Chapter Text
He’s clenched up fetal position on the ground and the cold is secondary to what’s in the night.
The ice is piercing sharp against his temple. He has no gloves, and his fingers won’t move anymore. He is frozen still, and he isn’t certain that it isn’t just because it feels nice to lay down for once.
The heavy footsteps crunch through the untouched snow, a hoof settling down in the palm of the hand he can’t move. His skin, the structures beneath, they put up a fight, cracking one bone after another as its weight collapses through his hand and to the ground below. Will’s fingers curl of their own accord.
He pulls his shoulder back to tilt his head upward, but can’t do much but squint at the figure as if it were shimmering and not another shadow in the night of shadows. A gentle huff sends warmth across his cheek, fiery and sultry through the ice.
A jostle sends his sense of gravity tumbling down through the earth and then dizzily upright, and Jack’s pulling himself into the front seat with a grunt. A puff of snow follows him from the outside and then dissipates into nothing when he slams the door. It’s hard enough to make Will jump even when he’s expecting it, feeling every bit of Jack’s nerves fill the space.
Jack speaks to the agent in the passenger seat and Will has the strange sensation of being someone else’s kid—waking up in then backseat of the over-sized SUV, two handlers up front dealing with the problems so Will doesn’t have to.
Even Jack’s anger can’t settle entirely on one party to blame, between the department of corporate travel management and the lone prick manning the front lobby of the hotel they’re parked at. The agent helpfully supplies that either way, they’re not staying here.
The car is moving, bumping over the failed attempts of snow clearing and skidding onto the dark road again. The smooth curves through the mountain-crafted road make Will want to sleep again, but whether he wants to dream again is another thing.
He straightens his body in the seat with a wince at his tight shoulders. He can watch the trailing headlights in the passengers’ side mirror at this angle; a convoy of reinforced Ford Explorers looking like more an intrusion to the forested space of the Rockies—only of the bodies on their side of the border—than the bloody trail of cold case questionables or copycats are.
The long drive is starting to feel less like an excuse to rest and more like an invasion to the night. He won’t sleep after this, but Jack will take him out into the frozen world anyway. Into this inhospitable frozen biome, habitat to those that can survive the harsh white noise of frigid wind—thick-furred carnivores, hoofed grazing mammals, jagged pines, and weary truck drivers on their interminable rounds.
The motel-gas-station combo they eventually come across feels too isolated to be of this world, but the vacancy sign shines bright atop the stretch of rooms. It has a gabled roof and dark wood panels across like an elongated cabin. Will curls up smaller in his seat in anticipation of leaving the car’s heated interior and his body-warmed leather seat.
Jack runs through the snow to the yellow-dim lobby and peeks his head out a few minutes later beckoning to the lot with two leather-gloved fingers.
Car doors open in a discordant series of clicks and snapping handles. Will feels unsteady on his feet as he he slides from his seat to the running board with his backpack hugged to his chest, but he forces himself to move and not be left behind in the cold. Outside of the rumbling compactness of the vehicle, he is met by the onslaught of the snowstorm, howling wind and trembling woods. The falling snow renders him mostly blind. He’s one of the last to cram into the room, too occupied with leaving the turmoil behind to catch the start of Jack’s words. The warmth and stillness of the lit, busy room smothers him.
“—double rooms. This is just what we have to deal with until we can find a better option. So pair up then grab the next key.” The space is uncomfortably quiet for a long moment, and Jack’s nerves come to the forefront. “Now. If this task isn’t too insurmountable for federal agents.”
The shuffling finally begins, but Will doesn’t move. It never worked in grade school gym class to stay still and hope the whole partner thing dissolved around him, but he’ll be damned if he does anything else. He doesn’t really care so long as he gets his own bed.
Beverly pops into his head despite it. Refreshingly honest, easygoing, funny Beverly… attractive too, if he’s being honest about his feelings. He would be at least somewhat comfortable with her. He raises his head just enough to scan the room, but finds her face to face with another agent he only recognizes as the kind-faced try-hard student he had a few years ago. Jimmy and Brian line up mumbling intensely under their breaths about God knows what. Will suddenly fears he’ll be put with Jack, and surely he can be professional if he does, but it feels far too much like being stuck dancing with the teacher.
A hand settles on his shoulder from behind and he recognizes the weight without looking back. Hell, if there’s anyone he doesn’t want analyzing him in his sleep, it’s Doctor Lecter. It doesn’t surprise him though. Here as a consulting profiler, Hannibal probably doesn’t know anyone else.
“We are in the midst of a fissure in the North American plate formed during the Laramide orogeny period, 35 to 80 million years ago,” Hannibal says to the back of Will’s ear with an excitability that he doesn’t have the energy to indulge. “Subduction like God pushing a rug on a hardwood floor. It places us in the Intermountain Seismic Belt; hammer pulled, tension built, but time builds a great sense of security for things like this.”
“Hm.”
“I had hoped to engage in some casual winter exploration between the job.” Hannibal looks back toward the window wistfully. The night is barely visible beyond the falling snow.
“There are certain ways to predict earthquakes, machine learning and that sort of thing,” Will says. “Far more likely to be taken by the weather you know all about but still choose to go out into.”
“Inconsistent methods of prediction—but you’re right. Death is rarely as exciting as a cataclysmic event can be. The kind of horror that one often can’t help but hope to see in their lifetime. Too curious to see something bigger than themselves.”
Will finally turns back to Hannibal. The last couple shuffle out of the lobby leaving only him, Hannibal, and Jack. Two keys sit on the counter.
He almost dares to hope that he’ll be awarded his own room to be an off-putting, gloomy mess in peace, but Jack is the boss and he knows where he stands. Hannibal grabs a key and smiles at him like it was never a question.
“Get some rest now,” Jack says, kinder than he was to the other agents. His escape through the door sends a gust of wind through the room that makes Will’s body wrack with a shiver.
His chill feels like more than just poor weather (-19 degrees Fahrenheit says the thermometer hanging from a suction cup hanger on the window). This cold digs deeper into his lungs, into the back of his head, the same thing that has him vacillating through body-seizing chills and oppressive overheating through any given night. Something coming from inside the house.
His body still wars against going back out into the cold, some self-preservation he’s surprised to find he still has.
He flinches at movement past his face and then Hannibal is pulling a scarf down the back of his neck and wrapping it around him a few times. Will stiffens at the contact but doesn’t stop Hannibal from cocooning him how he likes, as patronizing as it feels. Hannibal might as well just tell him he looks like he’s withering away. But the gesture is nice. And so is Hannibal. His sleeping arrangements could have turned out a lot worse.
Hannibal opens the door for him and Will finally ventures back outside into the snow storm, loosening the scarf a bit.
“No mountains where you’re from?” Will asks dryly, yelling over the wind as he shuffles forward. “You seem awfully excited about being here.”
“Some locals call Montana the ‘last best place.’ I try to enjoy my time wherever I end up, and learn some new things while I’m at it.”
“I hope it’s everything you dream of,” Will says, blinking at the snow in his face and wrapping his arms around his chest. “I’ve fished Yellowstone with my dad. Nicer in the summer.”
He follows Hannibal to the second floor and all the way to the end of the walk. The door opens with a click and a shove to crack the ice dug between the frame. Hannibal beckons him to go first and Will steps inside gratefully, kicking a pile of white powder onto the carpet.
It doesn’t take long to appraise the small room, but what he sees takes a moment to catch up to him. He waits for Hannibal to turn from the door and notice. Hannibal pauses in suit when he does, and they stand crowded in the doorway eyeing the one bed taking up the majority of the space.
“I thought he said double rooms, not double beds…” Will mumbles. The implications dawn on him slowly.
“Hmm. I suppose not.” Hannibal gives the bed a last glance before stepping inside and setting his duffel on top of a chest of drawers. That and the bed take up the majority of the room, the only other furniture being the lamp-donned side tables and a small sitting area at the window looking out the back. Hannibal draws back the curtains, but the panes are too frosted over to see much even in the meagre light from the buildings.
It’s an altogether claustrophobically cramped room with only one other door opening to a bathroom. Hannibal enters it and spins in little half-turns to inspect, as if they’d even be able to do anything about black mold or weevils at this point.
Will drops his backpack on the bed and takes a moment to mourn his space and privacy. Just as much as he resents it, he doesn’t want to be the one to make a big deal out of something that isn’t one. Will’s never been the best at social boundaries, but he can tell enough to know that bringing their little situation up will only make things unnecessarily awkward.
Hannibal is already wiping the drawers out with a packet of disinfectant wipes and setting his clothes inside like he’s ready to move in. Like any grown man who can be normal about sharing a space with a colleague. Will might have been more excited about the prospect if it had been Beverly he was paired up with. A distraction like that could do him well on this unsettling night.
He settles in one of the chairs by the window with his folder of file copies. Sleep won’t be coming anytime soon, so he might as well do something useful. He rubs his eyes and tries to focus on this one distraction he can give himself.
He doesn’t notice Hannibal leaving until the front door closes again, giving him a start. He doesn’t know what Hannibal could be doing at this hour in the middle of nowhere—perhaps his self-proclaimed ’winter exploration’—but at the moment Will only cares that he has a moment alone to breathe. He drops the file folder on the table.
They couldn’t have picked a worse time to ship him across the country for a case, let alone to somewhere as remote as this. It’s hard not to feel trapped and vulnerable. What help he thinks he needs right now, he isn’t sure, but he doesn’t feel particularly safe planted in the glacial wilderness that he is.
He quickly learns that the little coffee table is the perfect height to bash his knee against when he bounces his leg. He turns to the side and covers his eyes with his hands.
He’s still sitting like that when the door opens and lets in another gust of cold. He dreads the footsteps that come close enough to touch, but then he smells coffee.
He perks up immediately and takes the proffered paper cup.
“It didn’t look to me like you were ready to sleep,” Hannibal says, sipping from his own cup.
“You don’t need to let me keep you up,” Will says, but Hannibal ignores him to sit in the other chair. The space is so small that they could prop their legs up on the bed from here, but it’s hard to imagine Hannibal stretching out so casually. He crosses his legs as usual, avoiding the dangerously hard-edged coffee table.
Hannibal spins a photograph with two fingers to look at it right side up.
“She can hardly be more than a child.”
“No, they didn’t think so either. We’ll see when she thaws.”
Will turns away from the image when he drinks again. The silence stretches between them.
Despite the heater at their hip, he can feel the cold emanating from the window, nearly overpowering the humming furnace. In the quiet, the sound of the storm is overbearing. He’d be worried for his little house if he was stuck in this there. His dogs would be cowering, driven by instinct to burrow to stay warm. He can only hope the motel is built to withstand. If it wasn’t, it probably wouldn’t be here anymore.
The coffee is nice though, a taste of normalcy and routine in an otherwise unnerving situation. A reminder of their connection to civilization’s comforts, even if it’s just an old weathered gas station. And, admittedly, it’s nice to have a friend here to keep him from spiralling.
When Hannibal speaks again, it’s in the steady tone of recitation, while he keeps a strangely wondrous gaze on the window. “It did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man's frailty in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold; and from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and man's place in the universe.”
Will thinks for a moment, and with one eye nearly twitched closed in his recalling, he says, “Jack London.”
Hannibal nods his head once down to his neck and keeps it there. His eyes shimmer thoughtfully in the yellow lamp light.
“The man in the story does not have the imagination to consider the threat the cold poses.”
Hannibal looks pointedly at Will now, like he always does when he refers to his imagination. He doesn’t hide his excitement as well as he thinks he does. Will can see the hunger that no psychiatrist has ever been able to resist. Sometimes he thinks it’s more than just the usual scholarly greed when it comes to Hannibal, but that might be wishful thinking.
“The man is victim to his own ego,” Will says. “To think he can hike through the freezing weather alone.”
“A dog as his companion.”
“A dog who survives because of his instincts. Because he is inclined to this knowledge that nature is too powerful a force to contend with.”
The memory of the short story comes back to Will with the vividness of the imagination he had while reading it. A man who tries to hike through the Yukon, in one hundred and seven degrees of frost, alone but for his husky. He breaks through a spot of ice and submerges his foot in ice water, a death wish if he isn’t able to build a fire to dry off. He lights a fire, but a mound of snow fallen from a tree smothers it. His death is certain, if it wasn’t already long before he left, but he fights for his survival. He loses all feeling with his fingers and can no longer light the matches, but by a stroke of luck lights the entire pack against his leg, and doesn’t even feel it as he burns through the skin on his hand. He inevitably smothers the flame with his own frost-frozen hands. He tries to kill his dog to warm his hands in his flesh, but contains none of the faculty to do even that. He sprints through the snowy tundra before he falls and succumbs to his deepest sleep. You know he will die, but the ruthlessness of the cold is striking anyway.
Will feels colder for the memory, pressing his foot closer to the furnace.
“I’m less disdainful of the cold now than I was as a child,” Hannibal says. “It makes me wonder if I’m not merely more naive, and it isn’t entirely rational to be terrified of the cold.”
“Was it cold where you’re from?” Will asks, then turns back to Hannibal to wonder over what he’d never really thought to consider. “I don’t know your accent,” he admits sheepishly, rather than embarrass himself trying to prove his meagre familiarity with Europe.
“Quite. And it does have its share of mountains,” he says, with what Will thinks is a slightly teasing undercurrent at Will’s lack of knowledge. It’s a frustrating thing. Hannibal is one of the only people to truly offer him a challenge in terms of intellect and having swaths of unnecessary facts under his belt. They always seem to get this look between them when one gains the advantage over the other.
“Lithuania,” Hannibal says, finally satisfying his curiosity. “But my mother was Italian, and I admit I hold more attachment for that part of my heritage, though I did not live there until I was a young man. Another preference for warmth.”
“And you left Italy for here?” Will quirks his eyebrow and takes another sip of coffee before it cools.
“The land of dreams.”
“How long did it take to realize the lie?”
“It hasn’t all been fruitless,” Hannibal says.
Will supposes it wouldn’t be for a man of Hannibal’s status. He goes quiet and pulls a random policeman’s report toward him. Where the second body was found. The strange placement. The visible injuries.
Hannibal allows him the silence, seemingly content to sit and stare at nothing. Hannibal is good at comfortable silence for someone who seems to have something to say about everything.
The reports fill him with a strange sense of dread. After a few long minutes, he looks up and speaks again.
“There was another story I heard as a kid,” Will says. “From Little House on the Prairie of all things—this neighbor lady that watched me refused to play anything else. It was a story they told in it, of this family during a storm when the parents are separated from their children due to a blizzard. It’s cold and the kids are running out of wood for the fire. They start taking apart furniture, throwing chairs, tables, anything that’s dry in there, and they burn through everything they own, and it’s not enough to get through the night. I think they froze to death anyway. Or perhaps one lived, screaming when their parents came to help them thaw.”
Hannibal listens quietly, a smile growing on his face.
“One could easily mistake fire as the usual unforgiving culprit.”
“Cold is just so much slower, you don’t realize it creeping up on you until it’s too late.”
Hannibal nods, watching Will as if waiting for something. Will gives in.
“Heating was pretty… inconstant for me as a kid. Sometimes the power companies cut us off, other times dad knew to preserve. Maybe it was a bit of pride of fending for himself, a fuck you to the government. I think I only really wished for something different than what he gave me when I got that cold. You get to a point that you just can’t warm up anymore. You don’t realize until it happens how unbearable it is, to have no hot water, not enough blankets. I fell in the lake once, when we were on a house boat. Didn’t want to admit I’d been fucking around like that, so I just curled up in my damp bed and I started shivering like crazy. I didn’t know it was possible to shake like that. Nothing else matters when you’re that cold, so I swallowed my pride and went to my dad so he could dry me off. He later said I was all blue in the face.”
Hannibal watches him with more intrigue than pity, which he’s grateful for. Had it been pity, Will would have regret sharing anything.
Strangely though, Hannibal doesn’t seem to have anything to say to that. Hannibal Lecter always has something to say, but he just smiles kind of sadly, nods in acknowledgment, and stands up.
“Excuse me, I’m going to get ready for bed.”
Hannibal grabs a few things and closes the bathroom door behind him. He might just be realizing how tired he is this late in the night. Their day is long gone already, the morning too imminent to feel good about sleep anymore. Will feels more melancholic in his temporary absence.
When Hannibal emerges, he’s wearing thick pyjama pants and a grey sweater. Will recalls how lightly he packed when expecting privacy. All Will has beyond his boxers is his work pants. He supposes it doesn’t matter much.
Hannibal lays on the far side of the bed by the door and holds a tablet at his stomach.
Will stands up. He doesn’t want to keep Hannibal up, and he doesn’t really want to keep looking through these reports. He splashes water over his face and rubs his eyes into an oblivion of stars.
He turns off the ceiling light and rolls stiffly under the covers of his side of the bed, leaving a safe gap between them. Hannibal is scrolling through an article predicting a winter storm hitting their area. He pauses scrolling on a weather map with a steadily darkening centre like drops in liquid. They exchange a knowing glance, and Will burrows down in the sheets to prepare for what’s to come.
He is preoccupied with the certainty that it is safer to hide deeper in the woods when Hannibal stops him at the door.
He’s practically burrowed into Hannibal’s arms when he comes to in that middle ground between sleep and awake, where he can chase the determination pulling on his brain to escape, but vaguely recognize that he’s doing what he shouldn’t be doing. Hannibal is anchored between him and the door with little room left between bodies and wood. Will recognizes his own forward-leaning stance and tense muscles, and knows with certainty that dream-him is determined to fight through that barrier.
Despite the urge to follow the instinct that feels truer than anything else, awake-him has enough wherewithal to pause in Hannibal’s arms and lean a polite distance back. Hannibal steps after him, hands at his elbows, herding him back to the bed like Will is the delinquent sheep in the mix. Bashful, Will steps back fast enough that he bumps into the bed and nearly stumbles.
“Shit, I was…”
“Sleepwalking, yes,” Hannibal rasps. His voice is soft with sleep. “It seems it was a blessing in disguise that we became designated roommates. You would not last long out there tonight.”
Will flinches at the vivid imagery of him coming to in a dark forest, alone with no direction of home, already too far gone to escape freezing to death.
The deceptive warmth of hypothermia would cradle him to death and he would be the next body to litter the cold Rocky Mountains, assuming they would find him before the spring melt. He hurries back to his side of the bed, craving the meagre heat of the thin motel sheets. He considers the warmth and efficacy of that poor man’s straitjacket again. This wasn’t supposed to happen tonight, not here.
It’s louder in their room now, the wind knocking at the side of the building and snow pelting their window. Hannibal approaches the window and wipes the side of one sleeve in a circle, but even wiped clear it’s impossible to see past the blizzard. Will doesn’t know what time it is, but sometimes the time of the day is negligible with a storm like this. This is the kind of storm that brings constant darkness.
He shivers pulling the blankets up to his chin. It’s cold under the sheets, too cold for having supposedly warmed it with his body heat all night. He wonders how long he’s been up and how long it took Hannibal to notice, but he doesn’t know how to ask in a way that doesn’t make it sound more concerning than this already is. He leans closer to Hannibal’s side of the bed, just until he returns, but it isn’t very warm either.
“I occasionally have trouble sleeping in unfamiliar places,” Hannibal says, as if this is a case of restless sleep and not weeks of deeply concerning evidence that Will’s brain is melting inside of his skull. “I have some emergency sleeping pills if you would like.”
The surety of artificial drowsiness is appealing. True darkness, rather than the dark world Will can’t seem to avoid travelling to in his sleep. He nods.
He listens to Hannibal rustling through his things, and it makes him realize just how much the storm is drowning them out.
“It’s worse,” Will mutters.
“The storm has made its dramatic entrance.”
Hannibal returns with an unmarked capsule pill and a cloudy glass of tap water. Will lifts up on his elbow to drink.
He flops back down with a weary sigh. He’s exhausted, but sleep suddenly feels far away. He waits in anticipation for the medication to take over this decision.
Hannibal crawls in next to him, shifting the bed with a creak.
“May I?” Hannibal asks. Will isn’t sure what he’s referring to, until a dry hand settles on his cheek, rustling his beard, and then moves to push back his hair and cup his forehead. His skin tingles in its wake.
All he says is, “Hm,” and then gets to fixing Will’s hair. It’s unnecessary and a little strange, but as Hannibal combs his bangs back into place he feels himself go still to feel the contact.
“Do you feel how warm you are?” Hannibal asks.
“I’m freezing,” Will says. He hates the idea that his body is warring against him so much that he can no longer tell how he feels.
Hannibal’s hand slides under the back of his neck and squeezes. He can’t think of why this prodding is necessary, but if Hannibal’s not going to think anything about it, he’s sure not going to say anything. His hands are large and certain. It’s like his dad’s hands when he used to clap a huge palm down on his shoulders, but Hannibal is gentler than he was. His hand lingers.