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Will woke up to Jack’s hands on his face.
“Can you understand me, Will?” Jack said, and then “Shh, shh, it’s okay,” as Will instinctively shook his head and attempted to flail free of his grasp. His broad hands wrapped firmly around the back of Will’s neck. “You’re with me. You’re safe.”
“Where am I?” Will croaked, finally stopping his twitching and accepting being held in place. Jack brought a glass of water to his lips. The cold felt good, even as water spilled down his chin while he drank.
“My living room.” Jack crouched down in front of the armchair that he had been placed on. Will could see the top of Jack’s head, something that he doesn’t think he’s ever considered before. “Heard some weird noises, and there you were, wandering around unresponsive in my damn front yard. Without shoes on.” Jack prodded Will on the shin, and he became gradually aware that the soles of his feet were scraped raw and embedded with debris. “Care to explain what’s going on with you?”
Will stared impassively at the collar of Jack’s pajama shirt. He should have felt ashamed and frantic to excuse himself about appearing at his boss’s home without explanation and in his underwear, but everything felt hazy and unreal. He continued his silence. Jack wasn’t the only one who could avoid a conversation about himself by simply sitting there until he gave up.
“Fine,” Jack said, and used his hands on his thighs to lever himself to standing over Will. “We can talk tomorrow. Let’s get you cleaned up.”
Will hissed as he tried to stand and remembered his bloodied feet and wrung-out muscles. “Don’t move,” Jack instructed, and picked up Will with a brief grunt.
He would have thought that Jack would sling him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, but he scooped Will up in front of him with one arm under his back and the other under his knees. His fingers pressed into the meat of his scapula and the tendons behind his knees. Will watched the smear of blood his feet had left behind on the glossy wooden floor while Jack slowly and laboriously carried him up the stairs.
He was deposited on the edge of a bathtub, the bathroom light switched on and suddenly harsh in his eyes. The room was painted a dusty blue and fitted with ornate little gold details everywhere. He lifted his feet gingerly above the plush bathmat and wobbled on the tub’s edge. “Whoa, whoa,” Jack said, like gentling a horse. He hovered his hands behind Will’s shoulders until he became steady again.
“Hitch me to your post,” Will muttered, nonsensically.
“That’s what I’m trying to do,” sighed Jack. He pulled a bottle of iodine out from behind the angular gold Art Deco mirror and poured a slug out onto a wad of gauze, practiced. Will caught his hand before he could go to press it to Will’s feet.
“I,” Will said. His grip couldn’t come anywhere near to encircling Jack’s wrist. He felt like he did when he was a child, always sick and being gruffly tended to by his father looming over him in bed. When he was feverish, he’d weakly attempt to swat his father’s hands from his brow, unable to stand being touched. “I can do it myself.”
Unlike his father, Jack backed off this time. “Alright. I’ll leave the supplies here. Shower off while you’re at it. You’re drenched in sweat.” He ambled out of the bathroom, but left the door cracked open behind him. Wanting to make sure he didn’t pass out and drown in the shower, Will was sure.
He turned on the tap to let the water run over his feet and sat there for too long feeling it sting his wounds and wash away the blood. He fumbled with the knobs, not wanting to call Jack back in, until he found the one that diverted the water into the showerhead. He shucked off his boxers and t-shirt before they could get further sprayed.
After a few painful wobbles, Will gave up on standing and simply sat on the floor of the tub. It felt clean and endlessly smooth below his body. He plucked a few bottles from the edge of the tub, barely able to see the labels without his glasses. The one he used to wash his hair smelled rich and sweet. The one he lathered onto his skin was floral and citrusy. Between them, he scrubbed down all of himself in the steam until his whole body felt scraped bare like the open wounds on his feet, so clean there was no more barrier between him and the water.
A shuffling came from outside the door. Jack pacing and fretting, Will supposed. The litany of footsteps, throat clearings, and little sighs melded into the falling water until it all sounded like one animal ruffling feathers, tapping hooves. It ran over his skin, poured down his hair and over his stinging eyes, completely enveloping him. He curled his hands into the feathers on his hide.
Will stopped the flow of water, and Jack immediately thrust his arm into the bathroom. “A towel and some clothes for you.” He deposited the bundle on the counter. Will padded gingerly up to retrieve them, accidentally catching Jack’s eye in the mirror. Jack hastily pulled the door shut behind him.
He lost himself for a moment again in rubbing the plush black towel against himself. He felt the water seep from his curls into the towel beneath his fingers, the scrape of the nap against his back, a fold of fabric that he nuzzled into with his face over and over again. A cloud of fuzzy fabric softener scent rose around him. He dropped the towel when he realized he was getting stuck again, and sat down to dress his wounds.
Naked, sitting on the cool tile floor, he faced the door. One layer of gauze, two, medical tape to secure. He pictured Jack on the other side of the door, shifting his weight from foot to foot like a boxer. Will got up and mimicked that imagined motion, testing his feet and finding them adequate. The clothes that Jack had left were an oversized soft tee branded with some Pilates studio’s name and sweatpants that were too tight in the waist. He pulled the provided socks on over his dressings. Lacking anywhere else to put them, he balled up his damp underwear and stuck them in his pockets.
On the other side of the door, Jack wasn’t waiting for him right in the frame like he’d imagined. He slumped against the wall, illuminated only by the moonlight that came through the window at the end of the hall. Will crossed his arms over his chest, suddenly cold outside the cocoon of steam. “Uh. I’ll go home now.”
“I’m not taking you all the way back home tonight.” Jack caught his elbow and began steering him down the hallway. Will followed, near automatically. “I still need my beauty sleep, you know.”
Will was borne over the threshold of the bedroom, less like a bride and more like a pack animal being prodded toward the field. The room had flowers everywhere–a bouquet wilting on the nightstand, a mural stretching across the wall, a lamp with a floral pattern molded into the base. Jack pushed him gently onto the bed, and he laid down obediently.
“Did your wife pick these out?” Will touched an orange lily, and the petals fell apart beneath his hand, leaving yellow pollen clinging to his fingertips. The pillowcase underneath his head was silky. The bed smelled of still more flowers, crushed on damp soil.
“Who knows, probably just some free junk she got. She doesn’t wear them.” He wasn’t looking at the flowers, but at Will. Jack prodded him again on his flank, inexorable like the tide. “Move over. That’s my side of the bed.”
Will curled up on his wife’s side, feet tucked under him, facing childishly away from Jack. “Where is she?” He didn’t know what he wanted the answer to be.
“Conference. She works too damn much for her own good.” When Will stole a glance at Jack, he was staring grimly at the ceiling.
“But you brought your work home with you,” Will whispered.
“Back to feeling funny, are we?” Jack snorted. Will didn’t look this time. “Fishing for compliments is a bad habit.” He sighed. “You know you’re not just my work, Will.” He reached over Will’s head to switch off the lamp on his side, his pajama sleeve brushing Will’s ear, and tugged the silken covers up around both of them. “Goodnight.”
Will’s shoulder barely touched Jack’s, right at the point his bullet scar sat. Jack didn’t move away from him. Will could have told him that he wasn’t fishing, that he didn’t know, actually. He didn’t.
In what must have been his dreams that night, Jack cradled him on his lap while Will bled. He poured water endlessly into his mouth and shushed him. Will tried to suckle at the bottle and scream around the bit between his teeth at the same time, but it was fruitless. The water washed straight down his throat and out again through his wounds, his body incapable of holding it in. The tide tugged at them both. Jack wouldn’t take the bit out.
When they arrived at the BAU headquarters in the morning, Hannibal Lecter was there waiting for them. His nostrils flared when they walked in, and he smiled.