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“Stay with me, Will.”
Hannibal, in and out of focus; a tickling, tugging sensation on his right cheek.
Will tilted, or perhaps the world did, a dimly lit smear of color in flesh tones and scarlet, and then he felt a steady hand against his side, and the cool, wet touch of a glass to his lips.
“Drink.”
He opened his mouth obediently, and some of the water went in. The rest dribbled down his chin. He felt, rather than saw, Hannibal dab it away.
He opened his eyes with great effort, and found that Hannibal was right there in front of him, real, his hair wet and drying badly. Will smiled, or perhaps he grimaced.
“You were my anchor,” he rasped.
Hannibal’s eyes looked bottomless in the dark.
“Couldn’t let you drift out alone.”
He felt Hannibal’s arms come up and around him to steady him even as he let his eyes fall shut yet again. As darkness encroached, he thought he said, “I wanted to go with you,” but he couldn’t be sure.
It was warm in Hannibal’s embrace, and comfortable. He wondered why they had never let each other have this before.
He woke again to the long, hot press of Hannibal’s body behind him. It was still dark, darker than before with the lights out now, and whatever Hannibal had given him wasn’t done working through him; he didn’t feel much, besides weightless. The deep, slow rise and fall of Hannibal’s chest against him grounded him and told him Hannibal was still asleep.
Hannibal.
His arm was slung roughly over Will’s side, his breath snuffling in the nape of Will’s neck. Will closed his eyes and was aware of the tickle of his chest hair against his own back — shirtless, then — and the places where their flesh pressed together, skin and sweat. Hannibal’s legs tangled jealously with Will’s own, and through a thin layer of cotton, his dick, soft against the curve of Will’s ass.
Will searched himself and found no objections.
He hadn’t thought much about Hannibal’s body over the years. But perhaps that wasn’t entirely the truth.
He let his eyes close, and as his mind turned, he found himself in the chapel again, candlelit and drenched in sun. It was empty except for Hannibal, who stood listening to a distant aria with his back to him, in a grey suit Will had seen him in often: trim, tailored, fit. His hair was longer than Will had seen it in a while; a conjuring of Will’s imagination. Will looked at the lines of his body under the fabric and thought, perhaps for the first time, that it was nice.
Some indistinct amount of time passed as Will drifted pleasantly between worlds.
Back in the dark, Will became aware of two things simultaneously: that he had slowly become aroused, and that Hannibal’s breathing had shallowed. He was awake.
Hannibal being Hannibal, there was no way he had not noticed. His hand, draped over Will’s side, was close, but very still.
For a moment, Will wondered, almost annoyed, What is he waiting for? Does he want me to say please?
Then it hit him that of course that was what Hannibal wanted.
He lay there chewing on that and let the moment draw out longer and longer, almost too long, before he slowly turned his body back into Hannibal’s and whispered, “Please.”
There was no response, except for the slightest deepening of breath. It was still too dark to see. Will began to wonder.
“My hand, or my mouth?” The question came suddenly, and very close.
“What?”
“Or something else entirely?”
They lay face to face now, nearly nose to nose, Hannibal’s breath warm and shallow against his skin. Will tried to gather his thoughts and found he couldn’t. He put his hand out and felt Hannibal’s heartbeat; it was slow and steady.
“Say that again,” he said, or maybe asked.
“If you want something from me,” Hannibal said slowly, “you will have to ask for it.”
He took Will’s hand in his own and brought it slowly up to his lips, where he let it hover for a moment before kissing the knuckles chastely.
“God,” Will said.
He felt the ghost of a smile curve against the backs of his fingers.
“Hand,” he decided. “Your hand.”
It was safer, and easier. In the warm of the dark, he felt the bed shift beneath him.
“Very well,” said Hannibal, releasing Will’s hand.
Will felt him press his palm to Will’s chest, fingertips skimming the bandages. He lingered there for a moment, as though committing the sensation to memory, and then his hand slid down, down.
Will didn’t mean to make the sound that he did.
It was over quickly, and he lay shuddering, breathless and damp in the aftermath. He thought he should say something, but nothing came to mind. He was already floating away again even as Hannibal put on a dim light and swung out of bed. The painkillers. The orgasm.
He was only vaguely aware of it when Hannibal returned to wipe him clean — fussy, he thought, like a cat — and roll him gently to the other side of the bed. Then he was lost to dreams.
“We,” Hannibal said to him on the third day, “have been blessed with a second chance. Reborn out of the ocean itself.”
Will glanced up, put a spoonful of drippy oatmeal in his mouth, then swallowed around the pain in the side of his face, still throbbing despite the pills. “Baptized in the waters of the Atlantic,” he suggested.
Hannibal seemed to like that. “Yes,” he agreed, and the smile reached his eyes.
The light filtering in through the windows was grey and wet. Outside, the bare branches of a copse of deciduous trees gave some skeletal cover. Will had lowered the shades halfway when he’d finally gotten out of bed. Hannibal had registered the gesture with a glance, but he hadn’t commented on it.
They sat now across each other at a small kitchen island, Will with a bowl of what had to be instant oatmeal, Hannibal picking at a soggy potato hash he’d unearthed from somewhere, two mugs of coffee cooling on the countertop between them.
“Where are we?” Will said, at length.
“Still Virginia,” Hannibal said, and then off Will’s look, added, “The vacation home of a general practitioner I treated some years back. Luckily, he still owns it and doesn’t visit often.”
“And you just happened to have the key.”
“I may have used a little judicious force.”
Will let it lie at that. In any case, that explained the decor — expensive, but restrained; modern, and yet somehow cozier than he would have expected of Hannibal — as well as the clothing, tight on Hannibal but large on Will. And the food.
Will glanced towards the TV their unwitting host had installed above his fireplace. It was off, but he remembered the sound of newscasts interrupting his dreams, on and off, fuzzy through the haze.
“They’re looking for us,” Will said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes,” Hannibal agreed. “We will have to leave soon. After your stitches are out.”
“Hm,” said Will, and looked down into his empty bowl for guidance.
Will passed a great part of the day sleeping, falling in and out of consciousness wherever the urge took him: the couch, the bed, the floor at one point. He woke up from that one to find he’d been moved to the couch, a throw spread over him. He looked at the throw, gathered in his hands, and couldn’t help inferring a story from it — the earthy colors, the floral hem. It looked incongruous when he laid it down against the seamless Bauhaus white of the couch. Who had bought it? A girlfriend? A wife? If a wife, one that hadn’t been in his life long, Will thought.
He got up and paced through the rest of the house, getting his bearings. It was small, and there wasn’t much to see. He found Hannibal dozing in an armchair next to the bed, a book facedown on his lap. On closer inspection, it was a copy of Cicero, Letters to Atticus.
Will looked at him, and the feeling was tangible: delicate, yet heavy. He felt like he held it in his hands, too hot to touch, and overflowing. It was in him, too, in his throat and in his belly.
In the bathroom he saw his own reflection. Half his face was taped up with gauze. Hannibal had had to shave some of the hair off to close the wound. Unable to bear the asymmetry, he had apparently taken the time to trim all the rest as well.
When Will passed by the windows, he saw trees, and through that, a distant glimmer of ocean.
“We’ll need a boat,” he said.
He had tried to get into bed, and Hannibal had redirected him here politely but firmly. Now he sat on the edge of the tub, looking at the tiled wall and holding the showerhead in one hand as Hannibal sponged him down with a wet cloth and soapy water.
Hannibal’s hands stilled. “A boat?”
“We’ll have to leave the country,” Will said. He craned his neck to look back at Hannibal, then immediately regretted the decision. “Unless you have a better plan.”
“I’m afraid my plans are rather sketchy.”
He began to scrub again, and tapped Will’s arm for the showerhead. Will handed it over.
“Then we need a boat. Food, too. Whatever you want, but I’m gonna recommend easy to get.”
“Stand up,” Hannibal instructed, and then, turning on the water: “Where do you plan on taking this boat?”
“South,” Will said, after a moment.
Hannibal didn’t say anything.
The water sluiced off Will’s calves; then, as Hannibal worked his way up, off his thighs, his ass, his back.
“Turn around. And hold out your arm, please.”
Will did so.
He watched Hannibal gently mop away the suds from around his bandages with a clean, wet cloth. Hannibal had rolled up his sleeves, but they had gotten damp anyway. Droplets of water stood out against his skin. Will reached for his sleeve and thumbed the edge of the fabric, where it rolled under and touched the flesh of his arm.
Hannibal looked up and met his eyes then.
“I’ll look into it,” he promised.
In the half-light, Will watched Hannibal strip for bed, and he found an odd sense of comfort in the sight.
Hannibal caught him looking as he was shucking off his pants. “Enjoying the view, Will?”
“Hm,” Will said, and smiled.
Hannibal’s bandages were wrapped all the way around his abdomen. That would be the gunshot wound. The rest of his body was mottled with bruises, now turning green and yellow, and he’d wrapped both ankles. For a second, Will tried to imagine him dead on the floor, mirrors in his eyes, but he found with some relief that the image, when conjured up, didn’t have much truth to it.
They got under the comforters together, and Will reached out first, putting his hand against the bandage where he thought the bullet had gone through. Hannibal craned his arm back and turned out the light, plunging them into darkness.
Darkness felt good to Will. It enveloped him, quieted his mind.
Hannibal felt good too — solid and real. Will let his hands drift, first up, tracing Hannibal’s pectoral muscles, thick and strong under his palms, then down, skimming the bandages. He came to a stop at his iliac crest, tracing the curve of it between thumb and forefinger.
Hannibal put a hand on the back of his head and drew him closer, and Will was pleased with the way he fit under Hannibal’s chin. Hannibal smelled good: clean sweat and the lingering floral scent of the soap he’d bathed with.
“Just like this then,” Hannibal murmured.
Breathing into the crook of Hannibal’s neck, Will imagined, for a moment, that they were plunging into the sea again, the noise of the whole world shrunk down to a single point occupied by only the two of them, careening together towards — what?
His hand found the waistband of the boxers Hannibal was wearing, baggy and incongruous on his trim body, but not, Will supposed, any moreso than the prison uniform had been. The fabric was cool to the touch.
With his eyes closed, he felt downwards till he found Hannibal’s penis, warm and half-hard through the cotton. Experimentally, he curled his fingers underneath and held the weight of it in his hand. A deep breath from Hannibal.
It seemed like he should say something.
“I’ve never,” he said, feeling foolish even as the words came out of his mouth, “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
He couldn’t see the smile, but he felt it, Hannibal’s face pressed against his hair.
“Shall I help you?”
His voice came muffled through Will’s hair, and Will felt the vibration of it through his chest. He nodded.
Hannibal’s hand left his head then, and he reached down to grip Will’s hand low around the wrist. He bent his head close to Will’s ear and whispered, “Just hold me, then.”
He freed himself from his boxers and wrapped Will’s hand back around him. “Like this,” he said.
After he came, he waited a minute to catch his breath before he said, “I’m turning on the light,” and did so.
Will got up with him to go to the bathroom to clean up.
In the mirror, Hannibal met his gaze, then cast his eyes back down to the sink with a smile. “How was it? Was it what you expected?” he asked.
“I can’t say I know what I expected,” Will said.
“I see.”
He saw Hannibal’s eyes flicker, then Hannibal asked, “Shall I do something about that for you?”
Will glanced down at himself and thought about it. “What were you thinking?”
Hannibal looked back up at him through his eyelashes as he dried his hands on the towel. “If you’ll have me,” he said, “I would love to use my mouth on you.”
Will thought about the way Hannibal had been in bed, the feel of him moving in Will’s hand, his breath coming fast. He felt all of a sudden like he was drowning.
“No,” he said, and looked away. “I don’t think I could bear it.”
Hannibal watched him steadily for a moment. “Not tonight then,” he agreed.
Will waited for him to leave, then took care of it himself in the bathroom before returning to bed.
When he woke again, it was late in the day. It was already dark in the bedroom, but through the doorway he could see the setting sun cast a long orange rectangle of light across the living room floor, the couch, the wall.
The other side of the bed was empty. He fumbled at the nightstand, found the two pills Hannibal had left him, and swallowed them down with some water.
Outside in the kitchen, he made himself a slop of instant oatmeal — runny, so he could drink it down easier. Hannibal was nowhere to be found. The pantry was empty and growing emptier too. Will dug through it and found only two more packets of oatmeal, a box of sugary cereal, and a can of refried beans. He supposed he could mix hot water with the cereal or the beans, too, if he had to. Still, they would have to go shopping soon, one way or another.
There didn’t seem to be much else to do, so he sat himself down in front of the TV and turned on the local news. A lot of bluster about a bill being stalled in Congress. Traffic and weather. The news anchor laughed as the feed cut from her to a story about a dog stealing pizza. Commercials.
Will thought it had only been four days, but then again, maybe he was wrong. He had slept a lot; he still felt groggy now. No, there it was — the image cut to the jittering feed out of a news copter circling above the coast. There was the house — and a verbal warning to sensitive viewers — then a cut to the flagstones. They were still stained, but the body was gone. It didn’t look like much in the daylight, but Will could still feel the blood hot on his hands.
“The search continues for the two missing men,” the news anchor said in voiceover, “but so far the coast guard has turned up nothing. We spoke to the chief of police earlier today, and here’s what he had to say.”
Cut to a prerecorded feed of the police chief speaking to a field of microphones. He assured the bobbing crowd of mics that the police was working with the coast guard alongside the FBI and that everything possible that could be done was being done. It was highly unlikely, he said, that anyone would have survived a fall from that height, especially given the injuries the men seemed to have inflicted on each other, and they had quite good evidence that the two had, in fact, fallen.
“How can you know that for sure?” one reporter from the back called out. “What would stop them from just driving away from the crime?”
“We have a recording on scene that captures a fair amount of what transpired,” the chief said, turning his strained face towards the questioner, “and evidence shows that two cars arrived at the scene that night and none left. Additionally, the blood spatter —”
He went into more detail about the blood and the video, and Will tuned out briefly to sip his porridge.
“We encourage all residents to stay aware and on alert,” the police chief was saying, “and to report in if they see men matching these descriptions to the following number…”
The camera shook as the cameraman stretched his shoulder, and the image swung to the right. For a brief moment, Jack Crawford’s tired, angry face came into view; then it refocused on the police chief, digging through his papers. Descriptions and photos came up over a blue screen; so did a 1-800 number.
The photos were old, Will thought. It was a mugshot from his incarceration; Hannibal’s was the same. At least the scars were all there on Hannibal’s. He supposed it had all had to happen in a bit of a rush, pulling neutral identifying photos of both of them up on the spot.
“Now, we’d like to talk a bit about the unusual history between these two men,” the anchor was saying, “but we’re getting a call in from our reporter on the scene that a representative of the FBI is making a statement, so we’re going live to the scene first—“
Cut to a live picture now, Jack Crawford trying to get into his car, a horde of reporters in his way. He was halfway through a sentence when the feed cut in, his face tight and set in that way he had where he was being patient with you and wanted you to know it. “— don’t know if they’re alive or dead,” he was saying, “We won’t know until we find some proof one way or another.”
“What kind of proof are we looking for?”
Jack looked over his shoulder and, with what appeared to be great self-control, did not roll his eyes on camera. “Let’s just hope,” he intoned, “that we find the bodies soon.”
“Freddie Lounds is saying, among other things —” a snort from a neighboring reporter “— that the FBI willfully and recklessly endangered the public in this operation. How much truth is there to her allegations?”
Jack raised his hand and deflected a mic from his face, shook his head, and got into his car.
“Mr. Crawford! Agent Crawford!”
Will realized that at some point, Hannibal had returned. He had been standing next to the couch; now he took a seat by Will. Will noticed he had procured a smartphone, which he laid down on the coffee table.
“Uncle Jack is on the search,” Hannibal observed.
“He’s under the gun,” Will said.
Hannibal had sat down about an inch away, and he’d folded his hands neatly over his crossed knees. He turned his head now to regard Will, and he asked, “Will you go to him?”
Will considered the inch between them. He considered the cant in Hannibal’s posture, the familiarity of it. How many times had he summoned up that very gesture in the darkness of his own mind?
The TV kept on going. “—was unavailable for comment. Channel Five has been made aware that she was recently hospitalized out of state under unclear circumstances; more information will be made available as we receive it.”
They both glanced at the TV at the same time and looked for a long moment in silence as the screen displayed a picture of Molly — an old one, probably clipped from a newspaper. Will thought she looked young. Happy, too, maybe.
Then Will looked down at the phone on the table.
“As I understand it,” he said, “you were going to buy me a boat.”
“Yes,” Hannibal agreed, after a pause.
“Good,” Will said. “Do that then.”
They took a walk down to the dock in the very early morning, the fog still thick around them. The sun had not crossed the horizon yet. Only a thin grey light from the pinkening sky illuminated the world around them. A few people were up, but very few.
On their way out the door Will had put a goofy bucket hat on Hannibal’s head. Then, surveying the image, he zipped the track jacket Hannibal had chosen all the way up for good measure. He wrapped his own face in a scarf he’d dug out of the bottom of the closet, then put on a pair of earmuffs. It would have to do. He’d found sunglasses, but they were so cartoonish as to draw more attention than they’d deflect.
“Are we decent?” Hannibal had asked, clearly amused.
“If you want to get caught, be my guest,” Will had said. He’d gestured at the door, and Hannibal had agreeably led the way.
Now they were standing before the boat. It was at least fifty feet long, sleek birch decks and a narrow white hull. Above the angled windows, a tall, sloop-rigged carbon-fiber mast, and belowdecks, a 150 horsepower backup engine. Will stared.
“Desperate men with debts to settle ask very few questions,” Hannibal said, by way of explanation. He took the long step from the dock to the deck of the — be real, Will told himself, it’s a goddamn half-million dollar yacht — and held out his hand for Will to take.
Will gave him a dirty look, then took his hand.
If possible, the inside was more ludicrous than the outside. A plushly upholstered breakfast nook that could easily seat six. A pinstriped couch with matching cushions, and a long walnut counter. A kitchen galley, chrome and white. Will let his hand drift across the marbled wood surfaces, every one polished to an unnatural shine. A few steps further down, two bedrooms, fully furnished — one with matching twin beds, and through the opposite door, another with a full double.
How many people did Hannibal think were going to be living on this damn boat?
He craned his head back to ask just that, in as offended a tone as he could manage, but found Hannibal close behind him already.
Hannibal was smiling, and he put his hand on the small of Will’s back.
“Will it do?” he asked. The indulgent look was somewhat spoiled by his outfit.
Will fought the urge to roll his eyes.
“It’s fine,” he said. He jammed his earmuffs back on and turned to go. “Let’s leave before it gets too late to move around.”
They spent their last day in the house cleaning and tying up loose ends. Hannibal sat Will down on the edge of the bed and took out his stitches, and Will was reminded of the gentleness with which those same hands had bandaged Will’s after Randall Tier. After a moment, he thought to himself, and then those same hands had gently slit Abigail’s throat, but here you are anyway.
What did it matter, anymore?
The beast was his, whether he wanted it or not. And he did, he found, want it. He did.
Hannibal insisted on changing all the sheets and doing the laundry.
“It doesn’t matter,” Will said. “Trace analysis will have a field day no matter what we do. And we’re taking his clothes.”
“And we ate his food,” Hannibal said, folding a pillowcase with a sort of serene precision. “All the more reason to clean up after ourselves.”
Will left him to it. It wasn’t like there was anything else to do with the time.
He went to the kitchen to poke through the pantry one last time. He flipped on the TV in case — he didn’t think they’d been spotted, but it wouldn’t hurt to make sure. The news was busy at this hour playing an early morning talk show.
There was a manila envelope on the countertop that he hadn’t seen before — he supposed Hannibal had picked that up yesterday with the phone. Money, maybe? It wasn’t sealed, the flap held down only by the brass brads. He bent them open quickly and shook the contents out.
It was money. Fifteen hundred dollars, it looked like. A prepaid Visa and three passports as well, faked names, faked stamps.
He was still looking through them when Hannibal came back out.
“A lockbox?” he asked, when Hannibal seated himself across the counter from him.
“I kept an extra set,” Hannibal said. “Just in case.” He glanced down at the one Will was holding. “I thought to throw this one away, to spare you the pain. But I couldn’t quite bear to do it.”
He reached across to touch Will’s hand, and Will let him.
“No,” Will said. “I probably couldn’t either.”
He offered the passport to Hannibal, who took it from him, then tucked it back into its envelope for safekeeping.
They retired back to the bedroom in the early afternoon, and Hannibal set an alarm for the wee hours of the night. Will lay on the fresh sheets and stared at the ceiling, Hannibal a palpable presence next to him. For a while, Hannibal poked and prodded at his phone. Then, having finished whatever he was doing, he picked up the Cicero again to read.
The light from outside filtered through the trees to cast shadows into the room, and Will looked at them for a long while, thinking about monsters he had known and been.
Finally, after what felt like hours of restlessness, he rolled over and put his ear against Hannibal’s chest. Hannibal moved his book to his other hand and made room for him.
The sound of Hannibal’s heartbeat calmed him. It was steady, soothing, constant.
Will slept.
They woke in the dark, the night still thick around them, and collected their meagre things. Then, flipping light switches for the last time, they left the house they had squatted in for the last six days.
It was cold, too cold for the summery things they’d stolen from the house, but they made do with two layers each.
Along the walk, Will spotted a donation box and made Hannibal stop while he rummaged through a bag someone had left on the sidewalk. Hannibal watched him with a thinly veiled expression of dismay.
“It’s cold,” Will said. “And the more we look like hobos, the less people will want to look at us.”
He pulled out a large red ski jacket and tossed it at Hannibal, who caught it but looked like he really wished he hadn’t.
“Put it on, it’s clean,” Will said, and threw a balled up scarf at him as well.
For himself, he found a pair of oversized corduroys, a sweater with three holes in it, and a woolen cap.
Hannibal just looked at him, as if that said it all.
“I feel pretty good,” Will said. He did, too. The sweater helped.
“As you like,” Hannibal said.
When they got to the shopping plaza, Hannibal sent him off with a pocket full of cash and a list of things to buy before he split off for the supermarket.
There weren’t many people inside. But Will supposed that was the whole point of arriving at four in the morning. He entered to a gust of warm air. A tired cashier brushed past him without even glancing at him. Will found a shopping cart and quickly rolled into one of the aisles.
He went along throwing things into the cart haphazardly. First aid stuff, gauze and tape and ointment. Windbreakers, gloves, some sandals as well. He got some underwear — it was too weird stealing someone else’s — and then some sunscreen. Tools and some extra rope, a tarp. He checked the list and then checked it again.
After he’d gotten most everything he wanted, he doubled back and headed for the cash registers. On the way, he passed through the pharmacy again. He stopped for a while, thinking. Then — why not? Condoms, lube.
The whole ungainly pile he rolled up to the front. The woman ringing him up looked worn out, like she didn’t want to be there. He kept his eyes downcast, and she did a brief double-take at his face, but he supposed the scarf helped. He’d lost some weight too. The moment passed. Good enough. They’d find them on the cameras later anyway, if they thought to look.
The act of leaving itself was strangely subdued. Will had thought maybe it would feel like something, something meaningful. It didn't. They loaded the boat in the still dark of the dock before dawn. Two spindly, tall lamps shed a little light weakly down upon them. Around them, the gently wobbling masts of the assembled boats looked like so many grey, ghostly trees in a forest.
When they had put the last things on board, they pushed their shopping carts back out to the nearest parking lot.
There was a post office sitting lonely in the corner of the plaza, a string of battered old lights under the sign illuminating the whitewashed clapboard walls. Will looked at it for a while, thinking about Molly, Walter, the house, the dogs — he thought about Wolf Trap, too, his old bed by the window, and Quantico, the lecture hall. New Orleans, and before that, the shipyards. The years and years and years. Hannibal looked at him while he looked.
"Will you say goodbye?"
"I should," Will said.
He turned and Hannibal was close behind him, close enough to smell, close enough to touch. He reached out and put both hands on the sides of Hannibal's face. When he looked into Hannibal's eyes and saw him looking back, he found that he felt only sadness and inevitability.
“What I should do," he said, "is kill you."
Hannibal turned into his touch, and his lips grazed Will's palm, a dry and papery sensation. “Perhaps you already have,” he said.
The suggestion set Will ablaze. He seized Hannibal's ears and pulled him down, held his forehead to his own. “You don’t believe that," he said, "and I don't believe you."
Then he kissed him, rough and hard.
Hannibal went stiff for a moment, surprised perhaps, but then, like a sigh, opened up for him.
It was everything Will wanted it to be.
They broke apart in the silence, and Will held Hannibal's head, panting. Hannibal was panting too. His mouth was bruised, and his eyes wet, and it looked good on him, all of it. Will turned away.
The sky was beginning to lighten, the stars winking out one by one. From the trees in the wooded park across the way, the sounds of small creatures beginning to stir. Soon the human inhabitants of the town would follow.
“We have to go," Will said.
“Yes," Hannibal agreed.
Back at the boat, Will stood on the deck and undid the lines. He kicked the boat off gently, then went to the wheel and began the arduous process of taking them out of dock, a little thrust here, a little shift there. Hannibal went into the kitchen galley and began to make breakfast. The smell of actual eggs drifting out from the cabin was astounding after so many days of drinking porridge slop.
“Am I allowed to eat solids now?” he called down.
“Soft foods,” Hannibal replied.
When they had gotten out of the marina and into open water, Will looked back at the shore, the little boats and their many masts all growing smaller and smaller. The signs on the buildings slowly became illegible, and then, simply inconsequential. Will took them a few minutes out and then dropped anchor and went inside.
He sat down with Hannibal at the table, and they ate. It was good. Better than good.
Afterwards, stepping up onto the main deck, he saw that the sun had come up fully, and the fog had mostly burned off. Across the glimmering expanse of ocean, the shore had receded to little more than a grey haze.
Hannibal saw him looking and followed his gaze out.
“And what shall we do now,” he said, “now that you and I have left the confines of our old lives behind?”
Will looked up to the sky, blue and cloudless, stretching infinitely in every direction.
“What indeed, Dr. Lecter?” he said.
What they did do was take the boat south a ways for a while, following the coast. Hannibal helped him hoist and tack the sails. Will, standing back and watching him bent over the lines, thought he could get used to the sight. He had a strong back.
For most of the morning, Will sat on the deck in the shade of the big sail and looked out at the sea rushing past. After futzing around below decks for a while, Hannibal came out with a sketchbook and joined him.
They sat in peaceable silence. Will dozed off, and he woke to find hours had passed. His face and hair were sticky with sea spray, his head resting on Hannibal’s thigh. Hannibal was still sketching, pad balanced on his one free knee. When Will got up, he saw that the sketch was of him, his sleeping face.
“Do you draw to remember?” he asked.
“I draw for many reasons,” Hannibal said. “One of them being to remember.”
Will held out his hand for the drawing, and Hannibal passed it over.
“You once told me that you’d remember me in a moment forever, even if you saw me every day. You said this to me just before you tried to open my head with an electric saw.”
Hannibal inclined his head in acknowledgement.
“And right now?”
Hannibal looked at him. “Won’t you?”
Will couldn’t disagree with that.
“Mono-no-aware is a Japanese term marking an awareness and sensitivity to the transience of things.”
“The me you see today is not the me you’ll see tomorrow.”
“No,” Hannibal agreed. “Nor will I be. Nor are you in this moment the same as the you that you were only a moment ago.”
“This moment changed me,” Will said.
“As did every moment before it.”
“As will every moment after.”
“Yes.”
Will looked at the sun slowly moving through the sky — it had passed its zenith some time ago and was on the decline — and thought about the inevitable end of things.
“Then we should appreciate the moments we have as we have them,” he said.
“And remember them,” Hannibal said.
Will snorted and got to his feet. “It would be hard for me not to remember you,” he said, reaching down to offer Hannibal a hand up. “Any version of you, in any moment, at any time. You’re memorable that way.”
They dropped anchor sometime in the late afternoon, Will unwilling to risk tiring them out looking for another safe spot to stop. They rolled the sails together, and Hannibal made them a simple dinner.
After they cleaned up, they retired downstairs.
Hannibal came up behind Will as he was brushing his teeth, shirtless after his shower, and fit his body to Will’s back. He put his chin over Will’s shoulder so they were touching cheek to cheek, and he pressed his palm to the scar on Will’s naked belly.
Will raised his eyes to Hannibal’s in the mirror.
“Okay,” he said.
There in the cramped bathroom, back pressed to the sink, he took Hannibal’s mouth for the first time. Hannibal did it on his knees with his hands braced against Will’s hips, Will’s fingers in his hair.
After he came, Will pulled Hannibal up to him, kissed his bruised lips and tasted himself in Hannibal’s mouth. This is mine, he thought, with a sudden irrational flash of jealousy. This is all mine.
Breaking apart, he panted into Hannibal’s mouth, “I wanted, I always wanted—”
There didn’t seem to be any one good way to end that sentence, so he didn’t.
Hannibal stroked his hair until he stopped shaking. Will clung to him and buried his face in his neck. He was so solid. He felt so real.
Later that night, after they had drifted off in bed and then woken again, limbs tangled and touching each other, Will let Hannibal fuck him.
“Are you sure?” Hannibal had asked, stroking his face with that familiar painstaking and treacherous gentleness.
“Yes,” Will had said. “Yes, please.”
It was a night of firsts, Will thought, and this he didn’t mind either. Hannibal was gentle with him, and slow. When he entered him, Will drew his breath in sharply, but it was good. It seemed right that he and Hannibal should be one like this. They already were in every other way.
Will rolled his hips back into Hannibal, bringing him deeper, and he felt a full body tremor go through him. Hannibal’s hands seized up, gripping Will hard, and he said, “Will,” in a voice so tight it felt like it might break.
“Do it,” Will said. “Give it to me. Give me everything.”
Hannibal did, and Will took it.
There in the dark with his face in the sheets, feeling the weight of Hannibal pressing him down from above, listening to the sounds of their mixed voices, helpless and breathless, Will thought, This, too, is mine.
He had nothing in the world, but he had this.
“I love you,” he said. “I love you.”
In Nassau, they stopped for three days to replenish stocks and run errands. Hannibal arranged for physical bank cards to be sent to the hotel he’d booked. Suddenly they were flush with cash.
He bought Will a linen suit, and then another one in a different color, three shirts and a pair of dress shoes. Will rolled his eyes and let him, except for the shoes. “There’s no point wearing dress shoes on a boat,” he said.
Hannibal, noting his advice, bought the shoes, and then bought another pair of deck shoes for both of them. They were nicer than anything Will had ever had.
“Fine,” Will said.
While Hannibal was off sniffing lotions and unguents in a small yellow-painted boutique across the marina, Will slipped into a post office with a padded envelope and a bit of note paper he’d brought with him from America. Wasting Hannibal’s money on international roaming fees, he’d looked up a remailing service on the phone, and he had the information with him now.
It was temperate in Nassau, even in the late reaches of winter; it felt like spring. The sun slanted in through the windows as Will stood at the counter making out his letter.
There wasn’t much to say. There wasn’t much he could say.
He thought about writing, “I never meant to hurt you,” but while it was true, it didn’t feel honest.
In the end he left it simple. He took the ring off and slid it inside the envelope along with the letter, sealed it, and sent it.
Dear Molly,
I’m fine and better than fine. Don’t look for me. I love you. I’m sorry. Burn this.
- Will
When he met up with Hannibal again at the hotel, he raised his face for a kiss and Hannibal obliged. It was simple and natural.
He put his left hand up to Hannibal’s cheek to ground himself, and when Hannibal felt it, he smiled into Will’s mouth and breathed deep through his nose.
He took Will’s hand in his own and caressed it, thumbs tracing the empty space on his ring finger.
“I have a gift for you as well,” he said.
“This wasn’t a gift,” Will said. “It was a funeral.”
He went with him up the narrow limestone stairs anyway, and he smiled despite himself when Hannibal closed the door behind them. The bed was strewn with blossoms, white and bell-shaped, long necked on their slim green stems. There were so many, Will briefly wondered if Hannibal had bought out every florist in the city.
“Flowers, really?” he laughed.
“Not just any flowers. Easter lilies,” Hannibal said, and drew him in to kiss him again.
Will snorted and let himself be lowered to the bed. He swept his arm out and the flowers went everywhere, a mess, the scent of lilies overpowering as he held Hannibal close.
“You court your own destruction, Hannibal,” he said. “And mine.”
“We’ll go together,” Hannibal said, breathing deep in the crook of his neck. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”
Will supposed that was about right, after all.