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There was a quietness that filled Will’s head since the snow. An emptiness that sat behind his eyes and hung heavy on his shoulders. Jack had taken Will into police custody, he had questioned him, he had begged to know why. Why Hannibal Lecter turned himself in? After all of this. The answer was clear from the doctor’s words to Will, on his knees, hands behind his head. I want you to know where I am at all times. It was petty, it was loud and rattling and annoying and so Hannibal. So Will turned his brain off. He let it be quiet.
“You realize we can’t keep you on here anymore.” Jack had started that evening when he came into his office to find Will still there, empty and hovering like he had nothing left. Will nodded. “Go home. Go get your dogs.” Will stared at the wall. He missed his dogs.
“I don’t have my car, Jack.” It was back in Wolftrap. Jack sighed.
“Stay at my place tonight, I’ll drive you home tomorrow.”
The car ride was quiet. The snow was shining and beautiful and it made Will want to throw up. He couldn’t think, no matter how hard he tried to pry any emotion open, it was gone. The warm air of Jack’s heating hit Will’s face, he was empty.
“I know the last time it didn’t exactly work out, but I think you should go to someone.” Therapy. He almost scoffed. Jack glanced at him. “I mean it, Will. You deserve help, to talk it out, whatever. I’m not your boss, I can’t force you, but you deserve it.” Will nodded, mainly to end the conversation. He didn’t need anyone.
There was this warm feeling in Will’s chest, for a few months. The memory of the places Hannibal had touched him. Held him, hurt him. His gunshot wound healed horridly, unlike the smiling scar on his stomach. Sometimes, when Will let the shower run too hot, that warm feeling felt suffocating. Too close. Hannibal Lecter lived too close.
Maybe that warm feeling is what made him attend service. He barely listened to the priest talk, focused more on the feeling of the kneelers digging into his knees. Jack had told him to see someone. Get help. This was helping him plenty. That empty feeling in his bones went away in the pews, they went away when he plucked through the red bibles to find a verse that made his nerves tingle. He didn’t believe in God, not in the way they did. He just wanted to feel close to someone else.
A year after the snow, the priest approached Will after a service. He was alone, in the back, staring at the open altarpiece. It was open for Christmas and Will noticed the long neck of Christ reaching towards the heavens: begging his Father to come home.
“Will, correct?” The priest, Father Walters, had asked, startling Will out of his gaze. Will nodded politely as he avoided Father Walters’ eyes. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.” The man smiled, he was nice. His voice lulled Will into a peace that replaced the quiet, a nice short of silence. “May I sit?” Will nodded again, and then spoke.
“Yes, of course. Sorry, I’m not much of a talker.” Father Walter shrugged as he sat down. He looked at the altar and then to Will.
“You should come to confession sometime Will before all the anger inside you overflows.” Will stared back at the man, with mild confusion. “Or, if that’s too scary, maybe try to engage with the people here. I know you have quiet a few dogs, I’m sure someone here would like to take them on a walk with you. Reach out, Will. God doesn’t want you to be alone forever. That’s no way to live.” His old gunshot wound pounded for a moment, and Will held back a scoff. Jack was haunting him.
“I’m not much of a people person, these days,” Will said, trying to keep his voice steady and polite. The Father nodded and smiled at his palms.
“If the foot says, “Because I am not a hand, I am not a part of the body,” it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body.” That made Will smile despite himself, it made the pain from his healed gunshot wound leak into that warm feeling in his skin.
“1 Corinthians 12:15.” Father Walters nodded. “You are good at your job.” That made them both laugh a little.
“I can tell that you have been hurt, but is that not what calls you here? To the Lord? You are here for a reason, Will, and I am here to guide you when you cannot hear our Father’s calls.” The chapel was empty now, as Father Walters stood and smiled down at Will. “Pray.” And Will was left alone, returning to the digging wood in his knees and the clasp of his hands. He wasn’t called here because of their father, he knew, but he knew he couldn’t stop praying.
“What are you thinking about?” Maybe Father Walter had been right about finding someone to walk his dogs with, he was grateful. That didn’t mean Will had ever gone to confession, nor attended church much anymore. Six months had passed since then, since Will had remembered the three graces in the angels who welcomed Christ in the altarpiece. He read that red bible so many times, he had asked Father Walters if he could take it home. It lived in his bedside table drawer since Molly had confessed she didn’t really believe in God either.
“Nothing,” Will responded, turning to look at her. He admired the way her hair was falling into her face and how her eyes traced his face with a gentle smile. She just shook her head and reached a hand out to hold his face.
“You have this look in your eyes sometimes like you wanna say something but you’re worried God is listening.” Will smiled, Molly felt his cheeks move under her hand. He looked away from her eyes, letting that warm feeling envelop him.
“We should get married.” It had been about three months since they had kissed in the dog park where Winston had the best time, it had been two and a half months since Molly told Will about Wally’s dad, it had been two months since Molly had thrown Will into his bed laughing and climbed on top of him grinning, it had been a month and a half since Molly had left Wally at Will’s for the day because she had to take a shift at work, it had been a month since Will had told her that he loved her over breakfast. Molly sat up and stared at Will with big eyes.
“You’re crazy.” Will just laughed, pulling her on top of him and guiding her hands to his stomach where the curved scar burned hot with that feeling. The feeling that he had been begging to replace, the feeling that tied him too closely to his past. Christ had nails hammered through his hands to connect him to the cross in the same way that Hannibal’s hands connected Will to his body. Hannibal was too close, he wanted Molly closer.
“We should get married, we should find a house in the woods where the dogs can explore, and near a lake so we can work on the boats.” Molly pressed her hands into his stomach till it hurt and pressed her forehead to his.
“Will, we’ve been dating for three months.” She was so warm, so real, so close.
“You ruin me, Molly. You make me sick, and hot all over, and I want to live within you and I want it to be us. I don’t want you to go back home, I don’t want to only see Wally on weekends, I want you to hold me too close.” And maybe, deep down, he knew whose feet he was truly praying at, but Molly’s eyes were so blue and he wanted to be crashing in the waves with her because she was holding him like he was real. Like she wanted to sip him in and cradle him to his chest, and it felt normal. It felt normal and good.
“Yes. Okay, yes. Let’s get married.”
***
Hannibal stood in their kitchen, their small cramped plastic countertop kitchen, shirtless in the summer heat. The glass of water in his hands was the coldest thing in the house, he sipped from it pleasantly. Like life was good. Life was quiet, but not empty. Will’s bones were achingly full- in a way they hadn’t been in years. Maybe Hannibal was torturing him, in the same petty way he had three years ago.
“Do you know how much I gave up?” Will said from the doorway, where he was leaning. The days blurred together, Will sat at the beach. Paced, fished, felt the aches in his body until he couldn’t think, picked at dinner, wondered how they could have been so close on that cliffside, and how they were so distant now. He wanted to punch Hannibal, he wanted to claw his chest open, he wanted that feeling in his bed with Molly: The misdirected warm feeling his chest refused to feel for anyone but Hannibal. I want you to hold me too close. He had announced to her eyes, her perfection, her life. Now all he wanted was to be crashing into Hannibal until they were nothing but a pile of broken body parts and blood. Why couldn’t they have died in those waves?
“You couldn’t escape me, no matter how much you distanced yourself from me.” Hannibal placed the glass down and looked at Will. “Did you try to kill us because you hated me for holding the love you should’ve felt for your wife? Or did you try to kill us because you hated yourself for that?” Will could never hate Hannibal, he had always thought his feelings were rooted in hatred but now, watching Hannibal live domestically within the same walls as him, he knew the hate boiled down into a never-ending love.
“I loved Molly,” Will said because he knew it true. “I just couldn’t remove you from me, no matter how I tried.” Hannibal hummed. No, it hadn’t been torture. It had been a lesson. Three years to learn that he couldn’t escape himself. Will felt that warm feeling in his stomach again.
“How did you self-medicate me away for three years?” They had avoided the topic, really. Nothing of the past three years mattered to Hannibal. Will had thrown them away, even when he didn’t regret them.
“Church,” Will said. He wouldn’t change it, he realized staring at Hannibal. He didn’t regret loving Molly, maybe he should. Maybe he should realize how much he hurt her in the end, how she could never have all of him in the way he had all of her. But he couldn’t, because he realized how good love felt. How good it could be to exist within someone, without the pain taking over. Hannibal and him became one, and that had scared him. Had horrified him into pushing Hannibal away. Maybe Father Walters had taught him that he didn’t need to be scared anymore. “Hannibal.” He said to the silence.
“Will.” He said back.
“We can’t survive separation.” Something bubbled in Will’s chest, something burning hot and making tears well in his eyes. “Please don’t keep us separate anymore, stop keeping me on a loose leash. I need you. I need to taste you, I need to love you, I need you to hold me too close until I break. I want to exist in your hands. I know I escaped, I know I ran, I know it’s my fault. But please, I would give anything for you to gut me again. I would do anything to be consumed whole. Please.” As his voice cracked and broke and gave way, he stood in the doorway unmoving. Begging for Hannibal to step into him.
“My dearest, Will,” Hannibal’s hands were on Will’s waist, guiding him into his body in seconds. Gripping tight and smelling in his ocean hair. “I was just waiting for you to ask.” They stayed there for a moment, as Will felt the warmth inside him explode and seep into his muscles and skin. Slowly, Will gripped Hannibal’s hip in his hand, moving their bodies so their hips were pressed together. His other hand pushed Hannibal’s face to the side and up so his neck was long and exposed. He sunk his teeth in, slathering his tongue over the teeth marks as he marked Hannibal’s neck. Will kissed along Hannibal’s jaw as he heard the older man whimper. It shot through his bones, and he realized something.
“You are mine,” Hannibal grunted and slide his hands up under Will’s shirt across his back, shoving them impossibly closer. Will leaned back. “You petty old man.” And it was true. Will’s clenched hands and bruised knees from praying to Hannibal, asking for forgiveness, and begging to be let free from his grasp. He had been begging for something impossible because he was not Hannibal’s. Hannibal didn’t control him, didn’t contain him. No. He was nothing without Will. Will grabbed Hannibal’s face and kissed him as best as he knew how, until Hannibal was nothing more than hot tea within his palms, getting drunk down.
“I am yours.”