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You know you can tell me anything.
I know, Will.
Even if it hurts me.
I don’t want to hurt you unnecessarily. Suffering unnecessarily serves no purpose.
I know, I just want you to know that it’s… okay.
Sometimes, Hannibal locks himself away for hours. He never tells Will why, even on the rare occasion that he asks. (Which is almost never. He understands the need for space, and he nights not ever ask him if it weren’t for the way Hannibal’s occasional uncontrolled emotions make him feel.) All he knows is that Hannibal is gone and he has to entertain himself for two, three, four hours at a time. It isn’t hard to do, not really, but there’s a loneliness in it that he hates. As if there’s a part of Hannibal, however bad or changed from their fall, that he’ll never be privy to.
Books, fishing, wood working, bug watching. None of these things fill up the empty spaces in his head long enough to make the loneliness disappear. It was the same when he was married. He wanted Hannibal to turn himself in; he never anticipated the abject emptiness he would feel without his presence. His wife, her child he pretended was his, didn’t fill up the spaces. If anything they were a balm, but never a cure. In a lot of ways he wanted them to be, in a lot of ways he couldn’t fathom it.
Once he does everything he can do to entertain himself he moves on to what he does best — fixing things. He’s never been particularly good at fixing people, understanding them, yes, fixing them—whatever is wrong with Hannibal is his own fault—but he’s great at fixing home problems. Boat motors, windows, a creaky step on the staircase. It makes him feel useful when Hannibal doesn’t want him to be.
(That’s what this is. Hannibal is hiding away from him because he refuses to let him be so vulnerable, because he doesn’t want Will to fix him. Why? He doesn’t know. Does he feel undeserving? He can’t imagine that, but he couldn’t have imagined this either. This disconnect. He knows, of course, that he can’t fix him, he can probably only break him more, but the shouldn’t matter. He should still want him close while he suffered.)
They’ve already spent so much time apart—necessary time—but time anyway. For Hannibal to take more time, it feels like a personal slight. It’s as if he isn’t unaware that they’re getting older, and each hour lost feels destructive, like death. Hannibal doesn’t mind. Or if he does mind, he never lets Will know it.
Add that to the infinite list of things about Hannibal that Will won’t ever be told. If he minds that they’re losing time. He thinks this is a punishment. Will took three years and now Hannibal is taking time too. Hours until it’s equal.
I don’t want to be volatile.
Do you feel that angry then?
Pure anger. But not everyday.
No, there’s so much grief. You lack the Old Testament God sort of anger. You’d have to hate me for it to be pure.
Are you religious now, Will? Are you asking for forgiveness?
Divinity has nothing to do with what I’m asking you.
Some part of him knows this isn’t a punishment. He tells himself that, but he’s never known Hannibal to be anything but desperate for control, with a need the level the playing field fully. Sometimes it’s hard to come to terms with the fact that is is struggling. That Will has changed him so irrevocably that he’d rather hide and lick his wounds than suffer with him.
The hiding is worse right now. Their little mountain not-cabin is dusted in snow, the trees are icy, and the cold seeps in through cracks he didn’t know existed until this week. There isn’t enough caulk in the world to fix all of the leaks either. He keeps buying more and running out before he’s made what he’d consider headway. It’s something about the cold he thinks, but he can’t be sure. When it’s warm, he hides too, just not as frequently. Besides whatever reason he hides, Hannibal doesn’t share much with him at all if he thinks about it—there’s little to be gained from it—so most of what Will knows is inferred.
Inference is not the same as cold, hard facts. He knows this better than anyone. The evidence proves his jumps, but it’s hard to prove this without some sort of confession. Hannibal’s tongue is heavy purposefully. Leaden from his own manipulations. In some way, he’s convinced himself that Will cannot know whatever happens in that locked room, or what takes him there. He has to leave Will up to his own devices and that has lead him to enough caulk to warrant a membership at their local hardware store.
Caulk and the truth that he rarely can come to terms with. All Will is good at when it comes to Hannibal (and vice versa, if he wants to point fingers) is breaking him and then reshaping him into something new, something better. This time was a mistake, but he’ll smooth out the kinks next time. He’ll tell Hannibal that he can help him while he suffers, he can at least be near. That’s what he does when Hannibal comes out of the room, back taut, face stony. Although he doesn’t think it’s enough. It never really settles him. Hannibal is always tense, always skirting around him. Ignoring the inevitable.
Today, he’s smoking out holes to fill. There’s a fire. There’s a heater. To Will, the house is almost too warm. He’s walking about in his boxers and a thin t-shirt and that’s pushing it. Somehow Hannibal always finds an area that he’s missed. Points it out with an uncomfortable tapping of his fingers, a twitch of his jaw, and Will gets to fixing the leak. He might tell him it’s the cold on a day he’s only gone for an hour, and maybe some of it is. It’s just easier to blame it on the cold, he thinks, on Will’s inability to seal the house.
Is Will failing as a husband? He thinks that while he caulks. Was he always destined to fail?
It’s 4:37 on a Sunday afternoon which means they should be on the porch swing with coffee and blankets. That’s the weird thing about these episodes—Hannibal can be in the cold, but mild chill sends him packing. There’s no porch today, and Will would be lying if he said he doesn’t feel spurned by this. Hannibal is locked away again; Will has knocked and asked him to come out but he hasn’t gotten a response. Maybe Will just doesn’t work hard enough.
He’s filling in each leak to the point he knows the house is going to be exasperating new issues when it’s warm again. They’ll be fighting mold, too much moisture, swollen floors and breathing walls that are rank with summer and mildew and some new pain Will can’t fix. But he’ll deal with those when they come; if he has to chip out every bit of caulk and then reapply it so be it. This can be his own area of worship, his burnt offering, a mystical devotion to a man he can’t see. That’s for later though. He needs to focus on the now. The future is always going to be there. It always has been.
The caulk is running out again, but he knows better than to go to town while Hannibal is having one of his locked-up episodes. It’ll just have to wait until tomorrow, and he can take Hannibal to the morning market. Not that the market has all that much, but some people have greenhouses and sell their produce. (That’s what they need. A greenhouse. Hannibal would like that, he thinks. They could garden together. It would give his mind something else to do rather than whatever it’s doing now.)
Another hole and he’s out of caulk. That’s fine. He washes his hands in the downstairs bathroom, digging out the dried bits that have crusted to his nails, and finds his way to the living room couch.
I took a lover in my youth while I was in France. An older man. He met me in a museum; he drank cheap coffee and smelled of wilted tulips.
Did you love him?
No. But I think he loved me, in his own terrible way.
I imagine it must of been hard for you to leave everything behind, including him, regardless of love.
He took it harder than I expected. I hurt him and his suffering meant little to me, and I didn’t care to make it mean something. I was angry. That was all I felt.
Did that solidly with you that you made the right choice?
Yes, in so many ways it did.
He could go out there himself. Take a cup of coffee, he’d have to burn the pot he started and then left, grab one of their throw blankets, and watch as the sun slowly sets, reflecting off of the ground and the trees that surround them. He doesn’t though, doing that feels like a betrayal to the life he’s trying to build. If he shows Hannibal he can do one thing without him—get married, be a father, have a more of less content life—what’s the say another won’t push him over the edge.
Instead, he clicks the television on and lets the local news play. 5:03 now, but there’s nothing to be said about the podunk town where they live. It was the same when he was a kid; bigger cities have lots of news, places like this have so little. Maybe someone stole a buggy from the local grocery store, or a man was arrested for a DUI, but nothing exciting. He thinks it’s why his father liked to move around, in hopes of turning out to be somewhere important, and then to be important himself. As if a diesel mechanic can be important at all.
Will doesn’t get it, he never really did. He felt most important in Louisiana, in church, when his father was a deacon and clean and everyone praised him for being such a well behaved child. (He needed to be. He couldn’t get taken.) Now, he doesn’t want to be important to anyone but Hannibal, and in that way, his father never understood that he was important to Will. Sometimes one person isn’t enough. Sometimes you need to move and find new people to fill up that missing space. He’s glad he didn’t inherit that from his father, he picked up plenty of other bad traits from the man, but that one has remained distant.
Last week, someone asked me to go home with him. He was French-Canadian, he saw me at the diner and sat across from me.
Did you want to go with him?
Not in any way that mattered. Not without you.
Did that make you angry?
It made me sick.
The television buzzes; sometimes it glitches. He’s replaced it twice and has finally accepted that the glitching is their signal and he can’t fix that. Nor does he want anyone coming out here to try.
There was a murder 30 miles from their home. The second murder in three months and everyone’s concerned. They’re going to move their hunting ground soon, but it’s nice to hear there are no leads, no witnesses, and so little left of the bodies they can’t identify them. Missing pigs that fill their bellies and the bellies of the local church when Hannibal is feeling generous.
Hannibal wants to make art, and they will one day, but not yet. That might help, he thinks. It might fix some of his issues, of their issues, but Hannibal understands his reluctance.
It’s an hour before dinner when Hannibal comes out. An episode can’t keep him from following that part of their routine. He likes to eat at the same time every night, and he loves to cook for Will.
“We’re having duck breast.” He smooths his hands over his shirt, as if straightening out some invisible wrinkle. He’s so put together anyone would be forgiven for thinking that he’s fine. “Would you find a bottle of pinot noir? You can pick which we have tonight.”
How very generous. In a way, it’s a sort of apology. I’m sorry for locking myself away for three hours and forty-two minutes today. I’m sorry I ruined our plans. I’m sorry there’s something wrong with me. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It doesn’t matter, Will knows what brands he prefers with each meal and is going to pick accordingly. That can wait.
He stands, cautious like he might next to a rabid dog. Hannibal isn’t going to bite him though, at least he thinks he won’t. His bad shoulder does have a crooked halo from his teeth. That was in a moment of passion, and this is obviously not that. Will touches him, like he always does, and Hannibal jerks away. He never says why he does it, but it always takes too much coaxing to get him to agree to let Will hold him after.
“Come on,” Will whispers, “dinner can wait.”
Later tonight he might regret pushing dinner back, but he doesn’t worry about that right now. It’s a smaller issue than this. Dinner will always be there.
He nods toward the couch. “Let’s sit for a while.”
He hadn’t thought this would be his life, but it is. Maybe he deserves this, but maybe he doesn’t. It’s hard to parse what is deserved and what isn’t. Usually, he tries to not think about his life in layers of deserving; it would drive him crazy, but things like this can’t help but feel that way.
Hannibal scrunches his nose; he can smell the caulk still stuck under his nails.
Did he do something wrong? Did Hannibal? He’s always felt righteous about what he’s had to do, but so has Hannibal in his own way. They’ve both fully believed the things they’ve done were completely necessary and Will can’t lie. He doesn’t regret throwing them off of that cliff. If he knew this would be his life after, he thinks he’d still do it. Still, this a punishment for them both. Divine or not. Maybe it’s subconscious. They’re gods all their own, they don’t need the Christian God to strike them down for their sins. They strike each other down at least once a year. Or maybe God has in his own backwards way. He knew they’d end up like this so he let them. It’s just as likely.
“Will,” Hannibal breathes, exhausted, exasperated—like their not-cabin and all its issues.
He doesn’t suppose some caulk will help? A bit around the ribs, pushed into place with the tips of his fingers while white and pink crusts around his cuticles.
They still enjoy aspects of things they always did. Wine, whiskey, grandiose admissions of some kind of guilt or love of grief, the taste of flesh on their tongues. There has to be something that’ll fix whatever this is. This punishment against Will, this punishment against Hannibal. They need to break each other again.
Hannibal pushes away from him, but Will knows better. He holds him by the back of his neck; sometimes his fingers bruise his peachy skin, sometimes he remembers his strength. He’s stealing back the things he wants from him. Touch, even if Hannibal doesn’t want to give it, affection, even if Hannibal is scared to receive it, love, even if they both don’t know how to do it.
It’s easy to haul him over to the couch. It’s part of the routine of things. He gets him down and keeps him there.
All that I have desired, I have devoured. If you desired him, you should have eaten him.
You haven’t devoured me.
Haven’t I?
Did you devour the Frenchman?
I crushed him between my thumb and forefinger. He wanted to hurt me, I couldn’t allow it.
You allowed me to.
Days like this, there isn’t much fight in Hannibal. He pushes, shoves a little, but he always gives in. It’s easier that way, to push back whatever he’s hiding and whatever he hates and melt into Will. To sit, maybe lay on the couch—which really there isn’t room for both of them to lay but they do it away—and try to stabilize.
As a boy, Will used to think he would melt away into the rivers back home. Sink into them, down into the rough sand, and become one with the riverbed. He always wanted that when he knew it was coming time to move again. For a while, he begged his father to stay in Louisiana in their trash trailer, but he learned quickly that wasn’t the way of things. They needed money, and his father was such a sad man. He hated staying there. He hated being reminded of the nothing.
Sometimes, a week, a day, an hour before they were set to leave, Will would go out to the river next to his house and sit in the water. The current wasn’t bad, so he’d go chin deep and force himself to sit all the way down. Then he’d pray to God and ask him to turn him into silt.
A part of him always knew he wasn’t enough for his father so he hoped he could be enough for the rivers that his father loved.
Maybe that’s what Will was trying to do when he threw them both over the edge of that cliff. A return to form. To be something else together. To never leave home again. Maybe he prayed on the way down and asked God to please turn them into silt. Sometimes, he thinks God listened.
Now, Hannibal melts into him. He didn’t always, but he has the past three times this has happened, so Will takes that as a victory. His trembling body, both from the upset and the damage from the ocean, slots against Will. Melts into him like a child into a riverbed.
For what it’s worth, Will holds him tightly. If he hates it, it doesn’t matter, because he needs it. He clings to him now, presses his face to his neck, breathes him all the way in.
“Where’s your grief?” Will murmurs into his soft hair. He can smell river and ocean. He can smell his desire to kill him. “Does it scare you?”
Hannibal’s nails dig into the backs of Will’s arms, bunching up the skin under them. He’ll taste it later, while Will watches. He’ll say it’s the best meal he ever had.
His voice comes out craggily, “My grief is mine alone.”
It isn’t anymore, but Will doesn’t argue the point. Hannibal floats, and Will does his best to be sturdy, to keep him with him, at least for a few more minutes. Sturdy but shifting like sand. There’s no other way he can be.
Any anger I feel toward you would hurt you. Devouring you would never be enough.
I can take it.
I know, but it doesn’t serve a purpose anymore.
You can find the purpose if it helps you.