Chapter Text
There were many things Will Graham was not, friendly, talkative and patient with people? Those were on the top three.
His eyes were focused on the shapes the wind made on the grass outside, the way it morphed into claw marks that extended and retracted as the blows saw fit. Meanwhile, his class was into a twenty-minute discussion on Bach's musical greatness, very excitedly pointing out his progressions and what made his style so different. One of the students criticised his feminine style and now the whole class was in disarray. Will didn't care, the wind was a greater composer with the notes it was writing in the grass.
"Mr.Graham, you need to go to your next class. Everyone is gone"
The class was empty indeed, the chatter he had blocked so well now completely silenced. The teacher looked, impatient and concerned like he was about to ask Will if he was doing alright. So he left.
Will and school had a complicated relationship. He had a limited amount of attention to spare, so he used it wisely watching the birds and the flies and composing their patterns. His teachers had a problem with this, Robert had been called many times, told that either Will had issues or he simply didn’t care enough to try. His father didn’t follow up, he had good enough grades, so he didn’t argue. The teachers insisted, Robert deflected, and Will kept spacing out. They can’t do much more than that in here.
He wandered aimlessly around the campus trying to find the damn room M-40 until he decided to skip class altogether. It was the last one of the day anyway, and besides, the notes of the grass were stuck in his head, he wanted to write them down before he forgot.
He walked back until the artificially lit building was behind him and only the orange and pink hues of the evening remained. The gardens were half empty, leaving a group of boys with a ball and a tall young man painting with a few spectators. The rose bushes surrounding the main water feature called for Will’s touch. Their sharp kiss tempting his fingers as he approached them, missing their bite last minute to land on the softness of the petals. He traced them and heard their song. His hands dropped and he kept walking, still hearing the voices of the roses and the strings of the wind, and extended them in front of himself playing the notes in a fool’s piano. He closed his eyes, he could hear it, the notes on his overactive imagination flooding his ears and immersing himself so deeply that he first felt the cold and only after the wet.
“Are you alright?” The hand extended to him only registered in Will’s brain after he blinked several times. He held it, its softness rivalling the petals.
“Did they hurt you?”
They?
The boys that had been playing ball were now standing behind the tall young man, their ball lost in the middle of the water.
He was helped up, curls removed from his eyes by manicured fingertips.
“I’m sorry, dude, my bad.” one of the boys called out before walking away with the group, leaving Will lost and dripping with the other guy.
“Are you?” his accent was like deep burgundy, the colour and the wine in a mixture of senses, he could taste it with his ears.
“What?”
“Are you hurt, darling?”
He couldn’t quite feel his whole body, sensation concentrating on his knees, his palms, and his forehead.
“I think I hurt my knee” he is helped up, feeling the shirt cling to his skin, transparent and exposing “I’m fine.”
Only then did he look up, finally taking in his lacklustre saviour. The boy in front of him had magazine-perfect hair and a sight Will had rarely seen before. His eyes matched his voice, deep mahogany and ever-deepening, and in them was a look to rival that of a martyr at the feet of God. Will looked away.
“Pardon me if I’m being too forward” he was too close “it isn’t like me to be this rude” and yet getting closer “but, I’d love to draw you.”
Will was taken aback, finally raising from his sensorial drowning to resurface in a world in which a kid he doesn’t know is touching him and asking if he can paint him. He notices now that other boys, the ones that had been surrounding the canvas are looking at him, observing as the stranger asks him this completely inappropriate question, expecting an answer like they too wanted to take part.
“No, what the fuck?” Will batted himself back, putting distance between him and the stranger “Get away from me.”
The worship in the stranger's eyes turned to disappointment, then confusion, and finally settled in a masked sort of neutrality.
“I’m Lecter.” his hand was back between them, and Will took another step back “Hannibal Lecter? I’m quite a figure in this school, you see?”
“I don’t find you that interesting.” Will stepped off the fountain, soaked to his breaches, oxfords ruined. The murmuring behind him getting loud enough to register and let humiliation finally rise up his spine, through his neck and onto his face.
“You will.”
He needed to get away. Away from the stranger, away from the boys’ voices, away from this garden. He is hit with a rush of drapetomania, containing it until his shoes hit hard under him. He ran and ran, into the old building, until his feet mimicked his heartbeat. He ran down the stairs and into the basement, where the lights hit softer and yellowed.
M-40.
It mocked him, an ‘I was here all along, you fool’ energy that Will really didn’t need right now, the voice of the teacher thundered through the door, a pencil falls, a cough, Will keeps running.
M-30.
Further down the hall…
M-20.
…until his lungs were burning hot…
M-10.
…breathless and dizzy…
M-00.
…only stopping when there was nowhere else to run.
The door that had stopped him was different from the others, it had a chunk ripped out in the middle, with sharp edges like teeth that threatened to eat Will whole, through it, in its belly Will could see a piano. A veteran bösendorfer, that had more than a few scars on its legs. He stepped closer slowly, the old floorboards creaking under him, whining in pain and joy of usage, softly but deafening in the silence. Will sat on the bench.
It was the same antic model his mother owned, only hers was loved, with oiled wheels and a varnished surface, this one was rougher under the touch, unpolished. Its ugly exterior pulled at Will’s heart. What had they done with it? Had it been thrown away with the rest of his mother’s belongings, sold in some backyard to someone who wouldn’t care for it as dearly as his mother, someone who would let it become like this one? His fingers hit the tiles with the same respect he would’ve shown for his mother’s own, letting them travel along the keyboard while he thought of her. The way her back sat straight with Will on her knee while she played a tune they both loved. Her curls, so like his, cascading down around her face, framing that smile that put the sun’s brightness to shame. He thought of her fingers, thin and long, dancing along Will’s who clumsily followed.
“You play well” He startled to a stop, fumbling the last notes with a jump.
The man behind him had his weight shifted into the mop he was holding, his smile hurrying Will into standing.
“I’m sorry” he rushed out, passing the janitor without looking at his face and scurrying back to his dorm.