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Will remembered when he saw you, down to the very second.
He’d just started consulting with the FBI, it was his second case. Jeffrey Deacon. He’s killed three women by the time they’re called in. Winifred Brennan was the first, her body was found mutilated on a park bench. Three weeks pass, then Lyla Nyguen is cut down from a tree just a stone’s throw away from where her predecessor had been found. The tangled mass of limbs that had once been Deidre Jackson had just entered the morgue when he’s touched down 4 hours outside the small Northwestern town. They’d been at it 3 days straight when he decides it’s time for a real and true break. A break he shouldn’t waste by drinking but he does anyway. Now he could tell you why he’d walked into the only bar in town on an empty stomach, 3 hours sleep, and ordered 3 fingers of whiskey. But not then, it’s not his scene. It’s crowded and loud, filled with people trying to fake the kind of excitement they’d seen of big cities on television but he’s always been good at blocking out the noise. Pulling inside his mind. He does just that, turning the images over and over as only he was capable of.
Your hand is the first thing he sees, setting a new drink in front of him. To this day he still doesn’t know how this particular hand was able to rip him from the abyss that was his forcefully twisted thoughts. But tipped with shining black it somehow managed a feat few had done. Without touch. Without speech. His eyes trailed up the black fabric that clung to your arm like a second skin, over your shoulder to reveal a deep v of unmarred flesh and collar bones that incite the urge to bite into them. He follows the still untouched flesh of your neck until he finally faces the sorceress that waits so patiently for his attention. Your eyes pierce him, a knife wound soothed by impossibly long lashes and pitch-black liner. A few strands of hair fly around you face, as uncontrollable as he sure you are. But it’s your lips that his eyes fall on in the end. They haven’t moved, not once during his torturous observations, a plump bottom lip with just the lightest teeth indents not quite hidden by your top lip or the color painting you lips. He feels exposed in the silence, as if you had managed to grab hold of his thoughts and flip through them as easily as a children’s picture book. And if he looked up, if he met your gaze again, you would reach the last page. He abhors eye contact, he’s overcome with the fear of what he may see of himself in your mirrored sight. He looked all the same.
Will never forgot that moment either. Or every one that followed after.
“You’re here about those girls,” he still heard that voice sometimes, more often in the few pleasant dreams his mind gifted him with.
You rounded the end of the bar he had once thought a strategic place to sit and would now be his undoing. Your voice quiet in your closeness, forcing him to listen, burnt cloves and ocean air covers the sickly smells of perfumes and colognes over stale alcohol.
“Luke,” Jeffrey Deacon, “can’t keep his mouth shut about it since you got here,” you spat the man’s name from your mouth as if it had the power to do to you what his hands had done to those women.
As if he had already tried, “How long before?” turning completely in his seat, watching with vastly too much interest as you sipped your cocktail.
“Lots of men don’t like the word no,” it’s barely a second but he sees it. Then, now, those women, “Luke likes to take, he’s always been good at taking. In his own special way.”
He remembers those words, they’re his words, spoken just hours before as he pulled himself into reality once more. They had made a simple sort of sense then, pushing them onward in the right direction, falling from those lips they make perfect sense. He drags his eyes away, takes a long gulp from his almost forgotten drink as if the burn might ground him. Your gaze burns hotter, the glass seems to empty instantaneously and all he feels is you. He still does from time to time, always just out of sight.
It’s not love – not yet- or lust – not ever- but something deeper, something he had been so sure was impossible. Real connection. That hand, the one that started it all, comes back into view. But there will be no more drinks. There’s a confidence he doesn’t expect and found himself deeply thankful for. There is no tip-toeing, no hesitation at the thought of broken glass. You wrap that hand over his own, there’s an unsurprising strength in your grip, you know he can’t open the door but he’ll happily walk through it. He does. Without a second thought.
For three days he spends days on the case and, more importantly, his nights lost in you. You don’t leave the low rent hotel room even when he does. Each night he walks into a new revelation, a new design, and once he understands he washes himself in your touch, your lips wiping the filth and grime that tried to leech itself to him away. Flicking it away as if it were no more than swarming gnats. For three nights, he exists in a world of pure neutrality, no facades, no masks, no past or future, just each gasping moment. Your last morning is desperate, he can’t stay, you can’t go, no matter how much you both ache for it. It defies Earthly law what happened in those few hours before hotel checkout and a long, uncomfortable trip to the airport. He remembers every blissful moment of it all. When he can grasp a corner of it without his new life ripping it from his hand, he wraps himself in every second of you, to far gone from time and reality to realize he isn’t there anymore.
All of it comes rushing back in the same amount of time it had taken him to rush into Hannibal’s office, with the same lack of decorum he’d come rushing into your life. There’s that familiar feeling of being stabbed in the gut, he’s sure it’s worse than his real-world experience of the same sensation when he realizes those impossibly long lashes are damp with tears. Your cheeks bare the light streak of running make up. For the first time in two years, he feels something and breathes a real breath. He can watch all those forgotten feelings rush into you through the small windows of your gaze. You’re finally feeling the new scars he’ll discover exploring your body once more. You’ll cry when he holds you, fitting you perfectly against him once again.
“You’re here,” is all he can muster, all sense of purpose forgotten.
You climbed from the chair, matching his pointed focus, “I didn’t know what to say.”
Neither of you ever say much, disjointed conversations held together by thoughts shared over some ethereal conduit only you had managed to tap into. Words are difficult. More than that, words are simply unsuitable. It’s like coming home, back into a world without thought or confusion. Simple contact promises to speak more than language discovered. He follows that promise, moving across the room, aching to touch you. Hands so close to your skin, and unable to make contact. There’s a fly on the wall, he already knows too much and he is far too enthused by what is unfolding before him, as if you were nothing more than animals in the wild. Though, in truth, you might’ve been, it seemed to be the only thing that made any real amount of sense about your bond.
“I thought you were speaking in metaphor,” he breaks the silence, neither moves all though he sounds as if expecting them too, “An unnerving case of codependency.”
You step back, away from them both, trapped between two worlds. He can see you splitting as they tugged with a might to rival gravity. You’re breaking down, piece by perfect piece. He watches you struggle to breathe. To simply exist. There isn’t anything to hide in because there are no thoughts other than escape. Gnaw at the bone if you have to, just get out. Hannibal sees it too, that unyielding scientific mind was not quite ready to step in. To intrigued by the thought of what you might do next. What does a wild animal do when caught in an emotional trap? It’s a complexity you can’t swallow. You can’t sort Will and the mask of patient into carefully constructed rooms. He steps towards you again, you flinch. He’s never made you flinch, he lets it pass him by, holding his hands up instead. Forward until once again he’s a breath away without daring to touch you. There will be no emotional blood spilled here.
“You’re here,” the connotation much different, the breezy happiness he had come to learn in your presence colors his tone, “Look at me, please?” It sounds an awful lot like begging in his ears.
But you still can’t. You opened the door once. He walked out as swiftly as he had walked in. It’s his responsibility, he has the strength for it. Even with your all too eager audience he throws the door open, just as he had done mere moments before. He rushes in, just the same as before, and slams it closed behind him. He holds your face in his hands, sticky with dry tears, forcing your eyes to his even as instinct makes your muscles twitch with the urge to fight against the demanding grip. You force yourself to remember it’s him. He would never hurt you if he could help it, never again. You melt in his grip, falling into the kaleidoscope of affection you’d remember a thousand times over. He wants you stripped down naked, far beyond the flesh, and to pull you back into him. He had never left, you had never suffered, even if you both knew they were neither true not what could be remembered.
“You’re here,” he said instead, as if it might convey the multitude of hopes he could hardly keep straight let alone expect you to interpret, “I’m here.”
Only Hannibal would chose that moment to prod with a light clearing of his throat. You twitche but don’t move, trying to hold Will’s gaze even as every muscle poises to run. He dares to shoot a quick, pointed look at his colleague, and your body did just as it had intended since the door opened. By the time he’s noticed your movement, the door is open. Calling out is useless, there’s no use in trying, he just watches you leave. Feeling the hole in the pit of his stomach you could only have felt yourself watching him drive away that foggy morning.
“You hid her away,” as if he understood. As if the simplified observation could even crack the surface of what existed between the two of you.
Will’s eyes don’t leave the open door, “Wouldn’t you?” choosing to forget why he hand come and instead follow after why he had to leave.
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Two hours of driving pass before he finds himself back with Hannibal, as he always seemed to. This time sharing drinks in the kitchen, silent and yet deafening you hang in the air.
“I would have, to answer your question,” taking the opportunity offered. He would never be this open about you again, not if he didn’t get his foot in the door, “Her imagination is as vivid, her ability to step into the shoes of others is just a mysterious as your own. And yet it is nothing like your own empathy.”
“I am complex,” the words are inexact, “She is primal,” you had told him that was the problem with language, “Two years ago,” it’s not designed for things that lack any true description, “In a bar,” things that can only truly be felt, “Rather plain.”
“There is nothing plain about your bond,” not relationship. It implies choice, knowledge, history, “Unorthodox issues require an unorthodox response, Will,” that isn’t what they have., “She spoke of you as if you were something unquantifiable.”
You both are something of the Old World. The land before our time you had called it. They both take long, quiet sips until both glasses are empty. He will never comprehend this facet of his friend but he had begun the tedious study that would be required to know of it. There’s a jealousy he can’t quell, the knowledge he could never truly understand the mind of the man who so often came to him for guidance was suddenly personified. Tangible. Something that could bleed and they both knew it.
“We defy the rules made by the waking world,” finally drawing his gaze to the unavoidable probing that stood before him, “It makes sense, even when nothing else does. I’ll feel as if I’m losing myself in it all and I remember exactly how she sounded.”
“You saw her and it was is you’d never truly been apart,” unable to keep the tint of green from his voice, “You met you in a bar,” forcing them both pack on the path.
“She brought me a drink. This perfect hand…” he exhaled hard, shaking his head, “This perfect being.”
“Perfect for you?” he countered, quirking a brow.
This shake is a bit more fervent, almost angry that he had dare ask, “Perfect. As in free of defect, of the man-made human condition,” and though he’d spoken with you on his own, Hannibal seemed unconvinced, “I kissed her,” he couldn’t feel it, see it, if he was patient one day he might, “ You taste like sunshine. How does a person know what sunshine tastes like? Unless they are far more than that.”
“Do you love her?” that green-eyed monster is the third person in their conversation now and while Will is completely unaware of its existence the tension does not go unnoticed.
“Do I have a choice?” he counters, itching to leave. The more they spoke of you the more desperate he became to search for you. Aching and needy for all he had been unable to do before you swift and unwelcome exit, “Before I left, she told me we are all made of stardust, just searching for our galaxy. That what we feel is galactic magnets.”
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He arrives home at 3 am, sleeplessness making searching counterproductive. He watches an ember burn from the dark of his front porch, the air smells of burnt cloves. You must’ve walked more than a few miles, cabs don’t drive out this far, not for cheap. More importantly, you had waited. Sitting in silence outside his door, a piece of wood keeping you from his life. He had offered this to you once, hoping against all intelligent thought you’d agree right then and there. You hadn’t the strength. And now you were hoping it was still yours to take, to fall into. He runs, barely remembering to close the car door, as he jumped the short stairs. The ember flies, dying with a sizzle in the frost heavy grass.
He kisses you, hard, like he should have. Hannibal be damned. Heavy open-mouthed things that spoke more than he could. Deeper than either ever could manage. Your hands almost bruising in their grip on his arms, his nails dig into the tender flesh of your cheeks. Just like before. It’s becoming impossible to tell where you end and he begins. All he knows is it’s pure. All you want is to feel him as much as he needs to feel you. He backs you up against that flimsy wood, feeling it rattle in the jam at the sudden attack.
“Stay,” he pants against your lips, the smallest parting he was capable of.
You swallow hard, “Forever.”