Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

…All of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears.

We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea - whether it is to sail or to watch it - we are going back from whence we came.

—John F. Kennedy

The sailboat was a wedge of darkness against the pale glare of the rising sun on one side, a gleaming white too bright to reckon on the other. Out to sea, a group of pelicans cast flickering, ungainly shadows across the blinding whiteness, silent movement and then belated grunting cries following in their wake.

Two men approached the boat slip. They were carrying bags but left them stacked to one side of the dock, politely out of the way. It was early yet, the marina was tiny, and few souls were yet about. Some distance away, fishermen’s voices filtered small across the still water, like the memories of ghosts long passed.

Hannibal stayed by the baggage as Will abandoned it, coming alongside. The morning was still and Hannibal lifted his face into the air, mingled with scents of seawater and algae, diesel and hydrangea, fiberglass, teak and varnish, warming in the early sun. He watched as Will reached for the shroud and nimbly climbed aboard, his carriage changing as he adjusted to the minute sway beneath his feet. Will’s hand found the lifeline and followed it to the bow, crouching to briefly touch the anchor’s chain, to give a firm tug on the forestay, exploring the boat with his hands as much as with his eyes--a sailor’s communion no less sacred than a priest’s. Will halted the longest behind the helm, still, not even touching the wheel, his chin raised as he gazed ahead over the expanse of the unknown seas in front of him--in front of both of them. Hannibal wondered what he saw.

After that moment’s absence, Will returned to Hannibal and allowed Hannibal to hand down the bags to him, setting them on a bench. The gash in his cheek had healed well, but in the morning sunlight it was still a garish slash near the upper edge of his beard, which was longer now. It had been too inconvenient and too painful to shave in the first weeks after the fall, and now it seemed Will had no immediate intention of returning to the two-day beard he had sported for so long. Perhaps he was anxious to change his look from the images that would be circulating in the press and on the Most Wanted lists. Or perhaps it was nothing more than that he was self-conscious about the marring of his face, as if such a little thing could endanger his beauty. Not that Will considered himself beautiful.

Will had not told him why, and Hannibal had not asked.

When the bags were all aboard, Hannibal then climbed on himself. He produced the key to the cabin and opened the door, then stood aside.

“After you,” he said.

Will gave him a sidelong look, but he trotted down the companionway without comment. Hannibal followed close after, curious what his money had bought.

The saloon was all gleaming cherry woodwork and white cushions, pristine as if straight from the factory, although the boat was used. Very lightly used and restored lovingly. There was a U-shaped settee to port, ahead of a galley with a good amount of counter space for such tight quarters. Hannibal was pleased to note that he could straighten to his full height, though there was not more than an inch or two of clearance above his head. Will went ahead to one of the sleeping cabins and peered inside, then further to inspect the head, while Hannibal located another to starboard. He found the other sleeping cabin aft, opposite storage and the engine access.

“Which cabin do you want?” Will asked, returning. He settled himself at the navigation desk and began searching through the storage there.

Hannibal went to examine the one at the fore. It had more clearance and privacy than the other. The circular skylight reminded Hannibal vaguely of his cell back at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. He supposed the lower ceiling and darker cabin aft would remind Will of his own cell.

“You can have this one,” Hannibal said.

“You sure?” Will was examining the vessel title and registration. “I don’t care where I sleep.”

“This bed is shorter and narrower, especially at the foot,” Hannibal said, coming back. He settled in the seat in front of Will and folded his hands in his lap, crossing his long legs out in the aisle where there was room. “And I imagine it pitches more in the waves. I’ll be more comfortable in the other.”

The sun was just at a height to reflect off the water through the narrow windows, swirling into fine yellow strands, like spider webs across the ceiling, between the patches of blue glare that were the skylights.

“’Marlon Adams’? Is that supposed to be me?” Will glanced at Hannibal. “Marlon Adams,” he repeated, sounding strained. Hannibal smiled slightly.

“Your driver’s license should also be in the drawer. And a passport.”

Will located the items, as well as several backups and Hannibal’s own new set of identifications. His eyebrows went up. “Björn?” Will read, snorting softly.

“I speak German,” Hannibal said.

“I’m sure you do.”

“We’ll assume new identities frequently at first, but that will become less necessary with time, and time is passing. This vessel will buy us more. Already the legitimate news agencies will have moved on, and though I suspect Miss Lounds will continue to invent news for years, the average American, even if they recognize us, will take a moment to remember where from. Moments are all that we need, Will. Enough moments, strung together, make eternity.”

“Finally disappearing together,” Will said softly.

“Yes.”

“Marlon and Björn.”

Hannibal smiled again. “Try to remember.”

“That will be harder for you than it is for me,” Will said. “I don’t call you by your name every thirty seconds, Björn.”

Will sorted the passports and identification cards, to store away from the ones they would be using for the next few weeks. Hannibal watched his deft hands, making quick work of that and then of the folded charts that had been stored with them, no doubt making mental notes of others he might like to have to supplement their collection. A calmness had settled on Will’s shoulders as soon as he had climbed aboard, quite unlike the distracted tension he had carried as they both waited to heal. He was a hound, a working dog: he needed work to give him purpose. Hannibal had hoped to see more pleasure at the gift.

“Is she what you wanted, Will?” Hannibal asked.

Will must have caught the note of yearning in Hannibal’s voice. He looked up. He studied Hannibal for a long time, inscrutable. “She’s beautiful,” he said finally. “Much nicer than the boat I sailed to Europe. It may be more work to sail this one, with my shoulder the way it is, but I have you.”

“So you do.”

“And you?” Will said. He looked around the saloon, at the tiny L-shaped galley with its two-burner stove, the grand total of eight square feet of cooking space. A microwave was mounted in the aft wall. “Is this what you wanted?”

“Everything I wanted and more,” Hannibal said. As Will’s searching eyes turned back to him, he added, “As Alana only allowed me to cook on a hot plate—and then only rarely—for the past three years, I think I can make do.”

“Cetus,” Will said, looking down at the vessel registration. “Of course.”

“You could rename her. She’s yours, Will. I bought her for you.”

“Marlon,” Will corrected. His right eyebrow quirked, followed by his left.

Hannibal assented with a bow of his head, amused that Will was amused.

They unloaded their clothing and gear, and over the next several hours, Will inspected the vessel and made a list of gear, line, tools, and replacement parts he might need. Hannibal insisted that he include objects that he thought he might want as well, so Will added a second fathometer to mount to the wheel console, a deep sea rod, two spinning rods, a fly-casting rod, various tackle, two rod-holders, fishing line of a variety of weights, and made a mental note to get “Marlon” a fishing license. They should probably get one for “Björn” too: if they were stopped by a local Fish and Game officer, it would be better to have one, even if they did not have a line in the water. Hannibal, for his part, did the same for the kitchen and the rest of the living space.

They worked mostly in companionable silence. Hannibal finished long before Will, and he made his first of several supply trips, which took most of the rest of the afternoon. He returned to discover a tall Styrofoam drink container orphaned on the countertop. It smelled of soda and rum, though Hannibal was certain the marina’s diner did not have a liquor license. There was also a wadded up piece of waxed paper, printed in a red check, and smelling of provolone, roast beef, onions, and grease. But in that time, Will had installed the solar panels off the stern, attached an extra battery, and begun hooking up the wind generator. Hannibal would always have more than enough power to cook, even if they never ran the engine. He was satisfied and settled in to make them dinner.

He was still chopping vegetables when Will’s frame darkened the door above him. Will did not descend, just leaned in, his elbows propped on the upper decking, as he watched Hannibal work for a few minutes. He smelled of sweat and oil and, underneath that, steel.

“Have you given thought to a name?” Hannibal asked without turning.

“I considered the Wild Goose for a while,” Will said. “Seemed appropriate.”

“I should very much like to lead Jack Crawford on a Wild Goose chase.”

“I’d rather not.” Light increased as Will straightened and looked back outside, though he did not move away. The day had grown cloudy, and the light was diffuse and gentle. His voice, when he spoke again, was just as gentle. “I thought of the Abigail Louise,” he said finally, leaning back into the opening.

Hannibal’s knife stilled momentarily, and then he continued chopping in his even, steady strokes.

“But renaming a boat is supposed to be bad luck,” Will continued. He shrugged, as if it did not matter at all. “Cetus fits us.”

“Superstitions are well suited to those who live a life based in chance and fortune, when chance and fortune are more powerful than they. Who do you think is more powerful?”

“The sea has already spit us out once.”

“We’re not more powerful, then? But perhaps too unpalatable.” He turned to look up curiously at Will. The setting sun limned Will’s face with golden light. “Andromeda’s beauty was great enough to offend the gods. They sent their monster to swallow her.”

“She was saved,” Will said. He sounded tired.

“Do you think we will be?” Hannibal asked.

Will just gazed at him.

“Come rest for a while, Will,” Hannibal said. “I’ll make you a cocktail.”

“I’m almost done,” Will said. “I’ll finish and then get a shower, if there’s enough time before we eat.”

“Take as much time as you need.”

He hovered for another moment, then disappeared from the opening. Light grew where his figure had been. It blinded Hannibal at first, then softened. Taking up where he left off, Hannibal resumed his slicing.

Chapter Text

We are going toward the sea. I have swollen. I am carried away.

Sometimes at night love comes up so quickly and so high, and if we have no little boat perhaps it is because we want to roll breathless under the ocean floor.

― Hélène Cixous, The Book of Promethea

The sensation of falling startled Will awake just as he was nodding off. It was nothing, just a hypnagogic myoclonic twitch, no better or worse than those billions of people experienced on a regular basis. Will had never been a sound sleeper, and the sedative dose in his bloodstream that night was insufficient to keep unconscious. He was used to such things.

But now it was different.

He lay on his back in his little cabin and looked at the square of lesser darkness above him that was his skylight. He could distinguish neither stars nor clouds above, just a heavy gray floating above the blackness all around him. The boat was silent, the two doors enough to block him from the sounds of Hannibal’s even breathing, but Will could imagine it: steady, slow, deep. A man Hannibal’s age should snore, but Will had discovered in the long hours after the fall that he did not, as they alternately slept in a painful vigil, aching with cold, each watching for the other to stop breathing completely.

A hypnic jerk always brought the fall to mind now. Will had been afraid in those few weightless moments: afraid and at peace, warmed by Hannibal’s body in his arms, and it had been so right. Right that they should die there together, right that they had killed together, right that Hannibal had known what was coming and still given himself over to Will as they stood on the eroding edge together. It was right when Hannibal’s arms, loose and passive at first, tightened—desperately, compulsively—around Will. In those moments, Will had loved him more than he could reckon.

Enough moments may string into eternity, Will thought, but they had not found eternity. Somehow, they had come up short.

Will did not remember the impact or much afterward, only disjointed images of pain and cold and choking on saltwater until they somehow crawled up on a minuscule strip of beach at high tide, Hannibal pulling Will along, since Will had dislocated the same shoulder that Dolarhyde had stabbed, and it dragged uselessly through the sand next to him. Where Hannibal’s strength came from, Will did not know and would never understand.

It had been dawn by then, and Will remembered lying on cold sand he was too numb to feel, Hannibal pulling him into another embrace, this one promising life and all of life’s attendant pain and need. Their arms and legs entangled, entwined, tightened. Hannibal’s cheek was rough against the throbbing pain where Dolarhyde’s knife had opened his cheek. His breath on Will’s ear was the only warmth in the entire world as Hannibal breathed his name.

“Will . . . Will.”

Lying there, alone in Cetus’s belly, Will’s body opened to an endless weight of grief, reaching for him with tentacles, inky and black, and he lay pinned against the foam mattress. He ached, for what he did not know or understand. He had lost something there on the beach, or in the fall—lost it so utterly, he could not even remember its name.

Chapter Text

Let the wind and ocean water wash away a thousand memories, like sand.

― Oksana Rus

They planned, supplied, and readied themselves over six more days before setting out. Will had expressed the desire to test Cetus on a few runs to iron out any kinks in his understanding of her operation and to teach Hannibal the basic tasks in front of him, which amounted mostly to showing him where everything was; the principles Hannibal understood already. They spent time studying charts, though Will had sailed the Chesapeake Bay before and knew it reasonably well. But finally all was done, and nothing more held them to the land that had delivered them each to the other, some five years before.

Will had purchased decals to spell Cetus in a flowing script, not unlike Hannibal’s copperplate hand, on their stern. Hannibal had spent an unhurried hour on their final evening fussing over the placement of the letters, but when the word was finally in place, they both had a sense of satisfaction. They shared a 1961 Petrus Grand Vin Pomerol and sat up late that night, lying on the bow, looking up at the stars. It was the wrong time of year to see the constellation Andromeda rising, unless they chose to watch through all the darkest hours of night. The bulk of Cetus hid beyond the horizon.

They set sail on a steady breeze early the next day, their little boat eager to meet the wind. Will stood at the helm, his mass of curls, growing long, blowing madly around his face. He was in short sleeves and barefoot, though the morning was still cool. They were on a port tack, sailing on a beam reach and making good speed. Hannibal sat facing ahead, his legs stretched out on the bench before him and crossed at the ankles, even though it meant he rolled slightly with the movement of the vessel. He kept an arm looped over the side to steady himself. He watched the sun arc slowly overhead, the deepening of the water from green to blue as the Chesapeake Bay widened around them, flocks of various birds coming and going, an occasional splash of spray moistening his face. He had been a long time indoors and not a molecule of this natural beauty was lost on him.

But mostly he watched Will.

Will did not see this world of ultraviolet glare and sunblind desaturation as Hannibal did, but rather with the eye of a mariner and a fisherman. In the previous week, Hannibal had coaxed him into voicing some of his observations, and seeing life through Will’s eyes had been in its way as fascinating as viewing death. A loon’s laughing cry rose and passed on more than one occasion, and Will commented that was a good sign for the fishery, that there must be a good number of menhaden, a baitfish, in the Bay that year. He watched wind and cloud for signs of danger. One afternoon, he saw the swirls of currents eddying off a point and promptly brought the boat under engine power and kept them jogging in the current, getting a line in the water and landing a large striped bass in a matter of minutes.

“Tidal change stirs up a lot in the water,” he had said. “Brings out the predators.”

He had been referring to the fish, but Hannibal had smiled anyway. It was a beautiful fish, and it had been Hannibal’s pleasure to cook it for their dinner.

Fishing or sailing, with his face turned in to the salt air and spots of red blooming in his cheeks, Will was distant in a way that reminded Hannibal of his look at a crime scene: present and yet gone all at once, attuned to the push and pull of elements like a mystic immersed in his oneness with God.

Hannibal did not mind this distance. As Will had once crossed the threshold to Hannibal’s own memory palace, so Hannibal found his own communion with Will’s, here in the tumble and chop of a day breeze over the gray-blue waters of the Atlantic.

They were here together.

Already the short week at the marina seemed far away, the months recuperating after the cliff house episode even further—dim memories, dreamlike and unreal, like they had never lived them, like the lives of some other men. Yet Hannibal’s years in the cell at the asylum still hovered just behind his shoulder: still air, faint scents of sickness and medication, urine and semen and chlorine carried on the dust in the ventilation. A large enough room he had had, but no view beyond the endless flicker and hum of fluorescent lights during the days and the warmer, calmer incandescent bulbs just outside his cell at night. 

It had been so long. So long.

But here was Will, only a few feet away from him, his fingers thoughtlessly caressing the silver circle of wheel with just the pads, gripping, releasing. There he was, the toes on one foot curling and pressing into Cetus’s decking, his bare feet peeking out from new linen pants, slightly too long without shoes on.

There—impossibly there, undeniably there, inconceivably there. Close enough to touch, if Hannibal reached for him.

Hannibal stored him up in his mind, in a room encompassing all the oceans of the world.

Chapter Text

tread carefully

into my life, my dear.

the currents

are strong.

you will get lost

in this

warm ocean

of my skin.

― Sanober Khan

They traveled the Chesapeake Bay over several lazy days, stopping in the evenings to anchor overnight in sheltered inlets, occasionally going ashore for supplies, and once spending several days in a tiny cove, well disguised from traffic either to sea or on land. They would sail inland and re-provision in Norfolk, then test Cetus on a long trip over open waters before finally settling in for their final voyage and destination in South America.

The little bay was just deep enough to put in close to the mouth, the waters gradually sloping up to sand, grasses and cattails, before giving way to deciduous forest, greener now than gold. The water lapped the shore as gently as waters in a pond. A handful of seagulls paddled through the water around them at all times, confident that the boat would yield up something good to eat from time to time. If anyone had a house or cabin nearby, it was well out of sight. Will could almost believe that they were the only two people left in the world.

He fished at dusk and dawn, and Hannibal swam as soon as the sun was high enough to warm him, sometimes while the morning mist was still rising from the water. He often returned to swim several times during the day. Will had joined him a few times, but he did not feel the same delight in the activity that Hannibal did. The water was warm enough to be safe but not comfortable, and it made his shoulder ache and stiffen. Hannibal often reminded him that the right kind of swimming was exactly the exercise that he needed to strengthen and heal it—that if he took it slow and worked it properly, the pain and stiffness would ease and he might avoid surgery later. But Will never seemed to find enough interest to actually take the time, and mostly his body sprang back to its full health without him needing to worry about it. It had certainly had practice. Molly used to tease him that if he learned to take as good care of himself as he took of her and Walter, he would outlive them all.

All the more reason not to worry about it.

The stray thought of Molly made him close his eyes for a moment. He pictured her and Wally getting up in a chill dawn to walk the dogs without him: quiet voices, the padding of soft paws, puffs of warm breath in the cold air. They were safe now. They were all safe. The wrong thing was the right thing to do.

Cetus provided many opportunities to exercise, at least. Will tried to ignore that he was favoring his shoulder in spite of it being his dominant side. He was not fooling Hannibal, though, and he knew it.

Will finished cleaning the last of the morning’s dishes and climbed onto the cockpit. It was still early, the sun sending flickering shadows of trees across the water, green and gold again, at just an angle for Will to need to shield his eyes as he sought out Hannibal’s form in the water.

Hannibal’s swimming transformed the inlet into his personal Olympic pool, moving in steady strokes from the boat back to the same point before returning for another lap. It was more than pleasure for him, Will knew: he was focusing on regaining what strength he had lost during his time imprisoned and then injured. His spacious room at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane had allowed him to exercise regularly, even though Alana had never let him into the exercise yard, but it was not like being free, with the kind of activity Hannibal had liked to get up to. Not to mention the quality of the food.

Will stood next to the helm and watched him as he made a final turn and returned to the boat. He dipped underwater, a pale swirl in the blackness of Cetus’s shadow, then emerged in an eruption of water, lifting himself and turning to sit on the extended swim deck, all in a single smooth motion. He tilted his head back as the clear salt water sluiced from his lengthening hair, between his shoulder blades and over the expanse of his back, marred by the Verger brand in a bas-relief of white scar tissue, and down further, the slender, still-red circle from Francis Dolarhyde’s bullet. His back rose and fell as he took in the morning air in big breaths, muscles tightening and relaxing under his gradually tanning skin.

He turned his satisfied gaze to Will’s, looking over his shoulder. “Are you sure you won’t swim, Will?”

“Maybe when we get somewhere a little warmer.”

Hannibal hesitated for just a brief moment before reaching for his towel lying next to him, casting Will a sidelong, chiding look. Then he hauled his knees to his chest and thrust his large feet under him, rising to his full height and shedding water around his feet. He mopped the water from his face with the towel and down over his neck and shoulders, to his arms, as he climbed back up into the cockpit.

Will followed the motion, then glanced down at Hannibal’s abdomen, at the jagged scar of the exit wound from Dolarhyde’s bullet, angry lines spreading over his skin like cracks in clay. He had been lucky: the Red Dragon had sacrificed damage for accuracy, choosing full metal jacket ammunition so as to minimize the impact the window glass would have either in changing the bullet’s trajectory or in absorbing its energy, and he had intended to wound, not kill. It meant that the bullet had done relatively little damage to Hannibal as it passed through him. Lucky, Will thought again. He remembered holding the spent round in his palm: lightweight, mangled, innocuous. Hannibal should be dead, if not from the gunshot alone, then from the fall, the contamination of the wound, the time it took before they got treatment. Hannibal had once called it a “miracle” that they lived.

“You concern yourself with my wounds but ignore your own,” Hannibal said. He tossed the towel over his shoulder and crossed to Will, standing close enough to look down at him. Will could feel the cool dampness of the seawater radiating from his skin.

“How is your face?” Hannibal asked. Will watched his mouth as he spoke. “Does it still hurt?”

“Not a lot. The painkillers help.”

“Not helping enough, then.”

Will acquiesced with a shrug, mostly on his left side. Hannibal frowned at him.

“Your unwillingness to accept physical limitation doesn’t do you any favors. I would never have been able to hide your encephalitis from you for as long as I did, had you been more interested in your own well-being.”

He reached up and put his palm to the side of Will’s face, running his thumb over the mark from the knife. It smarted beneath his touch, the coolness of his fingers sending goosebumps across Will’s skin. The gesture—and his closeness—pulsed in the wound running across his own stomach. The last time Hannibal had touched him like this, his hand had been warm and dry, Will’s own skin wet and clammy from the rain. Will felt the heat seep from his cheek into Hannibal’s palm, just as he had felt Hannibal’s touch warm his skin before his blood had spilled out in a hot rush over his thighs.

Hannibal must have thought of it too: their eyes met and held, and Will could see the subtle thrust of Hannibal’s jaw beneath closed lips as he fought to contain emotion.

Will broke the contact, turning his head away from Hannibal’s hand. A hollow place ached from his throat to his sternum.

“I’ll try,” he said.

Hannibal dropped his hand. “I want to have a look at your shoulder when we get to Norfolk. I need to know you’re capable and ready to do what needs to be done. You’ll be taking both our lives in your hands.”

Will nodded, once.

Hannibal gazed at him. “Again,” he added.

Chapter Text

In a sea of strangers,

you've longed to know me.

Your life spent sailing

to my shores.

― Lang Leav, “Sea of Strangers”

Love & Misadventure

When Will finally was tired of jigging the shallow water with no intention of catching anything, he went to his tiny cabin and showered the sweat off. Afterward, he found Hannibal peeling shrimp, strands of saffron already simmering next to him on one of the burners. A diffuse glow of sunlight illuminated his face from below, as the sun peeked through the skylights and lit up the woodwork and white upholstery in the saloon. It warmed the recesses of Hannibal’s sculpted face and made his eyes glow, more amber than brown. He peeled the shrimp and removed the veins with deft turns of his wrists, his sleeves rolled up halfway to his elbows.

“I can help with that,” Will said.

Hannibal slid the bowls across the counter, turning to the sink to wash his hands before retrieving peas to shell. Will rolled up his own sleeves and set to work, glad to have something to do with his hands. The boat had been running well, and though Will had found a few projects to tinker with, he was unaccustomed to this much idleness. He would have preferred to be out on the open water, one part of his concentration always on the task of sailing, even in sleep. It helped still his mind if he kept busy. Hannibal and he talked on some days, about books they read and what they might do in a future that still seemed too distant for Will to imagine, a future one part of him still believed he would never see. On other days Hannibal had seemed to content to remain quiet, in a way Will did not remember from the times before Hannibal had gone to prison. But even in these quiet moments, Will was always conscious of him, always aware of Hannibal’s awareness of him, an itch in the back of his skull.

“You’ve done this before,” Hannibal observed.

“I worked in a cannery when I was in high school, in the summer.”

“All those hours in my therapy chair, and there’s still so much I don’t know about you.”

“Our sessions were…focused.”

“On your cases, yes. And on what you were becoming.”

“And on Abigail.”

Hannibal’s gaze flickered up at Will and then back down to his work. “The memory of a loved one can remain present in a relationship, every bit as real and alive as those who are left behind. Do you wish to talk about Abigail?”

“Abigail doesn’t stand between us,” Will said. “She left in Palermo.”

“When you forgave me.”

“Yes.”

“You traveled the world to know me, physically entered the chambers of my mind. Opened dark rooms, peered inside, left doors ajar.”

“I heard music, in the silence.”

A smile touched Hannibal’s lips. He was making quick work of the peas as they collected, pattering, into a metal bowl. “You have met some of the people, seen some of the places, that influenced the earliest incarnations of who I was, and who I became.”

“Chiyoh, yes. And Mischa.” Will finished peeling the last of the shrimp and handed the bowl back to Hannibal, looking at him curiously. Hannibal seasoned them, gave them a quick toss, and returned them to the small refrigerator.

When Hannibal did not speak again, Will went to his cabin and washed his hands, then retrieved a bottle of Lost Mountain from their wine storage under the banquette. He opened it and set it on the table, sliding into the settee.

Hannibal regarded the Virginia wine, his little half-smile still on his face. “You are as ever able to sense the drift of my thoughts,” he said. Will raised his eyebrows. “Do you miss Wolf Trap, Will?”

Will blinked. Wolf Trap was years ago now. A lifetime ago. In a way, it had been home to him as no other place had—his itinerant childhood spent moving up and down the waterways of the South and Midwest, four years in the Navy, then back to college for his bachelor’s, on to the New Orleans Police Department, and ultimately to D.C. for graduate school and then the FBI. In all that time, he had never stayed in the same rental for more than eighteen months. He never stayed anywhere for long until he bought that little farm in Wolf Trap. The stream in his mind flowed behind that house, just out of sight behind the trees and across the field.

It had been a sanctuary and a comfort, but something had changed after Hannibal had been there, after he had dug a hole in his own wall, after choking up an ear, after the FBI and Randall Tier and Margot and Mason Verger. After Abigail had died without ever seeing it. After Hannibal had surrendered, after Jack had returned to the FBI, and after Will had not.

He had learned to be lonely there.

When he had understood himself, he had put the house on the market and sold it quickly, without a backward glance. He purchased a trailer and took it and the dogs with him until he settled in Maine and found Molly and Walter. It had not taken long—just a short six months from start to finish. He could be nostalgic, but he did not miss it, not really. Not much. It was always there if he needed it, a refuge no less real for being only in his mind, for all that it was three years in his past.

Understanding blossomed in Will.

Hannibal had finished with the peas and was now cutting a miniature red bell pepper, turning it as he cut it into curling strips. There was nothing in Hannibal’s demeanor that indicated that he was especially interested in the answer to this question, but Will could feel his intentness as readily as if he had been staring with the bright eyes of a crow, looking for a shiny object to steal.

All those years Hannibal had spent in the asylum, and he had not known where to look for Will.

It was not a matter of addresses and the names of towns and states—which Hannibal had proven he could find out readily enough—but that he could search in all the echoing chambers of his mind, and wherever he might encounter Will, it would be with the understanding that Will was not there, that he had gone on to some place Hannibal could neither see nor follow.

Will hesitated. What Hannibal wanted was what Will had shared with Molly and Walter—not the minutiae of everyday life, of PTA meetings and baseball games and dog baths, which Hannibal could well understand on his own without being told—but a sense of place. A vision of Will building a birdhouse on the porch, the snow beneath the evergreens in winter, the dappling of sunlight on bare earth in summer, the scent of cedar and pine, hickory and maple and oak.

He closed his eyes.

The sleek lines and gleaming teak in the saloon fled as the squared timbers and heavy white chinking of Will’s Maine home rose around him in earth tones and soothing horizontal lines. Dim yellow bulbs glowed under rustic lampshades with leaves on them, casting soft light on cotton fabrics and patchwork quilts, lovingly sewn and tied by hand. There would be laughter there, too, and barking dogs, the echoes of voices Hannibal had never heard—and would, Will prayed, never hear—vibrating through the bones of the wood and earth. Laughter and warmth and peace.

He did not want to give these things to Hannibal. He felt like he would be doubly betraying Molly by giving up her memories to the man who had almost gotten her and her son killed, and he was afraid of stirring Hannibal’s immense capacity for jealousy as he pictured Will’s life without him.

But Will was afraid to keep it from him too.

He opened his eyes.

He had a fleeting impression of Hannibal as the shadowed, antlered beast of his imagination, but he blinked again and it was gone, replaced by the soft light on Hannibal’s sculpted features, ethereal and exquisite. Sunlight gleamed around him.

“I miss it sometimes,” he answered truthfully and as nonchalantly as he could. “Sometimes I wake up and expect to see its walls around me. Like being cupped in the palm of a hand.”

“The comfort of small, familiar spaces.”

“Are you content in this small space, after the spaces of the asylum? I don’t think I would want to spend all day down here like you do.”

“You have a wild spirit, Will, not content to sit and roost.” Hannibal tilted his head. He discarded the remnants of one bell pepper and picked up another. “Roller pigeons climb high and fast. They fly way up in the air and roll over and over backwards in a display, falling toward the ground. There are shallow rollers and there are deep rollers. You are a deep roller.”

He considered the tiny room, with no windows opening to the sides, only above in a narrow strip near the ceiling, walls heavily laden with cabinetry, the one blank wall space as yet unadorned. The skylights and open doorway kept it bright, but it still felt small, enclosed.

“I’m content,” Hannibal said. “I am here because I choose to be. Because you choose to be.”

“You don’t long for more?”

“For now, I have everything I need.” His tilted his head toward the door. “Swimming. Cooking. A view.” His eyes captured Will’s. “Seeing you.”

The look on his face was earnest. An intake of breath, held suspended, and he looked down and away from Will’s gaze, back to his work.

The ghost of Bedelia du Maurier’s words slipped into Will’s consciousness. Could he daily feel a stab of hunger for you, and find nourishment at the very sight of you?

The grief of their years apart flooded after, with the weight of what they had done to each other and what they had suffered at each other’s hands. The shadows of pain and stains of blood surrounded them, filling the boat, threatening to sink it and carry them both to the bottom of the sea.

Will wanted to relent, wanted to soothe Hannibal, but he could not find it in himself to regret the years now, not after all the things Hannibal had done. Not after all the things he had done. He had needed to try to move on, just as Hannibal had needed to make his choices and would not regret them. But he could not help but grieve for years lost and alone in the asylum, starving, if Bedelia du Maurier was to be believed. Empty years he could imagine all too well.

Is Hannibal in love with me? he had asked, as he had known and doubted in equal measure ever since Hannibal left him bleeding out on the floor of his Baltimore kitchen.

Will had been enormously afraid of either answer.

Hannibal continued to cut the bell pepper in to a twisting spiral of red, his face and body still, only his hands working.

“I thought of you,” Will said finally. “Often.”

Hannibal’s breath released in a slow sigh. Will watched the words fill him up, set him to rest, with no outward change in his demeanor.

He wished it were always so easy. Or had it always been?

He reached for the wine.

Chapter Text

Trust, is the stone thrown into the sea, sinking deep in all its murkiness, unable to see what it once lived and believed to be a promise.

― Anthony Liccione

Cetus sailed, close-hauled, into a strong wind under heavy skies. They were warm breezes, lifted up from the tropical waters to the south. They carried the little boat, sails full and taut, along on the backs of white horses, the white crests of the roiling Atlantic. Leaden clouds hung low across the gray surface of the waves.

The continental shelf dropped away under Will’s feet, cascading beneath them, plummeting from the warm shallows to the lightless depths of the abyssal plain--a vast nothingness spilling and filling the space between them and the thin crust of the earth below. He was weightless, crushed by water, lost to all eyes save the glass eyes of deep sea nightmares, with long-toothed, thrusting jaws, translucent bodies and blue and white bioluminescence, flickering and dying in the darkness.

Will fell endlessly into the void.

Chapter Text

[O]nly the sea is like a human being . . . always moving, always something deep in itself is stirring it. It never rests; it is always wanting, wanting, wanting. It hurries on; and then it creeps back slowly without having reached, moaning. It is always asking a question and it never gets the answer.

― Olive Schreiner, The Story of an African Farm

Hannibal was below, roaming his memory palace or something equally useless, Will hoped. Cetus was rocking enough to make it inconvenient to do much, and Hannibal had already scoured the entire boat clean three times. Will liked a tidy boat, but he did not know what he would think if he went below deck to find Hannibal polishing the woodwork again. For all that Hannibal had maintained that he was content on their little vessel, Will was not sure he believed him.

The day of rainy weather had passed, leaving the sky blue and dotted with cumulus clouds and a fitful breeze from ahead of the beam. There was a heavy swell that Will did not like as he tried to navigate the sweet sides of the large, swirling surface eddies to get the most of their slow progress. That, along with the unreliable nature of the wind, meant that the mainsail went slack as often as it was full. Will had rigged a preventer to keep the boom from swinging across the deck when the waves bucked the boat during a lull, but not long after that, a larger-than-average wave washed over the port rail and doused him, head to foot.

Swearing under his breath, Will locked the wheel, double-checked the preventer and bilge pump, and made his way below.

Hannibal was lounging in the settee, wedged in the cushion in such a way as to minimize the slight heel of the boat. His feet were up, and he was reading a book. Ophthalmodouleia, the title read. Of course it did.

He looked with interest at Will’s soaking form. “You’re supposed to stay in the boat, Will.”

“Thank you, Hannibal.”

Will ran a hand over his wet hair, feeling a trickle of water bleed down his neck and between his shoulder blades to his spine. He resisted an urge to flick water Hannibal’s direction and instead unbuttoned his sticking white shirt and peeled it off, heading forward, dripping, to his cabin.

He became slowly conscious of Hannibal’s steady gaze on him as he moved. He halted as he came to his door, hand on the latch. Somewhere in the back of his mind those words echoed again—Is Hannibal in love with me?—and Bedelia’s measured tones as she answered.

He was standing even with where Hannibal was sitting. Will turned his head but did not quite look at him.

Hannibal’s attention remained steady, intent, curious. “Will?” he asked.

Will went inside.

Thereafter the association had him and would not let him go. He became aware of Hannibal’s attention in a manner he had never thought about much before. But now there was no escaping Hannibal’s hooded eyes moving over him in each chance encounter as they navigated around each other in the small spaces afforded by the craft. No fort would contain the thought, and Will could not keep himself from a light-speed slide show of times Hannibal had touched him and what those touches could have meant, but did not, filtered through this new lens: Hannibal lying in the bed next to him in the days after their fall and watching him recuperate, Hannibal washing and dressing him in Florence, the way he had once pinned Will’s arms down with his jacket as he undressed him and forced a needle into him, and then dimmer, cloudier—the memory of the ear, the violation of the tube down his throat, how Hannibal had drawn it out of him and then caressed his face.

He knew that Hannibal could and did partition his mind against such associations, that his affection was every bit as real as his violence, that there was nothing in his psychological profile that connected his sadism to his sexual proclivities, but Will himself could not enforce easy divisions once associations had been made. He could only find and explore this newly tender and painful place within him, like a man who cannot keep from tonguing an aching tooth.

Chapter Text

Strange infatuation seems to grace the evening tide. I want you to be free, but it is your sorrow that has made a slave of me... I wish to know how to keep you... You rise like a tide in my oceans, shine bright like the moon over them, and darken the sky when you mysteriously leave... Forgive me, my Amphitrite, but you are all I know. The day is breaking now, the earth is dry and torn. I know you're tired from the violent storms. I do love you, and you are all I know. The look in your eyes has made a slave of me for eternity. Without you I seem to lose the power of speech. Without you, I am nothing at all. I once again feel you slipping from my reach.

--Oksana Rus, using lines from Brian Molko’s “Without You I’m Nothing” (Without You I’m Nothing, Placebo, 1998)

Cetus heaved to port, then stilled.

They were falling.

Hannibal came to full consciousness just as the sea pushed back hard against Cetus’s hull, pinning him momentarily to his bed. There was a clanging Hannibal recognized as the boom swinging to the end of its reach. The pressure released, and he could hear Will jumping to his feet in the saloon, over the buzz of the weather station. The door to the cockpit thudded open, rattling.

“Hannibal,” Will said. It was a command. The door thudded shut.

Hannibal was already moving, flicking his light on to assist him in dressing. Carefully, not rushing, he dressed and donned shoes and gloves, so that he might be of some use on any stray lines. The dull noise of the wind from above quieted, and the boat was rolling, out of control: now canting to port, now to starboard.

Emergencies at sea were common, no matter how careful a sailor was. They could be anything: a failure of mechanics, a fluke of the weather, a mistake one of them had made in tying lines. Any of these things could be deadly, if they were not handled with dispatch, or if one made the wrong decision.

It would be very easy for either or both of them to die out here.

Dressed, Hannibal laid his hand on the door’s latch, ready to go above and help Will with the emergency, but he waited, edging the latch with his thumb. The vessel swayed under him.

He released the latch and resumed his seat on his bed. He could hear the ticking of his watch in the quiet, even with the sound of the waves outside. One minute passed, then another, and a third. He lifted his chin, considering. He could smell coffee—Will must have come down to the saloon to make himself a cup, not foreseeing the danger. He could not hear what Will was doing now.

Another minute passed before Cetus’s engine finally rumbled to life beneath him. The rolling still felt haphazard, but Hannibal could justify waiting no longer without drawing Will’s attention, so he rose and opened the door. He mounted the stairs, keeping his head low. Rain lashed the deck and his back and shoulders.

Will was at the helm, guiding their bow into the wind. He was shirtless, a ghost in the running lights, the night heavy and black beyond him. His hair was soaked through already and plastered to his forehead. “We’ll reset and get the boom under control,” he said. “I’ll look for damage once we do. Stay low.”

Hannibal obeyed, moving aft to get out of the arc of the boom. They had furled the headsail and reefed the mainsail prior to him going to bed, and they were running with a light wind, so Will had set a line to prevent the sail from shifting should the wind change direction. The boom was swinging on its own now, dragging the tangled line that had held it.

The boat’s engine felt sluggish compared to its usual limber skip when under full sail. The swell had picked up with the rain. Will threw the beam of an LED flashlight on the loose tape they used as a telltale for the wind, holding the little flashlight in his fingertips, above his shoulder, like the cop he had once been. The sail’s leading edge flapped. Will adjusted the lines, and it soon stilled, filling with air. The boom slid into a controlled position as the boat heeled slightly. Will altered their heading, putting the engine in neutral but not shutting it down. The shortened sail, full, drew the boat into a steady course.

They both waited to see if anything would break loose, if the sail would hold, or if some more drastic damage had been done than they could easily see in the running lights. They stood in silence for several minutes, waiting.

“Crisis averted,” Hannibal asked finally, “or delayed?”

Will did not answer. Lit from below, his eyes were enormous and unfathomable. His lips were slightly parted, his chin up, as the rainwater dripped down through his beard and over his neck. Below the pulse at the base of his throat, the striations where his pectoral muscles joined his breastbone stood out in shadowed relief. Hannibal memorized the play of light and darkness over his skin, filing them away for later.

There was no way to know what Will was thinking, but he had responded to the unexpected malfunction entirely as he should: acting with purpose and without delay, choosing the safest course of action. Hannibal was as satisfied as he could be, at least for the moment.

“What do you think caused it?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Will said. “Some combination of wind and equipment strain.”

“Constant pressure will strain anything eventually,” Hannibal observed, “no matter how solid or secure.”

“We won’t be secure until we’ve seen what damage has been done,” Will said. “Here.” He indicated the wheel, effectively cutting off the conversation before it got too philosophical. “Just hold steady. We’re going to be in the trough.”

Hannibal took the helm. The boat rolled as Will clambered forward and onto her deck, his LED flashlight scattering its beam onto the main, then out into nothing. Cetus heeled to port as she climbed the hill of the next wave. Will’s form was a thing of shadow and light before Hannibal, only a few feet away, yet as distant and unreachable as when he had stood beyond the glass of Hannibal’s cell.

Then the world turned over.

Hannibal’s reflexive grip on the wheel kept him from toppling overboard as water flooded the cockpit, poured around him up to his waist, floating his now buoyant body. A huge gust of wind screamed over them, joined by the suddenly loud roar of Cetus herself, engine freed of the water’s mute grasp.

The mast was in the waves, sail filled but draining, and Hannibal could feel Cetus trying to right herself, struggling against the weight as they descended into another trough. Then the slope of the next wave pushed the mast down again. For a moment, the sail glowed brightly, lit from underneath, and then it faded to darkness as the little flashlight’s beam sank and disappeared. He could not see Will.

“Will?” he called. His voice was steady and loud, but no answer came.

The heavy gust had died nearly as suddenly as it had arrived, a brief lull replaced by a steady breeze, like that which they had been sailing under when Hannibal had first retired for the night. He looked for some means of making his way ahead, but to move in the flooded cockpit risked sending him over the side, unless he could clip himself to a lifeline.

“Will?” Hannibal called again.

Finally he saw a dim figure ahead of him, darker than the hull, lighter than the waves. Somehow Will had managed to grab the loose line in his left hand. It wrapped across his chest and around his right arm, holding him suspended between the mast and the abyss, up to his chest in water. If he heard Hannibal’s voice, he made no sign.

The water pushed up to Will’s chin and subsided. He looked out at the surface of the waves as if hypnotized, and though he was holding on, he seemed to be making no effort to pull himself in.

“Will.”

Will turned his head slowly Hannibal’s direction.

Cetus strained underneath them. The next wave came sharply, splashing water over the starboard rail and down over Will’s head and shoulders.

Will’s face uplifted. On a whim, Hannibal thought, he could be gone—would be gone, spun away in the Atlantic just as he had intended on that far night on the headland, as they stood over the bloody corpse of the Dragon. As then, Hannibal knew he had little with which to fight this enemy. He had no secrets left to reveal, no curiosity to exploit, no monsters to fight, no daughter to share, no one left to save but Will himself.

He had only Hannibal Lecter, and that had never been enough.

He needed something to match that indomitable drive of Will’s: the drive that could fight months of manipulation and disease to see clearly what no one else would face, that had resisted and fought through Hannibal’s influence and his own deepest urges, that had chased Hannibal around the world but could still turn Will’s back when the impulse took hold, that had faced death and pain over and over and never shied from facing them again. The same drive that had sent them both over a cliff and, in the next heartbeat, had dragged the both of them up on a beach, broken and shuddering and cold in each other’s embrace.

But Hannibal had only himself to give.

“Will.” Hannibal repeated the word as if it were a summoning spell. Will still watched him, the whites of his eyes dim but visible. Cetus slid her mast again into the water and again strained for release.

“Don’t leave me, Will.”

Will’s chest filled as if he were taking air for the first time. Cetus slipped down into another trough, and this one was steep enough at last: the top of the mast crested out of the water, and the sail drained, tipping the boat back up so quickly that Hannibal had to fight to control the wheel and keep his balance.

But then they were up, and water was sloughing all around them, and Will was crawling back along the deck to Hannibal, who pulled him down into his arms.

Chapter Text

As if it were too great, too mighty for common virtues, the ocean has no compassion, no faith, no law, no memory.

—Joseph Conrad, The Mirror of the Sea

The blood smell caught Hannibal’s attention before he could see well enough to inspect Will’s injuries. The shoulder was out again—that Hannibal could tell right away by the way Will was holding his right arm with his left. As Hannibal reached for him, he turned his left side into Hannibal’s body and did not try to hold on. He smelled of saltwater and polyester rope, the musky scent beneath that Will himself, and cutting through it all was the metallic tang of blood. Not a lot—nothing life-threatening—but it tingled in Hannibal’s nostrils.

They stumbled down to the door and Hannibal pried it open. Will leaned against the boat as Hannibal descended the companionway and reached up to stabilize Will as he followed. He was in pain and not able to use his arms to balance himself against the vessel’s movement, but he could walk.

Hannibal turned the lights on—never mind the power consumption—discarded his gloves and helped Will forward. He could see the source of the blood now, easily: the line that had saved Will’s life must have snaked around his arm and pulled tight, and it was probably what had dislocated the shoulder again. The line had burned him enough to bleed, both in a spiraling pattern around his upper arm and in twin marks on his chest, across his pectoral muscles. The wounds were lightly seeping, in two trails down over his sternum, pooling into the crook of his elbow where his left arm crossed over his stomach to hang onto the right.

Hannibal found a towel to drape over Will’s bed and helped lower him into it.

“Just let me sit,” Will said, his voice breathless. “You need to go back up.”

“First things first.”

Hannibal inspected the shoulder. It was as he expected, an anterior dislocation caused partly by how the stabbing, from before Hannibal had known Will, had done permanent damage to his rotator cuff. Chiyoh’s bullet had worsened things and so had the impact of the water after Will had carried them from the eroding bluff. There was no way to tell just how bad the damage was—if the ball had torn anything new when it slipped the joint—without access to proper medical equipment. Hannibal would have to reset the shoulder, immobilize it for now, and then talk Will into a hospital visit later.

He went back to his own cabin and located muscle relaxers, then returned to Will’s cabin. Will dry-swallowed the pills without question.

“I need you to lie down,” Hannibal said. “Here, on your front. Let me have your arm.”

Will did as he was bid, gasping as Hannibal slowly extended the arm in front of him as he lay. He seemed to be in the full swell of pain, not numb, so nerve damage was unlikely, at least. Hannibal guided the arm to rest with Will’s knuckles and hand trailing the floor, gradually releasing it to its own weight.

He stood. Will’s body lay before him, pale and bloodless, shining with saltwater. He had kicked off his shoes at some point and his feet were bare. His pants were soaked through and stuck to him, lining the contours of his legs and hips. He must be cold, but he was not shivering, and his skin was smooth.

“Stay as relaxed as you can,” Hannibal said. “We need to get you dry.”

He reached down, but as his fingers brushed the Venusian dimples at the small of Will’s back, Will’s muscles tensed, making him gasp again as a shudder of pain moved through his damaged shoulder.

“No,” Will said.

“You could go into shock, Will. We need to get you warm.”

“No,” he said again. “Just set the shoulder. I’ll be fine.”

“Will—”

“Please,” Will said. His voice was harsh, even angry. His eyes were closed and his face half pushed into the towel. One lock of wet hair curled down onto his visible eyelid.

Hannibal worked the inside of his lips with his teeth. “Did you mean to die out there tonight, Will?”

“If I wanted to kill myself, Hannibal, I would just jump overboard. After a fifth of whiskey.”

Hannibal smiled slightly in spite of himself. “I will keep an eye on the whiskey, then,” he said.

He knew he did not have quite an answer to the question he had asked, but he let that slide for the moment. He went and located the first aid kit, another towel and some smaller books. Wrapping up the books inside the towel, he took the elastic bandage from the kit. Cetus was moving through the waves on some unknown course now, but she felt stable. Hannibal had thought to lock the wheel before helping Will, and whatever course they were on, the wind must be moving steadily and enough at an angle to keep the sail put. As long as there were no more freak gusts of wind, they should be all right for a few minutes.

He knelt beside Will’s damaged arm. The beads of blood from the rope burn had mostly coagulated, and the skin was puffy. He was going to be very bruised in a few hours.

“I’m going to put some weight on your arm,” Hannibal said. “I’m going to encourage the ball to move back into its socket by helping the muscles stretch. Do your best not to move.”

Will nodded once, curt.

Hannibal pressed the towel-wrapped bundle of books below Will’s forearm and gently wrapped the elastic bandage there to hold it in place. Slowly he released the weight and let the books pull Will’s shoulder toward the floor. Will’s breathing increased and then leveled.

“This should only take a few minutes,” Hannibal said. “You should let me get you out of your wet clothes.”

“I’m not going to die in ten minutes.”

Hannibal settled for reaching over Will and drawing his blanket across his shoulders and over his back and legs. He smoothed the blanket against Will’s back.

Will’s right eye was open, watching Hannibal. He did not speak, not even to thank Hannibal. It stung.

Leaving him, Hannibal returned to the deck to take stock of their situation. He took another flashlight from the console and looked around. All was about how they had left it: nothing else appeared to have broken loose. The mainsail was luffing slightly, and he tightened it. He inspected the boom to discover that the cleat, where Will had attached the line to prevent the boom from swinging, had sheared off completely. The metal eye was still hanging on the line. Hannibal untangled the line from the mast and bow and other lines, and then he retied it. The knot was in a makeshift location close to the end of the boom, but it would have to do. He killed the idling engine and returned below, where he quickly changed into dry clothes before going back to Will.

Will was still lying where Hannibal had left him, his arm trailing its bundle of books just above the floor. The shoulder had not yet returned to the socket, and his scarred skin distorted over the vacancy. His eyes were closed, and he did not stir when Hannibal entered his cabin. Gone fishing, perhaps.

Hannibal watched the steady rise and fall of his back for over a minute before Will said, “Can’t you just manipulate it back into place?”

“That would carry some risk to your arm.”

“I have huge faith in you, Hannibal.” Will’s voice was flat.

Hannibal lifted back the edge of the blanket. He ran his fingers down Will’s spine, feeling his skin, and then pressed his fingers to the pulse in Will’s neck. The skin was clammier than he would have liked, the heartbeat too rapid. But not, he thought, an emergency.

He knelt again, parallel to Will, his knees on either side of Will’s arm. Reaching out, he pushed the lock of hair away from Will’s eye with his thumb, brushing his hair back over his ear with the side of his hand. Will lifted his head slightly to look up at Hannibal. His gray-blue eyes were cloudy with pain, yet defiant in the face of it, as always.

“I’m ready,” Will said.

“I know.”

Hannibal slid his hand down to the trapezius muscle and massaged it slowly, then brought up his left hand up to the deltoid. Will hissed under the touch. Hannibal desisted, focusing on the trapezius, then gently worked the deltoid muscle again. He reached down with his right hand, took hold of Will’s upper arm and began applying downward pressure. After a moment, he brought his left hand down to Will’s elbow and added pressure there as well.

Hannibal had relocated many shoulders during his time as an emergency room surgeon, and most people tended to clench the muscles in their legs or other parts of their bodies to cope with the pain. Will remained still enough that Hannibal might have expected that he had retreated inside some kinder place in his mind, or perhaps succumbed to sleep and silence under the muscle relaxers, but instead he stayed with Hannibal, watching Hannibal’s face just inches from his own. Hannibal licked his lips and continued to apply pressure, watching Will watch him.

They remained in this tableau, waiting for deliverance.

Chapter Text

Because there's nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it's sent away.

― Sarah Kay

Will felt Hannibal’s form hovering near in a manner he had been used to for years now, ever since his encephalitis had given Hannibal an excuse to touch and reassure him, the mercurial author of both his pain and his relief. So many scenes from Will’s memories went this way, from encephalitis-driven seizures to hot, seeping gunshot wounds, and all the emotional strain that had come with these things and more. The pain in his shoulder seemed scant by comparison. Will longed to draw a curtain over his pain, to shield it from Hannibal and from himself, so that he could lie in a warm and innocent darkness, filled with comfort and free of guile.

How long they had traveled, but how little distance they had come.

He could feel Hannibal’s breath, hot on his cool skin, and it reminded him incongruously of his dogs, coming to investigate him when he lay sick in his bed, all hot breath and cold noses. He almost laughed.

He must have twitched because a shock of pain lanced his shoulder and arm, all the way down to his fingertips and up into his jaw. He caught his breath.

Hannibal regarded him thoughtfully, then looked down. He shifted his grip on Will’s arm, leaning forward into it now. Cetus rocked them, to and fro. Hannibal minimized the pulsing to the best of his ability, keeping his pressure steady and gentle.

“Do you resent me for the pain you’re in, Will?” he asked, still looking down. His voice was husky.

“You didn’t cause it.”

“Not this time.”

Will did not answer. He closed his eyes and wished he had let the sedatives put him to sleep.

“Job endured immeasurable pain,” Hannibal said after a time. “His suffering is understood to have increased his intimacy with God.”

“‘I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear,’” Will quoted softly, “‘but now my eye sees Thee.’”

“Philosophers and theologians have tried to explain the purpose and experience of pain for as long as man has had language to express it,” Hannibal said. “Many believe God sends pain to discipline and purify His saints and followers. Even modern scientists have demonstrated that guilt increases a person’s willingness to endure pain, and that the experience of pain assuages those feelings of guilt.”

Will felt his lips curl. “That math doesn’t work for me,” he said.

“Did you believe that when you took us over the cliff?”

Will opened his eyes again. Hannibal’s shoulder was close to him now, obscuring Will’s view of his face. “I didn’t take us over the cliff because I was looking for pain, Doctor.”

Hannibal shifted slightly at the word “doctor,” drawing away just enough so that they could look into each other’s eyes. He had uncharacteristically let his beard grow once they had started overnighting on rough seas, and Will was not used to how the grizzled hair made him look rougher, less refined. He pursed his lips, then said, “Pain can be a catalyst for change. Many survivors of trauma report a renewed appetite for and appreciation of life and all of its possibilities.”

“That which does not kill me makes me stronger?”

“In my experience, pain doesn’t always make a man stronger, even when it doesn’t kill him. But it transforms him, as the crucible transforms the metal.”

“Alloys are usually stronger than the metals they come from.”

Hannibal tilted his head. “Counterfeiters created alloys of precious metals to deceive the unwary. That which is rendered new is not always rendered better. Utilitarian belief is that happiness is the measure of pleasure that a person can derive, absent of pain.”

“That math does work for me.”

The words hung in the air. He sensed hurt from Hannibal, who was still watching him, his thin brows knitted together. Will thought of falling. He remembered the happiness, fear and hope.

“To feel intensely is not a symptom of weakness, Will. It’s the mark of the truly alive.”

“I can bear it,” Will said. The muscle relaxers must finally be working, he thought, as he was too tired, suddenly, to continue this discussion.

Hannibal seemed to sense his weariness. “We’re always braver in the face of our own pain than in the face of the pain of those we love,” he said quietly. He turned his attention back to Will’s arm and let the conversation rest.

The misery in Will’s shoulder had not slackened, and he worried at what even more painful technique Hannibal might try to reset his shoulder, should this one not pay off in the next few minutes. Relief seemed an interminable distance away.

More minutes passed in silence, but finally the shoulder began to move. Will took a gulp of air, blinking at this new agony, clouds of darkness pooling in front of his eyes, and then he released the breath in a long, shuddering sigh. The shoulder hesitated and then popped into place.

Hannibal supported the weight of the books with one hand and unwound the bandage with the other, releasing the books onto the floor. Will could not resist testing his hand’s movement and felt it brush against the seam on the inside of Hannibal’s thigh.

“Try to be still,” Hannibal murmured. He ran his warm palm over the muscles of Will’s shoulder again, much the same as he had smoothed the blanket fifteen minutes before, and as he had once drawn a blanket over Will’s chilled form and caressed him, Will thought idly, mere hours after shoving Abigail’s ear down his throat.

The knuckles on his hand brushed the nape of Will’s neck, the other hand moving over Will’s shoulder, now tracing the burns around his arm with the barest ghost of a touch.

“Help me sit up,” Will said.

Hannibal helped support his arm as he pushed up into a sitting position. “We’ll immobilize the shoulder for a few days,” Hannibal said.

“I remember the drill.”

Hannibal retrieved his sling and brace and a towel and clothes, not needing to ask where Will had stored them. He had probably investigated all of Will’s belongings at some point. He wetted a cloth and then sat next to Will, avoiding the cold, wet stretch of sheet where Will had lain. The wetness had probably soaked through to the mattress underneath—his clothes had been sopping when they came in. Hannibal began gently removing the trails and stains of blood.

His movements were slow and deliberate, less like a doctor at work than a supplicant at prayer. Will resisted the urge to object. He would be unable to tend his right arm well with his left hand, and Hannibal would insist, and he would be forced to give in. Will wished it did not matter. Hannibal rinsed the cloth in the sink and resumed his work, warm fingers over smarting skin.

Will watched his face as he worked, remembering another cleansing at another time, long gone, his hand in Hannibal’s hands, the warmth of water and soft fabric and the thrill of having killed, and of having Hannibal beside him in the aftermath.

“So many of these moments have come and gone and come again,” he said wistfully.

“‘The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun,’” Hannibal said.

“If only there were,” Will said.

Hannibal looked up at him, a troubled expression on his face, as he ran the towel over Will’s shoulders and torso. He reached around Will’s back and helped him lean forward, drawing him close, so that he could dry Will’s back.

Once this new ordeal was over, Hannibal assisted Will with an undershirt and helped him into the apparatus over it. “I’ve got it,” Will said when his shoulder was safely settled. He reached for the towel.

He expected an objection, but Hannibal left with a single nod, carefully closing the door to ensure his privacy. Will struggled out of his pants, clumsy with just his left hand. It was a relief to shed the clammy, stiff fabric, a relief to be by himself for a few minutes, a relief to breathe. The skin of his thighs was cold and blue beneath his deepening tan. He moved slowly, leaning against the doorframe to stabilize himself as Cetus skipped over the waves, charging ahead in some unknown direction. By the time he had finished drying himself, he was starting to shiver all over, and the knowledge that it was a good sign was poor comfort against the new wretchedness.

He tossed the pants into his shower and struggled into the soft shorts Hannibal had laid out for him. He did not want to appear shuddering in front of Hannibal. He was so tired of it—tired of the vulnerability, of dependency, tired of the torture of needing comfort, of wanting comfort from his tormentor. But there was no help for it now: he was not going to stop shaking until he got warm.

Going out into the saloon, Will found that Hannibal was rummaging in his own cabin, out of sight around the bulkhead. He had placed two folded blankets on the bench of the settee, and Will was glad to take one of them and hitch it up over himself as he sat gratefully on the banquette and closed his eyes.

“You can sleep in my bed,” Hannibal said. His voice sounded muffled, as if he had not emerged from his cabin.

“It’s fine, Hannibal. We can make up the banquette—”

“I’ve built up a place for you to be comfortable and elevated. I’ll nap on the banquette from time to time, if I have to.” His voice was clear and close this time.

“It’s not long enough for you—”

“No, no, Will. I insist.”

Will opened his eyes to find Hannibal standing over him. “You are so consistently insistent,” Will said.

Hannibal smiled. “And you so persistently resistant.”

Hannibal was reaching for him, and the fight was gone from Will now. He was just tired. He tolerated Hannibal lifting him to his feet, setting aside the blanket, and guiding him with a light touch at the center of his back, warm through the fabric of the undershirt. Hannibal helped him wedge into the mound of pillows and blankets he had built in the corner of his bed.

Will settled finally, as Hannibal sat near and watched him. Sleep dragged at him, the drugs guiding him into still depths. At long last, he gave in.

* * *

When Will had been asleep an hour, Hannibal came and sat quietly at his side.

He had tidied Will’s cabin, then gone above and adjusted their course and resettled them for night travel, on short sail, back on their correct heading. He listened to the satellite weather report as he sat in Cetus’s darkness, dimly lit by the equipment’s LEDs. He had a look at the GPS and radar. No other ships were in their vicinity. The woman finished reading the weather report in Dutch and then began in French. Squalls, she had reported, with heavy gusts of wind. No major storms, but a small craft advisory for areas of the Caribbean and Atlantic. The weather should clear in the morning. The crisis, as brief and cataclysmic as it was, was over.

He turned on a single lamp to make his way to Will. It was dark in the aft cabin, the light leaking from around the bulkhead behind the navigation desk. Hannibal’s shadow dimmed Will’s form where he lay on the bed.

Hannibal watched Will breathe in the darkness. His scarred cheek was turned against the pillow, his mouth curled up at the corner, just visible between the shadows of his mustache and beard. His brown eyelashes splayed over his cheeks like the wings of a butterfly at rest.

Reaching under the blankets and sheets, Hannibal felt for the skin of Will’s thigh. Will stirred and settled, the sedatives too heavy on his eyelids for him to wake. Hannibal opened his hand, moving over the smooth muscle until he cupped Will’s kneecap in his palm. He stilled. Will’s skin was dry, not feverish or sweaty, the blankets a cocoon of heat and comfort around him.

Hannibal withdrew his hand. He smoothed away the wrinkles from his presence, sealing the cracks and tucking Will away, safe.

Chapter Text

I have always wanted to give you the world, so I started giving you pieces of the oceans that kept us apart.

―Karen Quan, Write like no one is reading

All was calm. Cetus’s sails hung lifeless. The ocean stretched all around under a piercing white-gold sun, a vast blue landscape empty even of whitecaps.

This had begun a few short days after Will’s injury and lasted into another day before Will started to worry about it. He listened to the weather forecasts with religious fervor, but they all said the same thing: unlikely and unseasonable calm. There was a tropical storm brewing to the south, but it was making little headway and should miss their course. They should be well settled in Saint Martin in a few more days’ sail, and yet they went nowhere.

Hannibal cooked to pass the time, now working his way through canned and dried food with no less aplomb than he cooked anything. He had served tea-smoked duck eggs with black caviar for their breakfast. He was currently working on braised veal, telling Will that he had saved some of the heartier meals he had planned for the latter part of the journey. “Nothing like a good meal to keep spirits up,” he had said. He did not seem to mind the heat while he cooked, no matter how stuffy it felt below deck.

He was heating a frozen soup stock he had prepared in advance, while Will sat at the navigation desk as they listened to the weather report. When the woman had recycled her speech twice in her robotic, lifeless manner, Will reached out and snapped the radio dial to “off.” He adjusted his sling irritably. His skin itched underneath, and he did not like the smell of it: antiseptic and elastic, synthetic fiber and sweat.

“Are we lost in the Bermuda Triangle?” Hannibal asked.

“We’re not lost,” Will said. “We know exactly where we are.”

“Lost in the sense of ‘forsaken,’ then?”

“If we’re not moving fast enough for you, feel free to get out and push.”

Hannibal smiled. “What do you think we should do?”

“I don’t know,” Will said after a moment. “We have a range of two hundred miles on the engine, maybe two-fifty. We’ve consumed some fuel. I don’t know how much. That’s not enough to get us anywhere from our current position, and once we spend it, it’s gone.”

“We could use the fuel to get closer to a main shipping lane.”

“That carries its own risks,” Will said. “The same as radioing for help—Björn,” he added, lifting an eyebrow.

Hannibal chuckled. “It wouldn’t hurt to wait a day or two,” he said. “We have enough water, and plenty to eat. It’s been a few days. We can get you out of that sling.”

* * *

A day later, Hannibal sunbathed on a cockpit bench. He stretched out in the sunshine, shirtless, sunglasses on, chin upturned as he breathed the moist air. He enjoyed how the air moved the hair on his chest and legs and tickled his beard around his mouth, but it did not fill the sails for more than a few moments before dropping off for an hour.

Hannibal’s hair was lightening and his skin darkening, extending his grizzled look all over. Will had seemed surprised by how graying he was, but Hannibal was pleased with his age and the experiences that fueled it: every moment he lived he had snatched from God’s own sticky fingers. Will had a few strands of gray in his hair, too.

He and Will both had gotten a shaggy, sea dog appearance and were quite unlike their former selves. It would be well for a border crossing by sea. Will would comb his curls over his forehead to cover his scar, and no one would look twice at two sailors making the common crossing to Saint Martin.

Hannibal had read in TattleCrime that Will had followed him across the Atlantic, alone in a sailboat called the NOLA. It had moored in Palermo, at the gateway to Hannibal’s mind, there already when Hannibal had delivered his broken heart. When Will had sold the boat through a dealer in Sicily, never to see it again, Hannibal knew he would give Will another—this would be where they would go together, as they should have gone all along.

He looked over at Will, who was sitting across from him, leaning back, chin down, knees wide. He wore a white shirt, the collar unbuttoned and sleeves rolled to the elbows, thoughtlessly handsome. His brown curls had lights of gold in them now, and his skin was tanner than Hannibal could remember ever having seen it. The old scar from the bone saw traced a delicate white line along his forehead, while the newer cheek wound was all but lost in his beard.

Will had kept his arm immobilized for just a handful of days before Hannibal had decided he would be better off without the apparatus. He was in his forties now, too old to leave the tissues still that long if he wanted to someday make a full recovery. Keeping him from over-exercising it was another matter, but Will at least was mindful to keep his arm close to his body and not rotate it outward too far. Hannibal was coaching him through his physical therapy this time, not accepting his glib answers about doing the exercises himself.

He started by having Will press his hand against Hannibal’s hip and then against Hannibal’s slowly giving hand, testing his strength and watching to see just how much pain he was in. Will had adopted his trademark flat affect by the second of these sessions. He would stare ahead, at the pulse at the base of Hannibal’s throat, following Hannibal’s instructions to the letter, but he might as well have been the walking dead for all the emotion he expressed. He spoke when spoken to and offered nothing.

Just the two of them were alone on this boat, hundreds of miles away from anyone else for Will to worry about, and they stood close together with their hands on each other . . . yet somehow, Will was sliding from Hannibal’s grasp.

Hannibal was not often given to worry. The handful of times he had worried had mostly been because of Will, and here Will was causing him anxiety again. It was both disconcerting and genuinely admirable.

He remembered the way Will had pulled him into the embrace at the top of the cliff, the way he had clutched at Hannibal, the way he had pressed his face against Hannibal’s collarbone, filling the void that had been empty for such long years.

He remembered, too, how Will had blenched under Hannibal's touch, as he lay on the bed after dislocating his shoulder. He had flinched in a way that Hannibal could not recall him ever having done before, save one time he had felt for Will’s fever, many years before. Even then, Will’s resistance had melted to exhaustion and the desire to trust. But not now.

For the first time, Hannibal wondered if this isolation and forced closeness was actually the wisest course of action for them. He had been sure, and he was still sure--they had to deal with each other, to grope their way through their shared maze of long-stored griefs and the dead ends of failed trust. But as always, Will found ways to surprise him.

Hannibal could believe, but he could never know.

He did know Will had been grateful for the seclusion, that Will did not want to think about what he would do with regular, ordinary human interaction now that he had departed so far from it, but that was a question for another day, far in the future. Whatever he was fighting now, Hannibal thought, was something else.

As Hannibal considered, he watched as Will rotated his wedding band slowly with the fingers on his right hand, not taking it off. He was wondering where the wife was now, Hannibal sensed. Wondering how angry her child was with him.

Will rotated the band another half turn. There must have been a scratch on the rim. Will felt at it, letting his thumbnail snag on it. He slid it off and circled its rim with his thumb. He slid it back on.

It always went back on. Every time.

Hannibal tasted the salt on his lips. He looked ahead into the distance. “Do you think she would take you back?”

Will’s head came up. He went very still.

“We could turn the boat around, when the wind returns,” Hannibal said. “Sail back to the States. You could wake in a hospital with dim memories, a drug-induced haze. Reasonable doubt.”

“We’re not going back,” Will said.

Hannibal continued to look at the flat, shining horizon ahead, silver sunlight under a pale blue sky. Cetus was not even heeling in the still air. The entire world had gone still.

“I have scopolamine here,” he said. “Diazapam. More. It would be simplicity itself to recreate the appearance of another Miriam Lass. Another Bedelia du Maurier.”

Will made an exasperated sound, shifting his weight. Hannibal could feel him move, turning away and then turning back. Hannibal took his sunglasses off and turned into the onslaught of his gaze.

“I’m not Bedelia du Maurier,” Will said. “And you’ve already been dosing me for that eventuality.”

The words were quiet. Had the wind been blowing, Hannibal would not have been able to make them out. Cetus wallowed, her rigging groaning.

“You never really took me off after we recovered from the fall,” Will continued. “You put it in the one place you were sure I would never believe you would put it. The one place you would never put it.”

“It was only when it would cause you no risk, and never a large enough dose to impair you.”

Will nodded, raising his eyebrows. “Just enough to show up on a drug screen, in hair fibers and fingernails. If I agreed to it, you’d dose me heavily between now and our arrival back in the States, make sure the story would stick.”

“You were tempted to take me up on the offer, then, when it came.”

“No.”

“Do you think you’re protecting her from me?”

“You know the answer to that already.” Will’s voice was cold.

“Do you think she’s waiting for you?” Hannibal asked. “It must be a terrible thing, to wait. To not know, day in and day out, whether your husband will ever return to you.”

“Don’t pretend,” Will said. “You gave her what she needed to move on.”

“I have no intention of calling on her. Now you’ve heard me say it. Does it make this easier?”

Will stood abruptly. In the flat calm Cetus shied under his movement. He took the short few steps across the cockpit and stood above Hannibal, looking down on him without expression. Then he held out his hand, his fist closed. Hannibal remembered washing those knuckles, bloodied when Will had killed young Randall Tier. No mark from the event showed on his skin now.

“It’s what you want, isn’t it?” Will said.

Hannibal held up his palm. Will dropped his wedding band into it. It was warm with Will’s body heat, glimmering in the sun. Hannibal turned it so the bead of sunlight circled the rim, that little symbol of eternity. He closed his hand around it.

“Does that make you feel better?” Will asked in a low voice. “It’s not enough that you take everything else—you have to take even the symbols of anything I had that wasn’t about you?”

“You tried to kill yourself, Will. I would give you freedom from those anchors whose weight would drag you down.”

There was a long silence as Will continued to stare down at Hannibal. Hannibal waited, intrigued.

“What would you give me?” Will asked finally.

“What would you have of me?”

“Would you give me”—Will articulated slowly, deliberately—“Bedelia du Maurier?”

Hannibal felt a thrill of surprise in his chest. Will was steady, studying. Hannibal watched the gray-blue of his irises. His pupils were constricted in the harsh daylight. “Do you want her?” Hannibal asked curiously.

“No.”

“I would deny you nothing.”

“I don’t want her dead,” Will said. “I don’t want her at all.”

He turned and walked the few steps to the rigging. He retrieved the winch handle and began adjusting the sails to the dead air, using his left arm, which was awkward for him. Hannibal felt an urge to go and assist him, but he knew Will would not want his help.

“You were going to kill and eat her all along,” Will said finally.

“Did she tell you that?”

Will glanced over his shoulder but did not respond.

“You went to see her while you were investigating Francis Dolarhyde,” Hannibal said.

“I went to see her,” Will said, “after I went to see you.”

“Were you there for therapy? Or something else?”

“It was therapy. Of a sort,” Will said. He ceased winching the sail and just stood there with his head down. “She said you. . . .” His voice trailed off.

Cetus rocked them gently. The jib was stirring a little, but not catching any real breeze, just swirling and then falling to rest, inert. Hannibal turned the ring over in his hand and looked at it.

“What did she say, Will?”

“You sent her cards with recipes.”

Hannibal studied the set of Will’s back. He was lying, if not in substance, then with the intent to mislead. “Bedelia knew what she had gotten herself into. Did you tell her you were going to help me escape?”

“I told her what I intended.”

“That was courteous of you.”

Will sighed. He returned the handle to its housing and turned back around to face Hannibal. Hannibal waited, but he didn’t speak, just stood looking, his head slightly tilted to one side. He worked the fingers on his right hand, as he tended to when agitated. Then, without another word, he turned and trotted down the companionway and out of Hannibal’s sight.

Chapter Text

[The sea] contains so many colors. Silver at dawn, green at noon, dark blue in the evening. Sometimes it looks almost red. Or it will turn the color of old coins. Right now the shadows of clouds are dragging across it, and patches of sunlight are touching down everywhere. White strings of gulls drag over it like beads.

It is my favorite thing, I think, that I have ever seen. Sometimes I catch myself staring at it and forget my duties. It seems big enough to contain everything anyone could ever feel.

― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

The afternoon wore into evening. Will made dinner: poached sea bass with leeks—simple, refreshing, cooked with the adept hand of one who ate fish at most meals. Hannibal complimented it, then receded into an uncharacteristic silence. He had donned a clean shirt and Will’s wedding band had disappeared. Not overboard, Will thought. But gone.

They ate outside in order to be at hand on the off chance that the wind would pick up. It did not.

The sun descended through the west, casting silky light through high, thin clouds. The sea was green and without any sign of life: no fish, no fowl, no movement. Even Cetus’s usual creaks and groans seemed distant and unreal. The evening was beautiful, but neither of them commented on the beauty.

Will rummaged through the helm console and turned the radio on to the weather report. They listened for a few moments, but nothing had changed. He flipped it to off.

They had begun rationing their use of power now that they had only the solar panels to charge the batteries, the wind generator sitting useless and still. Some movement of the water may still have changed their position, however, so Will turned on the GPS.

“Fatal error,” it reported.

“What is it?” Hannibal asked.

Will turned the screen his direction. Hannibal blinked at it without changing expression. “So we are now lost in the Bermuda Triangle?”

“We’re not lost.”

Will tried a hard reset, but it did not fix the problem. He checked the connections and wires as best he could without tearing up the vessel, and they seemed sound. He checked a sigh of irritation, centered himself, and turned the unit off.

“Can you troubleshoot it?” Hannibal asked.

“Tomorrow,” Will said. “I’ll have to read the manual. Unless you want to do something else next.”

He watched Hannibal consider their options, sparing a quick glance around the boat and then into the gathering darkness ahead. “Perhaps it’s time to consider using the fuel,” he said.

“If we head due south, we’ll get into the shipping lane,” Will said. “A hundred miles, maybe. It will take us all day. More than that and we’ll have less fuel than I would like left.”

“We should do whatever you think is best,” Hannibal said.

“I’m open to suggestions.”

But Hannibal did not seem to have any suggestions, for once in his life. Hell must truly have frozen over, Will thought, wishing he could better appreciate the novelty of the moment.

The stagnant air made being below uncomfortably hot, so Will took himself to the upper deck and lay down. He lay, rocking gently, watching the light fade and Cetus’s jib give an occasional hopeless flap.

He must have slept, for it seemed a moment later and the sun was just kissing the horizon. Will felt rather than saw Hannibal sitting next to him, all fire and shadow with the light on his skin and hair above the darkness of his navy hemp shirt, open at the throat. His feet were bare. One dark-clad leg was folded underneath him, the other bent for him to prop a bare elbow on as he watched the sun go down.

He had not seemed to notice that Will had awakened, so Will watched the sunlight turn his brown eyes to amber. The harsh light emphasized the creases around his eyes and mouth, and he looked almost feral, especially with his new beard with its streaks of white and gray.

Will wondered what equally tender and ravenous urge had brought Hannibal forward to watch over him while he slept. Their conversation about Molly and Bedelia had not satisfied either of them. Hannibal was far from satisfied—Will had felt it stirring under his calm demeanor as he had prowled restlessly about the boat ever since. The vacancy on Will’s ring finger filled his consciousness, but he resisted the urge to touch it. He tried to imagine if there might ever be any way he could give Hannibal enough to sate him. Maybe there was, if Hannibal had succeeded in sawing his way into Will’s head and eaten his brain after all. Will could not see it otherwise. The whole of Will’s entire life and being was not enough. It had never been enough.

If it were enough, they could have died in the tidal churn at the foot of the cliffs, when Hannibal had finally gotten all he thought he had ever wanted.

They should have died. How could it be possible that they had not? And yet, here they were.

Will rolled onto his left arm so he could push himself into a sitting position, wincing at the kink in his neck and upper back from sleeping on the hard surface. He felt Hannibal watching him, motionless. Will was glad he did not reach out to help.

They sat in silence for a few minutes as the ocean gradually swallowed the sun’s brilliance. Will watched the sunset as steadily as he could, not shielding his eyes. Slowly, the last sliver of golden rays trembled and died.

“Were you watching for the green flash?” Hannibal asked as the grayness of twilight rose up around them. Will blinked away the imprint of the sun on his eyes.

“I’d like to have seen it once in my life,” Will said.

“You never have?”

“No. Have you?”

“Once, when I first came to America. I came by ship from Paris. It was at the southern reach of our course, not quite in the Antilles Current, but still near the edge of the Sargasso, as we are.”

“People say it’s more common in tropical waters,” Will said.

“So they do. They also say that once you’ve seen the green flash, you’ll never again go wrong in matters of the heart.”

“Must be why I’ve never seen it.”

Hannibal glanced at him, then away to the horizon. His color seemed pale and faded in the dusk, compared to the fiery glow of sunset. The sky was a deepening blue, twilight fleeing ever more rapidly the further south they traveled. Already Venus and Saturn competed for dominance near the western horizon, and Jupiter shone in the blue dome above their feet. Even a star or two was flickering into view.

Will rubbed his neck, then lay back against the deck again. Hannibal swiveled and stretched out his long legs to lie down next to Will. A meteor streaked over them.

“There’s a whole new sky of stars ahead of you, Will,” Hannibal said.

“The southern constellations.”

“The Greeks could just see some of the southern circumpolar stars, when they sailed to the southernmost waters of the Mediterranean. Those that make up what we know as Carina today. The Keel.”

“We’re further south than that already.”

“Have you looked for the stars that are new to you?”

Will shook his head. “I hadn’t thought about it since we left Hatteras.”

“The Greeks saw those southern stars as part of a single constellation, Argo Navis.”

“The ship of Jason and the Argonauts. Emerges in the spring to set sail across the southern horizon into the western sky.”

“No constellation in the sky was vaster or more majestic than this great ship. Recent astronomers decided the ship was too enormous to be contained in one single constellation, and so they broke it into just its constituent parts. Some things are too grand, too wondrous, to imagine.”

“Easier to pretend something that big doesn’t exist,” Will said.

“Or break it down and take it in small bites,” Hannibal said. Will could feel Hannibal looking at him instead of the sky in front of them.

“You lose all the grandeur that way.”

“You lose it either way,” Hannibal said. There was a rustle of movement as he resumed looking upward.

More stars had materialized as they spoke. The deep blue glimmered above them. Will found Canis Major, the easiest for him to recognize, and followed it to Puppis and Carina, then up to Vela: the stern, keel and sails of Argo Navis, just as he had memorized prior to leaving the United States.

“I used to—” Will broke off. He had been about to say Wally’s name, and the knowledge made him cold. He cleared his throat.

“What did you use to do, Will?”

“I used to look at stars with my father,” he said instead. “He taught me some of their names, how to recognize them, when and where to find them in the sky.”

“Did you teach them to your stepson?”

Will sat up. He felt his face flush. Hannibal stayed lying beneath him, watching him from his shadowed eyes.

“Did he remember them for you?” Hannibal continued. “Could he recite their names back to you? Did you put your hand on his shoulder and tell him how proud you were of him?”

Will thought of the warm squeeze of Hannibal’s phantom hand on his own shoulder, the time Hannibal had wanted him to remain silent about Abigail’s misdeeds. He remembered likewise pressing his own hand to Wally’s shoulder in his turn, when he had wanted Wally to know he was proud. When he had wanted them to be close. He hated that Hannibal closed even that distance between them, that he could so easily insert himself in Will’s memories of his family, without even knowing what they were.

“I asked you once if you were a good father to him,” Hannibal said. “Were you?”

“No,” Will said bitterly. “Not good enough.”

He felt Hannibal’s curiosity at the answer as he rolled up onto his knees and then to his feet.

“Did you know that I was thinking of him, or did you just guess?” Will demanded.

“You never speak of them,” Hannibal said. He lifted himself onto his elbows. “Whenever you start to feel comfortable enough that you might, you always hold back.”

Will stared down at Hannibal, and then he lowered himself back down to one knee. He leaned close to Hannibal’s face. Reaching out, he gripped the fabric of Hannibal’s shirt in his hand, closing his fist around it slowly.

“Maybe that should tell you something.”

Hannibal twitched slightly—Will had caught some of his chest hair—but he remained passive. It was Will’s weak arm, his right, and so the gesture was just that: a gesture, made for no better reason than emphasis. But it felt good to have Hannibal under him, looking surprised. A dim memory of the thrill he used to get while imagining killing Hannibal came and went, just a phantom—powerless, soon forgotten. There was something freeing in the knowledge that he could not kill Hannibal even if he tried.

“What should it tell me, Will?”

“Some things”—Will breathed deeply through his nose, trying to steady himself—“do not belong to you.” His voice came low and quiet.

Hannibal’s hand came up and touched his arm, moving up to the recently injured shoulder, running his palm over Will’s shirt, passing his fingers over the roughness of scars beneath.

“I only wish to know you.”

Will held himself over Hannibal for several long seconds. He imagined hurting him, pressing a knee to his throat and crushing his voice box, silencing that voice forever. No thrill accompanied the thought now. No pain, either. Nothing. He would never do it, he knew; he had taken his opportunity at the top of the cliff, and it would never return.

He could barely see the darkness of Hannibal’s eyes and knew that his own face would just be a mass of shadows against the stars above them. Hannibal’s lips were parted, and Will could feel his warm breath. He knew the look without needing to see it clearly: admiration and ache warring equally over his chiseled features. Consuming, as always. Drinking him in. Taking. He wondered what Hannibal saw in his own face.

“Goodnight, Hannibal,” he said, as gently as he could.

“Goodnight, Will,” Hannibal said in return. There was a strange, brittle quality to his voice.

Slowly, Will released Hannibal’s shirt and took a firm, deliberate grip on Hannibal’s wrist, pulling it away from his flesh. He released it unceremoniously and straightened up.

Cetus shivered under his feet.

Chapter Text

…They're dangerous as all gifts from the sea are;

the sea offers death as well as immortality.

― Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Professor and the Siren

Dawn. Gray light filtered over gray sea and gentle swell. Thin fingers of mist stretched silently over the face of the water, crawling over Cetus as she swayed in the stillness, reaching up over her bow and rigging and sliding up the mast, curling around the limp folds of the sails. A shackle banged between the mast and boom as the waves rocked the boat, sending a muted clang across the water like the tolling of a bell.

Will Graham emerged from below deck, a lone dark figure, steaming coffee in hand. He placed the cup in the holder on the console, flipping several switches, then began a sweep of the boat. He furled the sails and adjusted the rigging, moving with quiet, slow thoroughness, still favoring his right side. The clanging silenced.

After a few minutes, he returned to the helm and brought the engine to life. It rumbled and then settled to a hum, a blue cloud of exhaust lifting up to join with the film of mist and then disappear. Wan yellow light parted the clouds to the east as the fog slowly began to lift.

Will turned Cetus to a southerly course and settled in to watch the telltale for signs of any wind he might not otherwise feel, sipping his coffee. Hannibal had only just retired, and he could look forward to several hours of solitude, with nothing but the purring of the boat for company and the endless waves, absent even the cries of gulls.

The mist peeled back to empty blue sky as the hours passed, a featureless dome of blue on a featureless matching plane of water, Cetus a single speck of white-on-black in its center.

The telltale remained steady.

Will came and went. He fixed himself a snack. He drank a beer. The sea stretched away in front of them, unceasing, unfathomable. Even the swell weakened and faded to nothing.

Finally Will felt Hannibal rising within the belly of the boat below him. He did not know how he knew—Hannibal moved with the singular grace of a big cat. Only the vibrations moved through Will’s mind, like the vibrations of the engine moved through his flesh. Hannibal had awoken, and Will’s peace fled.

It was another hour before Hannibal showed himself on deck. He came bearing a little plate of canapés in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other, two glasses threaded through his fingers.

But it was not the juggling act that caught Will’s attention. Hannibal had shaved cleanly for the first time since they had left Hatteras. His cheeks and jaw were slightly paler than the rest of his face. He had also combed his hair back into the neat sweep that Will remembered from his days in therapy, and he wore a blue button-up shirt that could have come from those days as well, rolled at the sleeves just as he was wont to do when cooking any of his elaborate meals in his equally elaborate kitchen. He looked so like his younger self—a self that had never seen three years of imprisonment—that Will stared for longer than was strictly polite at this unlooked-for reversal. Only the scars across his cheekbone and under his chin betrayed him.

Remembering himself, Will helped relieve Hannibal of the plate and the glasses. The wine was already open.

“Gravlax, on a toasted crostini with dill-infused mascarpone, capers and red onion jam,” Hannibal said by way of greeting. “With Maison Lucien le Moine Batard-Montrachet Grand Cru. Oak-aged, of course.”

“Thank you,” Will said, taking a canapé.

“Are we there yet?” Hannibal asked, his eyes crinkling as he poured the wine. He settled the bottle on the console and sat himself next to Will. “How about now?”

“I’m just looking for a parking place.”

“How far have we come?”

“We’re making about eight knots,” Will said. “Without the GPS, I’m guessing, but we’re close to the shipping lane. We should run a little longer.”

“Have you seen any other vessels?”

“Not a soul.”

“The radio?”

Will shrugged. “They’re out there.”

“But you haven’t spoken to anyone.”

“No.”

Hannibal bit into a canapé and looked off into the distance. “Have you considered a mayday?”

Will turned to him. “We’ll probably be recognized. Caught or killed.”

“Someone might die,” Hannibal agreed.

“I’m not in the best shape right now, Hannibal.”

“But you have considered it.”

“I think we can wait until we’re shorter on food and water.”

Hannibal tilted his head. “Can we wait,” he said, “past the point when dwindling supplies and thirst weaken us?”

Will took a sip of the wine. It had a taste of salt, as did everything anymore. He looked away.

Hannibal set the plate of food down on the bench between them. He was sitting between Will and the glare of the sun off the water, his figure a shadowy black in silhouette. Reaching down, he took one of the canapés and flicked it over the side. Will glanced over his shoulder to watch the little creation, so delicately assembled by Hannibal’s precise hands, diminish in their wake.

“How long until you don’t wish to run anymore, Will?” Hannibal asked.

Will looked beyond Hannibal to the empty horizon. “Another two hours,” he said.

“Two hours it is, then.”

Hannibal lifted his glass, sparkling in the sunshine, toward Will. “Well,” he said, “continue.” He drank his glass to the bottom, nodded once and disappeared down the companionway.

The day drifted along, and the sun grew hotter as it began its descent into the west. Will listened to the radio for a long time, hearing the voices of the men behind freighters and cruise ships, fishing boats and pleasure craft. They spoke of many things, voices crackling with laughter and static, enmeshed in the small business and petty incidence of life. They seemed very far away. Will listened to them as he had listened to men his whole life: rough voices and foreign sounds, speaking too much and saying too little, and all from a very great distance.

There was no word on the weather, of the hot and unnatural stillness that held Hannibal and himself in its unrelenting grip.

* * *

Below, where Hannibal lay in the dimness of his berth, the engine sound shifted to neutral, then cut off and died in a splutter as the surface water bubbled and stilled around them. A momentary silence filled his ears, followed by the creak and shift of rigging as Cetus slowed and began to drift. He heard Will moving above him, his feet thumping gently as he crossed the deck, and then the clacking ratchet of the sail being hoisted, the ring of metal on metal and the whisper of unfolding fabric.

Silence resumed. There was no answering shift in the weight of the vessel. They had found no wind.

Hannibal swung his legs out of the bed, laying aside his book, and stood. He combed his hair neatly into place, in spite of the pointlessness of the gesture. He collected a clean towel and went into the galley, cutting off a heel of bread. He wiped the counter and disposed of the crumbs, then made his way up the little ladder to the outdoors.

The sun’s brilliance on the white fiberglass blinded him for several seconds, but he knew every inch of the vessel and could move about it with his eyes closed, charting his progress through the room in his mind that had become Cetus and all she represented to him, these weeks that he and Will had been alone together. He crossed to the port bench and laid the towel down.

Will was a dark presence near him, slim and sharp as a cutlass. He stood motionless at the helm, one hand arrested on the wheel as he watched Hannibal. The heat was sticky and oppressive.

Without turning his face toward Will, Hannibal took the heel of bread and tossed it into the water. It made a tiny splash and bobbed back up to the surface, where it stayed among its own ripples, even with the side of the boat and not moving away. If there was a current, it was carrying them both equally.

Hannibal began to unbutton his shirt.

“What are you doing?” Will said.

“You were right, Will,” Hannibal said. He tugged the shirt off one arm and then the other. He folded it, laying it neatly next to the towel. “I’m not content in small spaces. I long for more.”

He began undoing the buttons and fly of his pants. He could feel Will’s stare on him. Bending over, he pulled off the rest of his clothes. He glanced once over at Will, who had not moved a muscle. His eyes were on Hannibal’s abdomen, drawn as always by the scarring. Hannibal straightened, frowning slightly as he folded his pants and boxers and placed them with his shirt.

Ducking around the solar panels’ fixtures, Hannibal undid the mechanism that held the swim deck up out of the water. He settled it into place and locked it down.

“You’re supposed to stay in the boat, Hannibal,” Will said sarcastically. He did not insult Hannibal by telling him what he was doing was dangerous.

Hannibal turned back to Will and approached him. Will fell back a half step, an instinctive movement—if Hannibal wanted to overpower him, he could manage easily enough, especially in the confines of the boat and with one of Will’s arms virtually useless. Though perhaps not without suffering injury: Will refused to back up further. His look was guarded, defiant. Hannibal held Will’s gaze as he closed the space between them and stood looking down at him for long seconds. Reaching slowly down to the console, Hannibal turned the key, still sitting in the ignition.

Cetus rumbled back to life.

“If this boat is a prison, it’s a prison you put us in,” Will said.

“Perhaps it’s time for a prison break, then. For both of us.”

Hannibal left him there and went to the swim deck. He stepped down, crouched and then sat, swinging his legs over the side of the boat and his feet into the water. The water was cool, refreshing in this, the hottest part of the day. Hannibal closed his eyes and inhaled the salt air and diesel exhaust.

He slid into the water.

The coolness wrapped over and around him, lifting him up, making him feel as awake and alive as he not had since they left Hatteras, even next to the night when he had feared for Will’s life. He ducked his head under the water and kicked out from the boat, free of the confines and the tether that bound him to Cetus and to Will, still standing on her deck. The earth was a mile below his feet and he floated untouched above, suspended in nothing and everything.

Surfacing, he flipped the water and hair out of his face with a sharp turn of his head. He turned in the water and located the boat, now some fifteen feet away from him. Will had not moved. His face was utterly blank.

“Am I tempting God, Will?” Hannibal called back to him loudly, making sure he could be heard over Cetus’s engine. “Will the sails fill with that elusive wind and drag you away from me?”

He scissored his legs under the water and watched Will watch him.

“Or am I tempting you, Will? How easy would it be to put the boat in gear?”

On the boat, Will shifted his hand on the wheel. He tightened it. Even from where he was, Hannibal could see Will close his eyes.

“Where do you want to be? Here with me, or free of me once and for all?”

Will turned slowly away from Hannibal. His left hand came up to the wheel as his right reached toward the console and the throttle. His hand hovered in the air.

“What are you waiting for, Will? For God to decide?”

Will’s hand dropped to the key. The engine spluttered and quieted.

In the silence that followed, Will’s voice came quietly. “Come aboard.”

“Do you want God to decide for you, Will?”

“Please.”

Hannibal obliged, swimming the few strokes back to the swim deck and pulling himself back aboard. He brought the swim deck back into place and secured it. Will did not turn around.

It was a simple matter to get his arm around Will’s waist. Will turned in Hannibal’s grasp, his reactions quick, wrenching something painfully in Hannibal’s still-healing side. But he was not quite quick enough, and he went over the port rail and into the ocean.

Hannibal watched for Will to surface. He began drying himself with the towel.

Will’s rage was tangible as his head came above the surface of the water. He coughed and stared balefully up out of the water at Hannibal’s face, his wet hair plastered over his forehead and ears. His injured arm reached to the side of the boat as he treaded water with his healthy arm and feet. With the swim deck up, he would never be able to pull himself back on board without Hannibal’s help.

Over Hannibal’s shoulder, Cetus’s sails remained empty and lifeless.

Hannibal finished drying himself and began pulling his clothes back on as he regarded Will below him.

“Do you still want to die, Will?”

“I never wanted to die.”

“But you were willing to die, weren’t you? Willing to die if it meant killing us both? Do you still feel that way?”

“Is this a test?”

“What are you waiting for? For the weather to kill us both? Why are you here at all? Are you still waiting for God?”

Will’s anger seemed to dissolve then. He put his chin back down to the water and regarded the side of the boat.

Hannibal’s breaths came shallowly as he waited for Will to push away from the hull. He imagined Will’s face looking up at Hannibal once, before disappearing forever. Hannibal traced the lines of Will’s skull and face in his mind.

“God didn’t put me here, Hannibal. You did.”

His voice was so quiet Hannibal almost could not hear him. His tone brought back the words, I don’t want to think about you anymore, so vividly that Hannibal had to look away from him, his throat constricting. The cool touch of air brushed his cheek.

He tried his voice, found it wanting, and had to try again. “Have you been waiting for me to kill you, Will? Is that what this has been?”

Will lifted his head then. His eyes were gray and full of grief. “Neither of us are ever very far wrong, are we?” he said.

“Just far enough,” Hannibal said.

“Help me up, Hannibal.”

Hannibal reached down to him. Cetus shifted slightly, sending a clang into the air.

Will pulled himself out of the water as far as he could, and Hannibal managed to get a hand under his good arm and drag him over the rail and onto the bench, not caring how much water came over the side with him. Both their clothes were wet now, and Will was shaking slightly as they clutched each other.

Will ran one hand over his head to brush the wet hair from his eyes. “You’ve got it wrong,” he said. “So did I. We aren’t out here waiting for the boat or the weather or the sea or even each other to kill us.”

He coughed on the salt water, then cleared his throat.

“We died already. We died at the bottom of the cliff. We died and this is hell.”

And then he smiled, gray eyes lifting to Hannibal’s, bringing Hannibal’s heart into his throat. He smiled that sad smile of his, the smile that could contain oceans of sweetness and bitterness all at once.

“Hell isn’t a lake of fire or a frozen wasteland,” he said. “It isn’t even other people.”

His gaze raked the skin of Hannibal’s face, both savage and wise.

“Hell is each other.”

Chapter Text

[The waves] move across a faint horizon, the rush of love and the surge of grief, the respite of peace and then fear again, the heart that beats and then lies still, the rise and fall and rise and fall of all of it, the incoming and the outgoing, the infinite procession of life. And the ocean wraps the earth, a reminder. The mysteries come forward in waves.

― Susan Casey, The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean

Will had seen Hannibal’s heart break enough times to recognize it in his stillness, in the slight thrust of his jaw beneath closed lips, in the shifts between denial and acceptance in his brown eyes, which could find no safe place to rest in the landscape of Will’s face.

“The circle of hell you reserved for yourself,” Hannibal said slowly, “your everlasting torment . . . is to be with me.”

“Hannibal,” Will said. “I’m with you for only one reason.”

And he drew Hannibal into him, into his arms. He wrapped his arms around him, even the injured one, and Hannibal slowly relaxed into the embrace, his breath coming in a warm, shuddering rush on Will’s ear. Will tucked his chin over Hannibal’s shoulder and felt Hannibal do the same to him.

It still hurt, to be so vulnerable. It hurt that Hannibal had turned on him and could have drowned him or let him drown, yet again after so many times down this path. It hurt that Hannibal lived day to day and moment to moment, awaiting Will’s next betrayal.

It hurt that there could never be any real trust between them, that they continued to cycle through waves of treachery and longing, with such few and short-lived moments of peace between them.

It hurt when they avoided. It hurt when they touched.

Will pressed his cheek to Hannibal’s neck. The phantom ache of Dolarhyde’s knife thudded with the beat of his heart.

It hurt.

Will tried to be still inside, tried to care and not to care. The golden pendulum swung in the darkness of his mind. Still, still, be still.

He remembered falling, remembered dying. He remembered the pain of the beach and the horror of being returned to life, of finding Hannibal alive next to him, of everything being for nothing in the end. He had been so very cold, his face and shoulder and chest on fire, and Hannibal had held him tight and refused to let him slip away.

The pendulum swung. Will felt the warmth and strength of Hannibal’s arms around his back, and he concentrated on them until there was nothing else.

He felt the sting of Cordell’s knife by his ear. He remembered Hannibal’s last-moment rescue, the hated feeling of helplessness while Hannibal carried him through the snow as gunshots echoed all around them, like the thud and crackle of distant fireworks.

He felt the burn and tug of the saw as it tore into his skull, the torrent of his own blood carrying him, lifting him, helpless again. Bound, his clothes ripped from him as the bullet worked its way inside him, arms pinned, the bite of the needle. Weakness.

He tightened his arms around Hannibal’s broad back, felt the gnarl of scar tissue under his palm. Another circle of hell. He traced it with his fingers, felt it give under the press of his thumb. The pendulum swung.

He thought of Hannibal’s fingers on his own hand, scraped raw over the flesh of a dying man, a dying beast. He thought of the warmth of water and the tingle of antiseptic, of Hannibal’s hushed voice and the thread of awe and affection in it, his own mingled horror and joy, the quiet sense of power.

He thought of Hannibal’s hand again, on his face, cupping his neck. Will turned into that same place on Hannibal’s neck, breathed in the scent of him, pressed against the strands of wet hair and the smooth skin below Hannibal’s ear. He let Hannibal’s shadow shield the blinding sun from his eyelids and spill, cool and dry, inside him.

He remembered Hannibal’s hands stroking him, the slide of his fingers over a blanket, the warmth of his strong grip when that seemed the only solid thing in a world spinning out of control, the unreality of the slide and crinkle of plastic as Hannibal caressed him, the agony of the tube, the massage of his throat to help him swallow.

The pendulum swung. It pulsed against the swirling red darkness of Will’s eyelids. That last image, once so buried in his mind he could not find it at all, now one of the hardest to banish. He trembled, and he felt Hannibal trembling. Still, be still.

He remembered seizing, remembered Hannibal touching his face, peering into his eyes. He thought of Hannibal holding his arms, pressing him and guiding him to sit. He felt the cool press of Hannibal’s wide, dry palm against his burning forehead.

The rough skin of Hannibal’s jaw scraped over Will’s cheek, light stubble catching in his beard. The sandpaper rasp grazed against his mouth as he turned his face in toward Hannibal’s, feeling nothing but the reality of him, the swelling of his chest as he breathed, the coarseness of his skin against Will’s lips.

“Will—” Hannibal said. His voice caught on the word. The pendulum swung.

He remembered Hannibal’s closeness, the warm grip of his hand on Will’s shoulder, the solidarity he had once imagined they held with regard to Abigail, fleeting as it was. He remembered how Hannibal had pried his helpless hands from her neck, how he had both given her life back with his own hands, and then taken it away.

Hot blood pulsed between his fingers: his own, Abigail’s. It rose around him, cooling, sluggish, no longer quick with the beats of their hearts. He remembered his own cries, the choking sounds she made, the droplets of her blood scalding holes in his flesh where they struck him.

He felt again Hannibal’s embrace, the sway of their bodies together, the desperate pressure of Hannibal’s arms clinging to him, fingers tangling in his hair, the bruising pressure of Hannibal’s fingers on his jaw.

He felt the white sear of the knife across his abdomen and the gentle caress of Hannibal’s hand on his face.

The pendulum swung.

Will pushed against the tide of their past, halted it, pressed back against inevitability, against entropy, against their sins and betrayals, against their wounds and pain, against the chasms of jealousy and the endless gulf of grief. He seized their memories and wrapped them in darkness, forced them into silence, formless and void, and cast them into the deep.

The pendulum stilled. All of it was lost to the sea.

Will let Hannibal go with his weaker arm, reaching up instead to cup his neck beneath his ear and draw his face close to Will’s own. He held still, watching Hannibal catch his breath, waiting, hovering. And then he lifted his mouth to Hannibal’s, and with a brush of his lips, Will separated that which had gone before from that which would come, dividing the waters from the waters, and created a firmament in the midst of their ocean.

Hannibal kissed him back gently, hesitantly, reverently. His eyes closed slowly as he gave himself over to taste of this new world, to this gathering together of new seas, of new seasons, and of new days and years.

Eternity stretched before them.

* * *

There was a stirring, and the boom swung around with a clang. The sail flapped, whipping like a flag, and then Cetus heeled to port as the sail caught the breeze and filled, taut and eager once more.

They were moving again.

“Of course,” Hannibal breathed against the corner of Will’s mouth.

Will gave a quiet laugh. He felt free for the first time in ages, the wind and the averted crisis filling him as surely as they had filled the sail. He pulled back to look a long time into Hannibal’s earnest face and fond gaze, then disentangled himself from Hannibal’s arms and went to adjust for the luff in the sail and to alter their course as the wind picked up. Hannibal watched him work, the poetry of his arms and back and body. Then he went to join him.

Together they turned Cetus to her new heading, their little boat a glimmer of light and shadow on the surface of the endless sea.

my dear,

we are all made of water.

it's okay to rage. Sometimes

it's okay to rest. to recede.

― Sanober Khan