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It was grey.
The sky was grey, and the sea. Hannibal’s stubble, too, that was grey, which was surprising. Will had never seen him unshaven, hadn’t even imagined it. That was a good sign, he felt, that maybe this was all real — the boat, the grey sky and the grey sea. Hannibal.
He stared at Hannibal’s grey cheek, this one piece of strangeness like an anchor in all the rest of it. He stared a bit longer, just for good measure. Will’s own cheek was stitched and sore and tight in the breeze. That was another good sign. I wouldn’t imagine myself in pain, Will thought.
That’s not true, Will thought.
He looked away at the waves.
Will’s stitches stood out stark in the grey light, a crimson black slice beneath his cheekbone. Hannibal knew it ached, he could tell by the way Will held his jaw. I wouldn’t imagine him in pain, Hannibal thought.
He looked at Will, looking at the waves, and pretended that were true.
::
“Do you think death could possibly be a boat?”
Hannibal looked up from the compass, considered.
“No. Death is not. Death isn’t. Death is the ultimate negative, to not be. You can’t not be on a boat.”
Will raised a brow, eyes still on the fish hook he was threading on a line. “I’ve frequently not been on boats.”
“No Will, what you’ve been, is not on boats.”
The corner of Will’s mouth tugged like he was on his own line. He didn’t know how to explain how he could feel Hannibal loving him, just that he felt it, a warmth like when you find a break in the wind, and he had no idea what to do about it.
Well, maybe he had already done it.
“We are on a boat,” Hannibal said suddenly.
“I know.” He didn’t.
“I mean, we are on a boat. Reality is merely that which is accepted by most people. And here, on this boat, we are all the people.” Hannibal looked pleased with himself.
“Yes. What I like boats, is the way they’re contained. One is safe on a boat. For a time. Relatively.”
Will looked out at the sea again. The wind pulled at his hair, and he closed his eyes. He seemed almost a part of it, in a way. The salt air, the grey water. Hannibal felt strangely bereft. He pushed down the urge to enfold Will in his arms. This part was exactly the same.
There was a tremor in Will’s hand. This, too, was the same.
The hook in his fingers glinted like a minnow in the light.
::
“I’m afraid—”
“So am I.”
“—I’m afraid this is real, Will.”
“I’m afraid it isn’t.”
“A scientific approach to the examination of a phenomena is a defence against the pure emotion of fear.” Hannibal went to adjust his cuffs, but remembered that he was just wearing an old sweater. He paused with his fingers on the knit, feeling more at a loss than he did at the start of his sentence, which was already considerably more than he was letting on. He assumed.
“What’s the first thing you remember?”
“Before you or after you?”
“No,” Will frowned. “That’s my line. Isn’t it?”
“Is it?”
“You and I have begun to blur.”
“Now that line’s yours.”
“I know it is. I know who I am.”
“Who do you think are?”
A strain of slightly ominous music drifted through the sails.
“Hannibal.”
“Will.”
“Do you hear music?”
“Usually.”
Will considered whether he really should kill him. “Do you hear this music?”
Hannibal sighed. “I was hoping that was not what you were asking.”
They looked at each other. Will raised his eyebrows. Hannibal raised his eyes. The music seemed to work itself out from between the sails, pulling free to thin and dissolve on the wind, flowing away into the mist.
“Would you care to examine that scientific phenomenon, Dr. Lecter?”
Hannibal kept peering closely at the sails. He tapped a finger against his chin, then examined the nail. “One curious scientific phenomenon is that the fingernails appear to grow after death. As does the beard.”
“Is that why you have stubble now.”
“Well also there isn’t a razor on this boat.”
::
The boat hung suspended in the grey air. Fog lapped the prow.
“We could flip for it,” Hannibal suggested, pulling a coin out of his pocket.
“Heads or tails?”
“Life or death.”
Will pulled a face. “Is it wise to bet with Charon’s due?” Hannibal felt suddenly indicted for numerous past crimes. He palmed the coin without mentioning to Will that what he had thought would be a quarter was, unaccountably, a peso. It would just upset him.
“Normally I can predict which people will pick.”
“Life or death?”
“Heads or tails. Though both would probably be accurate.”
Will cocked his head. “What have you predicted for me?”
“You know I could never entirely predict you, Will.”
A pause for the memory of a barn. Will lightly shook the sound of horses out of his ears, but he could still feel Hannibal’s palm under his jaw.
“Could you really not? You don’t…imagine what I might do?”
“I only hope,” Hannibal confessed. His eyes caught on the collar of Will’s flannel, a breeze jealously tugging it from his neck. “Do you imagine me?”
Will pushed both of his hands up over his face. “Sometimes I honestly do not know what I have imagined and what was real.”
“Is that why you thought you were becoming me? Because you could imagine me so well?” Will groaned through his hands. “Is that why you think this might all just be in your head?” Will groaned louder.
Hannibal crossed the distance between them, because they were on a boat. On a boat, he could do this. He knelt and took Will’s hands from his face. “Please don’t rip your stitches,” he said softly. “It took a lot of work to keep them even while the boat was rocking.” Will’s hands were still in his own. He rubbed his thumb over a knuckle.
Will felt faint. He wondered if that was because usually when Hannibal touched him, he was either sliding into or out of consciousness, or bleeding heavily from the torso. Sometimes both. Will stared at their hands, the edges going black like a vignette. He squeezed his eyes shut and wove his fingers through Hannibal’s. “Maybe if we touched more often, this wouldn’t happen,” he whispered. Hannibal did not quite understand what Will meant by that, but he really liked part of it.
“What do you want, Will?” he asked.
“Just — keep me here.”
“Have we decided where here is?”
“Here is our boat.”
“We’re in the same boat.”
“You’ve got it.”
::
“The symbolism seems too heavy.”
“The ferry to Hades?” Hannibal guessed. Will nodded. “I’ll admit, the symbolism is very apt. And yet, here we are. On a boat.” The boat became incredibly boat-like, as if to back him up. Timbers creaked. The sails behaved perfectly like sails, and not like the scrims they sometimes flirted with being.
“It’s luck then,” Will said, leaning back against the mast.
“Or fate.”
“Mine or yours?”
“There could hardly be one without the other.”
The boat, still being amenable, tilted in the swell, and Will’s foot shifted to rest against Hannibal’s ankle.
“Fate then.”
“As you well know, Will, there is a design at work, in all we do. Events must play themselves out to an aesthetic, moral, and logical conclusion.”
“Moral?” Will asked, incredulous. “Logical?”
“No bone to pick with aesthetic?” Hannibal replied, canting his head. It was an elegant gesture, of the manner he had, but belied by the fact that the salt in the wind had his hair forever looking like he had just pulled the thick sweater he was wearing over his head.
“No,” Will said, trying to stop a smile, for multiple reasons, and failing. “It’s beautiful.”
Hannibal crossed a battered boat shoe over his knee, wincing briefly at the pain in his side, then tented his fingers, for all the world as if he were sitting at his desk, and not on a slightly rusted box of life jackets. “Could it be that beauty is the morality? The logic, too, for that matter?”
Will looked quietly amused. “Of all of this…. Yes. Yes actually that would explain a lot.”
::
It was still grey. The sky still grey, the sea. Hannibal’s cheek.
The uniformity of the color palette was surely contributing to the disquieting sense of being adrift. Also literally being adrift. But they were on a boat, and boats are like that.
Will taught Hannibal how to tie knots. Overhand. Hitches.
They leaned against the railing and gazed out over the waves, tricking their eyes, building beasts out of the mist.
::
“I don’t believe in it anyway,” Will said, conversationally.
“In what?”
“Argentina.”
“Just a conspiracy of cartographers, you mean.”
“I don’t believe it will happen. How do we even know it’s true?”
“For all anyone knows, nothing is. One acts on assumptions — what do you assume?”
“That this is the end.”
“And what will you do with your ending, Will?”
The sound of the sea rose to fill the space after Hannibal’s question, the sweep and steady lash of water.
“There must have been a moment,” Will said, wondering. “In the beginning, where we could have said no. Somehow we missed it.”
Hannibal nodded. “We’ll know better next time.”
Will’s face broke into a sudden smile. The real one, the big bright sunlight-cresting-over-a-wave one. He smiled that at Hannibal, and the whole world tilted. This is not a metaphor. They were on a boat and the boat was all their world and it tilted in the surf, so that Hannibal stumbled, and then stumbled to Will, who had yelped, having forgotten the cut on his face. But when Hannibal reached him he was laughing, laughing and groaning and gripping Hannibal’s sleeve as the boat swayed.
“’Til then,” Will sighed, and leaned his forehead on Hannibal’s shoulder. Hannibal felt that throb in his hands that he used to think meant something else, until he learned he could ease it by doing what he did now, and curling his fingers deep into Will’s hair.
Will’s chest hurt. It also hurt where he’d been stabbed.
This part, it seemed, was also just the same.