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Hannibal’s graceful hands sweep over delicate ivory keys, a solo dance that shows musical expertise. Elegance radiates through his fingers into the softness of the melody, a serene smile on his face as he strokes each note just right.
It’s effortless for him. There are no errors.
Will wonders how hands that break bones and tear flesh, that dig and claw and scrape until veins pop like branching lightning across his arms… can also be so beautiful, gentle. A lover’s caress holding the piano with care.
Jealousy bubbles up inside him at the singing keys being kissed by Hannibal’s fingertips, at the mahogany bench that’s allowed to support his weight. Envious of anything that gets to hold Hannibal or be held by him with ease, without thought or hesitation.
Without fear.
There’s glances towards him, maroon eyes lock with his over and over as the song fills Will's lungs like delightfully cold water on a summer's day. Drowning.
Even with the seeming distraction, Hannibal never falters. A perfect rendition performed as his lips quirk into a smile, too soft to be anything but genuine. Saccharine sweet to the point of teeth aching.
Will watches from a distance, traces the way Hannibal’s suit vest hugs his frame with his eyes. The way his chest moves as he seems to breathe the music in as he plays. He’s safe over here. Standing right where the harsh shadows of the room meet the golden glow cast by the window in a line, as it cascades over the piano and across the floor.
The piece reaches its peak, and then the last few pretty notes ring past Will's eardrums. The silence that follows feels too heavy, bright afterimages of the melody still fill the air even in the quiet. A tape in Will's mind rewinding to what he just heard. Preserving its importance in his heartstrings.
Hannibal’s eyes soften as he gives his full attention towards him. A sickeningly unintentional gesture. Unguarded. Just for Will.
“What’s the name of that one?” Will's voice is too raspy and uncertain to follow up the light, breeze-through-a-meadow sound the piano made.
Hannibal opens his mouth to speak, but hesitates for a split second, almost unnoticeable. A sliver of time you wouldn’t even care to mark on a music sheet. But it’s there nonetheless, before he speaks in that familiar melodious voice, strong and certain. Not too dissimilar to the noise the piano made just seconds earlier, an accented staccato of warmth.
“Symphony #5. Adagietto. Composed by Gustav Mahler in 1902. He wrote it as a marriage proposal for his lover, with a poem etched into the corner of the sheet music.”
Hannibal’s intense eyes shift away from Will’s. Unlike him. He gently taps a single key in front of him, barely pressing down so the sound it makes can hardly be heard, even in the pin-drop silent room. But it is there. An idle gesture exhibiting nerves. No, perhaps just hesitation. A fiddling with his hands.
Will can’t stop staring at those hands.
Strong, violent.
Warm, gentle.
“In which way I love you, my sunbeam, I cannot tell you with words.”
Wills breath hitches. The poem. He can almost perfectly visualize the swooping, cursive letters inserted into the worn paper of old sheet music. He feels frozen in place, in time. Immortalized in ink on paper himself, to be pressed to the pages forever.
“Only my longing, my love and my bliss, can I anguish declare.”
A short poem, yet filled with heavy weight. Will swallows. The lump in his throat goes down hard and choking. He closes his eyes in hopes the wet stinging that pricks them subsides.
He wants. Yet he cannot have. There is no poetry nor song that can explain it better than that. It’s a tale as old as time, a cliché that he’s stumbled into and can’t escape. Falling down a stairwell of piano keys that denote his misery in a loud descending scale.
But oh. What could be waiting at that fateful A0, the lowest key?
He licks his lips. Tries to come up with something to say. Hannibal always has something to say.
Perhaps words were never his strong suit. They often get stuck behind his mouth, a web of sticky sentences that he can’t decipher or make known, not to anyone, not even himself. More like the sound of accidentally leaning on a keyboard than a full song.
The breath he takes in still feels filled with liquid. Waterlogged.
He’s tired of drowning. Tired of fate and circumstance pulling him in any direction that’s not towards what he yearns for. He wants the next breath he takes to be as easy as Hannibal makes playing music seem. Effortless, beautiful. An exhale that says: you’ve done it. You can rest now.
It takes 3 steps to cross the room to where Hannibal sits, to bridge a gap that always felt treacherous to cross. 3 easy steps to where he can lightly cup Hannibal’s jaw, to trace his sharp cheekbone with a delicate sweep of his thumb.
It’s Hannibal’s turn for his breath to catch. A beautiful inhale of surprise. Will wants to capture that sound and write it into the corners of his own sheet music. To play it on every instrument over and over until his fingers are numb.
“Did they say yes?” Will's voice sounds broken and fragile, a flat note. “Mahler’s lover. Was the proposal accepted?”
Leaning into his touch, Hannibal closes his eyes, like just listening to Will's voice is overwhelming him. An opera symphony working its way into his ear that leaves him with goosebumps and tear-pricked eyes.
Will understands what that feels like.
He traces his thumb down to the curve of Hannibal’s lip, the very edge of where they crease together. His very own piano keys to press on. He can feel the soft stretch of them when he speaks again.
“I am hoping. A gift so meaningful could sway his lover into saying yes.”
Hannibal is looking for something. Will wants him to find it.
“Tell me Will, can something like love truly be expressed through a piece of music? Love is not only an intense emotion, but an act of devotion. Is that something a simple melody or instrument can convey?“
Will works his way towards the plush of Hannibal’s lips, dragging the bottom one down slightly. Hannibal doesn’t flush, but his eyes shine as he looks up at Will with questioning eyes. He’s soft, putty in his hands. Even as his stubble scratches Will's hand, which is something he never predicted when imagining small moments like this. When he would allow himself to yearn, to wonder. What Hannibal’s skin felt like under his hands. The warmth. The way he doesn’t turn away, but leans into him. Wanting him so fiercely that it makes his heartstrings pluck an aching melody and his bones shake with the exhaustion of loving another. But he didn’t envision the scratch of stubble. It grounds him to the reality of it all.
He’s real. Hannibal is flesh and blood and a heartbeat that pulses in time with his own. He knows that to be true now.
Will has seen Hannibal as the crescendoing peak of a fully seated orchestra when he spills blood as effortlessly as he produces music. A loud, ringing sound that can fill a stadium as he maims and destroys.
And yet he’s also seen him as the dust that filters through a sunbeam and lands on a piano's lid. Fragile and strangely beautiful. A rare gift to see him so fully as both.
“I think so. Most of the time, words and language can’t even express the enormity of love fully. It isn’t just a simple tune when there is intent inside of it. And I think I figured out how to hear it. When I finally listened to the right song.”
Will's thumb leaves Hannibal and is replaced by his own lips. Gravity and harmony pulling them together. He kisses him gently, like Hannibal might disappear into thin air if he isn’t careful. Turn into a songbird and fly away.
But instead, Hannibal’s lips search his right back. Slip against his own in perfect, warm harmony. A hand, the same one that has ripped the vocal cords from another so they can never sing again, takes a tender hold on the back of his neck to keep him there. Like Hannibal’s fears match Will's own.
When Hannibal sighs a humming noise into his mouth, an exhale that says they can finally rest now, Will hears it as the crackling static of Adagietto in the back of his mind.