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“Isn’t it a little morbid?”
“A little?”
“Very,” Will corrects himself. “Isn’t it very morbid.”
Beverly glances around from where she sits perched on the edge of an autopsy table, festive blue tights keeping her legs warm from the cold metal. “It’s just an office,” she answers, taking a sip of her drink with no betrayal to her matter-of-fact tone but the glint of amusement in her eyes.
“It’s tradition,” Zeller adds, arm around Will’s shoulder. “You should feel honored -”
“- an ancient tradition, really, to celebrate the turning of the seasons amongst the dead,” Jimmy chimes in, and Will arches a brow as he follows Zeller to the punch bowl kept - of course - on the sliding rack from one of the thankfully empty cold storage units.
“That can’t be sanitary,” Will snorts.
“Like hell we keep a dirty morgue,” responds Zeller, scooping Will a glass that he regards with distinct disinterest considering its source. He glances to Price again, though, and arches a brow.
“I’ve never heard that before. About the - the seasons, and the dead.”
“Oh, that’s because I just made it up.”
Will was invited, a special guest apparently, to join the forensics team for their own private holiday party. He had declined, declined, declined until the day of, and hadn’t managed to flee from Jack’s office fast enough before Beverly snared him to drag him down to their festivities. Just one drink, he had told her, he still had to get home to Wolf Trap and wanted to beat the snow, though he knew from her immediate assurance that this was agreeable, he’d be spending the night on her couch in the city.
He sighs, mentally wills an apology to his dogs who at least have the door to take themselves outside, and takes a sip.
In truth, of all the people in the building he could have been forced to spend the evening with pretending he cared about the festive season, the science team are the ones Will would have chosen had the other option been death. He drinks the punch and listens, Bev and Jimmy arguing whether or not the information he had just made up at all held merit in any culture. Brian just watches them with narrowed eyes, Will considers that perhaps he could have another glass of punch.
The entire party is, perhaps, simply because it’s Christmas eve. The FBI never closes, cases never end, and people keep dying, despite - or perhaps because of, if Jimmy’s new train of thought was to be believed - it being officially a holiday. Jack had gone home much earlier, excusing himself to spend time with Bella. The students had been let go a week before, those not as dedicated as some quite happily gone out of the city already.
Will wonders about Hannibal. Wonders if the man had gathered an entire house full of people to have an elaborate, crazy dinner. Some days Will wonders, to his own amusement, who it was that did the dishes after one of those, always assuming Hannibal would be too meticulous, too controlling to let anyone else do them for him. There would be piles. Piles of dishes. Will suddenly hopes the man isn’t spending the night before Christmas drying his ridiculously expensive bone-white china with a towel that has a thread count higher than his bed sheets.
“You’re not running away!” Bev calls, as Will makes his way to the doorway, and he waves her off. He won’t, despite part of him wanting to. He just wants to marvel at the emptiness of the corridors for a change, cleaners come and gone already. It’s oddly peaceful when it’s silent, pools of light against the thin carpet and down the walls. Will smiles, downs the rest of his punch and turns to return to the lab only to find his shoulder brushing against someone else.
“I had hoped to make it in before you returned from your reverie,” Hannibal comments, eyes narrowed in that silent smile he manages only when he is deeply pleased.
Will’s heart stutter-stops and stumbles faster, as he meets Hannibal’s gaze in passing. He looks then to his mouth, instead, one corner curled in the promise of a smile, and it hardly helps clear the hum from Will’s ears. “But you’ve got dishes to do,” Will remarks, closing his eyes in a moment of transparent agony as the words refuse to return to his mouth.
“Do I?” asks Hannibal, genuinely curious.
“I was just thinking -”
“About my dishes.”
“About your parties,” Will answers.
“About me,” Hannibal corrects, letting it hang for a moment before adding, “doing dishes.”
It’s only then that Will hears the flurry of scheming from behind him, and he tilts his head towards them without meeting the eyes that he knows are settled on him. On the doctor.
On them both.
“What?” Will asks, and the murmurs clear as Bev coughs pointedly. He looks towards her, follows her nod back across the room, and sees the round-leafed, white-berried lock of shrubbery tied neatly above the door. His lips part for a moment, dismayed that he hadn’t noticed - faltering, perhaps, in his observation now that he was looking at a brief respite away from doing that work over the holidays - and then, unceremoniously, Will snorts and turns to get more punch.
There is a flurry of discontent from the three scientists, flailing arms and gentle shoving to get Will back into the doorway where Hannibal remains patiently, waiting, perhaps, to see how this unfolds without his intervention.
“I want more punch.”
“You said it was unsanitary, you can’t just change your mind now.”
“Well is it?”
“What?”
“Unsanitary?”
“It’s sanitary enough.”
“Well enough.”
“Guys,” Will releases a breath, eyes narrowed, lips pursing. “Enough. Come on. It’s a stupid thing someone made up when they got lonely one Christmas.”
“Actually,” Jimmy gestures, punch in one hand, the other free… enough. “It’s possible the tradition originated in the ancient Babylonian or Assyrian empire, where single women would wait beneath the plant by the temple for the goddess of beauty and love, and bonded with the first man who approached them.”
“...single women.”
“That would mean I had to kiss Brian,” Will raises an eyebrow, “or better yet, Bev, since she brought me through the door first.”
“You can’t kiss Brian, I kissed Brian.” This from Jimmy, the other man brings a hand to his face and rubs his eyes in exasperation but he’s smiling.
“Is there a rule against a person kissing more than one other beneath the plant?” Hannibal asks, and Will turns to him with narrowed eyes as Hannibal just settles his smile to something soft and entirely too damned endearing.
“If you believe that the practice came, instead, from ancient Norse mythology, then the plant would not be limited to bringing people close to simply one other. The plant was declared to bring love rather than death to the world, by the Goddess Frigg, after Baldr was almost killed by it, an unfortunate incident, and people have since kissed beneath it to obey her.”
“That one I like much better,” Will mumbles, but finds that he is still denied his chance to leave the doorway as Bev pushes him back.
“Go on then.”
Will can’t settle his eyes on Hannibal at all now, let alone on his mouth that he knows - knows - is still curved into that same infuriatingly charming smile. “What if someone came through the door with a body?” Will challenges, moving to take a sip but finding his cup still woefully empty.
“The more you protest, the more interesting this gets,” Brian answers.
“I could just leave.”
“See what I mean?” Brian mutters to Jimmy, who nods his agreement, brows lifted.
Their point is made, and Will feels his cheeks darken blotchy red and miserable. It shouldn’t be a big deal. He should have just done something ‘silly’ or ‘cute’ and been done with it and he probably shouldn’t have come down here at all and he certainly shouldn’t have been imagining Hannibal to such an extent already and he should, really, just never leave Wolf Trap again.
“Fuck,” Will sighs, turning towards Hannibal to brush a kiss - very European - across his cheek. Hannibal, for all intents and purposes seeming entirely unintentional in attempting the same maneuver, just so happens to turn just enough to just bring their mouths together.
Will makes a helpless sound, glad that over the clapping no one can hear it.
No one but Hannibal.
Hannibal’s whose lips are still closed against Will’s own.
As if, perhaps, they were in the kitchen together. Shirtsleeves up to their elbows - Will’s shoved, Hannibal’s folded - with hands newly dry from finishing the mountain of dishes that await after the guests have left. Hannibal kisses Will first, just a gentle thing with the backs of his fingers against Will’s scruffy cheek, but it’s been a long day and Will wants nothing more than sink into the older man, free hand grasping around the back of Hannibal’s neck and tongue parting his lips. Quiet, instead of raucous applause - alone, instead of with their co-workers watching.
Will’s imagination isn’t always a curse.
But why he decides to obey his mind today, right then, is beyond him, and Will can feel the short strands of hair at the back of Hannibal’s neck, the way they curl just gently when the rest of his hair remains stoically straight. He can feel the way the taller man relaxes against him, allows the kiss and welcomes it, and for a moment more the clapping and hooting doesn’t matter, because this is good, this is nice. This beats the dead people punch.
They break the kiss only because they need air, the dizziness, though welcome, bordering on dangerous and the last thing Will needs is to end up beneath the man on the floor. At least this floor. And here. Otherwise the positioning he may not argue against so much.
“Damn,” Bev grins, and Will feels all the sound, the situation, and the heat in his cheeks hit him all at once. He struts past them all to get more punch, for no other reason than to put distance between himself and the door. And perhaps get more alcohol in him so that he can do it again if Hannibal’s still there when Will makes his escape.
“An interesting tradition I must say I have never partaken in before,” Hannibal comments, and there is, to Will’s delight, a slight color to his cheeks as well. He directs his smile down and Will finally notices the bags at his feet, filled, no doubt, with food, meticulously prepared and delicious. “I’m afraid I cannot stay, but I couldn’t allow the season to pass without thanking the team that helps this machine run.”
“Hell yes!” Brian is all too happy to take the bags, thank the doctor with a handshake from among them. Jimmy salutes him, Bev offers a hug that she finds accepted, to her surprise and apparently pleasure.
“You won’t stay?” Will asks, finds that smile he had initially seen directed at him again.
“I’m afraid preparing a meal, any meal, leaves rather a few dishes to tend to, afterwards.”
Will grins before he can stop himself, washing it away with a swallow of punch, and letting his gaze settle on Hannibal’s shoulders. “You’re going to spend Christmas eve doing dishes?” He asks. “I knew it.”
“Perhaps not the entire eve,” answers the older man, fingers slipping along the lapel of his coat to smooth where Will had grabbed it. “Certainly, with assistance, it would take only half as long, and I might be able to stay a little longer.”
When their eyes meet, it’s only for a moment, but Will can feel still the softness of Hannibal’s lips parting for him, the patient press of his tongue in response to Will’s unraveled desire. He sucks his bottom lip into his mouth and remarks, almost absently, “I’m not going to be able to drive tonight if I finish this.”
“Then it seems we’ve reached an agreement - quid pro quo,” muses Hannibal, before leaning just a little closer to Will to whisper: “But when we get there, be sure to mind the mistletoe.”