be good for us. Painful, maybe, but then...I could take care of you. We have too much to bury.”
Hannibal’s breathing has started up quicker from where Will fingers his scar.
“Ghosts to say goodbye to,” Hannibal says. Will hums.
Hannibal, of course, knows it to be more complicated than that. “A cruel demand.”
“You said I was righteous, not cruel.”
Hannibal gasps as Will presses deeper into the scarred flesh. Will feels where Hannibal is becoming hard against him again, so tenderly he returns to kiss his neck.
“We don’t have to,” he adds, but Hannibal shakes his head.
“If this is the part of me you want, you’ll have it.”
The words are like a rush to the head. His heart bursts at this show of commitment, of Hannibal showing to him his neck and belly and letting Will bite.
Will kisses him. Will loves him.
“Thank you,” he says, hand reaching down to stroke Hannibal to full hardness again.
The rest of their time on the boat passes in a blissful haze of sex. When they arrive on land, they sell the boat for less than they bought it for.
They make their trip leisurely across borderlines in the Schengen area, out of the way of most major cities until they are far away enough from the French coast. It is overwhelming to be around people once more, but they are vagabonds and it is enough to still feel anonymous; most people mind their business, avoid eye contact, have places to be and do not have time to spare them more than a passing glance. They keep their heads down too.
Will had never been to France, nor Germany, and he learns them by their small towns and highways and churches that Hannibal makes stops at, where they listen to the mass as a side effect of listening to the choir, while sitting in the back row. Hannibal, when he cannot cook, chooses local fare to sample with a discerning eye.
Hannibal is in his element showing Will around backstreets and museums with a hand on his back. They can't touch enough now, it seems, at night under sheets, pressed next to each other in the back of cabs. The first time they hold hands is in Berlin, waiting for the subway, and Hannibal's smile throughout it all is toothy, giddy. As they come closer to Lithuania, Will expects this inclination to wane.
Instead, it doesn't. Instead, Hannibal leans in more often for comfort. Becomes more solemn the farther north they get, as the languages spoken around them change. He teaches Will words of Lithuanian as they sit in an empty train car once their last stretch of travel begins through rural swathes of land. It’s best for Will to know the basics, Hannibal says. American travelers there are out of the way and noteworthy, he reasons.
By the time they come close to their destination, it has been a long journey and they are both weary from it. Will has watched the landscape pass in grays and browns for hours, and the chill fogs up the window around the edges.
"I'm tired," Will says.
Hannibal reads a book bought at the last train station. He looks up and says, "Rest on my shoulder, another hour yet remains."
Will shakes his head, "It's alright. I’ll be okay until we get there."
"For my pleasure then."
Hannibal has always liked taking care of Will. Letting Hannibal take care of him is in turn comforting to them both. Hannibal spoils him, concedes to all his wishes and exposes his bare belly. Hannibal who has already marked and hurt him every which way. It is that thought that causes heat to stir within him.
Will smiles. "Alright," he says. He leans against him, the scar on his cheek against the wool of Hannibal's coat. He breathes in an aftershave bought in France, that Will's been using too. The scent of amber and sandalwood brings now an instinctive comfort; the association sorting itself away with immediacy, like Molly and lilac.
He drifts into sleep and the next time he awakes, it is to the halt of the train.
Arriving on the grounds of Castle Lecter feels to Will similarly to that first time; as if he is crossing a certain threshold. As if he is pulling back a veil and stepping forward. As if he is walking backwards, how the dead walk. Perhaps it is the age of the place: the bodies in the earth, the ghosts trapped within the walls. Or maybe it is simply the association with Hannibal that makes Will fanciful.
Either way, it is an effect unlike anything Will has ever felt before. When they arrive the air is cold and smells of a recent rain. At this time of year that means mud, but in another month or two it will mean ice and snow. There is a fog that rolls on the ground that obscures certain things from them; the cemetery off in the distance, the vast scope of the castle.
It does not make the moment more palatable for Hannibal; the shift in him is sudden, almost violent. The mask slips on with what seems a desperate immediacy; perfect blankness to guard against the deluge. Will already feels the need to begin peeling it back and off of his skin, like it is something he might be able to get his fingers under.
Below that morbid itch, there is worry. When Hannibal aches, Will aches too.
Past the gates of iron and past the woods, at the stone steps that lead up into the halls of the castle, Hannibal stops. In his expression, Will catches all sorts of things: apprehension, anger, grief, and fear. There are tears barely there, threatening to spill. It sets Will's heart to beat a bit faster and his stomach to knot.
"What torture you put me through," Hannibal says, standing still at that base step.
"You taught me best."
As Will attempts to climb the steps, Hannibal reaches out to catch him by the wrist.
"Is it revenge that guides your actions? Or reciprocity?"
"Not revenge, no," Will says, "Don't you want to be closer?"
Under the skin, Will thinks, nails pulling back skin to reveal muscle. Hannibal has cut him open before, too. There is a satisfying symmetry to it all.
"This place is dangerous to me," Hannibal says.
"No more than I am. I'll take care of you." A promise to Hannibal's pleading. He takes Hannibal by the hand, a firm but gentle grip that pulls him forward and up the stairway.
Will opens the grand wooden doors and leads them past the threshold inside.