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“Minkštas meduolis,” Hannibal said as he set the plate in front of Will. Three thin slices of golden-brown cake fanned across the plate, arranged diagonally like a staircase, drizzled with glaze and garnished with a flower. “A honey gingerbread from Lithuania.”
“Oh, wow.” Will picked up his fork but had the decency to wait until Hannibal was back in his seat before taking a bite. It wasn’t that different from any other gingerbread loaf he’d ever had in his life: more delicate in texture, maybe, but still sweet and spicy, with a vivid honey flavor. And something else, something earthy and herbaceous. “Huh, what’s that? It’s kinda...herbal?”
“Your palate is improving.” Hannibal smiled down at his plate, where he was using a knife and fork to cut one of his slices in half. “It’s a traditional recipe, but I have made a few alterations to suit myself. Do you like it?”
“Huh.” Will took another bite. It was distinct, but not overpowering. He thought it was a nice complement to the spice and sweet, actually. “Yeah. It’s...different.”
“I shall take that as a compliment.”
Will finished his cake, dragging his fork across the bottom of the plate to scrape up the last bits of glaze. Hannibal cleared their dishes, poured them both two fingers of whiskey, and led the way to the living room, where the gas fireplace was already glowing. “Now,” he said, taking his seat in one armchair, “we may have our conversation.”
Filled with rich food, wine warm in his belly, Will was disinclined to talk about his current case, a serial killer in Norfolk who was removing the victims’ teeth and leaving them in their empty eye sockets. Instead, they talked about fishing, the dogs, Abigail, Freddie Lounds, Alana, Abigail again, and even the weather. The whiskey disappeared, and Hannibal held up the decanter.
“Ah, that’s probably not a good idea, I have to drive later--shit.” Somehow nearly an hour and a half had gone by as they’d been talking. “Sorry, I didn’t realize it was this late.”
“Take your time,” Hannibal suggested. “Unless you have somewhere to be tomorrow morning?”
“No, but--the dogs.”
“Will survive one night without you.” Hannibal gestured to Will’s glass. “How are you feeling?”
“Not drunk, if that’s what you’re asking.” He did feel warm, although that could be the fire. Warm and...effervescent, as if there was champagne beneath his skin. His toes curled in his shoes. His teeth itched.
Hannibal’s fingers brushed Will’s jaw. “Turn this way, please.” Will turned toward Hannibal, squinting; there seemed to be something wrong with his vision. Hannibal tilted Will up by the chin, peering into his eyes. “It seems to be taking effect,” Hannibal murmured. “I think you had better stay the night.”
“What? Why?” Will put down his glass on the end table before he broke it. “Did you give me something?”
Hannibal let go of Will’s chin. “Marijuana, in the cake. I thought it might be therapeutic. THC has been shown to relieve anxiety and depression.”
Will gaped at him. “I can’t--you what? Oh my God, you--are you high too?”
“Of course not; I baked two cakes. One of us must be lucid enough to supervise. Please, relax; the dose was not terribly high, and it is important that you remain calm and receptive to prevent the experience from becoming unpleasant. Have you ever been high before?”
Will pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “No.” He could feel Hannibal’s skepticism, so he sighed and amended that to, “Yes, once, in high school. A buddy of mine smoked, he offered me a joint, I never did it again.”
“Did you dislike it?”
Will let his hands drop back into his lap. “No, I just.” He swallowed. “I knew I wanted to be a cop, even then. Holy crap, how could you just drug me without telling me?”
“If I told you beforehand, you might have become anxious, and that would have been counterproductive.” Hannibal rose from his seat, touching his fingertips to Will’s shoulder to signal that he should stay seated. “I’ll get us some water. Please wait.”
By the time Hannibal returned with a cobalt-blue bottle of water and two glasses (Jesus, why couldn’t he just get two glasses of tap water like a normal person), Will had resigned himself to being high. He slumped in the chair and pulled off his shoes so that he could wiggle his toes. Even his feet felt high. He felt it in the backs of his eyeballs.
“How are you feeling?” Hannibal asked as he poured the water, glancing at Will.
“High,” Will mumbled.
Hannibal pressed the glass into Will’s hand. Will took it and drank it all in four long, thirsty gulps. Hannibal refilled the glass and set it on the end table. “How does being high feel, Will? In your body.”
“Heavy. Relaxed. Warm.” Will tipped his head back and closed his eyes. He heard Hannibal take a sip from his own glass of water, the working of his throat as he swallowed, the click of the glass as he set it back on the end table. “I could lie down, actually,” he admitted.
“Then come. We’ll lie you down.”
Will opened his eyes. Hannibal was already standing, one hand offered to Will. Will took it and let himself be hauled up, and Hannibal guided him to another room that looked, for all intents and purposes, like another living room, this one with a three-piece furniture set all in black leather and an enormous flat panel television instead of a fireplace. But it was carpeted, thick and plush like lying on a bearskin rug, and it was here that Will sank gratefully down.
“Holy shit,” Will said, once he was flat on his back. “What is that?”
Hannibal removed his jacket and folded it carefully over the back of a chair. He glanced up at the ceiling. A smile flickered across his face, there and gone again like a lightning strike. “Ah. That is Artemis and Actaeon.”
The lurid mural took up the entirety of the ceiling: on one side, a pale young woman with long, blonde hair draped modestly over her breasts, standing waist-deep in the water with her arm outstretched; on the other side, where her arm was pointing, a man in the process of being transformed into a beast: his head and antlers were of a stag, but the rest of his body was still human, albeit with grotesquely misshapen arms and legs, and shaggy brown hair sprouting on parts of his chest and flanks. He was twisted as if to run away, one arm flung up above his head, his mouth opened in a cry of anguish, his eyes rolling back. A trio of hounds pranced around him with their forelegs in the air, tongues lolling and teeth bared.
“Actaeon came upon the goddess Artemis bathing, and saw her nakedness,” said Hannibal, and to Will’s surprise he toed his shoes off and joined Will on the floor, lacing his hands over his stomach like a corpse in a coffin. “Enraged, and to prevent him from speaking of it to his friends, she turned him into a stag, whereupon he was torn apart by his own dogs.”
“Wow.” Will blinked. “Wait, all he did was see her naked? And she killed him for that?”
“Gods have killed for less than that.” Hannibal looked at Will. “How are you feeling?”
“Good.” Will stretched, fanning out his limbs like he was making snow angels. “This carpet is really soft.” He petted it with his hand. It was sort of like petting a husky or a malamute, one of those dogs with the thick, plush coats meant for snow. “How come we’re lying down?”
“You wished to lie down.”
“Yeah, but I mean, I could have lain down on the sofa.”
“Then I would not have been able to lie down with you.”
“We could have gone to bed.” Will turned his head to look at Hannibal; for once, he was able to meet his eyes easily. Hannibal was composed, but there was something tender in his eyes, in the way his hair fell over his forehead.
“Did you want me to take you to bed?” Hannibal asked.
“No. Yes. I don’t know.” Will rolled himself onto his stomach and propped his chin on his crossed arms. He’d moved himself a foot closer to Hannibal in the process; he was close enough now that Hannibal could put his hand on Will’s leg if he wanted. Will could reach out and push his fingers into Hannibal’s hair.
Hannibal took a deep breath. “I would not take advantage of you like that, Will. Not like this.”
“You want to, though.” Will found he didn’t mind the idea. He did reach out, then, and touch Hannibal’s hair. It was soft and fine under his fingers. Hannibal didn’t move, and he didn’t look away.
“You’re very tactile now,” Hannibal observed. “Is that something you want normally, but feel that you can’t have?”
“Isn’t it something we all want?” Will tried scratching Hannibal’s head. Dogs liked having their heads scratched; it stood to reason that humans did too. His suspicions were confirmed by the barest fluttering of Hannibal’s eyelids. He smiled. “Are you...really into deer, or something?”
“Pardon?”
“Oh, it’s just...there’s that statue in your office, and here Actaeon got turned into a stag…and there’s the one over your fireplace too, in the living room...”
A thoughtful pause elapsed before Hannibal replied. “The role of deer in mythology is complex and contradictory. It is Lord of the hunt, and yet it is hunted; it is the messenger of the gods and companion to saints, and yet we feast upon its flesh.”
Will shivered. “Are you the stag I’ve been seeing?”
“What?” Hannibal looked, for once, like he had no idea what Will was talking about.
“I’ve been dreaming about this stag.” Will’s hand had stopped moving, at some point, and now rested on the nape of Hannibal’s neck. “It looks like a stag, but it has feathers. Sometimes I think I see it when I’m awake, but I’m not sure. I don’t know. Is that you?”
“It could be you. You are complex and contradictory.”
“I don’t see myself in my hallucinations,” Will scoffed. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“You say that as if you expect hallucinations to make sense.” At last, at last Hannibal’s hand came up to rest on Will’s wrist, where it lay across his neck. The skin of his palm was warm and dry. Will thought it should be more callused, from the amount of time Hannibal spent in the kitchen, the amount of time he’d spent hunched over splayed-open bodies in the operating room. “How are you feeling, Will?”
“...like I could eat, actually.” He wasn’t hungry, precisely, but he wanted to consume; he was salivating like the feast was already before him.
Hannibal chuckled. “It stimulates the appetite. Come, then.” He got to his feet in a fluid, easy motion that Will couldn’t quite make out, and offered Will his hand. Will allowed himself to be pulled up, and they padded through the house in their socks. Hannibal’s hair was mussed in one side from lying on the floor and disarranged on the other where Will had been running his fingers through it. Will laughed, and Hannibal glanced back at him with an amused and indulgent smile, though he couldn’t have known what Will was laughing at.
“Sit,” Hannibal said, once they were in the kitchen, and Will sat at one of the stools drawn up by the kitchen island. Hannibal peered into the refrigerator and withdrew a couple of parchment-wrapped packages and a small bunch of grapes. He got a box from the pantry. He plucked an apple from the fruit bowl on the counter.
The grapes he set in front of Will, who popped several in his mouth right away: they were cold and sweet and juicy, the best thing in the world, and he stifled a moan of appreciation. Hannibal’s mouth tilted up on one side as he poured out the remains of a sleeve of crackers and began smearing them with soft cheese. “The crackers are a bit stale and the cheese too cold,” he said. “But I suspect you won’t mind, in your current condition.”
“I wouldn’t mind even if I weren’t high,” Will declared around a mouthful of grapes.
“Cheese should be served at room temperature, for full flavor,” Hannibal said, starting on a harder cheese, this time with a different knife. “Of course, if it’s too warm, then the cheese will begin to sweat, and that is unappetizing as well. It’s a fine line.”
“Blah blah blah,” said Will.
“Understood.” Hannibal slid the plate across to Will. The plating was nothing near Hannibal’s usual dark elegance: just a bunch of crackers smeared with a soft white cheese, a handful of a different, dark golden cheese cut into cubes, and a pile of apple slices. “Bon appétit.”
Will shoved one of the crackers in his mouth. The cracker was perhaps a little soft, but that mattered nothing against the cheese, buttery and nutty and rich against his tongue. “Oh’mgod, what’s this? Brie?”
“An American take on the D’Affinois, from California,” said Hannibal. “The other is an aged goat’s milk gouda, from Holland.”
Will plucked one of the little cubes next and ate it. He’d had goat cheese before, but this was nothing like the tart, musky crumbles he’d once had in a salad. It was mellow and almost sweet, with a breath of earthy saltiness. He tried it again with a slice of apple, really noticing how the sweetness of the fruit interacted with the cheese. He glanced up to see Hannibal leaning with his elbows against the counter, watching Will with a faint smile. “Uh, did you want some?”
“No, not at all.” Hannibal flicked an invisible speck from the counter and took the knives and cutting board to the sink and began to wash them. “How are you feeling?”
“Amazing. I didn’t know food could taste like this. Oh my God, you should be high with me. It’s a shame you don’t get to taste this.”
“I eat my own food all the time.”
“Yeah, but does it taste like this? Christ, this is so good.” Will demolished the soft cheese first, then the gouda and apple, and finally went back to the grapes. He discovered he liked salt and texture better than sweetness, but he ate the grapes anyway because they gave his teeth something to do, and because he was thirsty.
Hannibal must have known, because he put another glass of water in front of Will. This time Will was able to sip it politely, instead of gulping it down.
“Satisfied?” asked Hannibal.
“No,” said Will. “I’m full--I mean, I know I’m not hungry--but I feel like I could devour the world.” He took another swallow of water.
Hannibal huffed out a chuckle. “Perhaps later. I have some salumi. But come.” He handed Will a cloth napkin.
Will wiped his sticky fingers. “Where are we going?”
“I think you are in a condition to enjoy some music.”
And that was how Will found himself in the music room--God, Hannibal’s house had an entire room devoted to music--lying on the nearby settee while Hannibal played the harpsichord. He’d never heard a harpsichord being played before; he’d thought it would sound like a piano, and it sort of did, but higher. Tinnier. But tinnier wasn’t the right word; tinny made it sound like it was something bad, and this wasn’t bad. There was an echoing quality to the notes that they didn’t have on a piano that made Will think of bones hung from a tree like windchimes, rattling into each other with every passing gust.
“Weren’t piano keys made of ivory?” Will asked.
Hannibal slowed his playing before he replied. How did he play and talk at the same time? “Once upon a time, yes, they were topped with ivory. Most modern pianos have keys topped with plastic now.” He played a series of elegant interlocking scales, filling the room and Will’s head with visions of swimming fish and blooming flowers. “On this instrument, the naturals are covered with ebony, but the sharps are covered with bone.”
“Bone?” Will opened his eyes. “What kind of bone?”
“I believe cattle bone is common.”
Will tilted his face toward the ceiling. The mural in this room was a sky filled with stars. “Even after we die, our bones are not our own,” he mumbled.
“That may be true, if you are a cow. Do you feel that you are livestock?”
“Mmm.” Will circled his hands over the rough patches of his beard. “No. No, I don’t think so. But I don’t know that I belong to myself, either. Do any of us belong wholly to ourselves?”
The music stopped, and the room seemed much darker than it’d been before. Will turned his head to look and found Hannibal watching him, his hands between his knees. The lamplight silhouetted him from behind so that he looked like an angel, or a demon crowned with fire.
“How are you feeling?” Hannibal asked.
“Unstable,” Will admitted.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“No, it’s not...it’s not in a bad way. I feel a little bit like I’m dreaming, but it’s not bad, because you’re here. But I also feel like at any moment the dream might end, and I’ll wake up and I’ll be all alone, with not even my bones to call my own.”
Hannibal rose and crossed the room to sit on the settee next to Will’s feet. “You’re not alone.”
“No,” Will allowed. “I have seven dogs.”
“You have Alana. You have Jack.” A pause so brief that maybe Will imagined it. “You have me.”
“I don’t know that I have any of them,” Will mused. “They have me, but I don’t think I have them.” He raised his gaze to meet Hannibal’s. “Do I have you?”
“Absolutely."
Will blinked. His eyelids felt like they were made of syrup. “Do I have your bones?”
Hannibal gave an amused huff. “I doubt they’re very desirable.”
“You can have mine.” Will realized he was staring at the backs of his eyelids and opened them. “Jack has my brain, I guess, but you can at least have my bones. You can cover your harpsichord with them.”
“Oh, Will.” Hannibal wrapped his hand around Will’s ankle. Will could feel the heat of it through his sock. “Your brain and your bones are no one’s but your own.”
“I don’t know if I want them. S’an awfully big responsibility. I think you’d get better use out of them.”
Hannibal did not reply, but he stroked his thumb over the bone of Will’s ankle in a slow, rhythmic gesture. It tickled a little, but it also felt good. Will’s eyes had slipped closed again, and he thought about the unfamiliar constellations on the ceiling over his head. He wondered whose stars those were, and where, and when.
“You’re falling asleep,” said Hannibal.
“Mmm,” said Will.
“I’ll show you to your room, then.”
Will dragged his eyes open. “I have a room?”
“Always.”
Hannibal removed his hand from Will’s ankle; Will was sorry to see it go. He stood and led Will down the hall to a guest room much, much nicer than Will’s set up at home, with a queen-sized bed made up like a hotel. The bath next door was already equipped with a sage-green towel, a toothbrush inside a glass, and a brand-new tube of toothpaste. The toothpaste appeared to be French.
“Do you need anything else?” Hannibal asked.
“Uh.” Will stood in the middle of the bathroom and looked around. “I don’t think so?”
Hannibal stepped out of the bathroom and vanished.
Will was almost too exhausted to brush his teeth, but Hannibal clearly expected him to, so Will forced himself to give his teeth a cursory scrub and splash some water on his face. When he went back to the guest room, he was surprised to find Hannibal there, setting a glass of water on the nightstand. He’d left some nightclothes on the bed: a white t-shirt and a pair of red plaid pajama bottoms.
“I didn’t know you even owned any t-shirts,” Will said. Hannibal, with great dignity, did not respond to that remark.
“My room is only down the hall,” Hannibal gestured, “should you need anything.”
Will brushed his fingers against Hannibal’s wrist and watched Hannibal glance back at him in surprise. “Thank you.”
“It’s my pleasure.”
“No, I mean. Thank you. For.” Some great balloon of feeling pushed against Will’s throat from the inside. Tonight, he’d thought that he would go home and be with his dogs, maybe read a fishing magazine or maybe work on a boat motor. He’d thought tomorrow would be the same after that, and the day after. But now there was Hannibal, with his love of fine food and Greek myths and classical music, who surprised Will with his honesty and his unconventional psychiatry, who told Will that he belonged to himself and no one else.
Hannibal seemed to know what Will meant anyway, as he always did. He threaded his fingers through the hairs at the nape of Will’s neck, much the way Will had when they’d been on the floor in the TV room. “My dear Will,” he said, very softly. “You deserve so much more than you know.”
Will swallowed and closed his eyes against the things that wanted to come out of his mouth. “What happens tomorrow?”
Hannibal’s hand fell away. “Whatever you want to happen. You may wake at dawn and slink out and go back to your house, and then we will never speak of this again. Or you may stay for breakfast, and we will discuss what happened. Or we will discuss other matters.”
“And then after that?” Will opened his eyes. Hannibal was inscrutable in the dark.
“Whatever you like. I imagine you will want to go home and see to your dogs.”
Will made a discontented noise. He wanted to say that’s not what I mean, but Hannibal forestalled it with a brush of fingers against his lips.
“We will explore that together. For now, you should sleep.” Hannibal stepped away. “Good night, Will.”
“Good night.”
Will waited until Hannibal left, closing the door behind him, before changing. He left his clothes on the floor, taking a small, sharp pleasure in bringing some of his disarray into Hannibal’s world. The pajama pants were slightly too large for him and were clearly Hannibal’s own; the thought made him happy, for some reason. Maybe he was still a little bit high.
He crawled under the covers. He expected to have trouble falling asleep, but he didn’t; and if he dreamed, he did not remember any of them.
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