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His daddy is holding the new shirt in his hands; crumpled, stained, sweat-soaked, wrinkled. In a word: ruined.
Will stands with his head bowed low, chin pushed into his hard collarbone as his eyes glaze over in perilous, anxious thought. His chest is bare, humid breeze worsening the moisture on his body, and distantly Will thinks he smells like shit. The whole place smells like shit, third motel in one month, and the A/C went out during the night making the hot, mildew stench of the place nearly intolerable to sleep in.
Not for the Grahams, though. Never for the Grahams.
His daddy isn’t saying a word. The nice button-up in his hands, his callused, dirty, working man's hands, is limp and weighed down. Will didn’t mean to fall asleep in it. He didn’t mean to ruin it like that.
Outside, cicadas buzz so loudly one could mistake it for a stadium of static TVs. Will studies the gray tile beneath his feet, hating the feeling of sweat appearing, cooling, and reappearing again in the creases between his toes. In the pulling light of early dawn, the room is awash with reds and pinks and faded oranges. In the light, his daddy’s face is hollow-cheeked yellow.
“‘M sorry,” Will mumbles. “I’ll pay you back.”
The broken silence seems to awaken something in his old man’s frozen figure. He shakes his head and hums, ashy gravel in the back of his throat, and passes the shirt back to his son.
“That’s what the wash is for, boy. Go on an’ get dressed. You c’n borrow one o’ my shirts.”
His daddy turns around and walks to the tiny, molding bathroom, and Will remains where he is, clutching at the bargain-bin, Good Will, brand new, $10 nice shirt he’d gotten only the day before. It was meant to be his Sunday best, something to show up in so that nobody whispers behind their hands about when they see the poor Grahams, that nervous boy and his alcoholic of a father. Because if you show up in a nice button-up, not a stitch or stain out of place, and you’ve washed your hair and your daddy has shaved his face and neither of you smells like fish or shit, then people can’t say shit about you without biting their own tongues.
Will does his best to smooth out the wrinkles. It fit him just right. It had color. Stripes. It was nice. The lady working the register said it made his eyes pop and that he would look so handsome in it. His daddy had smiled, toothpick hanging halfway out of his mouth, and had proudly told her, He takes after his mom.
Behind him, Will hears the sink turn on and off in intervals. He can smell his daddy’s aftershave, a cheap brand with a sailboat on the front, and when he leaves the bathroom and sees his son still trying to fix the shirt, Beau sighs and places a hand on Will’s shoulder.
“You c’n just wear the white one, Willy. Nobody’s gonna mind.”
Will shakes his head, frustrated tears in his eyes. It was such a nice shirt. It was so nice of his daddy to buy him it. It was so nice and wasteful of his daddy to go on a shopping trip after getting laid off three days prior. His daddy should’ve known better by now that his poor excuse for a son couldn’t do anything right, can’t control himself when it comes to nice things. A glutton for all things out of reach, he just couldn’t resist wearing the shirt, trying it on, soaking in the small yet satisfied smile of his ever-trying father because this was the first nice thing they had gotten in a year. A long, hard year filled with nights spent fishing the swamps for a catfish dinner and haggling motel managers for just one more day in their shitty, moldy rooms.
Will folds the nice shirt as nicely as he can and puts it away. He grabs one of the many pairs of standard, bulk-bought, thin, white cotton shirts he has and pulls it on. He can feel it stick to him in certain places where the sweat has gathered and reminds himself that it’ll dry and it won’t even leave a stain because the shirt is white and sweat doesn’t stain white like it does on color.
When Will is done, slicking back his hair with odd-smelling sink water, his daddy gives him a once-over and tries to smile. He is disappointed but he won’t tell his son that. He doesn’t need to.
“Don’t buy me any more shirts,” Will says when they get into their rusted, second-life truck. Outside, the light makes his daddy’s face even more gaunt. Will turns toward the window. “I don’t need nice things like that. I like the white ones just fine.”
His daddy doesn’t say anything, merely looking over his shoulder as they back out of the motel parking lot, gnarled hands loose on the steering wheel.
“‘M thinkin’ catfish t’night,” Beau says when they stop at a redlight. “Sound good?”
“Yeah,” Will says, still staring out the window. His father’s side profile is reflected back at him. He closes his eyes. “Sounds good.”
Hannibal is holding a new shirt in his hand.
Rather, he’s holding a hanger with a shirt on it, the wire hook balanced delicately on one poised finger. In his other hand, he’s holding another hanger with another shirt on it, each half of himself reflected back in mirror twin likeness.
He raises his left arm slightly, showing off the striped, light blue, button-up, dress shirt. Then, he raises up his right arm, displaying a solid, light blue, button-up, dress shirt . Identical in all but pattern, and as Hannibal repeats the motion, Will sighs and rubs at his forehead.
“You pick,” he says, exasperated. “I don’t care. They look the same to me.”
“They are quite different,” Hannibal replies in good humor, approaching Will as he holds up one shirt after the other closer to him. “Taking care to dress in good style and thought is often assumed to be a flattering thing.”
“Or vain,” Will counters, standing still as Hannibal’s eyes dart between each shirt and himself. “Over-curation would imply a surface-level thought process. Materialistic.”
“Modern.”
“Conceited.”
Hannibal pauses, brief, curious eye contact made before smiling slightly and retreating back to the many, many shopping bags delivered an hour ago to their hotel room. Will wasn’t aware you could pay hotel staff to go shopping for you, but there were many things he was learning wealth could do.
“I believe the striped version of its twin rather suits you well,” Hannibal says, bent over to inspect the bags. “Solid colors, though reliable and complimentary to your figure, are a bit too plain for you. The stripes draw parallel with your curls.” He looks back to outline the soft waves adorning Will’s head. “And this shade of blue is a slightly lighter color than your eyes. Very complimentary.”
“If you say so,” Will mumbles, unused to this kind of fashionable and flattering commentary. He can feel his cheeks warming and, also unused to this kind of feeling, turns away from Hannibal to look out the window.
They’d successfully stationed themselves in a rather quaint but still connected area of Spain. Identities had been reforged and profiles kept low enough that Hannibal felt comfortable exposing themselves to the public more and more each day. This new venture of having hotel staff go out shopping, with Hannibal’s card, was quite a leap from just stepping outside to enjoy the warm sun and smell of salt and cinnamon.
The view from their tenth-floor room offers a landscape of cliff shores and a vast blue sea, picturesque and a tad too reminiscent of the day they fell, died, and were reborn together. Will squints in the late afternoon sun, yellow washing over his face, and he unthinkingly tongues at the still-healing scar on his cheek. As it’s healed, the angle of the red wound has given a kind of sharpness to his face that wasn’t there before. A kind of gaunt, bonyness that he’d seen in genetics and not enough food to eat.
Distantly, Will feels his stomach rumble. Maybe he’d ask if Hannibal was up for a fish dinner tonight. There was a street vendor not far from their hotel that he’d been hungrily smelling for days. He wondered what kind of fish they sold.
Turning back around, Will watches as Hannibal lays out several more shirts on their bed, each of a different fit, pattern, and color. Motioning politely, Hannibal looks meaningfully at the array of apparel and at Will.
“I wasn’t sure what your preferences were,” he says, stepping slightly to the side as Will comes to stand next to him. “Though your dress was charming in the States, I rather like to think your true taste lies elsewhere now that you are no longer trying to… appease others.”
Frowning, Will stares at the shirts without really seeing them. “I didn’t dress the way I did to ‘appease others’. I dressed how I liked to dress, regardless of how it offended your ‘higher’ taste.” When Hannibal says nothing to that, instead reaching out to straighten a cuff on one of the shirts, Will flexes a fist. “In fact, I still like how I dress. I don’t need any of these shirts.”
Unbothered, Hannibal continues to assess the clothing with a critical eye, likely pairing each one to how well it ‘suits’ the man beside him. “Must need influence our lives? Is it indulgent to occasionally spend some time in the realm of want? One could argue what makes a human is its lax hand in comfort.”
“We’re not in a position to indulge like this, Hannibal, and you know that. It’s hardly been two months.”
“We haven’t been caught yet, have we?” Hannibal raises a corner of his mouth, an ill-timed attempt at humor Will doesn’t feel.
Scoffing, Will turns away from the spread of expensive things and walks back to the window. “Just return them. I don’t need them, nor do I particularly want them. I’m fine with the shirts I have.”
“You need more than just the same four shirts you cycle through each week.”
“I have more than just four shirts,” Will says through gritted teeth.
“Hardly. Having two pairs of the same color shirt does nothing to negate that it looks like you wear the same outfit every other day.”
“Is that such a fucking crime?” Will bristles, a burst of anger deep within his chest firing out. He can tell it takes Hannibal back, the way he blinks twice before shuttering his mind to form a reply. “If it embarrasses you so much to be seen with someone who doesn’t need or want more than a few outfits, then just don’t take me out. I’m fine staying in the room while you continually expose us to the general public, going to restaurants, shopping, talking with strangers, walking around like nothing’s happened– it’s incredible we haven’t been caught yet.”
When he sees Hannibal open his mouth to speak, Will continues on. “And even if I did want new outfits, why do they have to be $300 shirts? It’s crazily overpriced and a complete waste of money since I’ll just ruin them in a few days anyway. Buying bulk is cheap and reasonable, Hannibal, and I’m fine with my multiple pairs of the same shirt. At least if I ruin those, it’s no ridiculous hardship to replace them. There’s a thrift store on every other street selling nice clothes for a fraction of the price.”
Deflated, Will sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “I don’t care if you want to buy nice things for yourself. Do what you want, but I don’t… I don’t luxuriate like you do. I’m comfortable with what I have. I don’t need– more. The minimum suits me just fine.”
Through the window, the sounds of seagulls and waves crashing filter through the silence. Hannibal is looking thoughtfully at Will, who hangs his head low enough to feel the crick in his neck pull painfully. He doesn’t want to see Hannibal right now, though an impossible task as it is, and Will feels that old-souled shame grip around his heart.
Yes, the human condition relies on a great many things, including a primal need for excess and comfort. Human beings live while beasts just survive, and the single greatest indulgence mankind has ever partaken in is materialism. That is what sets apart man from beast, where beast is stupidly content with a branch over its head for shelter, and man demands a roof and walls and something soft to sleep in each night.
However, Will Graham has never been one to indulge. A genetic, environmental predisposition to save and consolidate and horde. There were nights when he and his daddy slept with no roof or walls or soft things to lay in, and if man is defined by what it has, then those nights defined the Grahams as beasts– primitive things of flesh and blood that required little else than water and a mouthful of food to keep on during the night.
The strays of a human society that favored clean hands and unwrinkled shirts, lingering in the shadows and waiting for the opportunity to work, to spend, to indulge like the rest of the worldly population. Good Will, bargain bin, thrift store, gas station clothing that tore within a week but put on enough of an effort to keep them from being naked, to keep from being scorned, to keep from being turned away from the rest of good society and all its small, material pleasures.
When Will got his first job and his first paycheck to go with it, the first thing he did was buy a five-pack of Walmart-brand white t-shirts. He bought his daddy the same and they were brand new men the next morning, walking out of their motel like the sun shone specifically for them. As he got older, and when Will eventually moved out and away from damp, lonely Lousianna, leaving behind a well-meaning but hopeless father, Will went out and bought more shirts in bulk. He bought everything in bulk, storing them neat and tidy, taking good care of the cheap things he owned because that is how he had learned to survive in this bestial, human world.
He worked hard for what he had and he took excellent care of it all. He’d earned his small pleasures, his small indulgences of restaurant food and nice pillows, but extending that same kind of superfluity to his clothing had never been a priority. He ruined them, always, and it made no sense to buy something that didn’t scratch at him at night or shrink in the wash when he knew it would all go to waste sooner than he wanted them to.
Even now, Will sweated through the few shirts he owned. He ran hot, regardless of the presence of air conditioning, and each morning he woke with a fine layer of both dried and still-forming sweat. It was a wonder Hannibal tolerated sleeping in the same bed at all, a wonder he had not made a comment on it yet, and Will couldn’t bear the thought of waking one morning in one of the nice shirts and seeing Hannibal’s disgusted, disappointed face as he finally witnessed the ruinous creature that was Will Graham.
Such is his shame and spiral of years of specific avoidance that Will does not bother moving away when Hannibal approaches. He does not raise his head either when hands descend upon his shoulder and it is only when he feels gentle fingers lift up his chin that Will finally meets Hannibal’s curious, earnest gaze.
“I will return them if that is what you prefer,” Hannibal says, a measured slowness that, to Will, seems to match the rhythm of the rest of the world’s chorus. “However, if your objection is only to the price of them, then I can reassure you that it is no hardship for us to indulge. We have discussed this before, but the Lecter inheritance, and yours and my own earnings, are far beyond what we could reasonably spend in two lifetimes. The price of things, however frivolous it may sound, is no object to be concerned about.”
Seeing his beloved’s rally to protest, Hannibal removes his hand from Will’s chin and instead threads it through his hair, bringing them closer together. “Besides,” he says lowly, making a shiver crawl down Will’s spine, “you are priceless to me. There is no amount of money I would not give to satisfy any desire you might express. And,” he adds, that sly, corner smile reappearing on his face, “you’ll forgive me if seeing you dressed in fine things does not add to my own enjoyment.”
Flustered, Will rests his forehead against Hannibal’s shoulder, seeking comfort in the familiarity of it. “I don’t need new things,” he reminds, voice muffled. “You know I’ll ruin them within a week. It’d be a waste to buy something so expensive.”
“Nothing is ruined if it fulfills its purpose.”
“And if it serves no other purpose than indulgence? Greed for the unnecessary? Then it’s a created purpose, not innate.”
“Is not everything created? To be born with a purpose– that is a rare gift. God did not create with the forbearance to give us reason for existing. We simply are.”
“Masters of our own fate. Each decision gives weight, purpose, to everything else.”
“Yes. Is it enough, then, to simply live as we are in satisfaction? Or is giving in to want, to the deadly sin of greed, how we fulfill our purpose as human beings?”
Quiet for a moment, Will thinks about his want of greed and his instinctive repulsion at the idea of it. When you grow up poor, the idea of more becomes a fantasy that sticks beneath your skin and grafts to your bones. It’s exciting and uncomfortable and out of reach. Old habits, old shame, die a slow, miserable death, and the ghosts of them linger over shoulders for eternity. You never forget the time you didn’t eat for a day. You never forget the time you could afford to buy new, unworn shoes. You never get rid of the pullback, the voice that says, Don’t get it, you don’t need it.
“Purpose is individual. It’s no use assigning one to a whole when the functions are so distinct. It would ignore too many intricacies. It would ignore the inherent human condition— its purpose,” Will decides, taking a step back from Hannibal to look over at the assortment of egregiously priced shirts. He pokes at the wound sore in his cheek and looks back to Hannibal, ever watchful and attentive.
“Don’t buy me new, expensive things without asking anymore,” Will says. “I don’t need an entirely new wardrobe. I really do like the clothing I have, but it might be…” Will pauses to inwardly roll his eyes as he sees Hannibal’s posture light up, “It might be nice to have one or two new shirts.”
Grinning, an occurrence that happens more and more with each passing day, Hannibal ventures to the spread and begins showing them one by one to Will, who vetoes or nods at each selection. When a pale yellow shirt, likely the plainest of them all, is selected, Will hesitates. His stomach grumbles again, an aching movement with no sound, and wordlessly Will shakes his head.
Hannibal doesn’t question his decision but Will prepares himself for the day he’ll have to explain his distaste for the color yellow. For now, though, with the setting sun behind them washing the room in doleful pinks and reds, Will tries on the persuaded three shirts he decided to keep and turns in the mirror for Hannibal to observe.
They fit well, even as Hannibal says they can take the shirts to a tailor, and the material is unlike anything Will has felt. A part of him shrinks away from the finery but he stays where he is, absorbing the feel of newness and excess.
Sliding up behind him, Hannibal places a hand on the small of Will’s back. “What do you think?”
Will thinks it’s still going to be a waste. He thinks that it’s too good for him. He thinks his daddy would die again of a heart attack if he saw where his swamp-raised boy had gotten in life. He thinks that he should really ask Hannibal about that street vendor. Will smiles.
“I think it’s nice.”