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Hannibal supported Will back to their Buenos Aires apartment, one of Will’s tan arms heavy around Hannibal’s neck. Will turned his face into Hannibal’s shoulder, breathing heavily, and Hannibal all but kicked the front door down. He heard the lock snap out of place under his foot. Will’s hot breath on the fabric of his sweater distracted him.
“How do you feel, Will?” Hannibal asked, settling Will in his favorite armchair while Hannibal sought out their first aid kit in the attached kitchen. Will rolled his head along the back of the seat to grin at Hannibal, blood on his teeth.
“Alive,” Will answered. He yawned, and his eyes slipped shut; Hannibal strode across the room and pinched the skin of Will’s neck, and Will jumped, grasping feebly for him. Hannibal brushed his hands aside. With the first aid kit settled on Will’s low side table, Hannibal forced Will’s head up and to the side. Will panted, air puffing out over Hannibal’s large palm.
“Will, you have to calm down,” Hannibal instructed, unbuttoning Will’s ruined flannel to reveal the torn t-shirt underneath. He started to carefully remove the bloody tatters of the shirt, inch by gory inch. He could hear Will’s three dogs pawing from inside their closed bedroom door, scratching with stubbed nails at the wood.
“Is it bad?” Will asked, letting his head loll to the side. His eyes dropped down. “Oh.”
“It is not so bad that we can’t fix it,” Hannibal replied, and Will’s gaze flicked back up to him, to the agitated shadow that shaded his face, to the downward tilt held in the corners of his mouth. His shoulders were coiled, tension written into the sharp, rigid lines his body formed as he sat on the ottoman and stripped away the last of the shirt-turned-rag. Will ran a vague, shaky hand across Hannibal’s knee, skating it over the inside of his thigh, wherever he could reach. Hannibal ignored his wandering hands and started to clean away the excess blood to get to the crux of Will’s wounds.
“He was a good fighter,” Will commented, watching idly as Hannibal cleaned him. The pain was secondary to the dying adrenaline, still, and he could observe with a displaced interest as streak after streak was cleared on his tanned stomach. “Knew his way around a knife.”
“You should not be talking, Will.”
“You know what I think?” Will offered. Hannibal did not respond. Will clapped at his knee and let his head fall back, his eyes slipping shut. “I think you wanted a fight.”
“No.”
“Maybe you didn’t want me to get hurt, but you wanted a fight,” Will continued. His eyelids fluttered open, heavy, tired. Hannibal reached up and pinched his neck again, and Will slapped feebly at his hand. “I just got the short stick, didn’t I?”
“I believe our friend Ignacio drew the short stick,” Hannibal countered, elegant hands striking long and white against the rusty red of Will’s blood. Will snorted.
“You know what I meant.” Will turned his head again, shifting; Hannibal’s hands at his hips pinned him down. “You pretend that you don’t, but you always do.”
“I always do,” Hannibal agreed, cleaning away the last of the blood and examining the wounds. A couple of them were superficial, shallow, possibly not even in need of stitches; a couple more were deeper than that, damaging, and one possibly nicked a kidney. Another was still bleeding sluggishly, and Hannibal pressed one large hand over it while rifling through the box to his right.
“Ignacio could see you, in the last moments,” Will told him, and Hannibal’s eyes flicked back up to Will’s face. The corners of Will’s mouth tilted up, red and entertained. “He knew what you were.”
“A murderer?” Hannibal asked, if only to keep Will talking. Will studied his face, eyes skimming quickly from feature to feature.
“Everything,” Will answered. His eyes fell back down to watching Hannibal’s hands as he carefully removed bits of fabric and gravel from Will’s wounds. “He saw everything.”
“Was he afraid?” Hannibal asked. Will hesitated, then shook his head minutely.
“No,” Will said, slowly. “No, I don’t think so. I think it was more… relief.” Will shut his eyes and exhaled. “Relief. Relieved. He was relieved. I was… relieved.”
“My empath,” Hannibal murmured, and Will laughed, low in his throat. Hannibal removed a particularly tricky pebble, t-shirt fiber clinging to its side, and Will groaned.
“I wish I felt less,” Will told him, adrenaline falling out of him in waves, low tide ebbing at his ankles. The blood rushed out of his head. “Hannibal.”
“I am right here, Will,” Hannibal assured him. His hands were anchors, strong and steady, never shaking, never faltering, heavy and cold like metal against Will’s skin. Will watched his hands, hypnotized into silence as Hannibal moved, methodical. When the wounds were flushed, Hannibal began sanitizing, quickly, efficiently. Will breathed in and out with the even lifts and falls of Hannibal’s chest.
“You were not meant to get hurt, Will,” Hannibal began, softly, “and for that, I apologize.”
“You’re forgiven,” Will managed, voice a little choked. “Did you save him?”
“Pardon?”
“We had a reason,” Will reminded him. “Why we did it. Do you remember?”
“Of course,” Hannibal replied. His hands sanitized the last smiling edge of the longest slice, and his fingertips brushed the needle and thread as he lifted them up. “Why don’t you remind me, Will?”
“Why don’t I, Dr. Lecter?” Will said, twisting, groaning as he moved. Hannibal stilled him again. “Do you remember what he said to me?”
“I do,” Hannibal said, “with startling clarity.”
“Over-saturated clarity,” Will added, eyes slipping shut again. “He said I was a puto, a maricón, do you remember?”
“I do,” Hannibal repeated. “I was not pleased.”
“You were not,” Will agreed. “You asked what his name was, and he said it was Ignacio-”
“He said many things,” Hannibal interjected, and Will grinned in his direction, eyes still closed. Hannibal closed one wound with a small thread knot and moved to the next.
“Don’t interrupt, Hannibal,” Will scolded lightly. “It’s rude.”
“My apologies, Will,” Hannibal said, eyes smiling. Will squinted up at him.
“It’s okay,” Will said, sighing and shifting again. Hannibal’s hands halted him, froze him in place. “He said he was Ignacio, and you said, ‘I’m afraid you’ve been very rude, Ignacio.’”
Hannibal did smile, then, just a touch, in the corner of his lips, a puppeteer dragging one string upwards to make his doll seem happy. “That is not how I sound.”
“It’s pretty close.” Will turned his attention to their ceiling. There was a smear of something above his head. He needed to clean the place again. He would have time if he got laid up this time. “Once you said his name like that, I knew. I knew what we were going to do.”
“Did you object?” Hannibal inquired, neatly closing another wound. Will let his eyes drift shut once more.
“Not as much as I should have,” Will admitted. “Not anymore.” A confession, here, as Hannibal bent over him and Will saw God behind his eyelids, God seated on an ottoman before him, God powerful, ready to drop his church roof. “Did you save him?”
“Save him?” Hannibal asked, drawing straight lines with thread across the penultimate deep wound’s stitches. “I’m afraid I do not follow.”
“Save him,” Will repeated, as if that clarified. “So we can use every part of him.” He sighed, chest rising and falling shallowly. Hannibal hesitated in his work, then placed one hand over Will’s heavy heart. The lifts of Will’s chest displaced Hannibal’s hand easily, and Will grinned at the heat-on-heat. “Abigail would’ve liked that.”
Hannibal paused; he resumed his work after a beat of Will’s heart. “Yes, I believe she would have.”
“Stitch me up,” Will instructed blearily, his voice slurring together. Hannibal pinched him again, and Will swatted him away. “Quit that. Knock that off.”
“My apologies,” Hannibal offered. Will dropped his head in a semblance of a nod. He tied off the last wound. “There. You will be right as rain by morning.”
“I think it is morning,” Will argued, turning his head towards the window and narrowing his eyes in an effort to see a sun that had not yet risen. “Can I sleep now?”
“If you’d like,” Hannibal allowed, and Will smiled.
“Will you be there when I wake up?” Will asked, and Hannibal nodded, though Will had already closed his eyes once more.
“Always,” Hannibal assured him, and Will’s mouth twisted, half-smile, half-something else, something that painted his features in the daylight, something Hannibal could not name, or perhaps did not want to. Even God gave man free will.
“Always,” Will echoed. His breathing slipped into an easier pattern, even, chest steadying under Hannibal’s palm as he fell into sleep. Hannibal slid one arm under Will’s knees and another under his back before easily lifting him from his armchair. He took him to their bedroom, the door of which slid open once he hooked a finger in it and cracked it out of the way. The three dogs all came skidding out around him, but at one sharp command from Hannibal, they fell quiet and sat down in the doorway.
Hannibal laid Will carefully in their bed, divesting him of his shoes and bloodied clothes, leaving him bare, save for the bandages that Hannibal now smoothed over his skin and stitching. Will groaned, and Hannibal had a hand in his hair, lips at Will’s temple, shushing him. Will’s fingers wrapped around Hannibal’s wrist. Hannibal drew back from him, pushing his curls of hair away from his sleeping face. He tugged fingers through the knots in Will’s hair, and Will did not stir again, falling deeper into sleep the more Hannibal ran skin over skin.
“Sleep well,” Hannibal murmured, low. One of the dogs in the doorway whined. Hannibal let himself smile.