The life they build together is a quiet one.
For Will, that's no kind of adjustment. Subtracting the commitments and the necessary daily interactions a life with a family entailed feels like a slow, gradual relaxing into a state of being he greets with relief. It's the place where he always felt most balanced, but which he moved away from when he met Molly and Walter. When he thinks back, he imagines his life with them as a brief period spent in direct sunlight that, like a deer in a meadow at midday, always felt exposed and unnatural to him. Like he was playing the part of a different, divergent Will Graham. One whose mind hadn't split and travelled down an alternative route, decades back.
His life with Hannibal is the opposite of that life. Living as they do – in the deep shadows of the forest - Will feels a calmness and clarity he has rarely experienced before. He wakes at dawn every day with a mindful, fully present anticipation of the day ahead. His body, although deeply scarred by everything he and Hannibal have experienced together, feels strong and vibrant with life. The soles of his feet when he drops them to the bare floorboards, can sense every groove and hitch of the surface. Every morning he stretches his arms above his head and finds himself marvelling at the construction of them: the muscles curved tightly around the bones, the pale soft skin of his forearms, the fine chiselling of the ulna into his wrist. He twists his head to one side, and he hears and feels the corded sinews flex and crackle with a delicious discomfort. It's his morning ritual that doesn't feel like a ritual. Because he doesn't do it out of habit, only a kind of constant, daily, reoccurring wonder at being alive, fully and completely alive, and in possession of this body of his.
Occasionally - from the doorway of his room - he catches Hannibal watching him, and the wordless silence between them fills with an energy that Will always finds both disquieting and deeply familiar. Disquieting because his heartrate tells him so, and familiar because it is and will always be the natural state between this man and himself.
Hannibal watches him openly now, although he doesn't touch him or even approach him closer than necessity demands. In the days and weeks after their escape together, his hands on Will's body had become as familiar to him as his own. Hannibal had cleaned and dressed his wounds with the same deft efficiency as Will imagined he would an unfamiliar patient, wrapping and rewrapping his broken ribs in silence, with only the occasional professional enquiry into pain levels. He offered no words of reassurance, or indicated any satisfaction at his own work as the carefully sutured scars healed, only the most perfunctory of exams accompanied with as little eye contact as possible. It took two long weeks before he would hold Will's gaze for more than a few moments, and it was only when he finally did that Will understood why.
Hannibal was uncertain.
It was an emotion he had never felt or seen before in his hazel eyes, and yet it was unmistakable. And caught, identified and catalogued as he instantly understood he was, Hannibal finally stilled, and allowed himself to be seen.
His breathing, at first regular and deep, became almost imperceptible, his pupils widening fractionally as the moment stretched out between them, spun tight like a strand of sugar. Inclining his head fractionally, Will realised that he actually could hear Hannibal's heartbeat straining under his control, threatening to betray him, and then in the same moment he realised something else. That Hannibal was letting him hear it. Meeting his eyes again, he saw a tiny movement. Hannibal's lips had parted slightly, his jaw lifting a few millimetres while the rest of his body remained perfectly still. It was almost imperceptible, but seeing it Will found himself suddenly filled with a sense of wonder and fascination he couldn't even begin to find the edges of. Standing in front of him in that moment, holding his gaze, he knew with complete certainty that Hannibal had never allowed himself to be so completely vulnerable in his entire life.
After that, it seemed as if they were always looking at each other. Like there was a constant silent conversation, one that covered every single nuance and detail of their unfolding life together, without a single extraneous word being spoken. One evening, almost a month after the fall, sat in front of a fire in some stranger's Catskills holiday home, Hannibal raised his head from the book he was reading and asked him what he thought of Japan.
Will frowned slightly, pressing his own book open on his thigh and taking a sip from the glass of wine at his side.
"Do they have a lot of forests in Japan?"
"It is 67% forested."
"I remember reading that somewhere."
"They're largely broadleaf. The Japanese grew a variety of trees during feudal times for traditional building purposes, and for firewood. Now the forests stretch uninterrupted for hundreds of miles." Hannibal's eyes reflected the fire. Reaching over Will with the bottle, he refilled his glass. "In the autumn the mountains in the Aomori region are spectacular. Every hue of orange, red and gold that you can imagine."
Will's lips curved slightly in a smile, and he opened his book again.
"Then I think I like Japan."
And that was how their decisions were made, then and forever more it seemed. One of them would express a thought, and the other understood every part of it - every aspect of the why, how and when - with no further discussion necessary. If Hannibal made plans as they went, Will never saw any evidence of them, only marvelled quietly at what he assumed was the decades-old system of escape routes his friend had constructed. There was money – a seemingly endless supply – new documents as and when they needed them, and clothes and footwear appropriate for weather and location were sourced, seemingly without effort. Even so, it occurred to Will that Hannibal was less following a carefully considered strategy than he was simply tacking like a sailboat, moving gracefully from point to point, scouting for the next gust of wind that would carry them onwards.
It was late August when they had finally begun the journey to Japan. Having spent the previous months moving from one opulent location to another in North America and Canada, it did not surprise Will when, rather than a fast, low-profile flight, Hannibal booked them passage on a luxury cruise ship that would take 2 weeks to get to their location. Instead, he found himself faintly amused at Hannibal's seeming lack of caution, understanding as he did that his friend was nothing if not eternally vigilant.
Although there was never any talk of hiding, at some point Will shaved his beard, although if anyone had asked him why he probably wouldn't have been able to define his reason. He found that he liked the smoother face that looked back at him from the mirror. Even with the new scar, he fancied he looked younger, clearer-eyed somehow. Hannibal had made no changes whatsoever to his appearance, although it was obviously only a matter of time before he sought out the services of a professional barber to deal with his longer hair. It wasn't something either of them discussed, so there was a moment of wry, mutual amusement when they both returned to the cabin with fresh haircuts on the same day.
"It suits him."
One of the elderly ladies that Will had politely passed the time of day with during the first week of the trip, touched his forearm during dinner that evening.
"I'm sorry?"
"Your…partner. His new haircut."
Her cheeks pinked a little, and she gave a small laugh, as if she'd said something naughty.
"He looks very dashing!"
Glancing over at him, Will couldn't tell if Hannibal had heard the comment or not. Engaged as he was in entertaining their captain, his attention seemed firmly and completely fixed on the gentlemen and ladies in front of him. He was dressed impeccably in a hand-tailored white tux and tie that would have looked ostentatious on any other man, and Will puzzled again over Hannibal's seeming delight in the act of hiding in plain sight. Later, propped up on his pillows with Thoreau, Will watched him unbutton his cufflinks, shuck off the beautiful ice-cream white jacket, and brush it down before hanging it back inside the closet.
"Have you always liked clothes?" he heard himself ask, before he'd even considered why he would want to know the answer.
Glancing back at him over his shoulder, Hannibal slid off his suspenders.
"Yes. I think maybe my earliest and happiest memories have to do with clothes. Beautiful clothes. Watching my mother dressing for parties, watching my father. My parents had wonderful taste, and we were lucky enough to have a great number of talented designers as family friends. My mother was a true patron of their art."
"And later? After they were gone?"
"Afterwards there was my aunt. She also taught me a great deal."
"About clothes?"
"About clothes. And about armour."
Unbuttoning his shirt, Hannibal shrugged it off and dropped it into the laundry bag as he headed for the shower. The simple, prosaic act brought a faint smile to Will's face. Hannibal as human being, as someone whose clothing required laundering, whose face required daily shaving, was still a new experience for him. Living as they had been, in close proximity for almost 3 months now, he still wasn't entirely sure he was used to it. Hannibal's ability to control what parts of himself he allowed to be seen had always been a huge part of his defences, and – having shared so much time alone with him now - Will was acutely aware of how low those defences were towards him.
Slipping out of bed, he padded over the thick carpet into the bathroom. Through the frosted glass of the shower cubicle he could see the outline of Hannibal's body as he rested his hands against the tiled wall and let the water run over him.
"Would you teach me?"
Will's voice was soft, but he knew that Hannibal could hear him. Because he always did. He was always listening.
"About clothes?"
His voice had just the faintest hint of a question mark, the hint of that same raw, un-Hannibal vulnerability he had seen that first evening he had let him.
"About armour."
There was a long pause. The water shut off. Through the glass, Will saw his head drop a fraction.
"I thought we were finished with armour, Will."
There was a deep weariness to his voice that Will felt in his bones, a heavy, dragging sadness that reminded him painfully of Hannibal's kitchen, his face as he'd stood over him, swaying and drenched in his own blood. For a moment he thought he might laugh, but he was afraid if he did it might come out as a sob. Leaning forward, he rested his head against the glass of the shower door.
"We are Hannibal. We're done with armour. Against each other. I promise."
On the other side of the glass, he felt a movement as Hannibal laid his forehead against it, against his own. He could hear his breathing, deep and regular, matching his, and they stood that way, the connection stretching again, painfully open for as long as he could bear it. Eventually, stepping away, he returned to his bed and, after a while, the water started up again. Stretched on his back, Will lay listening to it, long past the point at which he fell asleep.
Months have passed now since that time, marked only by the changing colours of the leaves in their new home. Deep in the Shirakami Mountains, four miles hike to the nearest tiny country station, the two men have built their quiet life. The little wooden house they inhabit is maybe ninety-five metres square, consisting of one large living area, two bedrooms, a simple kitchen and a small office space. To their nearest neighbours – an elderly, retired farmer and his wife - they are happily accepted anachronisms. A German translator who speaks flawless Japanese, and a Canadian entomologist, engaged in a long term study of indigenous insects.
Will fishes in the many streams and rivers that flow down the mountain, and with every passing day, week, month he feels the calm flowing deeper within him. In the evenings they eat and read, or listen to the radio, although only ever to local channels. Will is teaching himself to carve hardwoods. Hannibal is learning the shamisen. The best evenings though are when they do nothing but talk. Lying side by side on the larch-shingled roof, staring up at the stars and listening to the night birds, Will is filled with wonder as a side of Hannibal he has never seen before slowly emerges from the darkness. Sometimes he wonders if the line between them has become so impossibly blurred that Hannibal has forgotten that they are two separate people, such is his willingness to let Will know him. They inhabit separate rooms, have separate spaces they call their own, but there is an effortlessness to their interactions now which expands daily, to create more and more freedom with each other. It is, as Hannibal so eloquently puts it one evening, as if they have both become the receptacle and the liquid that fills it.
Then, three months after they came to live in the mountains, Will awakes one morning to find Hannibal gone. His clothes are still in his closet, his futon neatly rolled away as always, but his absence is palpable. He is not in the house, or in the garden, or anywhere in the woods surrounding the house, and Will cannot feel him anywhere. For three long days Will waits, fishes in the nearest stream, patrols the boundaries of their home. On the fourth day he climbs a tall larch tree overlooking the gorge to the very top and stands, wavering in the uppermost branches, staring down at the stony ground far beneath. He thinks about the sound his body would make as it hit the rocks, the sudden, earth-shattering pain, and then the silence. When it starts to get dark, he watches the distant golden lights in the village come on one by one. Listens to the faint soft sounds of farm machinery, the working machine of people's lives. Then he climbs down, goes into his house and goes to bed.
The room is in complete darkness when he starts awake, but he knows instantly that he is not alone. He feels his heartbeat, at first wild and erratic in his chest, gradually slow and regain its normal steady rhythm as the long minutes stretch out. Laid out on his back, Will feels the hardness of the floor underneath the futon mattress, the points at which his heels, his thighs, his ass, his shoulder blades, meet the floor. It's not much softer than the larch shingled roof. Not much more comfortable either and, raising himself up on one elbow, he looks into the darkness at the other side of his bed, before slowly reaching and turning back the covers. Wordlessly, Hannibal crawls inside.
In the dark, their breath mingles, and Will wonders absently where he has been, although he already doesn't care. The faintest light from the approaching dawn is tinging the room now, and illuminating the cheekbones of his monster. Hidden in shadow, his eyes are nothing but darkness, and it suddenly seems the most natural thing in the world to lift one hand and trace his jawline, move the hair back that has fallen over one eye. Hannibal's lips part, and Will thinks again that he has never seen anyone look so completely vulnerable. When he speaks, his voice sounds as raw as his expression.
"I thought I could leave, but I can't."
"Why would you want to?"
Hannibal's head dips to his chest, hiding his face.
"I don't."
"Then why would you have to?"
Exasperation has leaked into his voice, Will can hear it. Reaching under covers, he finds Hannibal's hand and pulls it up to rest on his chest. Under his splayed fingers, Will feels his heartrate climb to that fast, familiar rhythm.
"Why would you have to," he says again, and pulls Hannibal into him.
Their lips meet in a sudden hot soft slide of tongues and breath, and a pulse of electricity stronger than anything Will has ever felt travels at lightning speed from the centre of his body to the top of his head, and explodes behind his eyes. He is spinning out, and then almost immediately, he's not. He's in his body, more firmly, more completely than he's ever been before, with his fingers tangling in Hannibal's hair, needing to be closer to him than he knows it's possible to be, but wanting it all the same.
He thinks how it would feel to sink his teeth into Hannibal, to bite him and mark him like he has been marked, leave identifiable scars all over his body. Then he thinks about licking the wounds like a dog, about healing them, the way Hannibal healed him and suddenly, overcome with something he can barely understand, he buries his head in Hannibal's throat, and starts to laugh. Deep, spiralling, breath-stealing laughs that somehow get confused on the way out, until he isn't sure any more if he's laughing or crying.
Hannibal rolls his head back on his neck for a moment, looking for him, and seems unable to process Will's expression. Taking his face in both hands, he frowns slightly, breathlessly, and Will answers his question without him having to ask it.
"It's OK. I'm OK," he frowns as well, half-confused, half-amused at himself. "I just…I suddenly realised that I'm in love with you. It just came as kind of a surprise is all."
Hannibal's lips quirk up at the side, and one hand slides down to trace Will's jaw. Catching his bottom lip gently in his teeth, he traces a line along it with the tip of his tongue, before capturing his whole mouth. When he finally breaks the kiss, Will is panting. Looking directly into his eyes, Hannibal's expression is a mixture of delight and pure arrogance.
"If you'd only thought to ask me, Will," he says, "I could have told you that months ago."