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Chapter Text

Afterwards, both of them will remember this careful slide into love with a particular sort of fondness.

As it usually happens, at some point the memories of a better, happier time will become the only things that keep them from falling apart and away.

This is how these memories were made.

Their first summer together (the word still felt strange to Frederick, together, him and Hannibal becoming a singular entity) is hot and humid. Both he and Hannibal are too lazy and sweaty to do much other than taking lukewarm baths and drinking lukewarm beer in the kitchen of the flat they rent.

He's nothing like, well, like anyone Frederick've ever met before. Being around Hannibal feels, he remembers thinking at the time, like explorers must have felt upon looking at the New World for the first time: landscapes unknown, lands not yet conquered. It's as if all his previous human interactions suddenly don't count.

He used to be a bit of a romantic.

Frederick tries to memorize the planes of Hannibal's face because that's what they do in every romance movie he's ever seen but it's harder than he anticipated, and his memory isn't that good anyway. He ends up with details and bits and pieces filed away in his mind: the colour of Hannibal's eyes, the way he squints when sun is shining directly in his face, the funny face he makes while drinking the cheapest cognac they could find (the only kind they could afford).

He gets good at learning Hannibal's body and the way it works; getting good at reading his face like one would at reading a book in a foreign language.

He tries and tries until loving Hannibal becomes routine; practices his motions until, figuratively speaking, he moves with a certain grace; a pigeon returning home at the end of every flight.

Chapter Text

Frederick doesn't remember his school days that well.

There's not that much nothing to speak of, honestly. Bullies. His mami and the general struggle of growing up in a half-Cuban, half-Jewish family (both noisy and nosy relatives). Finding some sort of balance within the two (Frederick's mother isn't that religious, but his father is. His early childhood was a little chaotic, bar and bat mitzvahs, quinceañeras, hannukah and navidad and yom hashoah, many family gatherings all blurring together into a vague memory of tables loaded with food and people who Frederick didn't recognise telling him how much he's grown). More bullies. A lonely adolescence filled with biology homework and Tolkien books (he to this day remembers A Elberet Gilthoniel by heart, even though fantasy books aren't that appealing any more).

Thing is, none of it was really his choice.

He chose medicine because his father (an angry, short man with a mop of jet-black hair) wanted him to. He told Frederick, in a brisk, borderline irritated way that he always talked to Frederick about important things in, that he should become a surgeon.

Frederick didn't want to, neither then and nor now, but he didn't really want to not be a surgeon either, and acquiescing to his family was easy. He applied to the University of Maryland three years later and was reluctantly accepted.

Moving to the dorm is as horrid an affair as moving gets. He ends up packing two large boxes of stuff (books, mostly, clothes and the sparking new radio player one of his cousins got him for his birthday) and getting shouted at by at least three different relatives. He didn't shout back, just grit his teeth and silently shoved the boxes a little too hard into the back of his father's Ford Escort.

Some part of him, even still, doesn't understand why he's doing it; a different, quieter part of him thinks he shouldn't be doing it at all. Frederick is still uncertain whether medicine is the right choice (whether he wants to spend four to thirteen years (13) of his life studying it). Either way, choices have been made, farewells have been bid, and he and his parents drove to the university. The drive takes a little under an hour, which is both good (convenient for him to visit his family) and bad (convenient for his family to visit him).

He doesn't worry about his future much, not then. It seems easy and certain, as most things do when you're young: Frederick will finish his undergraduate degree, apply to the medical school, and then conquer the world. Nothing is impossible, nothing is unattainable.

He gets lost twice before finding his dorm room.

University is going not quite swimmingly but passably. The first semester was a piping hot mess and Frederick cried at more than one point during the midterms, but that's university for you. Piping hot mess is okay, piping hot mess is something he can work with.

Uncertainty, though, is way worse. The tense, nervous kind of uncertainty that eats away at your nerves until it becomes all you can think of. Frederick doesn't know if he's made the right choice. He looks "Anxiety Disorder" up in the DSM-III. Some of the criteria fit, some don't.

Three months into the semester, Frederick still isn't sure where he stands with his roommate. Hannibal, a tall, gaunt boy with a thick English accent and the sharpest cheekbones Frederick had ever seen. He's is (Eastern?) European and has that striking quality to him that makes heads turn whenever he walks into a room.

He is also, probably, flirting with him. Definitely flirting with him judging by the amount of double entendres.

Hannibal is really big on wordplay.

Thing is, he doesn't mind. The attention is rather welcome, and, if Frederick is being honest with himself, he wouldn't mind hooking up with him either. It's the ambiguity that's killing him, he muses, thumbing through an anatomy textbook.

"Food for thought," Hannibal says, passing him a bowlful of what looks like a restaurant meal.

"Is that shrimp?" Frederick asks.

"Saltwater shrimps marinated in lemon peel and olive oil, fried with a garlic and lemon juice sauce."

"Uh," Frederick says. "Thanks."

"You are entirely welcome."

Frederick doesn't mind waiting, though, not even a little bit, so that's what he does. Waiting for Hannibal to make the first move, waiting for his degree to be over with, waiting until he finally founds out what is it that he wants to do with his life.

After a few months, they drift into a not-quite-friendship; an silent agreement: Hannibal loans Frederick his things and in return Frederick doesn't make Hannibal hate him too much and let's him use his radio player. Hannibal listens exclusively to classical music, which seems fitting.

They are still, silently, dancing around the possibility of becoming something more, or at least Frederick thinks so. There is a lot of flirting and obscenely delicious home-cooked meals, which Hannibal cooks on a single gas burner in their shared room. Hannibal lends Frederick his textbooks and helps him learn a mnemonic technique when Frederick spends a whole week trying (and failing) to memorize anatomy of the cranial nerves.

Hannibal buys him cigarettes when Frederick doesn't have the money, and there's always a plate of something warm waiting for him when he gets back to the dorm.

Hannibal is Hannibal.

Hannibal is, Frederick realises to his surprise while hurriedly smoking outside the lecture hall, being very friendly with him. It baffles Frederick to think why Hannibal would consider him, of all people, worth befriending (even though he has no doubt why the man is attracted to him. And no self-esteem issues, either, thank you very much).
All in all, Hannibal is a very baffling person.

It continues like that for a while; Frederick's GPA comes crashing down hard (he considers himself lucky for keeping it above 3.00 (barely) and somehow managing to withdraw from Anesthesiology before he got an FN); Hannibal's grades are immaculate, as they always are. They keep silently dancing around the possibility of becoming something more: neither of them say anything, but sometimes in the evening, after a dinner Hannibal cooked, they open the window, share a cigarette, and quietly listen to Led Zeppelin together. When The Leevee Breaks is Frederick's favourite, but Hannibal likes Immigrant Song more, maybe because he finds it fitting.
Everything is fucking great.

A few months into their second year Frederick is desperate enough to drag Hannibal to a family dinner, still feeling like the odd one out amidst the boisterous chaos that is his father's family, and needing to have someone by his side. Hannibal wears a suit and the ugliest tie Frederick has seen to date. He looks good regardless, his hair combed back and a curious flint in his eye.

"Is he the cute one you told me about?" his older cousin, Dinah, asks. Dinah is Frederick's only other gay relative, at least that he knows about, with coppery-red hair in a messy braid and dark freckles spattered across her light-brown skin.

(The family was utterly scandalized when she introduced her girlfriend, though strangely enough it was mostly because she is gentile and not because she is, well, a girl. The girlfriend was reluctantly accepted after passing The Test (family dinner with both of Frederick's grandparents present), but Frederick has never seen her himself. 

"Shut up! I'm not out. And he's not a.. boyfriend," Frederick whispers. He is, suddenly and most irrationally, almost angry (with her and himself); he doesn't really know why.

"But you want him to be," she doesn't exactly ask, hiding her smirk behind a glass of something.

"What are you two talking about?," his grandmother asks from across, because obviously it's unthinkable that anything can go on without her participation, and Frederick knows he shouldn't get mad at her, but he still is.

"Freddie's got a sweetheart," Dinah joyously proclaims.

"Thank you. Thank you so much," there is no escaping this now. Frederick sighs. He tries to catch Hannibal's attention from where he's sitting next to Frederick, but he seems to be immersed in a conversation with one of his numerous uncles."Why, this is wonderful. Zeyde!" his grandmother calls out to her husband, "Zeyde, come here. Frederick's got a sweetheart."

"Who's the lucky girl?" his grandfather joins the conversation. He's positively ancient, with a nose which Frederick unfortunately seemed to inherit, a long grey beard and a crocheted yarmulke that one of Frederick's aunts made him. The old man has a twinkle in his eyes that Frederick has come to be wary of. "Such good news! Tell us all about her."

"Crap," Frederick mutters. "Ver derharget*," he halfheartedly adds when Dina snickers. "This is all your fault."

"Come off it, zeyde," he adds in a louder voice. "She's not my girl. I haven't even told her yet." He can feel Hannibal watching him. He doesn't look at him back.

He spends the next hour or so warding off his nosy relatives and trying to avoid their questions, like whether the "girl" is Jewish and how does she look and where did he meet her. Thankfully, no one finds him bringing Hannibal there, or the fact that The Girl, whom Frederick met in college, is from Europe, suspicious.

Hannibal seems very amused by Frederick's frustration. "No, nothing," he quickly says, suddenly preoccupied with his shoes, when Frederick asks him what's so funny. "Your family is... intriguing."
"I am having a good time," he quickly adds, his accent thicker than usual. "Thank you for inviting me."

"You haven't met my mother's side yet," Frederick replies, rolling his eyes."

"Am I going to?" Hannibal not-quite-smiles.

"Yes. If you want to, I mean. I, uh. I'd like you to."

"Shouldn't you be inviting your mysterious girlfriend instead of your roommate?" he asks very quietly.

"Uh. I don't know if she'd want to," Frederick says. Hannibal doesn't reply.

If the ensuing silence is tense and laced with something that Frederick can't pinpoint, and whether there is a hidden depth to the way Hannibal looks at Frederick or the way Frederick smiles at Hannibal, it doesn't go unnoticed. The evening suddenly doesn't seem quite so dreadful. He introduces Hannibal to Dinah, as well as Tia, who is either Dinah's older sister or cousin or cousin twice removed. Frederick isn't entirely clear on that. They all have known each other since they were children, and while he never came out to Tia, there is a sort of silent understanding. They both seem to like Hannibal.

"And then," Tia is breathless with laughter, "he..."

"Don't," Frederick interrupts. "Don't you dare."

"He bites me in the arm! Obviously I start crying, and when mamah comes running, he's still trying to pry the toy from my hands, and..."

"I was three, okay? Also you're exaggerating."

"She totally isn't," Dinah says with authority.

"You weren't even there! Frederick exclaims. "Please don't listen to them. They're spreading libel."

Hannibal says nothing, but there is a sincerity to his smile that suddenly makes it a little less embarrassing.

After it gets dark, Frederick excuses himself and drives Hannibal and himself back to the dorm. Hannibal rolls down the car window and lights a cigarette. He gives it to Frederick, wordlessly, after taking a few drags. Cigarette kiss, Frederick thinks.

"My family can be a lot sometimes," he says instead. "I hope it wasn't.. too much."

"I don't think I have ever told you about my own family," Hannibal says after a long pause. Frederick passes him the cigarette, almost burnt down to the filter. Their fingers don't brush.

"I think you have a sister?"

"Had."

"Oh," Frederick hears himself say. "I'm sorry."

"Mischa died a long time ago, before I moved to America. She was very little." Hannibal sounds composed, almost formal. Frederick doesn't know what to say, so he doesn't say anything at all.

After a while, Hannibal turns the car radio on, and fiddles with it until he finds a channel he likes.

"Got no feel, I got no rhythm," Freddie Mercury sings. "Can somebody find me somebody to love?"

The rest of the drive is silent. Hannibal hums along the tunes, and ever so slowly lets his hand rest again where Frederick is holding the shift lever. They both keep their eyes on the road.

"Oh I, I wanna be with you everywhere, oh I wanna be with you everywhere," Fleetwood Mac murmur from the car speakers. Frederick holds his breath, and turns his hand palm up to lace their fingers together.

It's the longest drive he's ever been on.