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Translations in Clay
Five steps up the house. Then 16 smaller and curving steps to the second floor. The exhausting group effort required just to arrive at their new bedroom had them nostalgic for the boat’s simple structure. Will was much better off than Hannibal in his prognosis but did have claim over the most broken bones. Whatever the prize for that was, he hoped it was somewhere in this simple bed or, better yet, somewhere behind his eyelids.
But… Hannibal. Hannibal was broken and worn. Will’s all too familiar fixer-upper body settled beside a home condemned. It’s hard to build hope synthetically… but especially hard when there was nothing at all to go off of. Chiyoh’s stoicism had become increasingly tested the past few weeks and even Hannibal, in his few waking hours, looked a thousand miles away. A half-consciously employed defense mechanism – helpful in the way that going into shock can be – with the single focus of detaching the mind from pain.
A man made delirious by his self-restoration.
The bedroom had two twin beds on opposite walls, all sterile right corners except one eccentric floor lamp casting person-like shadows across the clay room.
The owner of the house broke through the hesitation to speak to Chiyoh in Spanish. Chiyoh translated quickly. “Don’t complain. This is where my great uncle and his wife stayed for two years.”
Will looked over at Nayeli. “This far apart?” Couldn’t just get a divorce?” He gestured to indicate the distance.
Since meeting him at the port a few hours ago, Nayeli already found Will barely tolerable. “It is common. Un acto de pureza.” She is curt. It’s a trait reminiscent of Chiyoh (but with far fewer suspicion-borne questions). Her accent in her limited English curls around the wandering tongue that Spanish and hearing loss gave her, thudding words out in a mechanical way. It seemed Chiyoh either briefed her on her general disdain for Will, or she was quick to form harsh opinions.
He ran through the possibilities while the women settled in a barely conscious Hannibal with a drip on the bed by the door. No, he thought, maybe when Will isn’t performing, he’s actually incredibly unlikeable. That sounded closest to the truth, considering that the only person that liked Will’s authentic company was very recently receiving international hate mail so, okay, no one in the room would be winning Miss Congeniality.
When Nayeli and Chiyoh retreated, Will found himself sitting on the edge of his bed staring across the room at a companion of half conscious flesh attached by tubing to only a few of the things he really needed right now. The beginnings of a nest.
Sometimes on the boat he looked down at the man and saw a bug, sometimes soulless meat, sometimes a corpse. It was cruel of a half-lost person to be the figure seen breathing, to have us know that they’re there, just under the privacy of their suffering.
After getting fully down into bed, Will turned his head slightly to stare at the other man again. He whispered through the silence, knowing he wouldn’t get a response. “I won't offer you a white flag just because you're ill, by the way. Unfortunately for you, I think I am always aware of all of you all at once.” He looked up at the ceiling and whispered even softer. “Unfortunately for my damnation , that hasn't condemned you in my eyes.”
Will slept far into the following morning.
Chiyoh never seemed to be someone with a delicate touch, but waking Will by clipping and removing the stitches in his cheek was just petty (albeit helpful). He’d developed the reflex to check on Hannibal immediately upon waking during their time on the boat, and on land apparently things would be no different. But Hannibal was no stronger and, in fact, the stability promised by a tucked away house was likely to allow for faster healing, yes, but a deeper slumber.
Chiyoh picked up the chair she was sitting on and set it down again next to the older man’s bed. The way she laid a glass of water by Hannibal’s side looked like someone leaving flowers on a grave – some part of the person hoping the dead would see the gift and take it.
She looked back at Will with a frown. “If I had to choose one of you to be gravely injured, I would choose you.”
He leaned back to lay flat and laughed bitterly before responding, “so would I.”
Will was outstandingly aware of how close death is to sleep, and sleep is to death. He wondered if he’d even notice right away if Hannibal crossed over. At how clean and quiet his death could be. If he would have to die twice: one for each of the lives he had in his bifurcated world of humanity and less… potable secrets.
Will considered not burying Hannibal if he didn’t make it through this. Just holding his corpse in the house until he goes, too – like he read about once. The thought shook him enough to have him padding across the room and sitting in the chair.
He trained himself then to separate breath from white noise. Signs of life would no longer fade into the inventory of the room. Two beds, two bedside tables, one bedside chair, one ugly lamp, and two humans alone without the other.
The chair was uneven on its legs, teetering back and forth in a diagonal on the floor of clay tile hexagons. It contributed to the general uneasiness of these days and their new home. Would he ever feel good again? The easy kind? The accidental good that doesn’t feel like wringing out a rag?
[I wish I didn't find him so beautiful like this, so in need of me, and so concretely.]
[I want to crawl inside him. And that can’t be what love is.]
He cleared his throat as though he had in any part of him something to say. “Before you, um…” he laughed. “Just that. Before you, there were all life’s regular blades. I need not list, but we know it’s the job, the drink, the mind. But another evil, too, were the soft materials I balled into roundness in my hot fists, hoping they’d be better suited to live with. But that’s not who I am. Comfort, unfortunately, feels acutely hollow without discomfort for me. Whatever it is that blows dust back up from where it settled or whoever scatters pigeons in the park. That’s what you do to my comfort. I want – I want the dust to settle and the birds to rest at last. You have me – just be better – and let me rest?”
Will leaned over to listen to Hannibal’s labored but consistent enough breathing. Drugged and relatively asleep. The overly starched bed sheets crinkled under his shifting. “You’re probably not truly internalizing any of this information, so I’ll tell you some secrets.” He noisily scooted the chair to be flush with the wooden bedframe. Maybe he could cite this session in the future as an effort for vulnerable self-disclosure. Not his fault his doctor wasn’t listening.
“My favorite book in high school was Wuthering Heights. I stole it from the school library and took it with me everywhere from then on. I even read it in college, I think.” He reached out a hand and retracted it as though part of the same thought. “I stopped finding it romantic. I wormed my way into research for a while. Became bitter. Waned into nihilistic views of love and life. Capote. The Grass Harp. ‘afraid as we are of being identified’... what the wind says … and all that.” He trailed off out of insecurity as though he had a conscious and judgmental audience.
[From the naked chill of the end of years, I remember all of the times I was reminded of being the odd one.]
[That’s now and the waking company doesn’t like me much.]
He inwardly chuckled at the thought as if they weren't saving his ass as he sat here and lamented.
“When I was 13,” Will began again with a wavering voice, “I had a really big crush on this girl. Mary or Maria or something. I wanted to take the long way home just to walk by her a little longer. Anyways, she told me: ‘you’re cute. I think. But you’re something strange.’” He laughed at the memory. Can’t even remember her name precisely but he can remember verbatim her words now three decades later. “It knocked me down a bit. It wasn’t a surprise, but it’s hard not to wonder and wonder and wonder about everything different.”
“I was poor like everyone in the neighborhood was poor. But poor in an ugly, wrong way. I was ‘new kid’ poor, ‘smelly clothes’ poor. It was unacceptable, an unimaginable childhood in the eyes of all the others.” Will pressed his thumb across the sweaty corners of his eyelids until he saw white spots. “So this boy paid me extra attention. I was 14 by now, probably. Ralphy. He thought I was a little off but he was, too. We both had reason to be. He was my first kiss. It was one day in Erie when he showed me the woods by the train tracks. We didn’t talk after. I moved a month later. I wouldn’t get another kiss for years.”
He stared down at the other man. He was lovely as he lay- so unknowing. This time when Will reached his hand out, he didn’t retract it. He pushed the hair back from the other’s forehead to just gaze at Hannibal’s unobstructed face. “I get the feeling that if you die… I will not just die grieving, I will just atrophy like a pierced organ. We aren’t coded to mourn each other.” Will held the shaky nausea that bubbled under his voice. “You’re free to die if it’s your time, but it’ll be my death as well, I think. You created us to join just to sever us again. Very cruel of you, Doctor.”
He stood up to go investigate the rest of the house, noticing first that Hannibal’s shoes were still on. Will slipped them off and set them in the space under the bed. Won’t be needing them anytime soon.
--
Chiyoh looked up from the sofa, where she sat a cushion away from Nayeli, cueing to each other calmly and sweetly. Chiyoh spoke aloud to enunciate the words properly and Nayeli used signs back.
As Will got close enough to see over the back of the sofa, he saw a young child half-laying in the circle of Nayeli’s legs. She was watching the signs but not Chiyoh’s cues. Interesting.
Will announced himself loudly. “Hola.”
Chiyoh looked over, the slight smile immediately flattening at the sight of his presence. “We were just discussing the unfortunate timing. We must go into the city in two days.”
“Oh?” He didn’t know if he had any right to ask, well, anything really.
Chiyoh looked down at his body, as though looking for more things about him to disapprove of. “Yes, Nayeli is going to be contracted in Bogotá and I will take the distance as an opportunity for game.”
“What game?” He found himself able to keep up with Hannibal’s flowery references more than Chiyoh’s curtness sometimes. She never had to hide her detached emotionality for a crowd, he supposed.
Now, she rolled her eyes toward Nayeli, as if the woman could understand English. “Game. Hunting to sell or take home. Nothing much around here other than chickens.”
Okay, he would’ve rolled his eyes at him, too.
Nayeli hummed and started to cue and sign again, indicating the little girl.
Chiyoh nodded and turned to him. “You will need to look after Mariana and the dogs for a few days. And Hannibal.”
He caught the moment she tried to structure a wall around whatever bleeding bits of her were sewn to the dying man.
“How many dogs?” He turned to Nayeli. “Cuántos perros?”
She raised hands to mime ‘one big, five puppies.’
He tampered down the attempt to grin, “no problem. Uh, Sin problema.”
Chiyoh stood and Mariana followed. She was impossibly small and didn’t speak aloud, so it was hard to tell her age. Judging by the length of hair and her coordination, probably four or five. Chiyoh interrupted his staring as they walked past the kitchen. She pressed a button that looked like a too-deeply installed hardware store door buzzer. It vibrated the wall loudly.
“This is her room.” The three of them walked to the tiny bedroom beside the kitchen and Will tried the buzzer again, wrapping his arm around the wall to remain in the room.
It buzzed the wall and floor, getting Mariana’s attention, who looked up and smiled sweetly, very much unlike Nayeli.
He couldn’t help but smile back, slowly getting used to the tug on his cheek..
“She doesn’t hear at all and only learned signs. Some things might be the same in different countries, but otherwise you’ll both have to adapt.” Chiyoh said it matter-of-factly and led them swiftly back to the kitchen.
Will’s mouth tilted down in curiosity, “Hannibal knows sign language, then?” [Of course he does.] He suppressed the eye roll.
Her expression shuttered closed again. “You, Will Graham, are the only one of any of us who has never lived in silence.”
[And wasn’t that just so cryptic and sobering in the way she always managed?]
---
The following morning, Will hobbled down the steps. His attempt to wean off his pain meds was idiotic and premature, but his alertness was required for the following days, so maybe he’d just stick to drinking after she fell asleep like the medium quality babysitter he was always destined to be. Above the stove was a framed polaroid of an old-looking city – a caption in pen "La Paz, 1988."
He poured his bone broth into a pan to heat when Nayeli came in. Because Will needed to, he broke the silence. “Uh, hey, buenos días.”
She answered with a flat expression. “Bueno’ día’. Quiero pre’entarte a nue’tra familia.”
Nayeli ushered in a large dog and introduced her as “Lluvia.” The five pups that followed in were only a few weeks old, all part rottweiler like their mom. She leaned down and picked up the runt. “Feroz.”
He paused his stirring to gently take the puppy from her arms, sharing a mutual sleepy and genuine smile over the dog. Precious little thing. He wondered if it did anything to earn the name ‘ferocious’ or if it was more aspirational.
When Chiyoh entered the room a moment later, she came in with Mariana standing on her feet and a piece of printer paper in her hand. She was so oddly close to a smile that Will hid his own (so he wouldn’t scare hers away). To his surprise, Mariana hopped off Chiyoh’s socked feet, took the paper from Chiyoh’s hand, and brought it to him.
He didn’t bother checking on his broth, opting to let it boil and over-saturate if it wanted. It already tasted like… unseasoned bone broth… and he wasn’t going to cook two separate meals for him and Hannibal. Will accepted the paper, eyeing a rather alarming crayon drawing without context and someone’s begrudging, much more delicate writing in pen above it.
“Wow, Chiyoh, you’re a really talented artist,” he said before awkwardly kneeling in front of Mari. Chiyoh didn’t dignify it with even a non-verbal response, but he hadn’t expected her to. To the actual artist, he didn’t know how to communicate exactly, but he opted for a really cheesy smile and a hug, which she returned gladly. Yeah, nothing like Nayeli.
Chiyoh, towering over his crouched form, ordered, “go upstairs and lay down. I will bring the bowls up.”
Will slowly wheezed his way back into a standing position and followed the instructions. Back on his feet and dizzily climbing the stairs, he wondered if he ever once kneeled and hugged a small child before.
---
Every time he entered the room, he was shocked by the same image of a dying man. For some reason, he had no object permanence for any version of Hannibal than the one he knew so intimately before Florence. This one was gaunt and disconnected from himself.
[Perhaps being so deeply fractured puts thoughts in rooms that can’t be opened and places that can’t be revisited. Pain can be endured when it is not entirely ours.]
The blood and bruises, well, those were familiar adornments.
Chiyoh was up not too long after with the food. It was hard to watch Hannibal eat. It was from a straw on his best days. For much of the boat ride, the bowl was tipped briefly into his mouth, his lips held closed after to force his swallow response. On those days, he whined quietly like an injured forest animal lost in the snow. And that’s sort of what he was.
“I hear you talking to him, you know?”
Will was unsure of what to say.
Chiyoh continued while she set down the now empty bowl and switched out the saline drip for a fresh bag. “Talking to yourself, is that silence? Talking to him now, is that silence?”
It felt unnecessarily hurtful to say that, but he supposed she, too, lashes out when she’s afraid. His fear responded, “don’t bury him yet.”
When she turned back to Hannibal’s body to fix his bedding, it was no doubt an effort to hide her face. A moment later, it was schooled again, but flushed from clenched emotion. “Patience can often be its own suffering.” She made no move to wipe the brimming tears.
Will watched her quietly, certain that anything he said would make the encounter worse.
Chiyoh seemed grateful for his silence. “He loves you. He stopped trying not to.” She tilted her head but her expression didn’t change. “Have you?” That caught him off guard – and something on his face must’ve given him away because she laughed at him. “It is adolescent how you are. He calls you a fledgeling, but he is, too.”
The idea of Hannibal being unsure of something was hilarious enough that it got a chuckle out of Will, even though it was certainly true. He’d told the man as much before.
“You discovered a way of communicating that isn’t social beyond each other.” She leaned over to the table for fresh tape for Hannibal’s hand to place over the needle’s entry place. “It is a language, still, but considered perhaps beautiful, perhaps broken in the eyes of anyone else. What matters is: is it beautiful or is it broken to you?”
“It’s beautiful.” The words came out fast and easy as though they were his own name. He stared at her expert hands while they injected a sedative into the other man’s fluid line.
“Then all reason is up to you. So long as you leave others out of it. But you know you won’t.” Chiyoh watched the line closely as though she could tell the liquids apart. “If you do become alone… who will you be? What will you be?”
She stood up with the bowls and left confidently, enough to distract Will from the fact that she probably doesn’t have an answer either. Although, he suspected, she’s recently figured out her own.
Will tried to quietly pad across the floor to sit on the bed alongside the other man.
He stared at his sleeping face for longer than he could make sense of until, finally, he spoke. [And it isn’t silence.]
“I hesitated on the decision to move my legs while we sunk. We owe a lot of our survival to buoyancy.”
Will paused to swallow a frog in his throat. (To preserve some unwitnessed dignity.) “I suffered alone and I wanted that to stop. But as much as it hurt, I wanted you to suffer, too. Knowing I could find some form of love and you couldn’t, that you’d have to survive on the thought of me alone… I loved Molly. I did. That wasn’t the part that I was faking. And then this is what I did? Take a death leap just to be saved and die slowly.”
“I cling to the memories of you as much as they cling to me. I make a chapel of them. I’m weary now, Hannibal, and I wonder what makes up the building blocks of the soul. I –” he laughed, “– I think mine are all your name. And yours… are all mine.”
“I am probably not stronger than you, whatever that means… but I am more whole. I am closer to what passes for humanity. But, God, I still need you like the iron in my blood, shaping my cells. I think of you in the way I think of myself. Just implicitly with me in everything.”
[Of course it’s love.]
“But not like lovers or friends or… anything human.” Will surprised himself with a sob then. “Or maybe I can’t recognize love.”
“All I know was my own mind retreating to make room for you and then, once you safely inhabited me, my cells grew around you again like moss on a stone. I am comforted by the way I still kept aging – and being – despite all of your invasions.” He leaned his ear over Hannibal’s mouth to hear the breath coming out in that soft way it always did under sedation. Will sat back up to look at him again. “You weren’t waves in me turning stone to sand. I have always been the waves. Accepting all of your animals.”
And when he said that, he wondered how true it was. How much had he accepted?
[Can’t pick and choose. I want. I want him.]
----
Chiyoh and Nayeli were gone before the sun rose, estimating probably four days away for Nayeli to finish her contracted design. He put together that she was contracted for a commercial landscaping project in the city. Bigger league than he was expecting.
Already, the day was starting off bad in his body. He’d have to make sure that a young child, six dogs, and one cannibal were all breathing, washed, and fed. The idea of six dogs was at first very appealing, but now he was feeling like the two women didn’t really take his broken ribs well enough into consideration before this task. If the task comes up where he has to carry something heavier than 10 lbs, or higher than his shoulders, that thing is falling to the ground. And that thing's name will be Hannibal or Mariana.
But he didn’t want to get ahead of himself. He started with breakfast.
[Hannibal doesn’t eat breakfast, so just, uh, eight mouths to feed.]
[Yogurt and berries for Mariana. Fish soup for Will Graham. Arroz y bife for Lluvia and the gang.]
[Don’t mix these up.]
As he sat with this child only slightly able to cue in Spanish, he considered what Chiyoh said. Why does he need to make noise? In this crowd, it’s excess more than it is something taken for granted. He could learn not to find it so lonely. He wished he could goddamn communicate with her, though.
When their bowls were rinsed and the dogs let out to relieve themselves in the tiny yard – they’d have to wait a few days for a walk because, fuck, he couldn’t do all this – he peeked through the drawers and in Mariana’s room. It was clean in a specific way that spoke of her doing her own tidying. He, praise all deities, found a few coloring books next to her crayons, and set her up upstairs, sitting on his bed, while he sat in the chair beside Hannibal’s many metrics and tubing.
She pointed at the sleeping man and Will held her hand to make sure she didn’t get any grand plans with the box of sharp and toxic supplies. He picked up both her hands and placed them over Hannibal’s heart, Will’s own overlapping hers. He needed the excuse sometimes.
[Alive. Alive. Alive.]
Mariana’s mouth tightened in a focused and fascinated way and very cautiously petted Hannibal’s arm like she might pet Lluvia. Will barely stifled his laugh at the sight. Hannibal shifted minutely and Will walked the little girl back over to sit on his bed to color.
---
Mariana went down for a nap in her own bed after playing with the puppies in the yard, so Will climbed back up the stairs and tried to wake Hannibal. Whatever that level of ‘awake’ was that got him to swallow lunch. Will tugged him slightly to sit up, the resulting ache in his ribs making him wheeze. The sound itself was what finally cracked Hannibal’s eyes open. He grimaced and shook in pain, like he was crying without tears.
The walk to the bathroom was absolutely fucking horrible. Will tried to stabilize the sick(er) man with the steering control of his legs and neck, rather than his arms. It was clumsy and appropriate.
As much as he’d like to see Hannibal back to his full self – clothes and weight and general joie de vivre – he was grateful for now that he was wearing loose sweatpants and no shirt (for wound examination) and, frankly, that he was much easier to keep upright without his top heavy musculature.
Will sat him down naked on the toilet, taking the lower angle as an opportunity to also brush Hannibal’s teeth.
[Blood. Always so much fucking blood with him.]
Rather than try any fancy and dignified maneuvers, Will pulled Hannibal directly from the toilet to stumble to sit on the floor in the shower. He stripped down to his bare self to join him. When in Rome.
[Shower with the man you love. Or however that saying goes.]
Standing over him, Will had to repeatedly and actively close the man’s mouth so it didn’t fill with water. The last thing either of them needed was a coughing fit. It was devastating to see him like this. Delirious on drugs just to stay sane enough through excruciating pain.
[He’d say he could withstand it, but he wouldn’t say the moment he couldn’t anymore.]
With the help of the wall and some effort from a fractionally more energized Hannibal, they were able to maneuver back to the room and into fresh clothes. Of those, they thankfully had a lot, because he was not going to do laundry.
When Hannibal made it back to a sitting position in bed, he finally noticed the disturbing card from Mariana tucked on his table. He gave a half-lidded frown and looked to Will for an explanation.
“Chiyoh helped,” Will said dumbly.
Hannibal laid down slowly (again with the help of the wall rather than another broken man) and mumbled, “looks just like you.” And with that, the man was asleep.
Will tucked back his silver hair, smiling at the memory of Mariana’s hands over his heart. It was easy enough to make a habit of. Will put his ear to his chest, the sound of moving there warming the shell of ear all the way down to his spine.
[Maybe I need this sound if there are no others.]
Feeling unwitnessed, he leaned back up to the hairline and laid his lips there, mouthing a few words that he’s not sure he’d be able to replicate with an awake audience.
[Dear universe, there is no immovable object. I have felt the unstoppable force.]
---
The puppies weren’t completely house-trained, but were in general a sleepy bunch. Mariana was relatively self-sustaining, but he felt like he should offer her something other than three meals and bath time. So, he took to reading beside her on the couch so she could feel the rumbles even if she couldn’t make sense of them.
That was where they both slept.
Hardly a way to wake up feeling more broken than usual and this would save him the trip down the steps for the dogs the following morning. That, or his fatigue would offer a rationalization for just about any choice that brought him to sleep.
-----
He did in fact wake up feeling more broken, but the youthful determination of the little one gave him a mandatory contract to put up with that.
“Please don’t.” Hannibal put his hand on Will’s wrist.
Will pulled back, a little alarmed at the steadiness in Hannibal’s usually wavering voice. “What?”
Hannibal mustered a fight again, “please don’t sedate me today. I will let you know if I can’t manage.”
“I’ve been talking to you a lot. While you’ve been sedated.” He felt awkward – or deceitful – or something about that.
Hannibal smiled softly. “I can not respond with all of myself but I hear you with all of myself.”
Will didn’t want to correct him by saying that he specifically waited for the man to fall asleep before certain revelations. “I want you to make it through all of this.”
“You insult me. Of course I will.” Hannibal smiled reassuringly, with probably more mustered confidence than his condition deserved.
Will grinned with no humor up to the ceiling. “I mean quickly. I don’t want to watch you miserable.”
“Anymore.”
“It’s… lonely.”
Hannibal assessed him for a moment. “Tomorrow, shall we walk around?”
“Yes, well,” Will gestured downstairs, “I’m in charge of a toddler and several puppies so mainly my life is concentrated on facilitating food and trips to the bathroom.”
A genuinely surprised expression. “No adults around?”
Will tugged at his curls, realizing they were matted down from his night on the couch cushions. “Chiyoh and Nayeli went to Bogotá for some curtly alluded to reason so I’m running around like I’m in a paper towel commercial.”
They both smirked at the light-heartedness affectionately.
Hannibal lifted the sheet to look at his scarring. He jolted at the sight. “Was this you?”
Will knew he had stitched him way too tight – the scar and its corresponding tissue shadows of removed stitches look like the thread-wrapped seam at the pocket of jeans, just in a Y shape. When freshly stitched and oozing, it resembled something like a group of centipedes. But Will wasn’t looking to be any higher on his hit list, so he defensively responded, “all my thread work for the past 10 years has been on lures.”
Hannibal looked down at the still healing scar again, disapproving, but trying to make peace with it. “No one else was available?”
That had to have been mostly a joke, but Will snapped back regardless, “after we broke you out of a clinical prison and stole two boats? No. We couldn’t round anyone up to make prettier stitches.”
Hannibal jokingly pouted.
“At least you weren’t in charge of wiping our sloughing scabs off. Chiyoh decided the best division of labor was her face on deck or in stores, and Will Graham on scab duty.”
When Hannibal put a cold palm on his healing cheek, Will continued, nearly in a whisper, “which – made sense. I guess. Our PR rep.”
Hannibal had a small flood of something like sadness take over his face. Possibly lethargy. Possibly pain. Possibly concern.
In a way, Will was happy he couldn’t read his expression. He had some irrational concern that if he woke up, he’d wake up changed, that the familiar cold nobility in his affect would be something wiped clean by the sea to reveal some wide open man.
“Okay, Doc, I won’t sedate you, but if you decide to do anything that requires your abdominals, please take your pain meds.”
Hannibal lowered the warning pointer finger before responding, “I will rest my body naturally. Stability exists only behind my eyes, after all.” He closed them as if to demonstrate.
Will placed his hand over Hannibal’s on the bed. “Hey, it’s here, too.” Before moving to stand and leave, Will leaned over to press his lips to the top of his head. He caught himself, but his breath was already ghosting at his hairline by the time he retracted. “Sorry. Um. Habit.”
“Is it?” Hannibal asked, beaming back at him in a half-teasing, half-awed way. He sighed years out of him. “You’re well aware by now that I am just a man. But being beside you in this way makes me yearn in the worst way for immortality.”
Will didn’t have any fitting words to reply with, and wasn’t expected to find them, so he smiled. [Love or need?] Smiled in a warm and unperformed way that he hadn’t felt the need to do in a long time. [Blur of the two, then.] “I will see you at lunch. It’s gizzards today. You’re gonna hate it.” He pushed Hannibal by the forehead to lay further deep into the pillow before starting another body-taxing day of keeping things alive and happy.
---
Even without the sedation, Hannibal slept most of the day. It’s exhausting work, healing the body. Upon first inspection, Hannibal had a through and through gut shot, a fractured ulna, and likely a broken rib. Oh, right, and he attempted days without pain killers following his triage torso stitching.
The sedation was essentially a grounding so he finished his antibiotic regimen without re-introducing bowel bacteria into his abdominal cavity.
Today, Mariana practiced writing Will’s name. She liked how it had an upside-down M. The capital G in his last name was a project for another day. He taught her how to draw a flower to go after her last name, ‘Flores’. He gathered that Nayeli was not Mariana’s mom, but some sort of close relative. Not a cousin or sister, so probably an aunt. He made a note to ask when the women return from their city living.
When the dogs and the girl were sufficiently cleaned, fed, and tired into their respective beds, he made his way back upstairs. And a rickety walk it was. He wondered if his tendons were on their final straw with him.
He knocked on the door to the bedroom as if Hannibal had any ability to do something needing privacy.
“Hey,” Will said shyly. They hadn’t spoken much aside from some banter regarding the inability to find kosher options in Colombia. (Will impulsively added eggs to the gizzard soup.) “Do you wanna shower or change or anything?”
“I’m perfectly content, Will.”
A shared warmth.
“Good. You look it. Happy, I mean.”
Hannibal hesitated for a moment before asking, “would you lay with me?”
The question took Will by surprise, though it shouldn’t have. Maybe because it was absurd with these twin beds and broken bodies. “I have broken ribs and you are attached to an IV.”
“Unhook me.” He spoke as though it was all easy and obvious. “And we can figure out a configuration that works for us. If that’s your only reservation, of course.”
Will watched the entire scene while he self-assessed. “It… is.” And it was true.
[Your relationship stretches very long, and still it does not move with time.]
[The rest of you does, but not what is between you two.]
[He devours whatever he touches, in one way or another. Do you do that, too?]
[Yes. Accident or intention?]
[It just happens.]
---
Will woke up to fingers on his pulse from a sleeping Hannibal.
[A physician’s lullaby.]
The other man, who was not actually sleeping, answered the silent question. “It helps me sleep, a primal comfort like a weighted blanket.”
Will eyed him drowsily. “You hope whatever part of your brain is absorbing stimuli from the waking world will walk them into your sleeping self?”
Hannibal swallowed. “In so many words. Or that perhaps the walls of my dream world would have your heartbeat.”
A raised eyebrow. “Did they?”
“I didn’t dream”.
Will laughed pretty heartily at that and Hannibal had a wide close lipped smile.
The younger man put his hand over the man’s fingers while he turned fully to face him. “So it’s not about my being alive? Because your fingers are on me like you’re calculating my BPM.”
Hannibal tilted his head as if in thought. “Well, I assumed you’d have disapproved of my ear against your pulse point.”
“Yes, your big head wedged under my jaw probably would have kept me up.”
They both grinned again, but it waned into the most sober expression that they’ve shared since being awake.
Will cautiously considered him. “Lucid?”
“Surprisingly so, yes.” Hannibal let his eyes close briefly. “I vaguely remember days and nights passing but I’m still unsure… has it been long?” Hannibal tried to measure his hair length between a finger and thumb.
“I’ve been awake for most of it but I’m confused about the time passing, too.” Will brushed back the hair from the other’s weak grip and smoothed it down to lay with the rest.
At that moment, Mariana came bounding in with her coloring book already in hand. She beelined for Hannibal again. Will bolted up, a move he immediately regretted, to keep her away from the medical cords and tray.
As soon as her odd good morning pats were dolled out, she pivoted almost elegantly to leave again when Will grabbed her arm. He mouthed “tú eres perfecta.”
She smirked and walked back out the bedroom door.
“You shouldn’t tell growing children that they are perfect, it can skew their self-perception.”
Will shrugged from where he was standing. “Every child deserves a few people with an unclear relation to their parents who spoil them intermittently throughout the year. I’m not handing her folded up cash on holidays, just letting her know she makes good first impressions.”
Hannibal frowned. “Was that the first time I've met her? She pet me like a dog.”
“Mari isn’t interested in dolls, so I think she’s learned her nurturing from watching adults with puppies. Plus, a tall, unconscious white man in a forbidden room of the house? She might think you’re a different animal than her.”
Hannibal analyzed the scene, seemingly uncomfortable with his laying down while Will towers over him. “Can you come closer? I assume this chair is not simply for my dutiful nurse.” He mimed with lagging limbs.
That certainly got Will's amused attention. “I am your dutiful nurse, or did you not realize?”
“I did not realize. I am sorry." Hannibal seemed very pleased at that. "After all of your schooling, you must have made a diligent veterinary technician.”
Will started to take unconscious steps closer to him. “You’re using past tense. Did you wake up out of the woods?”
Instead of answering that, Hannibal spoke suddenly at a disjointed volume, “I’ve changed my mind about the nurse’s chair, could you please join me in bed?”
Will quirked an eyebrow, mouthed “five minutes,” and got up to close the door. Prying eyes.
Hannibal watched the gesture with amused skepticism. “No funny business, William.”
“I promise to keep my hands to myself.” He held them up and open as if to show that he meant no harm or anything else. For the time being.
“Mhm, your lovely hands.”
Will looked at him while he clumsily climbed back into bed. “You’re delirious.”
The other man blinked with an almost funny luxurious slowness. “Hmm. Lucid but perhaps my lips are loosened by my drowsiness.”
Will’s mouth fell wide in a hesitating expression, not able to find the words. He wanted to sob in relief at the sight of the man, coherent and in good spirits.
Hannibal looked at him with a knowing glance and moved in to kiss him.
It was the kind of kiss devoid of sex, just honest domesticity, a sensible evolution from a hand on a shoulder. A pours-you-a-glass-of-water kind of kiss. A have-a-good-day-at-work kind of kiss. And the fact that it’s here, with this man, after all this time, both of them weakened by the wear and tear of consequences, made it more fulfilling than probably any intimacy that Will has ever felt.
Will didn’t hesitate to move back in, first blowing air quickly out his nose.
Neither man meant to cry, but when their mouths met this time it was some sort of chamber door opening to release all of their other loud reliefs at being alive, at being safely stowed, at being together. With the feeling, Will wanted to exhale every toxin and never inhale them again. Hannibal was alive, yes, but real. A person outside of Will in the way anyone else was.
[A separate individual whose limbs move without my neurons asking them to. A separate individual whose skin has no connecting point for mine.] [It was easier to swallow the thought that I love you when you were half-conscious.]
He couldn’t accept the reality of their necessary humanities.
The cognitive dissonance of being two people… was going to starve him.
The look on Hannibal’s face parroted the feeling right back.
They both lay there breathing too deeply and heartily for it to be anything purely respiratory.
Hannibal smirked mischievously. “You’ve let relief cloud your judgment, Will.”
Even though something like a chuckle puffed out, Will gripped at the man’s shirt, undeterred by shame. “Judgments are always clouded by something. Hard to see things at all without shades of overlapping recollections.”
Maybe the words Will whispered into his skin were audible this time, but still he pretended they were not.
--
On his final day in charge of the home, a storm was battering the windows. Will felt as though he might look out and see the stone steps into the house start to crack under the force. But instead of shatterings, it made steaming rivers. Down the steps, down the hill, collecting on car tires and pavement imperfections.
He made a mental note to research if monsoons can break through into the dry season. Breakfast today was oatmeal and strawberries for Mariana, eggs for Will, and, for the dogs and Hannibal, the same fucking thing they have every day. Beef and broth, respectively.
Once dishes and bathroom breaks were settled for everyone, Will joined Hannibal in bed as he did the day before. The inevitable intimacy of shuffling together, being mindful of all the places where the other one hurts.
After a few minutes of tracing fingertips, Will broke the calm silence. “What was it like for you? In the hospital?”
[Who did the beast taunt?]
Hannibal gave a curious look back at the question. “Rather mentally isolated. I didn’t want to give Alana the satisfaction of seeing me…”
When the pause went on for longer than natural, Will supplied, “feel?”
“... Yes, but I did. I did feel, I did miss you dearly.” Hannibal moved to stroke his knuckles down the other’s arm. “As we were then.”
“Which then?”
“Which before? I’m not sure of that.”
Will laughed. “Yeah me neither.” A beat. “And were you always sure I'd return?”
Hannibal’s expression shuttered into something cold for a moment. “No, not to me in the physical. I’d known you’d fall back to yourself eventually. I was worried that my presence wasn’t essential to my influence, especially with a mind as powerful as yours.”
He put his hands on his face in consolation. “Luckily for you, I needed a refresher course.”
The other man smirked. “Course, no. I taught you nothing.”
“Well then luckily for you I needed to see you. Didn’t need your hand on my shoulder to feel your influence but I think I needed a proof of life for me to go on living.” Will ran his hands through his own hair.
“A hostage metaphor for our Alana?”
Will’s eyes shot back up to the others’. “You mean your zookeeper? No. Just… can you let me have emotional honesty with picking my semantic choices to pieces?”
Hannibal gave a half-nod in fake concession. “You’re right, grab at honesty, Will. Tell me a secret.”
[You mean other than the ones I told you while you slept your pain away?] “Well, once… when I lived with my aunt, I got high with her son. I was only 10.” Will paused.
“Ten? Oh my. Is that the secret?”
Will went on, “my cousin came out. Just to me. He was only a few years older and this was the 80’s, so he didn’t have the words yet but I knew what he was saying. Anyways I told my dad and we moved out the following week. Out of the river mouth and into the sea. Headed to the most boring year of my life. The panhandle.”
“Panhandle? Is that northern Florida?”
“Yep. Well the story continues to where my father, six years later started dropping hints suggesting he’d be ‘fine’ with ‘who I was’.” Will laughed light-heartedly at the thought.
In a thick mood or perhaps in a weird attempt to demonstrate active listening, Hannibal asked, “referring to…?”
“Well I had a girlfriend, sorta.”
Pursed lips. “I’m sure your boyish looks were enough to make up for what you lack in charm.”
A chuckle. “Yeah, don't have too much faith in Will of the past. I didn’t know how to be with her. Or anyone. I can see why people started to believe I was gay or some kind of ‘different’. Even Chantal – that was her name – even Chantal wondered.”
“Did you not touch her?”
“I did, I did. But to both of us it was clear it was a performance. Together because we’re teenagers and it’s what one does,” Will rolled his hands through the air, “not because we were Will and Chantal. Maybe Chantal performed liking me for all her own reasons, too.”
Hannibal seemed to consider that for a moment and then looked down. “We all perform something.”
Will watched his expression skeptically. “Not all of us are still performing when we’re alone.”
“Yes, we are. Still, then. Do you know when you aren’t performing?” A question that seemed like it belonged in a time five years ago.
Will gave him a look, hoping he understood so he didn’t have to say the words aloud. “Yes. Yes I do. Do you?”
The older man stared back. “Bedelia is a curious mind. She was not with me behind the veil. I assure you. Wherever she was, it was engineered for her benefit as well. Perhaps she is aware but just wished to antagonize you. More unfortunate would be if she was not aware.”
Will wondered for a second how he knew about their encounters. “She doesn’t hold her relationship with you as something dear to her. She cared for you in the same way people ‘cared’ for California in 1849.”
The corners of Hannibal’s mouth poked up. “And ours? Is our relationship something you hold dear?”
A long sigh. “I don’t hold it at all, it just happens. A… phenomenon more than a relationship.”
A responding sigh, pushed through a patronizing smirk. Hannibal chastised, “that is called a ‘cop out.’”
Will pursed his mouth back. “Oh, is that what that’s called?”
They both took a long beat of quiet before he gathered an excuse to leave. “Well if you are feeling more self-sufficient, I should get back to the less independent ones.”
[Out of anyone in this house, Lluvia has the most control over her faculties.]
Once downstairs, Will pressed the kitchen’s buzzer to get Mariana to come out. It took a moment, belatedly realizing she probably fell asleep after her breakfast, but Mariana walked into the kitchen, looking disoriented.
---
Chiyoh and Nayeli arrived home that afternoon to find Will asleep on the couch and Mari asleep in his arms.
He woke to Nayeli's whisper while she gathered the girl in her arms. “Voy a cargarla arriba para dormir en mi cuarto.”
Will turned to Chiyoh and mumbled, “can you carry me up, too?”
Naturally, instead of humoring him, she sat in the seat on the other side of the coffee table to analyze him for a moment. “We had a lot of success.”
Will found himself genuinely smiling at the last few very stressful days. “We did here, too.”
Chiyoh stared at his face curiously but also as if to implore him not to tell her what that meant.
“Come. We have chocolate for everyone.” Chiyoh turned and walked the few steps back to the kitchen. “Take some up to him as well. Chocolate helps to heal.”
Once back down in the kitchen, Nayeli pointed at Will with a communicative look on her face. He raised his eyebrows, not quite knowing what was about to be asked of him. She looked at him flatly and lifted a recently killed fish, or just recently thawed by the looks of it. “Pe’cado. Tajalo.” Nayeli turned to grab knives and assemble the other ingredients for sauté.
“Pescado asado?” Will asked, staggeringly hyper-aware of his place and unsure why he was so uncomfortable in this inability to communicate all of a sudden (after spending much of the past few days as the loud half of every conversation). (And yes that includes the dogs.)
Chiyoh looked up from where she was unloading their groceries with a small amused smirk.
When Nayeli turned around, it was clear she missed entirely what he asked.
He tried again. “Pescado asado?”
She shook her head. “No. Lo voy a freír para poner en una sopa. Para tu amiguito.”
Will just barely avoided a laugh at her referring to Hannibal Lecter as his ‘little friend,’ but he was able to hold still and agree to scale and cut up this fish for her. And then he narrowly avoided another chuckle when he realized the man’s dinner was about to be fish soup and chocolate.
[No fruits, no grains, no vegetables for the sake of his healing bowel. Just the diet of–]
[Just the diet of an exceptionally carnivorous custody escapee with a hole in his gut.]
Watching Nayeli and Chiyoh’s dynamic together in the kitchen, Will began to piece together their relationship to each other. Whether or not it was romantic, they made a certain amount of sense in their companionship. He was acutely aware of the dysfunction within his own… relationship. It would never look like Nayeli and Chiyoh scooting around each other in the kitchen.
[Perhaps Chiyoh is not tamed by affection, but passionate to have charges.]
[To have a little girl again to look after.]
[To have her quiet severity be made unremarkable.]
[To have her silence be right.]
Maybe Will was always the cold one. Or maybe something red hot. He couldn’t remember.
One thing he was sure of was that, as soon as he washed his hand of fish flesh, he was going to go upstairs and push those two twin beds together.
---
That was, as it turned out to be, very difficult. One man could barely use his abdominals enough to stand and the other could barely use his pectorals enough to push. And he’d be damned if he asked for outside help in this decision. Will was hoping his resolve could fuel him with adrenaline, but his rickety climb up the stairs winded him enough to convince him that inspiration wouldn’t cut it.
Will started by haunting the doorway, waiting to gather Hannibal’s curious eye contact. When he made the suggestion, he had expected the responding soft grin, but not so much the additional weary eyes.
After a few absolutely tragic attempts to push Hannibal’s bed to the far side of the room, they came up with the plan to sit on the bed’s edge and scoot it back with feeble little kicks.
They made it, and with their exhausted and sweaty collapse into bed, Will grabbed Hannibal’s hand, which squeezed his fingers in return. If they weren’t fully clothed and in horrible pain, this would feel like something else.
But, they could use a sense of accomplishment and this probably shaved away a lot of the older man’s feelings of inadequacy. He liked the feeling of power as a person realizes who they’re trifling with – and he was clearly overjoyed that Will never forgot.
And so perhaps that was why he took the next initiative, rolling over onto Will and claiming his mouth. A teeth clicking, loud breath kind of kiss that made Will wonder how many kinds there were. And why he spent so long in sweetness when the insatiable hunger existed in the form of a man. Insatiable even now, even together.
Then, Will’s mind drifted to pain. And how he didn’t need to be in it so long as he had the pills on the bedside table.
They waited in silence for about a half hour when Chiyoh peeked her head around the door frame to cautiously eye whatever was making all that noise. She looked at Hannibal disapprovingly while she set down the tray with soup and bag of chocolate. Immediately after, Chiyoh lifted his shirt to search the area for bruising. No one commented on the fact that even Hannibal would be pretty vocal about a reopened gunshot wound.
(Because that would be commenting on Chiyoh’s paternalistic anxieties, and pointing out her vulnerabilities would do no good.)
The soup was intentionally devoid of seasoning, even salt, so it tasted like the medicine it was.
The chocolate bag, on the other hand, had deep dark truffles and shards of bark. Will gathered a truffle, rolled it gently between his finger and thumb, and bit into it. It was impossibly rich and the first time he’d had chocolate without relevance to a special occasion in longer than he could remember. Will analyzed the teeth marks he’d made in the truffle before lifting the remaining half up to Hannibal’s lips. And the man obediently opened for him, his eyes closing in response.
Will stared at the cocoa-dusted thumbprint on Hannibal’s chin, the look of warm delight in his chewing smile. It was very likely the best thing Hannibal had eaten in years. Will licked the cocoa dust from his own fingers and then from the other man’s chin. Will leaned in for another of those (well-received) pours-you-a-glass-of-water type kisses and then pushed himself up to stand. He wanted to shower and change before he fell asleep (an inevitable consequence of physical exertion, pain meds, and a hot dinner).
Before leaving the room, Will lingered in the doorway for a moment to watch the other man looking blissed out, despite his habit of holding a protective hand over his stomach. Sitting there, on the edge of their bed. He could look his fill later, too. And so more to himself than to Hannibal, he promised, “I’ll be right back.”
_
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