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Ever since the last fleck of sea water dried from his skin, Will’s body hasn’t been right.
He had an impressive collection of injuries, ranging from those sustained through his fight with the Dragon to those the cliffs and water blessed him with. Each one of them gave him grief for a number of weeks, sometimes even months, at a time.
A puncture wound to his cheek.
The loss of his first molar and second premolar on that side of his face.
A broken right shoulder.
A compound fracture to his right radius. (Will had come to the conclusion that maybe, when he hit the water, he hit it with the right side of his body. And despite being engulfed and entwined in another’s body, he was the one to take the brunt of the impact.)
A couple of cracked – or broken – ribs.
A dislocated knee.
Each injury found itself sewn shut, or bandaged, or popped back into place, or splinted, or even iced. It took months. Months that had been spent travelling: stalking along the eastern coastline in a small boat, piloted by Chiyoh who had appeared out of the shadows and sea that night.
Of course, each injury healed physically. Eventually. But in the months afterwards, his body seized and protested at the fact that it could now function as it once did. Once they had settled into one of Hannibal’s apparent many houses along the South American coast, he tried helping with tasks. Lifting bags of groceries from the trunk of their rented car. Cutting logs at the back of the house for the hearth’s fires that would chase away chilly nights. Even changing sheets of beds and cleaning dishes helped.
Free physical therapy, he stated simply one say when Hannibal asked him why he felt such a need to work through the strain on his body. As if Hannibal faired any better.
If he finally found himself getting over the nagging pain of one injury, another would wait just around the corner: ready to strike.
That is what seems to be happening tonight.
He tries not to wince at the sharp, shooting pain that bursts through his shoulder. The damn thing was shattered. And now, whenever cold creeps into the house, his freshly healed bones and muscles make it their mission to voice their displeasure about it. Will drops the last of the logs into the fireplace before straightening. Perching an arm on the mantelpiece, he steadies himself and tries to grasp on to his bearings.
The pain usually goes away on its own.
Once the fire gains traction and heat starts to seep into and warm the house, the pain will leave.
So he waits.
And waits.
And while his legs get most of the heat from the fire, to the point where he moves slightly to one side to stop them from burning, his shoulder still seizes.
It gets to a point where Will has to bite on his fist to stop a sharp whine coming out. It’s like a tension knot: something within the very centre of his shoulder is coiling in on itself tighter and tighter.
It takes his arm with it. As he waits for the pain to at least stop getting worse, his arm curls towards his chest. “Fuck,” he curses, blinking away a tear.
A floorboard creaks. Hannibal doesn’t need to make his presence known for Will to know he’s there. The air within the room shifts slightly.
The other man makes a curious noise. “Is your shoulder bothering you again?”
Will presses his forehead into his fist. He nods.
An almost tired sigh escapes Hannibal’s nose. “What would you like to do about it?”
His shoulder is what always causes the problems. And because of that, they’ve managed to concoct a collection of remedies to help with the pain. Most of them surround the vast collection of medications Hannibal has stored within their shared bathroom. A lot of the pill bottles contain painkillers – ranging from simple, store-bought anti-inflammatory to hospital-grade morphine.
Morphine only masks the pain.
Will blinks back a hot tear that stings the back of his eye. “Do you have any more of that gel? The one you used last time?”
Hannibal is suddenly by his side. There’s some space in between them: the other man making sure that he doesn’t accidentally brush against Will’s arm, and cause even more pain to ricochet up towards his shoulder. Hannibal nods. “We can start with that,” he reasons, tilting his head. “But I think you might need to take something to help you sleep.”
Will nods. “Yeah, fuck. Okay. That’s okay.”
Hannibal steps away and leaves the living room. Will’s ears twitch at the sound of the floorboards of the staircase creaking. After another couple of minutes, the pipes above him start whishing.
Will frowns slightly. He doesn’t have enough time to formulate a thought before another sharp burst of pain shoots through his shoulder. This time, it travels down through his arm: awakening the old injury to his radius. He keeps his arm close to his chest as he begins his journey upstairs.
A journey that should not take as long as it does.
This is why I kept a damn bed downstairs, he grumbles to himself. His life before the ocean swallowed and spat him back out is almost a blur these days. But he can remember Wolf Trap. He can remember having a healthy fear of the dark and those monsters that stalked within it.
And now, as he climbs each step of the staircase, he finds himself having a respect and adoration for that darkness. And living with and loving a monster who revelled within it.
By the time Will reaches the top of the stairs, he sees a thin streak of orange, warm light coming from the bathroom. The rest of the landing is relatively dark. The sun set almost an hour ago, but the moon is taking her time to rise and perch in the sky.
Will follows the orange light until he stands at the doorway of the bathroom. Already coiling through the air are thickening aromas like sweetened lavender and chamomile. Will inhales a lungful of the air. It doesn’t do anything for his shoulder, but the rest of his body sags.
He nudges the bathroom door open.
A claw-toed bathtub sits in the middle of the room. On the countertops, and even on the bottom edge of the bathtub, are candles in various stages of life. All of them are lit. Some have wax slowly starting to trickle on to the marble countertops. A couple of soft towels are already laid over the radiator, warming through.
Hannibal walks around the room, collecting some small bottles of various coloured and scented oils and gels. His sleeves are rolled up to above his elbows. A small wooden chair sits at the head of the bathtub. Hannibal sets the bottles by the legs of the chair.
When Will’s body was stitched and bound and in the process of healing, he needed help with everything from sitting up in bed to taking showers.
From his place at the doorway, Will regards the room – and Hannibal – for a moment.
“I’m not comfortable with just using one or two medicinal treatments on that shoulder,” Hannibal explains, gesturing vaguely to the filling tub. “I thought we could try something else.”
Will tilts his head. “You...you want to massage my shoulder?”
Hannibal doesn’t answer, but instead swirls his hand around in the water already within the tub. Happy with its temperature, he finally turns back to Will. “I’ll collect some sleepwear for you.” His eyes go to Will’s shoulder – and his curled up arm. “Do you need assistance in changing?”
Will glances down. His arm is locked, he notices. He can move the appendage, but he isn’t able to uncoil it. It will eventually, but for now, he’s going to have an issue with untangling himself from his tee.
Will swallows, and nods.
Hannibal holds out a hand to him. “Come then,” he says. His voice has become that much gentler. It suits the air of the room. Will slowly wanders over to the other man.
Wordlessly, they shed Will of his tee, jeans, underwear, and socks. Once bare, Will glances to the tub.
“Get settled,” Hannibal lightly instructs. The bathroom serves as the main bathroom to this floor of the house, but it’s also a large ensuite to their bedroom next door. Once Hannibal disappears into their room, Will sets about getting into the tub. With his functioning hand grasping the lip of the tub in a tight grip, he slowly eases himself into the bathtub.
The water is just on the right side of hot. It doesn’t scald his skin as he sinks further into it, but it’s not cool enough to give him flashbacks to a blistering cold ocean that tried to swallow him whole.
He lets himself sink down and down until the water laps at his Adam’s apple. His head is pillowed comfortably on the lip of the tub. His eyelids flutter closed at the feeling of Hannibal’s fingers carding through his curls. A sharp click of tongue echoes through the room. “While I love your curls, mylimasis, you really should get a haircut.”
Will hums. “Eventually,” he mumbles. Even though the pain hasn’t left his shoulder, the atmosphere of the room, combined with Hannibal’s gentle touches, might just be enough to lull him to sleep.
His collected sleep-clothes are set near the sink. It’s an oversized, worn tee and soft, flannel pyjama bottoms. He can’t stop the small smile curling the corner of his lip. He’s pretty certain that the pyjama bottoms at some point belonged to Hannibal. But during the first couple of weeks of them living together, they lived together as one person. Everything had been shared: especially clothes.
The rest of Will’s body loosens as warm water eases his muscles.
“Comfortable?” Hannibal asks.
Will hums. “Very.”
Though, he does tense slightly at the sound of a bottle being uncapped and closed again. The gel that Hannibal uses for his shoulder has to be massaged in. To get the best results, a firm touch needs to be used. And it fucking hurts.
“This is bath gel, mylimasis,” Hannibal gentles. A viscous, golden liquid lathers quickly in the other man’s hands. The sweet scent of the gel permeates the warm air around them. Honey, Will notes. A long sigh escapes his nose as Hannibal’s hands instinctively go to his shoulders.
The one that was broken, the one that still after so much time still refuses to co-operate, groans in protest for a brief moment.
Will bites the good side of his cheek: stopping a sharp hiss of pain escaping him.
“Tell me if I’m hurting you, Will.”
He tries not to glance over his shoulder and arch an eyebrow at the man. It seems too late to start worrying about all of that. Years had been spent by both of them hurting each other.
But now, after emerging from the ocean, their dynamic has changed. Something between them isn’t quite the same. Hannibal is...gentler...with him. That’s the only thing Will has noticed about the other man. Then again, Hannibal has always been gentle with him: even as he caused pain.
Now, Will’s head lulls further backwards as Hannibal’s hands run over his shoulders. The honey scent of the gel is sweet: almost overly so. There are traces of vanilla and caramel and molasses. He wonders vaguely if Hannibal bought it specifically for this purpose: to bathe Will in it. Hannibal’s usual shower gels are muskier and camphorous.
After a couple of minutes, both of Hannibal’s hands go to his injured shoulder. His arm still sits locked in place by his chest. Will lets his head roll, glancing over towards the other side of the room.
Hannibal’s fingers slowly uncoil his muscles. The problem, the pain, lies deep within his bones. Although his shoulder had been shattered by the ocean and the cliff’s rocks, his bones were set back into place. How Hannibal managed to do it, Will never asked. Whether he had been spirited into and out of a hospital during his days of slipping in and out of consciousness, he really can’t be sure.
But now, the muscles in his shoulder give up on their protesting. Slowly, minute by minute, the muscles in his shoulders slowly start to ease. His arm, he notes, slides back down towards his side. There’s still an ebb of pain in the centre of his shoulder: right in the very marrow of his bones. But he breathes through it.
Hannibal works silently, coaxing tight muscles loose with sure circular movements. Eventually, he dips his hands into the water of the bath, and returns to his task. Even if he is just using a bath gel, something non-medicinal, it’s the touch that has Will melting into the ceramic of the tub.
Hannibal gathers more gel. He decides to move away from Will’s shoulder. Instead, he gathers what seems to be an ample handful of shampoo and carefully cards his fingers through Will’s hair. The shampoo smells just as sweet as the bath gel. A strong hint of vanilla wisps along Will’s nose.
When Hannibal finally speaks, it doesn’t even disturb the silence that has fallen over the bathroom. “Does anywhere else hurt?”
Will takes a silent stock of the rest of his body. Truthfully, the rest of him has slipped off to sleep: happy and content to be submerged within warm water. So he shakes his head. The movement shakes his shoulder slightly, but nothing but an annoying throb of pain comes out.
The other man cups some warm water in his hand and lets the stream trickle through Will’s hair. They don’t trade words. Even though a heavy silence has settled over the bathroom, it’s not a silence that seeks to be filled. It’s something that he’s become more aware of as the months turn into years: their ability to exist within the same space, and just exist. No words need to be exchanged. No touch needs to be shared.
The water is starting to cool. Something his body learns of long before Will does. His muscles slowly start to reawaken. Even though the rest of him feels limber enough, his shoulder starts to protest again. “I don’t want to get out,” Will sighs: his voice verging on a whine.
Happy that Will’s shoulder is loosened enough, Hannibal sits back from the top of the bathtub. “I can put some medicinal gel on it before you get changed,” he nods to Will’s sleep-clothes. “And I can give you something to help you sleep.”
He won’t need it. Even now, struggling to sit up to get out of the bath, he feels like he could slip off at any moment. Sleep is something that had evaded him for the first few months of his new life, but as time ticks by, he hasn’t had many problems with slipping off to sleep.
Hannibal takes two towels from the radiator as Will gets out of the bath. They’ve warmed through completely, chasing off the chill that runs over Will’s wet skin. Even though his arm has unlocked, and it hangs limply by his side, Hannibal is the one to dry him off.
The medicinal gel has a strong smell. It has a combination of menthol, mint, clove, eucalyptus. All harsh scents that wrinkle his nose. As it seeps into his skin, Will can almost feel it warming up and worming its way down through his muscles and into his bones. Hannibal’s touch is still gentle; but firms slightly as he works the last of the gel into Will’s shoulder.
“Do you need help getting changed?” Hannibal asks, nodding to the clothes on the countertop.
Will regards them for a moment. He can finally move his shoulder, although the pain is more like a dull throb now. “Just with the shirt,” he says. It’s a soft, worn black tee. Hannibal bunches the hem in his hands. He nods to Will’s injured arm. “Let’s get that arm in first,” he instructs, helping Will slowly bring his arm into the sleeve of the shirt. Once that part is done, Will uses his other free hand to pull the rest of the shirt on.
Happy to leave Will to the rest of the clothes, Hannibal wanders over to the other end of the tub. He pulls out the plug, and goes about quenching the candles around the bathroom.
Once he has the pyjama bottoms on, Will pads out into the bedroom.
The sheets of their bed have always been pulled down. The pillows on his side are fluffed and propped against the headboard. One of them sits at the edge of the bed: one that could support his newly relaxed shoulder during the night.
Will bites the inside of his cheek. All of it seems so...domestic: so not them. But he spent so much time of their new life together wondering who they were. He was Will. Hannibal was Hannibal. But who were they together? Where they the same people who got swallowed by the sea, or the ones who were spat out?
His thoughts are interrupted by the bathroom door clicking shut.
Hannibal stands behind him: not touching, but close enough that Will can feel the man’s body heat against his back, and his breath against his nape. Will turns his head slightly. “I feel a lot better,” he rasps. “Thank you.”
Hannibal hums. “I don’t like seeing you in pain.”
I don’t like seeing you in pain that I didn’t cause, Will can’t help but correct the other man. He arches an eyebrow. Surely, Hannibal must know how ironic all of this sounds. Hannibal, who had prodded his mind and eviscerated his body, now kept his touch light and gentle.
Hannibal lowers his head. The point of his nose brushes along the tendon of Will’s neck. He lets his head loll to the side, letting Hannibal press thin lips to his skin. “Your mind is troubled.” The words are mumbled against his skin. “I know that you are...cautious...of me now. We spent so long dealing blows to each other, and now, you flinch even when my touch has gentled.”
Will swallows. A lump is trying to lodge within his throat.
When the other man’s lips leave his skin, Will has to clench his jaw and suppress a whine.
“I don’t want to see you hurt anymore,” Hannibal says lowly. “I don’t want to play those types of games with you anymore.”
Will looks over his shoulder. The other man’s eyes are cast down towards the ground. He presses his lips into a thin line. “You’re here with me now. And I would like to have you stay with me.”
Will’s throat almost seizes. “I’m not going anywhere,” he gentles, turning to face Hannibal. “I told you before, in the Uffizi: I don’t think either of us could survive separation.”
Something flashes across the other man’s face. It’s brief, almost hidden among the dark shadows of their room, but visible. “Then begs the question: do you stay because you wish to, or to keep yourself alive?”
A frown creases along Will’s brow. “You know why I stay,” he says. Lifting his good arm, he cups the man’s cheek in his hand. Will’s thumb rubs along his sharp cheekbone. Outside, the moon has finally perched in the sky. Streaks of white sunlight stream into the room, stretching along the floorboards. His bones ache with tiredness.
Will drops his hand. “Let’s go to bed.” His voice is so low it almost verges on a whisper. Hannibal nods, and wanders over to his own side of their bed. Will slides in without much difficulty. With his good arm, he rearranges some of the pillows propped up against the headboard. He lies on his back, loosing a long sigh as his body slowly begins to melt into the soft mattress. The pillow under his shoulder is firm, but comfortably supporting. He’ll move during the night. He’ll wake up in the morning either lying on the damaged shoulder, or on his side with it flung out to the side. And all of Hannibal’s hard work within the last hour will be for nothing.
Hannibal lies on his side, facing Will. He drapes an arm over the man’s stomach – careful of the old, fading scar that stretches across his abdomen. The days in Cuba are blisteringly hot. But the nights freeze. A thicker woollen throw is pulled up from the end of the bed, and draped over their already big collection of sheets and comforters. Hannibal is careful to keep some bit of distance between him and Will. But he’s still close enough to radiate some heat into the other’s side. Even the arm across his stomach is warm.
Will places his free hand on top of Hannibal’s arm. The night outside is deafeningly silent. Occasionally, the house will creak and groan around them. It’s an old villa: built on a forested hill looking over a small town. How it fell into Hannibal’s hands, Will doesn’t ask. He doesn’t ask about the other properties the man seems to have littered over the rest of the world either.
Will sighs. “Thank you, again. My shoulder and I appreciate it.”
Hannibal moves slightly. He still keeps their torsos separate, but pillows his head in the juncture of Will’s neck. His nose rests at Will’s pulse point. When he speaks, warmth breath puffs along Will’s neck. The other has to stop a shiver from wracking through his body. “If you find yourself in pain again, don’t hesitate to come to me.”
Will rubs his thumb along the tendons of Hannibal’s arm. Silence falls back over them again. Within a couple of minutes, Hannibal’s breathing changes against Will’s neck. It slows and deepens. Sleep has taken one of them. It’s not far from claiming Will. His eyelids grow heavier by the second. Soon, it’s taking too much energy to keep them open.
He gazes up at the ceiling. It’s a mottled plaster, whitewashed to reflect sunlight when it streams into the room. He sighs. His head lolls to the side, towards Hannibal, and his cheek rests comfortably against the other man’s forehead. The closeness is something that confuses him. Hannibal has always touched him: even before the waves took them. In the years before all of that, there were fleeting touches: a hand on the shoulder, or on the small of his back as Hannibal tried to pass him.
Then there was the embrace on the cliffs: the first time Will truly tried to merge himself into Hannibal’s body. Even though they were pressed chest to chest, it wasn’t close enough.
And now, there are nights like this. Their breath mingles in between both of them. Sleep slowly starts to stalk forward, tugging him down into darkness.
His fingers curl on Hannibal’s arm.