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The sea is warmer than I expect. I expect the feeling of a hundred or a thousand knives all over my body as we break the surface. I merely feel a gentle antiseptic sting in my wounds, as if it were an immense bath of Epsom salts to cleanse and soothe my injuries. The urge to slide under the deafening roar and warmth, to become fish food with Will, is impossibly tempting. I want to give in. I nearly do, but something in my chest constricts and I’m compelled to fight toward the surface.
Internal cardiac massage. A relatively rare technique now, but in cardiac arrest, one may open the chest cavity and manually stimulate the heart with one or both hands. Perhaps this is what it feels like.
I would only have this revelation later, while likely cracking several of Will’s ribs under my fists on the rocky shore. This wasn’t right, wasn’t fair. I had turned on my heel as the bluff turned to nothing under my feet, turned my back to face the house so I would hit the water first. Two types of salt water stream down my face and mix bitterly in my mouth when I lean down to press my lips to his. Time stretches out horribly long and slow before me unlike any emergency room or operating suite I’d ever been in and I consider climbing back up to the edge when he finally coughs up a foul mix of sea water, blood, and bile. I pull him close and he’s warm, hot even, pulse erratic against my fingers as they tangle in his hair.
Stupid. So fucking stupid. I thought I lost you forever. I don’t risk speaking it aloud. I’m not sure I could. My breath in the crook of his neck amid the rags of his shirt says it for me.
I’m sorry. Sorry sorry sorry. Each sluggish movement of his fists in my sweater repeats the word.
I pet his hair. I know, I know. I’m sorry too.
I pull both of us to standing through a long, excruciating process of stumbles, cries of pain, shaking knees that shouldn’t work but somehow do. The house is a black hulking mass against the stars high above us. We glance at it, then each other. I attempt to catalogue our injuries. My right side, his cheek and collarbone. Likely more that neither of us know of but will be vital to discover later. Will had hissed when I’d helped him up. His left ankle, then, hopefully just sprained. Together we should be able to avoid any lingering authorities.
Neither of us attempt to speak on the trek up. There will be days, months, years (I pray) ahead to speak. It’s slow going— certain parts of the bluff are steeper than others, and our lungs are still clogged with the Atlantic. Will’s cheek whistles faintly in my ear despite both of our attempts to drown it out with labored pants. We use each other for balance, gaining more purchase as the blood and brine give us a tack to grip onto. We dart behind trees at the sound of every twig snapping just a little too loudly for our over-sensitive ears, pressing ourselves so close I imagine I can hear his heartbeat in my ear until the moment’s passed.
When we make it to the house, we find what must be miles of striped tape fluttering in the wind like clashing May Day ribbons. The front door will be taped shut. It’s more steps to the master bathroom that way than from the back door. I look to Will.
Salt coats his lashes, his curls. He meets my gaze and his eyes are black as the sea and brighter than the moon. I lace my fingers with his silently and lead us back to the patio. He doesn’t linger over the tacky pools of black blood, not even the smears and splatters. We cut the tarp with a piece of nearby glass, and step into the house without a backward glance. I feel Will’s grip tighten in mine as he scopes the remains of the room.
He could be waiting. He still holds the glass in his hand, white-knuckled and ready. I smirk at the thought of having to stitch his hand too.
We move to the kitchen as one, only separating for the moments it takes to find any large knives and take quick drinks of alcohol the FBI did not confiscate yet. We canvass the house slowly, not satisfied until every cupboard and pantry is decidedly Jack Crawford-free.
We end in the master bathroom and reluctantly turn on a few lights. I attempt to rifle through the lower cabinets, but the pain in my side makes it an excruciating task. The shock is wearing off with lightheadedness quick on it’s heels.
“Black bag,” I whisper, pointing. I know he’ll understand. The words rasp out as if I have a mouthful of gauze and gravel. Will retrieves it from the second cabinet he opens, groaning as he reaches with his right arm. My hands impulsively reach for his waist of their own accord. I’m shocked when he doesn’t react, when he lets me lead him to the rug in front of the bathtub.
It hurts worse than the bullet wound throbbing in my side to leave him sitting there, head buried in his arm, as I walk just a few steps back to the counter. I keep shooting glances at him as I fill a glass with water and down it, then fill it again before passing it to Will. He drinks the glass I gave him and fills another from the bathtub tap while I scrub at my hands.
The roar of the sink is oceanic, deafening. I’m tempted to turn it off but I’m stuck, paralyzed in my mind. I can only scrub at my hands and under my nails until the skin turns pink and blooms with scratch marks.
I start emptying the contents of the bag onto the counter, picking what I think I might need, until I realize how fruitless the effort is and I sweep everything back into the bag. I grab towels from the linen closet, mindful of Will’s eyes on me. The bag and towels land at his feet with a soft thud; I lower myself next to him far less gracefully.
An orange pill bottle, syringe, vial. Nothing should be too far out of date, even if it has been awhile.
Will reaches for the bottle while I fill the syringe. “Antibiotics?”
His voice is hardly a whisper as well, muffled by the air passing through his cheek.
“And morphine,” I present the syringe.
His jaw clenches at the sight with a slight dribble of blood. Of course. I push my sleeve up, shaking as much caked grime off as possible. I lock eyes with Will as I make a fist, uncap the syringe, and slowly slide it into the nearest vein. The morphine is a near-instant balm that covers me in undulating waves with a sigh. When I open my eyes, Will is silently staring at me, inscrutable until I remove the syringe from the vial again and move toward him. He presents his arm without comment. Watching the same cool relief wash over him amplifies my own. I could momentarily forget I was on the verge of death hours ago.
I attempt to remove my sweater in a flurry of dried blood and blinding flashes of pain. A pair of hands and the cold of trauma shears brushes my skin, raising gooseflesh along my neck as the sweater is gently cut off and discarded. Warm washcloths and towels begin to join the sweater in a damp, pink heap, along with discarded bottles of saline and gauze.
“You should go first, It’s more serious,” Will says, as I reach for the suture kit. “I can help, if you need me to.”
I’m pinned to the spot. It was less of a suggestion and more of a command.
“We will do the exit wound together. The entry shouldn’t need anything.”
Laying my head across Will’s lap to give him a better angle has my head spinning in more ways than one. He swallows, needle driver and forceps in hand.
“You know I don’t know how to do this.”
I risk gazing up at him. His eyes shrouded in worry are worth the spell of dizziness. “It’s like tying lures, Will. I trust your hands are steady enough.”
I talk him through the process, explaining how I only need a few stitches surrounding the wound while the cold metal of the forceps and driver rest on my skin. Once our impromptu lesson is over, I place my hands near the first spot and look to Will expectantly. He offers a sharp inhale in return. I watch him as he pushes the needle in. It’s a foreign object in my body, nothing more, as Will begins to slide into the comfortable rhythm known to those of us who do delicate work with our hands.
His stitches are uncannily superb for one who just had the concept explained. My hand slips from my middle to rest against his thigh as any remaining reservations I still held about decorum slacken and slip away. Each suture burns. It’s quite pleasant, really. A steady reminder that we are alive, and together. It keeps me here with him, my head above water. Being exposed to him like this is nice, I think. He could kill me, if he wished. A million different ways, all impossibly creative. Jam the needle driver into the bullet hole to catch me off guard, then the forceps into my carotid artery. Maybe choke me and bash my head into the tub or toilet if it wasn’t quick enough. Will never minded playing dirty. And I’d let him, I’m certain of it. It would be an honor to die by his hand now, if he wanted it.
I remember when he killed Randal Tier. Intimate, he’d said. Would he want intimacy if he killed me? Even more than with Tier? I feel exposed at the thought and fight off a shiver. I’m aware of the acute sensation of Will’s forearms resting against my torso: one on my hip bone, the other across my stomach. His elbow brushes against my chest, the wiry gray hairs there still caked in salt and blood.
His brow furrows, squinting at the knot he’s meant to be creating. It gives me an intense longing for pencil and paper, or at least a camera to capture a photo to sketch from later. Will’s injured cheek is turned from me, but brown-red blood still forms a gorgeous painting down his throat where it meets the patches at his collarbone. For anyone else but us, it looks like a grotesque, unfortunate accident. I find the truth far more artistic and beautiful.
A while in, he goes to push his hair from his face, but I catch his wrist just in time.
“Let me.” I reach up and tuck his matted hair behind his ears as securely as possible, revelling in the chance to touch him so gently for even a moment. I could pretend this was another world if I tried hard enough— one where we were in Florence, on a terrace, wine-drunk, with Abigail practicing piano floating through the house. I offer a small smile as I let my hand drop back down.
The quiet burning resumes, until Will finishes the last suture with a soft, “done.”
He eases me to sitting and I inspect his work. “In another life Will, you could’ve been a doctor.”
He laughs at this, coughing blood when it places strain on his cheek. I pet his hair back, wiping away the fresh blood with a damp cloth.
“I’m sorry,” I say as he starts unbuttoning his shirt. Like my sweater, we do it together, gently snowing salt and blood on the tiles with each snip of the scissors. His cheek will be particularly painful for him and difficult for me, so I decide to start with his chest. He seems to know this before I say it, or like me, he dreads his cheek too.
“Should I lie down like you did?” He raises his eyebrows at the end, a physical marker of his question.
“No.” I turn to fish out more clean rolls of gauze and sutures. “Unless you’d like to.” He silently eases into my lap in response, reversing our earlier position.
“Tell me if it hurts,” I say, giving him a silent count before starting the first stitch.
He lets out a low breath, but nothing more. If I were to look at his face, he would certainly be working his jaw in pain. He can feel it. He won’t admit it until he’s screaming bloody murder, so never. I suppose I get to attempt to set some sort of personal record for quickest suturing— while high on morphine. I wonder if an honor from the AMA exists for such a thing.
“You are staring at me.” I meet his eyes, hair still filthy and throat still speckled with blood. If I could only see his eyes, I would think he was simply studying me, and I might be reading to him some book of Latin treatises or Italian poetry— Cicero or Dante, perhaps.
“I like watching you work.”
God-fucking-damn it.
My next stitch comes out ever so slightly uneven, and I half-wish Will was a corpse so I could rip it out and do it again.
“This is not my work.” Start another stitch. He hardly notices the needle now. “Not anymore, you know this.”
“Like riding a bike, doctor Lecter?”
Christ. Does he want it shoddy or liable to infection?
The needle enters the other side of his skin. I can’t look at him with the heat spreading across my chest and throat. I instantly hate my shirtlessness and wish for something to cover myself. Will’s hand is resting near my hip, indecently close. I hate that he chose to lay across my lap, and now he attempts to joke with me. I hate that the dragon stabbed him on his chest, so close to his beautiful throat and face and lip and eyes, though perhaps I’m glad I don’t have to face the memories of my brashness again at the moment.
I flick my eyes to his. He is alert, warm under my hands. “Yes. Quit speaking, you’ll make your cheek worse.”
He leaves me to work in comfortable silence, thankfully closing his eyes for the remainder of his stitches. The dragon’s knife was short and small, and a straight knife wound is far easier for me than an exit wound for Will, but he seems surprised when I rouse him.
“Are you certain you don’t want more morphine?” I ask while gently rinsing his cheek with saline. “This will be harder than the first one.”
He holds my gaze. “I want to feel it.”
I could kiss him. Of course he does, my unpredictable, impulsive Will.
I nod, giving him the rest of the saline and instructing him to use it as a rinse. He winces with the contact and the movement for several moments before spitting into the toilet. I motion for him to place his head in my lap, adjusting him until we’re both comfortable. I wait again, giving him a silent count off. He breathes hard through his nose and I regret the morphine making me slow.
I stop. He should choose. “Do you want it hardly noticeable or ugly?”
He swallows and his response vibrates against my forearm. “It won’t be ugly, Hannibal. Your work never is. Just fix me up, don’t worry about perfection.”
I’m no fool. I know the work he truly means. And yet… he likes it? He thinks it’s beautiful? God help me.
I’m thankful he cannot see me and the tears welling in my eyes. I keep them from falling with a few blinks, but I cannot push down the swelling feeling unfurling in my chest. It feels like hot broth in winter, bourbon in front of the fire with a friend, the last therapy appointment of the evening that isn’t supposed to be therapy. I do the dermal sutures quickly, ignoring any mistakes, then follow them with loose surface sutures. He’ll like the messier look of them, and it should still heal fairly well.
I clear my throat. “All done.”
He sits up and runs his fingers over the raised skin and rough nylon.
“Thank you, doctor,” he smirks, wincing with the pull at his cheek.
“You’re welcome,” I reply. I’m startled by how low my voice is. “Give it time, and it should heal, but expect a scar.”
I lean in close, running my fingers over the black lines. “Not my best work, but it was an emergency for a very special patient.”
“Scars can become neutral, even positive reminders over time,” Will answers, turning his head to meet my eyes. He’s incredibly close now, closer than I realized.
“Tell me if this hurts,” he whispers, and before I know it, the soft fever of his lips are on mine.
His hands are warm when one coils around my waist and the other holds the back of my head as he slants our heads to fit together. The porcelain of the tub is ice cold on my back. Will’s touch is a furnace, something to lean into and know it’s ardent and true. I push down a chuckle as his tongue skates across my teeth. I fight the surge of curiosity to see what the inside of his cheek might feel like against my own tongue. The thought sends something like a wild hunger tearing through me. He’ll certainly be taking those antibiotics if we’re going to be doing this while we recover.
I feel the soft, low growl rise in Will’s mouth so much as hear it and I’m reminded of how he looked on the patio, crouched and covered in blood, like a wild animal, a beast. Damn him.
I tilt my head and open my mouth a little more. I go slowly, lightly, the way one might feel at the gum where a loose tooth once was. I feel Will shiver and hum as the tip of my tongue brushes the stitched cut. His hands run over my face, my hair, my neck, shoulders, back (avoiding the branding), hips (avoiding the bullet wound).
Yes, he says in this way, that was fine, that was good, even. If I had never understood anything unspoken from him before this moment, I understood that.
One of his hands stays on my face, running through my hair with his thumb stroking small rhythms across my cheekbone when I reluctantly make us part. I gather him close to my chest, desperate for his warmth, his nearness, and bury my head in his good shoulder while his arms wind around my middle.
“Hannibal.” He says it like that day in the Palermo crypts, like a prayer.
I kiss his shoulder. “Will?” I risk looking up. “You? Me? Like this?”
“Yes,” he laughs, brushing the hair from my eyes. “Yes, Hannibal, Yes. Since… I don’t know. A long time. I just didn’t even know it.”
“Oh, Will,” I pull him to me, knotting my fingers in his hair and filling my nose with the scent of the sea, saline water, gauze.
We stay entwined on the bathroom floor for a long time, until our fingers are knotted in each other’s hair, until the chill of the tile is seeping into our bones and we can no longer keep each other warm.
“We should bathe, then rest.” My voice sounds strange even to myself as it’s muffled in Will’s shoulder. I feel him shift, the sound of skin on skin and joints in motion in my ear.
We help each other up again, a grim parallel to hours ago. This time, I hope the water we enter together is warmer. I toe off my shoes and socks and start on my trousers when Will’s hand clamps on my wrist, startlingly vice-like for our state.
“I’m a doctor,” I blink, “It’s nothing to me. I won’t look.”
He raises his eyes. They’re the sea during a storm, roiling with exhaustion and drugs, but nevertheless he nods. I convince him to take a dose of antibiotics with me while the water warms, then we help each other strip down.
Just as I’m about to step in, Will silently walks toward the light switch and flicks them down until only the shower itself is illuminated. We sigh and relax our shoulders simultaneously, and at the realization we’d mimicked one another, we smile.
“Thank you,” I say when we’re under the hot stream of the shower.
“We’ve been to each other’s houses,” he responds, taking a bar of soap. “It’s clear both of us prefer softer lighting to harsh overheads.”
We approach the peak of the morphine as the water starts turning clear underneath our feet again and our bodies burn. Under the spray of water so hot it should’ve scalded us both, we find ourselves holding on to one another to merely stand, just as we had on the bluff.
Our closeness and nakedness does not seem mutually exclusive at this moment, not even as we dry each other with the remaining clean towels. I suppose things like modesty no longer matter when you are one and the same person. Or, high on enough morphine not to care. But, I do want to care. I find myself cataloging the details of Will: how droplets in between his shoulder blades outline the bruises already blooming in dark violets and maroons, the way his curls drip with clean freshwater, and droplets collect at his throat near his collarbone.
I wish I could capture him like this in pencils, forever. I think I do care— about this, him. I think I care about being naked and close and high on painkillers and adrenaline and the fact that Will Graham is also those things just inches from me, and he wants to be. At least I hope he wants to be.
“What are you staring at?” he asks, lowering his towel in front of himself.
“Do you remember what I told you in the Uffizi?” I whisper. I dare not speak any louder.
Will nods, glancing at the floor. “You’d remember me like that always.”
“Yes,” I clear my throat and quickly pray he doesn’t notice the tears in my eyes. “I’ve changed my mind. I will remember you like this now, or perhaps tomorrow morning when the sunlight cuts across your face. I’ll decide then, or maybe not. We have forever.”
He looks up at me. “Hannibal,” he says, and strokes my face. I close my eyes. Is this what he felt all those years ago in the kitchen? My God, no wonder. I should’ve kissed him then.
“Let’s go to bed and maybe you can decide sooner?” he smiles, leading me toward the bed with the ghost of his fingers on my cheek.
That night, Will doesn’t wake once. He keeps his arm firmly over my middle, chin tucked in the crook of my neck and chest pressed to my back. Any hints of dawn’s first light and fears of the FBI it might bring are hours away. I sleep soundly for the first time in three and a half years with the crash of the sea in my ears and Will Graham at my side.