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“You could take it out, you know.”
Will had spent ten minutes watching Frederick lean over a book while discreetly rubbing at his left eye until it was red around the green contact lens. Every time he stayed the night, Will could see Frederick grow less comfortable the later it got. He’d never asked him to hide the discoloured eye, but he knew he had to allow Frederick to protect his vanity. Up to a point, anyway – which he reached seeing Frederick just barely keeping himself from scratching his own eye out.
“Everything is fine,” Frederick said, looking up. To his credit, he managed to feign relaxation rather well. Psychiatrist’s bonus.
“My dad used to tell me that playing with it is going to make it worse,” Will answered, mixing a spoonful of cod liver oil in with the lean boneless meat ground up in his bowl. The dogs were already pressing up against his shins in whimpering excitement.
“Considering I have no vision left in this eye, that should be difficult.”
“Suit yourself.”
Will wasn’t in the mood to fight. After listlessly leafing through his book and digging his thumb into the corner of his eye some more, Frederick got up and moved past him to pour himself his third glass of brandy, holding the bottle to Will in a silent question. He shook his head. Frederick had brought the brandy himself, claiming that what Will drank tasted ‘like equal parts methylated spirit and food colouring’, but Will still held onto his bottom-shelf drinks. Usually, Frederick had a glass of his expensive liquor before bed. Half a bottle right after dinner was new.
When Will had positioned full bowls of dog food around the room so all animals had a chance to get them without brawls breaking out, he wanted to ask about the occasion, but realised Frederick was gone. He’d left The Neuroscience of Human Relationships on the table and his cane leaning against it.
The front door was open. Will expected him to be seated in a terrace chair with his tablet as he stepped outside, but instead, Frederick leaned against the balustrade, looking out into the black forest. The September night was hot and humid and the air carried the austere smell of wet earth and evening primrose, which sprinkled the meadow with yellow stars.
“Are you looking for Buster?” Frederick gestured forward with his glass, where something not quite as tall as the grass made its way back and forth across the meadow, only recognisable as a wild shake and rustle among the weeds. With half a smile, Will turned to Frederick and halted. He had removed the contact lens after all.
Frederick searched his face for a reaction. Will knew, and Frederick knew Will knew. They looked impassively at each other in the dim, moth-beleaguered light of the overhead lamp.
“You have an excellent poker face, Will.”
“It’s actually pretty like that,” Will said, honestly. The white of the iris was muted by the underlying green to a faint grey, the pupil like a crater in the moon.
Frederick raised his brows. Lifting his glass to his lips didn’t completely hide a pleased smile.
“That is slightly morbid, but I will take it.”
Will whistled for Buster. The dog shot up the wooden stairs to the terrace, covered in torn leaves and burs. With vehement affection, he rubbed up against Frederick’s Italian suit pants, leaving greenery. Frederick had given up the fight against these attacks many weeks ago, accepting them as a reality of being with Will. Now he was sipping his brandy without comment and watched as Will set down a dog bowl and knelt to pull off the bits of vegetation from Buster’s pelt while he ate.
“I want to quit my job,” Frederick said.
“Your job?” Will gently pushed Buster’s meat-covered snout out of his face. “All you’ve been doing for the past year is trying to get Hannibal into your hospital. Now you’ve got him there and you want to leave?”
“I admit, I was fascinated.” Sinking into an old wicker chair, Frederick allowed Lily, the largest of the pack, to nudge in under his legs. “But now that I have him, stripped off all his human meat dishes and fancy clothes...”
“You underestimate him if you think that’s all there is to Hannibal.”
And misjudging him had almost cost Frederick his life once before. Will stood and caught Frederick’s mismatched eyes looking up at him.
“But what is there to Hannibal? I respect his schemes, I learned how well thought-out they are. But when I passed by the row of cells today, he seemed in fitting company.” Frederick finished his glass with the intent of someone trying to give his liver a workout. “Hannibal is an educated psychopath who eats people and thinks it is an achievement that he has no human decency. I know it resonates very well with you, and you probably will never understand this sentiment, but: I realised I do not care about Hannibal Lecter anymore.”
“There was never anything untoward between Hannibal and me, if that’s what you’re implying,” Will said, words tainted with sarcasm in response to Frederick’s acidic tone. Though he had never done so much as kissed Hannibal, it still felt like a lie.
“Oh, there definitely is still something very untoward about your relationship,” Frederick parroted. “Though I am sure it is complicated.”
“And I’m trying to keep it severed and cauterised. I’m surprised you can so easily transfer your interest. You just wrote a book on him.”
“Maybe that got him out of my system. Therapeutic writing.”
Frederick turned the glass in his hand, a last golden drop rolling in a circle on the bottom. Suddenly, Will had to keep himself from tapping his fingers against the wooden ground in accord with the wave of nervous energy that hit him, radiating from Frederick.
“It is possible my priorities have changed, too. I was always very focused on my work, but now my private life is more interesting than it used to be.”
After a quick, searching gaze at Will, Frederick leaned down and shifted his legs out of the way so he could pet Lily instead of waiting for an answer in mute inaction. However, he chimed in again before Will had a chance to speak.
“With the book and the trademark royalties, I have enough money to retire,” Frederick pointed out.
The thought was so ludicrous it made Will laugh.
“You can’t retire.”
Frederick frowned. “You want me to keep working at the State Hospital?”
“No. No – that’s not what I meant.” Will pulled up the other chair next to him and sat down. “I’d have quit after Gideon. I think it’s too dangerous.” Especially considering what precarious situations Frederick often ended up in. It hadn’t sat well with Will that Frederick would be in Hannibal’s reach, though he hadn’t said it out loud. Considering Frederick’s latent jealousy of his inmate, he might’ve taken that as a challenge and gotten into even more trouble. “But you enjoy being busy.”
Even when they were lying in bed together, Frederick would be answering messages, composing essays, and his psychology textbooks and magazines turned up all over Will’s house. Will didn’t even own a computer; Frederick got antsy after a few hours without checking his mail. Being needed and asked for all the time was exhausting for Will, like there was a hook stuck in his brain that someone kept pulling at. Frederick basked in the feeling.
“Astute analysis, as usual,” Frederick admitted. “I have some other ideas for books and articles and my publisher asked me to write a general introduction to criminal psychology. Plus, there is private counselling. I can choose my cases now. I would not have to go through the drudgery of depressed suburban family members.”
“And would you ever come home from work before ten?” Will caught his gaze again. “Considering your changed priorities?”
“I might think about it.”
Frederick covered Will’s hand with his own. It was pleasantly warm. They sat like that while Frederick kept playing with his glass and Will let noises around the house wash over him: the whisper of the trees, the dogs shuffling about inside, the crickets chirring. He wondered if their relationship would survive more time together. A year ago, he wouldn’t have thought they could spend two hours in the same room. He wasn’t opposed to trying his luck once more.
“Will you stay in Baltimore?” Will asked.
“Not necessarily.” Frederick looked like someone carefully setting a foot out on a frozen lake, listening intently whether the ice cracked as they moved their weight. They were on the cusp of being together long enough that one man’s location could change the other’s. “Do you have plans to leave?”
Staring straight ahead, Will chewed on the question. Did he have plans, any plans? Hannibal had broken Will’s life down and left a black hole sucking in past and future where there should be a chronological timeline unfolding. He had often wondered if running away was an option, since Hannibal had refused to leave, just to force Will to acknowledge him. The dignity of a structured retreat was not left to Hannibal’s experiments, so that was the best he could do. But where would he go?
“I would like to move somewhere close to the sea,” he decided on a whim, the waters of the Atlantic ocean lapping against his mind, memories of sitting in the middle of nothing between America and Europe, some unmarked, liquid, unsteady place even Hannibal could not reach. “Florida. Or back to Louisiana, maybe.”
“I liked New Orleans. I have not been there for a while. We went on vacation when I was ten or eleven.”
Will looked at Frederick again. He could outline the exact nature of the various psychological problems Frederick was afflicted with, the order of the suits in his wardrobe and why he hung them that way, the reasons why he liked red gloves and never rode bicycles. But he didn’t actually know where he had grown up. Sometimes Will could sense so much about the basic nature of people, he forgot to ask about what they probably considered the cornerstones of their life. It was a special form of thoughtlessness.
“Where do you come from?”
Frederick sighed.
“Deadwood.”
“What?”
“A settlement at the Eastern border of Texas. It contains a hundred people spread out over thirty one-story houses and a couple of trailers, two churches, and offers nothing to do until you are old enough to drive up to nearby Carthage, which has exciting places such as grocery stores.”
Will’s lips twitched in a brief grin. He turned his hand under Frederick’s so that he could take his.
“You don’t have a Texan accent.”
Frederick straightened his tie. “I should hope so. I try to be taken serious.”
Rolling his eyes, Will reached down to scratch Lily between the ears.
“I should drag you out to live in the Louisiana swamps, you snob.”
“Where you will in all probability find a wounded alligator baby and insist on raising it, alongside your twenty dogs, which it will subsequently eat. That way lies tragedy, Will.”
“You’re drunk,” Will noted, huffing a laugh.
“Not drunk enough to buy a cottage in the wetlands.”
Just drunk enough to have a conversation about the future of their relationship, Will guessed. Three glasses, carefully measured. He looked into the forest again. When Frederick sat next to him, fidgeting, talking, playing with the dogs, the stag never came out of the woods. Of course, Will waited for the night that he would turn around and see the bloody remains of Frederick on his antlers, the man torn to pieces for coming too close. Will hated that whenever he teetered on the edge of being content these days, darkness had to seep back into his head.
But Frederick had known from the first what Will’s baggage consisted off – he had pulled the memories out of him in bloodstained pieces in his hospital. Frederick wasn’t some innocent he was dragging in, he had weathered the same storm Will had lived through.
His grip around Frederick’s hand had grown so tight his knuckled stood white against the skin. Frederick looked at him with curiosity, but he didn’t pull his hand away, and neither did Will. He wasn’t as defenceless as he used to be, he told himself. And there was no one quite as good at surviving as Frederick Chilton.
“New Orleans is alright?” Will asked.
“I could live with New Orleans. And with you and your twenty dogs.” Frederick paused, raising an eyebrow as he glanced at Will. “In separate houses.”
Will smiled and stifled whatever next remark Frederick had on the tip of his tongue with a kiss. The right to do that was one of the greatest advantages of having a relationship with Frederick Chilton.