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the knives in the kitchen are singing
for blood, but we are the crossroads, my little outlaw,
and this is the map of my heart, the landscape
after cruelty which is, of course, a garden, which is
a tenderness, which is a room
~ Richard Siken, “Snow and Dirty Rain”
It’s late, long after midnight, when Will finds himself at Hannibal’s door. He stands uncertainly in the dim light of the hallway, waiting for Hannibal to look up. It seems to take forever, eons passing between one heartbeat and the next, for Hannibal to notice him.
Eyes are distracting,” Will had told Hannibal on that first meeting. Looking back, he wonders how much of what followed could have been avoided if he’d looked, really looked , into Hannibal’s eyes that first day. How much of the path was already laid out before them?
It’s entirely possible that Hannibal already loved him in some way from that first awkward meeting, and he would have seen it if he’d only looked.
He sees it now, in their new life together. It’s impossible not to see it when Will looks up from a meal or a book or a train of thought and happens to intercept something on Hannibal’s face that’s more like a force of nature than a human emotion. Love hardly covers it. He doesn’t know a word that does.
Will pretends to be unaware of it, and Hannibal lets him get away with the pretense. Of course he does. The only thing worse for Hannibal than having Will with him like this, his but not his in all the ways Hannibal wants, would be to have Will get spooked by everything unspoken between them and leave altogether. Will doesn’t even have to reach for his double-edged imagination to figure that out; it’s right there for him to see. Whatever ability Hannibal once had to conceal his emotions, he’s either lost it or given it up where Will is concerned.
These days Hannibal is an open book with Will written on every page and it’s nearly unbearable. Something is going to have to give, and soon.
In all the years to come Will never has a satisfactory answer to the question, why was it that night? Hannibal always wants to know what it was that brought Will to him. Did he cook the right meal? Did he say the right thing, or not say the wrong thing? If he’d been asleep when Will came to the door, would the chance have been lost?
Hannibal asks in a dozen different ways, tell me, so if I ever lose you I’ll know how to bring you back to me.
All Will can ever say is we’ll never lose each other again, I promise, I swear. Believe me. He would tell if he could, but he just never knew, even that night as he stood there waiting for Hannibal to look up. He just went to Hannibal when he couldn’t stand not going to him any longer.
Hannibal brings Will tokens from his trips into town; a book, a favorite ingredient for dinner, a new whiskey to try. He presents them as hopefully as any stick Winston ever brought to Will’s feet; if he had a tail it would be wagging. Will’s thanks feel completely inadequate, and it makes it even worse that Hannibal doesn’t seem to agree. He lights up at a thank you as if it were an I love you . As if any bit of attention from Will, however mundane, is the high point of Hannibal’s day.
Will feels cruel; as if he’s pulling wings off flies by simply existing in this liminal space where the moves are his to make, yet he cannot seem to take a step in any direction.
He thinks about Abigail sometimes, that last night in Hannibal’s kitchen. How she’d stood frozen in her tracks until Hannibal had beckoned her. Come to me, with Will’s blood on his hands, and she’d gone obediently to her own end. It hurts to think about but Will does, over and over, wondering what was in her mind that last moment. Did she know what she was walking toward? Was some part of her just relieved to be in motion at last?
Abigail is one very good reason for caution. Abigail, Beverly, Will’s child that almost was - they’re just the beginning of the litany of Will’s losses. He counts up the devastations at night when he can’t sleep.
Will shifts nervously from one foot to the other and the motion catches Hannibal’s eye. He shuts his book with a finger as a placeholder and looks up, so visibly pleased to see Will at this late hour that Will has to look away for a moment. He waits until he’s sure his voice will hold steady before he asks, “Can I come in for a minute?”
It feels a little like stepping out onto a frozen lake for the first time in a winter. When you’re almost certain it’s solid and will hold your weight, but you find yourself still holding your breath as if the air in your lungs might make you lighter. Waiting for a crack to open beneath your feet, and the water to swallow you whole.
On other nights, Will forgets his losses and runs his fingers over his scar, imagining that Hannibal might do the same. Eventually he lets his hand drift lower, and lower still, until he twists and gasps with relief and can finally sleep again.
Sometimes at the moment the stars explode behind his eyes he doesn’t see anything in particular. Sometimes it’s Hannibal. It’s never Molly, or anyone from before, and he should feel guilty about that but it’s probably better this way. A cleaner separation; he was someone else before, and now he is someone new with Hannibal, someone who wants new things.
He wonders if he might sleep better if his bed weren’t empty and if the hand easing his ache weren’t his own. But sleepless nights and a lonely bed are hardly a good enough reason to give himself to the undertow that’s waiting for him in Hannibal’s eyes, stacked up against all the reasons not to.
Hannibal tips his head slightly to one side to regard Will before he says, “Of course. You’re always welcome. Would you like to sit?”
There’s a chair. There’s an empty side of the bed. Will finds himself wondering if Hannibal always sleeps over there, on the left side - is the right side always empty? Is it waiting for Will? He hesitates over his options for a moment and then perches near the foot of the bed. It seems the most neutral option.
It’s hard, even now, to reach for the part of himself that can be vulnerable with Hannibal. There’s always the temptation to reach for protective armor. Will’s hoping that’s one of the things that might change, if this is going to work. But for now it’s difficult to reach past the urge to joke or dissemble and just say, “I’ve been thinking. I want to change a few things.”
He tells himself: No one will ever understand how you could walk clear-eyed into the arms of a serial killer who eats his victims, after all he’s done to you. After he’s fed them to you.
The argument rings hollow. He’s quite certain everyone he’s left behind assumes they’re already lovers, perhaps that they always were. He hopes Molly, at least, knows that much is untrue. But it’s a bit late to protect his reputation or his virtue now, to the extent he ever had either. Too late to care what anyone else would think or understand.
It’s been a long time since he’s even cared about the provenance of the meals he ate at Hannibal’s dinner table in Baltimore. It bothers him a little that it doesn’t bother him more, but if Will were going to make a list of all the things that should worry him about about his current situation, that wouldn’t break the top ten.
And as for the rest...well. He has his litany of the lost, when he lies awake. But the things done specifically to him, he finds he no longer cares about very much. The part of him that held those grudges never came back from the sea. They’re even now, or they would be if he weren’t holding this terrible unacknowledged power to destroy Hannibal with a word.
If he could let himself meet Hannibal out on the dangerous edge of the unnamed emotions that fill their days, they could be equals in that, too. No one else would understand it. But then who else would ever have to? Whatever their life is going to be from here on out, it seems unlikely to involve close confidantes. They’re each all the other has, and maybe it’s time to come to grips with that.
The urge Will feels to tell Hannibal that it’s all going to be okay, spiking fast and unexpected through him as he realizes Hannibal’s scared, is as unnerving as the rest of whatever this is. It’s just a tiny twitch of the muscles in Hannibal’s jaw, a tensing in the set of his shoulders, but these days that’s all Will needs to read him.
Reaching out to reassure is an instinct more than a plan; he hasn’t exactly been avoiding touch but certainly hasn’t been seeking it. And this isn’t touch, not exactly - his palm curled over Hannibal’s calf with a thick blanket between them. It feels grounding anyway, and he doesn’t move his hand.
“First of all,” he says low and steady, “I want to start doing some of the runs into town. My face is healed enough now I won’t stand out if I keep the beard, and I’m going a little stir crazy. I need a change of scenery once in a while.”
Hannibal relaxes slightly; if Will’s planning future shopping trips, then he’s not going anywhere permanently away. He nods, fractionally, but otherwise doesn’t move. Not to move his leg from Will’s touch; barely, even, to breathe.
They’re lying low for the moment. For months, probably, until the search and the media spotlight die down. (Until,Will thinks with a grimace, his internet news alert for the term “Murder Husbands” stops turning up multiple fresh hits a day.) It makes certain things easier, living in this little bubble. Certain issues are just off the table for the time being, theoretical questions for a theoretical future when they can move freely again.
Killing, for one.
One day, Will knows, they’re going to have some discussions about that. He’s not foolish enough to think that his company is fascinating enough to cure Hannibal permanently of his other questionable interests. Nor is he even sure that’s what he wants. This new Will Graham, who wants new things, feels a little differently about the hot stickiness of blood on his skin than the old one did.
He’s fairly certain that the discussion would go one way if they had it right now, with this distance maintained between them. He thinks it might go the other way, if they become further intertwined. They’ll have more influence over each other. It will be easier to bargain for Molly and Walter, Alana and Margot. Harder to deny Hannibal anything else. Less likely that he’ll even want to.
What’s terrible is not how calculating Will feels, thinking it out this way, but that he knows Hannibal would approve if he knew. He’d be as charmed by Will’s blunt honesty as he’s always been when Will plays intricate games with him. As charmed as he is by everything Will does.
“The second thing,” Will says, “is you have to let me in the kitchen once in a while. I actually can cook, and I’d like to show you. Now that I’ll be doing some of the grocery shopping.”
Hannibal’s eyes narrow slightly but there’s acquiescence in his voice as he asks, “What culinary horrors are you planning to inflict on me first?”
Will has an entire menu planned but he contents himself with, “Wait and see. There’s one more thing I want to talk about.”
He catches himself reflexively rubbing a small soothing circle into Hannibal’s calf with a thumb and wonders if it could possibly be as instinctive as that. If perhaps the hard part has simply been not falling into this, and once he gets the words out, the rest will be easy. He’s not quite fool enough to think that could possibly be true, and yet at this exact moment it feels as if it might be.
There’s nothing particularly special about the night it happens. It just turns out to be one night too many of lying alone, hands behind his head, staring up at the ceiling. One more night when he weighs up the things he should want and the things he does want, what he can and cannot justify, what he’d be giving up and what he’d be getting in return.
For whatever reason he’ll never fully be able to explain later, he finds himself sliding out of bed after midnight. Hannibal won’t even be awake, he tells himself. And he’s certainly not going to wake him up for a conversation they should have by daylight, or maybe shouldn’t ever have at all.
He’s going to poke his head into the hallway, see only darkness in Hannibal’s room where he’ll be asleep, and then go back to bed. That’s all.
Except there’s a dim light shining. Hannibal’s awake.
Will’s bare feet draw him down the hallway before he’s even consciously aware that he’s moving toward Hannibal’s room.
“I’m not blind,” Will finds himself saying, and wishes immediately and fervently that he’d thought this out better in advance. Thought of some way to say it that would be - what? Eloquent. Memorable. Romantic, maybe, even, which is something he’s never been much good at. Something other than horrifically awkward. But he’s in it now so he plunges ahead. “I know you want more than we have now.”
Hannibal tenses again. Will can see it and feel it under his hand. But he doesn’t try to deny it. What would the point be? Will’s shining a spotlight on something they’d tacitly agreed to ignore, and Hannibal’s just waiting to find out why.
Will goes on. “It’s probably a terrible idea. Pretty good odds it ends messy.”
“Likely it does.” Hannibal’s found his voice but it’s an odd version of itself, a little rougher and more tentative. But Will recognizes the tiny crinkle of an almost-smile at the corners of his eyes when he adds, “Most of our shared undertakings do seem to court that possibility.”
“I think you should let me stay here tonight.” Will forces the words out and then waits for that sound of weakened ice popping and cracking under his feet. He waits to fall.
Hannibal doesn’t let him, not this time. He glances at the expanse of empty bed next to him that’s been waiting for Will all these weeks and says simply, “You can stay here anytime you like. Anything in this house is yours, Will.”
Will knows with a sudden giddy certainty that he could draw out the implication. He could ask, “does that include you?” He could make Hannibal admit it out loud, and he would do it, for Will.
Instead, he sets another tentative foot out over tamed-but-still-dangerous waters and says, “Okay. Then I’m staying. Just to sleep, for tonight.”
The sheets are crisp and cool when he slips between them, the blanket a bit heavier than his own in the other room. The bed dips in an unfamiliar way with the weight of another body in it, far more than Molly’s lighter frame had ever warped their shared bed.
He lies flat on his back, looking up and noting idly that the ceiling in here is painted a different color than the one in his room. He takes a deep, slow breath. He’s in Hannibal Lecter’s bed and the world doesn’t end; he doesn’t drown.
He does startle briefly, at the sudden darkness when Hannibal’s bedside lamp goes out, and his eyes take a moment to adjust to moonlight while Hannibal sets his book aside. Already knowing it’s going to sound absurd, he says, “Don’t let me disturb you if you want to read. I can sleep with the light on.”
That earns him a small warm chuckle and a sense of the bed shifting as Hannibal slides to lie on his side next to Will, his voice almost in Will’s ear when he responds: “I believe my concentration has been thoroughly broken for the evening. We’ll sleep, since that’s what you want. Goodnight, Will.”
One more step out into the unknown for the night, maybe. Will reaches out a hand in the darkness between them, until it finds Hannibal’s own. Their fingers twine lightly, so there’s warmth but barely any pressure. Hannibal’s hands are softer than Will would have thought; he supposes three years of captivity is enough to erode calluses. Somewhere, if he let his fingers drift a few inches upward, he would find the fine traceries of Matthew Brown’s scars on Hannibal’s wrist. He wonders if he would be able to feel them like this, in the dark.
It’s a question for another night, he supposes. They will have other nights, many of them.
He lets out a breath that feels like he’s been holding it forever and says only, “Goodnight, Hannibal.”
They rest together quietly and, eventually, they dream.