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He limps across the Ponte Vecchio. Each step presses glass deeper into the tender underside of his skin. He is covered in it, blood dried into a dark lacquer along his knuckles, matted in his hair, stiffening the collar of his shirt. There are cuts along his palms. 

Pain in the body radiates outward, he thinks, like forgiveness in reverse. It begins in a single wound and blooms, a heat that spreads until the entire self is informed by it. He presses his hand briefly to the stone railing, steadying himself. It has borne centuries of footsteps, lovers, merchants, soldiers, the condemned. The bridge has survived plague and flood and war. It will survive him.

But his heart feels less certain. There is a particular cruelty in discovering that one’s most acute agony is invisible. His flesh testifies. It shows its injuries without shame. But the heart, the heart is a discreet tormentor. The hell of caresses, he thinks. A concert of hells.

He misses the days of ancient youth, not his own, but humanity’s. The mythic adolescence of the world. He imagines lascivious satyrs slipping through forests with wine-stained mouths, animal fauns laughing as they chased nymphs through groves thick with sap and desire. Gods who bit, because of love, the bark of boughs; gods who transformed their longing into teeth and left impressions in wood. Desire was honest then. It ran barefoot and blood-warm beneath leaves.

He envies that simplicity. Now desire is layered with restraint, with intellect, with consequence. It does not merely hunger; it contemplates its hunger. It dissects it. It names it. And in naming it, one makes it inescapable. Love. The ache will not leave him.

He walks further along the bridge, the limp more pronounced now. Blood trickles again from somewhere along his forearm. He observes it without alarm. Glass can be removed. Bruises will yellow, then fade. The flesh is forgiving in its own manner. It rebuilds. It knits itself back together with quiet diligence. But what of the heart? The body cannot export its pain to the skin as a scapegoat. 

He can still feel Jack Crawford’s fists upon his flesh as though they are occurring now, as though time has failed to move forward and instead loops back on itself with cruel fidelity. Jack’s knuckles were blunt instruments, unrefined, driven by grief and fury. He remembers being thrown. For a suspended second he had been airborne, weightless, an offering to gravity. Then the floor. The scatter of shards beneath him. The invasion of sharpness into skin. He had curled in on himself. He folded. And he let it happen. He did not fight as well as he could have. He has fought Jack before. He has outmaneuvered him before, psychologically, physically, strategically. He could have broken his wrist. He could have dislocated his shoulder. He could have ended it quickly.

He did not.

He wanted the pain. He needed it. Jack’s blows had been unambiguous. They declared: you are here. You are hated. Perhaps not forgiven. There is something almost intimate about being struck by a man who knows you. Jack knows him. Not fully, not in the way Hannibal has permitted another to know him, but enough. Enough to strike with conviction. Enough to throw him into glass with personal investment.

He can still feel the exact shape of Jack’s hand in the bruising along his collarbone. He had wanted the pain to reach somewhere deeper. To cauterize the ache that no physical violence could access. It did not soothe anything in the end. Love empties all possibilities of recovery. Barthes suggests that love is cyclic. A rhythm of wound and salve. A system that refines itself through repetition. Hannibal has always found this charmingly optimistic.

The cuts sting more now. Blood has begun to dry in earnest. His muscles tighten in protest. Barthes’ cycle strikes him not as love but flirtation. Flirtation with survival. A game played at the edge of annihilation but never quite stepping over it. One falls in love, one suffers, one recovers, improved, perhaps, more discerning. Nothing is wasted. The experience is metabolized, converted into future immunity.

He finds this premise almost quaint.

Love’s sole enthusiasm lies in consuming every possibility of falling in love again.

He understands now that what he feels cannot be slotted into a tidy cycle of recovery. There will be no next phase in which this is composted into wisdom and used to fertilize a subsequent attachment. The Aristotelian refinement, the self-fertilizing cycle in which nothing is wasted because it is required for the next iteration, belongs to systems that presume continuity. But this does not feel continuous. This feels terminal.

Aristotle’s cycle assumes that each love prepares one for the next. That the self becomes more complete through recurrence. But love, when it is absolute, annihilates recurrence. Love is only thinkable as one and only one tyrannical possibility: falling in love once and for all. Not as choice. Not as preference. One cannot control with respect to whom one falls in love.

He had not fought Jack because some part of him required the physical echo of what he endures internally. If love is a one-way ticket to the end of health, then perhaps he sought in Jack’s fists a kind of accelerated decline rather than Will’s cruelty. An honesty. A visible ruin to match the invisible one. He wanted to feel the totality of it. The violence. The helplessness. The impact of another body against his own. He had wanted to be reduced.

And yet, even reduced, he remains intact in the most dangerous way. His heart continues its devotion. His mind continues its orbit around a single gravitational force. There is no recovery phase mapped for this. No Proustian return to equilibrium. No Aristotelian conservation of emotional matter for future use.

There will be no next love.

He cannot control it. He never could. All his life he has believed himself sovereign over appetite. But love has revealed the limits of sovereignty. It is not an appetite one chooses. It is an event one survives, or does not.

He touches the edge of a bruise along his jaw, presses until it hurts sharply. The pain is clear. It has borders. It will fade. The other pain, the tyrannical possibility that has taken root in him, has no such borders.

He turns off the main street and slips into an alleyway. The hour is merciful. Early enough that the city has not yet fully awakened. No one looks down into the slit of passage where he walks.  The walls are close here, ochre and age-stained, their plaster cracked like parched skin. He presses one hand briefly against the wall to steady himself. The brick is cool. His palm leaves a faint, diluted smear. 

He considers what will happen when he reaches the apartment. The wounds must be cleaned. Sutures may be required. Ice for swelling. A hot compress later to encourage circulation. Perhaps Bedelia will help him. The thought is neither hopeful nor desperate. But love empties all possibilities of recovery. Once one has fallen in love in the manner he has, there is no returning to prelapsarian health. The body may heal. The psyche may reorganize itself around new habits. But something fundamental has shifted.

He turns a corner within the alley and the light narrows further, a thin ribbon of sky above. His breathing remains even, though each inhale tugs faintly at bruised ribs. He thinks of Aristotle’s tidy self-fertilizing cycles, nothing wasted, each phase necessary for the next. Love, in that schema, is compost. The detritus of one attachment nourishing the soil of another.

He cannot locate himself within that agricultural optimism. What he feels is not compost. It is conflagration. It has burned the field entirely. He imagines Bedelia’s hands again. She would sit him down without fuss. She would ask, in that controlled, almost languid tone, what happened. He would answer selectively. He goes to be tended, or to tend himself, knowing that no antiseptic exists for what has already taken root within him.

For a moment he does not trust his legs to negotiate. He leans back against the wall, and allows the weight of himself to settle. His vision swims, not with the blackening of edges, but with a subtle liquidity, as though the world has been poured into water and gently stirred.

He closes his eyes.

How long has he been walking?

Time has thinned into something elastic. The bridge, the alley, the narrow streets, they feel both immediate and distant. He remembers walking these same streets as a young man, shoes unscuffed, posture immaculate, mind sharpened by ambition rather than ache. He had thought himself untouchable then. Fundamentally unassailable. A figure moving through Florence like a visiting deity, observing, tasting, selecting.

He opens his eyes again and studies his hands.

Now he is touched everywhere.

Touched by fists, by glass, by the hot insistence of blood. Touched by something far less visible and far more invasive. Even his insides feel handled, rearranged. He inhales slowly through his nose. The breath is shallow at first, caught on the tender resistance of bruised ribs. He will not collapse here.

The polizia will find Pazzi’s body soon. He will be discovered, hung grotesquely, as intended. There will be photographs. There will be murmurs in corridors. There will be hands placed solemnly on shoulders. Florence will awaken to scandal. Jack will make sure he is caught.

Not eventually. Not perhaps. It is a matter of if and not when. Jack Crawford does not relinquish a hunt once he has scented it. Jack will follow the blood in widening circles.  Hannibal pushes himself gently away from the wall and straightens. The world tilts once, then steadies. He will escape.

And yet, He is leading them right to him. Why? He wanted to be found. Not by the authorities. Not by the state. But by one particular consciousness whose presence has already colonized him. Every boldness, every theatrical cruelty, every risk taken in Florence hums with a singular audience in mind. He breathes again, slower now.

The polizia will find Pazzi’s body. Jack will draw the lines. They will trace his movements through museums, through archives, through whispers. They will uncover aliases, perhaps. They will question restaurateurs. They will review security footage. They will reconstruct his evenings with meticulous indignation.

What else are they going to find? Who else will find Hannibal Lecter, Il Mostro, The Chesapeake Ripper? 

The question sharpens his hearing. It is almost physical, the way the world rushes back in. The faint hum of pipes in the walls. His own breath, steady now but still edged with iron. He leans more fully against the wall and closes his eyes, not in surrender but in concentration.

Footsteps. Not the heavy certainty of polizia boots. Not the urgent stride of a pursuer. These steps pause. Resume. Pause again. An onlooker, perhaps. Someone who has noticed a man in a darkened stairwell, blood marking his cuffs. They will ask if he needs help. He cannot be helped at all. The thought is not despairing. It is factual. What would heal him? What intervention could return him to the unfeeling, perfect geometry of his previous life? What would put him back into that immaculate alignment?

Nothing. It is lost to Baltimore. Lost to the blood that spread across his kitchen floor. 

Will. The name enters him like breath drawn too quickly. He opens his eyes. The footsteps are closer now, no longer abstract. His hearing sharpens further, every nerve tuned. And beneath the copper scent of his own drying blood, beneath the mineral damp of the walls, something else reaches him.

A smell. Subtle. Familiar.He would know it anywhere. He straightens slightly, though his body protests. The dizziness threatens again, but he forces it back. Blood loss can produce hallucination. He is not immune to physiology. He looks up. For a moment he thinks it is that, an artifact of injury. A trick of light in the dim stairwell. A projection conjured by longing too long denied.

But no. He is there. He is coming toward him, slow but certain, eyes already fixed upon him as if he has been there all along, waiting to be seen. Hannibal feels himself freeze. Will’s face is bruised. The detail strikes him first. A discoloration along the cheekbone, swelling near the jaw. A split at the corner of his mouth not yet fully healed. Bruised like Hannibal. Mirrored in damage.

From what, Hannibal does not know, and the not knowing pierces him with a sharp, almost jealous curiosity. Who touched him? Who marked him?  He becomes aware, of his own nose leaking, a thin line of blood sliding again toward his lip. He tastes it as he stares. He does not wipe it away.

Will draws closer. The months compress in the space between them. It has been so long since Hannibal has seen him. So long since he has allowed his eyes to rest upon the exact architecture of that face. He has heard his voice. I forgive you.

Will stops a few steps away. Close enough that Hannibal can see the fine tremor in his breathing. Close enough to confirm that this is no hallucination. His clothes are real. The bruise is real. The faint crease between his brows, the one that deepens when he is thinking of terrible things, is real.

“Hannibal?”

Hannibal feels something inside him fracture and realign simultaneously. The world narrows to the cadence of that voice.  It has been so long. And yet here he is. Will’s eyes move over him, taking in the blood, the bruises, the way he leans ever so slightly against the wall. There is something wide in his gaze.  Hannibal becomes acutely aware of the distance between them. It is not great. A few steps. And yet it contains Baltimore, betrayal, kitchens, knives, forgiveness.

He cannot be helped at all, he had thought.

And yet the mere sight of him shifts the equation. What would heal him? What would return him to the unfeeling precision he once prized? Nothing. He does not want that life back. The realization blooms with quiet terror. Falling once and for all. A singular gravity that collapses all alternatives. 

Will closes the last few steps between them without quite seeming to decide to.

Hannibal feels it before he sees it, the shift in air. He is suddenly acutely aware of the blood on him. Not only at his nose, not only at the cuts along his hands, but everywhere. It feels as though he is bleeding from every surface, as though his skin has become porous with it. His mouth tastes metallic. He swallows and feels the movement travel painfully down his throat.

Will stands close enough now that Hannibal can study him without the distortion of distance.

His eyebrows twitch faintly, the small involuntary movement of someone trying to hold expression in check. Beneath one eye blooms a bruise in yellow and purple gradations, like watercolor bled into damp paper. It looks almost painted onto him. Delicate and violent at once.

Will looks him over slowly. His gaze moves from Hannibal’s face to his collar, to the blood spreading across his shirt, to the way he leans just slightly too heavily against the wall. 

“You killed Pazzi.”

Hannibal nods.

“Yes.”

His own voice sounds distant to his ears, as though spoken from the far end of a corridor. He registers the timbre of it, almost soft. 

Will swallows. Hannibal sees the movement of his throat.

“Did he—” Will stops. His eyes shift to the split in Hannibal’s lip. “Was that him?”

Hannibal shakes his head slightly. The motion makes the world tilt, but he steadies himself.

“No.”

Will’s gaze lingers on him a moment longer, then drifts past him toward the end of the street, as though the stone walls might offer a more stable horizon. He inhales. Exhales.

“I imagined this differently,” Will says quietly. “The first time I saw you again.” His mouth tightens. “I had versions of it. None like this.” 

There had been a version of this meeting in Will’s mind. Perhaps one not soaked in soaked in blood. Or perhaps not soaked in blood that Will did not cause. 

“I saw you walking,” Will continues. “I told myself I didn’t have to follow. That I could let you remain a silhouette. But I followed you anyway. Across an ocean. Into your history.” His eyes flick back to Hannibal now. “You left doors open. You wanted to be found.”

Hannibal feels his head loll slightly back against the wall. The stone presses into his bruised skull. Of course you followed me.

 “And now that you’ve found me,” Hannibal asks, the words emerging slower than he intends, softer too, “what will you do with me?” He studies Will’s face. “Will you offer me more of your forgiveness, Will?

Will’s hand twitches against his pocket. But he does not reach inside. He looks back at Hannibal instead. There are too many emotions moving across his face to catalogue cleanly. Anger. Relief. Disbelief. A flicker of something dangerously close to tenderness. His eyes linger on Hannibal’s mouth, where blood gathers and slips again, blooming darker across his already stained shirt.

“Not like this. I didn’t come here to watch you suffer,” Will says, more quietly. “And I didn’t come here to save you either.” His eyes hold Hannibal’s. “I came because… I needed to see you.” 

He exhales, slow and careful. “There is a difference between imagination and encounter. One is safe. The other alters you.”

“Jack?” Will asks, instead of responding.

Hannibal nods.

“Yes,” he says. “He is very angry with me.” A faint, almost reflective pause. “And not without reason.”

Will’s jaw tightens. He grits his teeth briefly, then forces his breath out through them, steadying himself as Hannibal had steadied himself moments earlier against the wall.

“Where are you staying?”

Hannibal lets his eyes drift over Will’s bruised cheek one more time, memorizing the exact coloration of it. Someone has touched him. Marked him. The knowledge burns low and steady in his chest.

“I was on my way there,” Hannibal says. “It is not far.”

Will studies him, weighing the unspoken.

“Can you walk?” Will asks.

Hannibal meets his eyes. “Yes.”

A beat.

“Come,” Hannibal says quietly.

Will hesitates only a fraction of a second before stepping closer, sliding himself partly beneath Hannibal’s arm without asking permission. The contact is careful, almost reluctant, but real. Hannibal inhales sharply, not from pain, but from the shock of it. Will’s shoulder presses into his side. His hand, firm and warm, steadies Hannibal at the waist.

He is touched everywhere.

Even now.

They walk like that, slow, uneven, fused at the shoulder. Hannibal is aware of the mechanics of it. The subtle redistribution of weight. The way Will adjusts without comment when his limp falters. The faint tension in Will’s arm where it wraps around his back.

“I haven’t been in Italy the whole time,” Will says after a stretch of silence.

Hannibal tilts his head slightly, enough to indicate attention.

“No?”

“No.” Will exhales slowly through his nose. “I left for a while. Thought distance might clarify something.” A pause. “Do you want to know where I went?” 

There is something almost careful in it. Not coy. Not playful. 

“Yes,” Hannibal says.

Will’s grip shifts slightly as they turn another corner.

“I went to Lithuania,” he says. “To your castle.”

Hannibal feels the world tilt again, not from blood loss this time, but from the sudden collision of past and present. Lithuania. The word carries with it snow, silence, the smell of old stone and rot beneath it. It carries childhood in fragments, hunger, cold, the brittle crack of winter wood.

“My home,” Hannibal says quietly.

Will nods. “I wanted to see it,” he says. “Before I saw you again.” He hesitates, then adds, “I needed to know where you started.”  They walk a few more paces in silence.

“I thought if I stood where you stood,” Will continues, “if I looked at what was left of it, I might understand you better. I didn’t trust what I remembered. Or what you told me. I needed to see it.”

Hannibal feels something tighten in his throat that has nothing to do with injury.

“And?” he asks.

“I thought maybe I’d find something,” Will continues. “A reason. A shape. Something I could point to and say—there. That’s where it began.” They reach the building. Will slows but does not release him.

“Did you?” Hannibal asks.

Will shakes his head once.

“No,” he says. “Not in the way I thought I would.” Will glances at him, eyes lingering on the blood at his mouth, the bruise forming along his temple. “Seeing you like this,” Will says, “I think I understand more.”

Will had gone backward in time in order to approach him again. Barthes’ schema of love as recurrence falling, despair, recovery, falling again, presumes that one may step outside the experience long enough to metabolize it. But Will did not metabolize. He retraced. He returned to the wound’s geological source, as though by examining the strata of Hannibal’s childhood he might decipher the fault line that split them.

Love, then, is not a cycle but a narrowing. A refinement so extreme it becomes singularity. There is no agricultural patience in this attachment, no composting of grief into future bloom. There is instead a combustion that consumes the possibility of recurrence. One does not refine oneself for the next love when one’s entire interior topography has already been claimed by the first. Will did not seek softening. He sought proximity to pain. This is not cyclical love; it is archaeological love. It digs downward rather than outward. It risks contamination. It risks collapse.

The door closes behind them, and for a moment Hannibal stands just inside the threshold, as though uncertain whether the room will hold. Reality feels unstable, as if it has conspired to grant him something too perfectly aligned with his desire, and must therefore be counterfeit. He has imagined this convergence too often, imagined Will stepping through a doorway, imagined the air changing around him, and now that it has occurred without rehearsal, he finds himself suspicious of its authenticity.

This cannot be real. But it is.

The apartment receives them in composed silence. Will releases him only long enough to close the door securely, then resumes his position at Hannibal’s side. They move further inside together, their steps echoing lightly across the floor.

Will’s gaze begins its slow survey.

An eyebrow lifts, almost imperceptibly, as he takes in the space. He turns his head slightly, noting the art on the walls, the restraint of color, the economy of decoration. Hannibal watches him watching. He wonders what Will thinks. He hopes that Will does not mistake this for perfection. That he does not assume these months have been anything but saturated with absence. There has been no recovery in it. No cyclical rebirth into some new affection. Is it possible to love something so much, you imagine it wants to destroy you only because it has denied you?

He had entertained the notion that love might express itself through deprivation. That Will’s refusal to appear was a form of quiet violence. In darker moments, he imagined Will turning him into an object of abstinence, withholding himself as retribution.

But now Will stands in his apartment, bruised and breathing, and the theory dissolves.

Hannibal feels suddenly weary. Will moves a few steps away, still within reach, and turns slowly in place, absorbing the room.  You’ve been comfortable, his expression seems to say, though he does not speak it.

He would have liked to show Will Florence. There is no time now. 

The room tilts slightly again, though less violently than before. He presses his fingers to his temple, smearing faint blood there without noticing. Bedelia appears in the doorway to the adjoining room. She has been within the apartment all along, perhaps reading, perhaps listening. Her composure is intact as always, until her eyes fall upon the tableau before her. Recognition flashes across her features. Calculation. Alarm. Fascination.

“Hannibal,” she says evenly, though the word is edged.

Her eyes shift to Will.

“Will Graham.”

Hannibal studies Bedelia’s expression with detached interest. She understands immediately what this means. Not merely that Will has found him, but that the axis of the situation has shifted irreversibly.  She steps fully into the room.

“You’re bleeding on the parquet,” she observes lightly.

Will does not move. He stands slightly forward of Hannibal, not shielding him exactly, but occupying a position that suggests proximity is not negotiable. Hannibal feels it, the thin, cutting tension of two intelligences measuring each other without disguise. Will’s restraint is different. It vibrates. There is a wild spark in his eyes now, something feral and lucid at once.

“You look surprised,” Will says to her.

“I am,” Bedelia answers easily. “Though perhaps I shouldn’t be.”

She turns her attention back to Hannibal, stepping closer. Her gaze traces the line of blood at his lip, the swelling at his temple, the stiffness in his posture.

“Who?” she asks.

“Jack,” Hannibal replies.

She nods once, unsurprised.

“Of course.”

Will’s jaw tightens.

“You sound almost pleased,” he says.

Bedelia tilts her head slightly, examining him. “I’m rarely pleased by predictability,” she says. “But I am rarely surprised by it either.”

Her eyes flick briefly to Will’s bruise.

“And you?” she asks. “Did you fall into something, Mr. Graham?”

Will holds her gaze.

“I was pushed.”

Hannibal watches them both, fascinated despite the dull throb in his skull. Each sentence is a probe. “Bedelia,” Hannibal murmurs. She glances at him, and for a moment her expression shifts, not softening, but narrowing. She recognizes the caution in his tone.

“Jack Crawford is likely looking for you,” she says, voice settling back into its practiced composure. “For both of you.”

Will’s eyes flash.

“I’m aware,” he says.

“Are you?” Bedelia replies, mildly. “Awareness and preparation are not synonymous.” Her gaze drifts between them. “He will not limit himself simply because you are standing beside him,” she continues. “If anything, proximity will encourage escalation. He will interpret alignment as conspiracy.” A slight tilt of her head. “Is that what this is?”

Will steps closer to Hannibal without seeming to realize he has done so. “He already thinks so,” he says evenly. “He’s been thinking it for a while.”

Bedelia’s mouth curves, faint. “Then you have both confirmed his worst suspicions. How generous of you. I suggest that you consider how much of yourselves you are willing to offer to his narrative. He is very good at turning ambiguity into motive.”

Will’s jaw tightens. “Is that advice?” he asks.

“It is observation,” she says calmly. “Advice implies investment in the outcome.”

“And you don’t have one?” Will presses, voice quieter now. “No preference for who walks away intact?”

Bedelia studies him carefully. “I have always preferred clarity,” she says. “Clarity has a way of reducing unnecessary casualties.”

Will’s expression shifts, not anger, not quite. Something fiercer. “Clarity,” he repeats. “You mean confession. Alignment. Someone declaring what they are.”

“I mean,” Bedelia replies, “that ambiguity is a luxury neither of you currently possesses.”

The wild spark in Will’s eyes brightens, but it is focused now.

“I’ll get what’s needed,” she says at last, turning toward the adjoining room.

“She’s been living here with you this entire time,” Will says. It isn’t a question. His voice is low, but there is heat in it now. “With you,” he repeats. His jaw tightens. “In your rooms. In your bed.”

His vision begins to liquefy at the edges. Blood loss. Shock. The cumulative effect of impact and exertion. He has walked too far on an injured leg. He has bled more than he accounted for. He tells himself this as he shifts closer to Will. The movement is almost involuntary, almost innocent. He leans, not heavily, not yet, but enough that his shoulder brushes Will’s chest, enough that his forehead tilts slightly forward. And then, he presses his nose against Will’s shoulder.

“I did not want her to understand me.” His breath falters, but he does not look away. “In the way I wanted you to.”

The deep muscle beneath his ribs throbs with a slow, punitive rhythm. The cuts along his hands have begun to thicken at the edges, blood clotting into darkened seams. His neck yields more easily than it should. He has permitted himself to remain upright through spectacle and confrontation; now, in proximity to Will, the discipline begins to loosen.

He should not let Will see this. He wants to. He wants the fatigue visible. He wants the tremor in his breath. He wants the subtle surrender of posture. He tilts slightly further, allowing his weight to rest more fully against Will’s body. Will does not step away.

The tension remains in him, coiled, electric, but he does not withdraw. His arm shifts, perhaps unconsciously, to accommodate the lean. Hannibal feels the faint pressure of Will’s hand at his back, steady but not embracing. He wants to ask what troubles him. He wants to catalogue Will’s injuries as he catalogs his own, to understand where the pain resides in him.

Instead, he listens. Will’s heart beats faster than his own. He can feel it through fabric, through proximity. Hannibal’s mouth brushes faintly against the seam of Will’s shirt as he exhales. 

He wants to melt into his arms. He wants his body to give way, to fold into Will’s, to relinquish verticality and let himself be held. He wants to press his face into the hollow of Will’s neck and breathe until the world steadies. No matter his anger. No matter anything. He is acutely aware that Will could kill him now.

His strength is sufficient. Hannibal has placed himself within reach without resistance. If Will chose to close his fingers around the vulnerable arch of his neck, Hannibal would not fight as effectively as he could.

He tilts his head slightly, allowing the bridge of his nose to rest more firmly against Will’s shoulder. The scent intensifies. His mouth opens faintly as he inhales. And beneath the exhaustion, beneath the pain, beneath the quiet risk of annihilation, another hunger stirs. Forgiveness. He wants to eat him.

It is not separate from appetite. It is not a moral abstraction hovering above the body like some antiseptic halo. He feels it in his mouth before he can articulate it in thought. 

Forgiveness, spoken once, I forgive you, did not conclude anything. It did not resolve the wound. It intensified it. Forgiveness has not freed him; it has bound him more completely. He presses his nose closer against Will’s shoulder and inhales again, as if scent itself might carry absolution into his bloodstream.

Bedelia returns. There is a small leather case in her hand, unadorned, immaculate. Gauze. Antiseptic. Suture kit. “We need better light,” she says evenly. “And water.”

Her gaze moves to Will, not requesting. “Help him to the bathroom.”

Will does not hesitate, but he does not look at her either. His attention remains fixed on Hannibal, as though the act of glancing away might fracture something fragile. Hannibal allows himself to be handled. The world sways again, slower this time, as if the room has decided to breathe with him rather than against him. His hand, almost without intention, tightens faintly in the fabric of Will’s sleeve.

They move down the short hallway. Bedelia steps past them with fluid composure and turns the taps. Water begins to run into the deep basin of the bath, first with a metallic cough, then a steady, echoing stream. Steam rises slowly, softening the edges of the room.

Hannibal feels the sound of water in his bones. Cleansing. Immersion. Exposure. Bedelia sets the leather case down on the counter and begins to lay out its contents. Scissors aligned. Alcohol uncapped. Cotton pads stacked.

“We’ll start with his face,” she says.

Will’s hand tightens at Hannibal’s waist.

“Don’t touch him,” Will says. The words are not shouted. They are controlled, but the strain beneath them is unmistakable. Bedelia pauses. For a moment she simply looks at him.

“I can manage,” she replies mildly.

“I can—” Will’s voice falters, then firms. “I can do it. I know where he hurts.”

The statement lands differently than the others. Bedelia’s eyes flick to Hannibal briefly, then back to Will. “Do you?” she asks. Does he? Truly? 

Will does not look away. “Yes.”

Hannibal feels the subtle tremor in his hands. Bedelia inhales once, almost imperceptibly.

“As you wish,” she says at last. She closes the leather case without haste, though she leaves the instruments arranged upon the counter. Then she turns and walks out of the bathroom.

The water continues to run in the bath. Steam climbs the mirror in translucent veils, blurring their reflections into a single, shifting silhouette, two figures merging and separating with the rise and fall of breath. Will does not move immediately.

He stands there for a beat, jaw clenched, eyes on the closed door as though measuring the space Bedelia has vacated. Then he looks back at Hannibal.

“Come on,” he says quietly.

He slides an arm around Hannibal’s back, not gently, not roughly, but with purpose, and guides him toward the left side of the room, where a wide slab of marble counter stretches beneath the mirror. The stone is pale, veined faintly with grey, cool despite the steam.

“Sit,” Will says.

Hannibal obeys. He allows himself to be lifted onto the counter, the movement pulling a low, involuntary breath from him as his ribs protest. He settles there, hands resting loosely at his sides.

Will stands between his knees. The proximity alters the air. Hannibal looks up at him.

Will’s eyes are darker than they had been. The bruise beneath his eye is more pronounced under this light, the yellow fading into deep purple at its edges. There is no softness in his gaze now. Only concentration. And something else, something volatile, banked but not extinguished. Hannibal inhales.

He can smell Will’s anger. It is faint, but it is there, adrenaline and salt beneath the steam, a metallic sharpness that does not belong to the antiseptic. Anger at him. Anger at himself. 

Will’s hands twitch at his sides before lifting. The water continues to run. “Turn your head,” Will says.

Hannibal tilts slightly, exposing the split along his cheek where glass had kissed him open. Will’s fingers come up, hovering for a fraction of a second before they make contact. His thumb brushes lightly over the wound, tracing its edge. His lips part. Hannibal watches him watching. Will presses, just slightly. Pain flares, clean, electric. Hannibal blinks despite himself.

“Don’t,” Will says sharply. “Don’t flinch.” Will’s thumb presses again, firmer this time, smearing blood along the contour of Hannibal’s cheek. The sting sharpens.

“How many times did he hit you?” Will asks.

Hannibal considers the question. “I do not know,” he says.

Will’s jaw tightens. “I think you do know,” he says. “I think you always know. You notice everything. You count everything.” His eyes sharpen. “You’re not suddenly imprecise.”

Hannibal meets his gaze. “It was a fair fight,” he says. “He struck. I struck. We both made choices.”

The lie lands between them with quiet weight. Will does not look away. “I think you let him beat you,” he says. 

Hannibal feels the tremor in his own hands intensify faintly. He folds them together to still it. “You overestimate my altruism,” he replies. “You believe I desired the outcome?”

“I think,” Will says slowly, “that you wanted something from him.”

“And what would that be?”

Will leans closer. “Punishment.”

Hannibal exhales through his nose, faintly. “Jack Crawford is not equipped to punish me,” he says. “He lacks the necessary imagination. His violence is procedural.”

Will’s fingers tighten briefly against his jaw. “No,” he agrees. “But he can hurt you.” Hannibal feels the truth of that statement settle into the marrow of his ribs. “He did,” Will continues. “And you didn’t stop him.”

Hannibal says nothing. Will’s thumb presses again, and Hannibal does not blink this time. “How many times?” Will repeats.

Hannibal’s gaze shifts, just slightly.

“I do not know,” he says again.

Will studies him. “You could’ve ended it,” he says. “You’ve ended worse. You’ve ended men who posed less of a threat.” His voice tightens. “You chose not to.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Hannibal considers answering truthfully. Because I wanted the pain. Because I wanted something external to match what you do to my heart. Because Jack’s fists were simpler than your forgiveness.

Instead he says, “It was a fair fight.”

Will’s hand drops from his cheek. He lifts a hand and rubs it over his face, as though attempting to smooth his expression. The blood from Hannibal’s cheek, smeared earlier by Will’s thumb, transfers in a faint arc across Will’s mouth. A darkening at the edge of his lower lip. It is small, almost imperceptible, but Hannibal sees it. His breath catches.

They both cannot recover from this. No gentle reabsorption into former selves. There will be no phase of recovery from this encounter. No polite estrangement. No iterative refinement. They have already passed beyond the possibility of rehearsal.

Will turns away abruptly and reaches for the tap, shutting off the bathwater. The sudden silence is jarring. Steam continues to rise, but the relentless sound has ceased. Will’s back is to him. Broad. Tense. His shoulders lift and fall once as he inhales.

“I’m going to help you get strong again,” Will says.“I need you steady on your feet. Clear-headed. Entire.” His voice is steady, but there is iron beneath it. Hannibal watches the line of his spine through the fabric of his shirt.

“I don’t want you weak,” Will continues. “Not diminished. Not half-standing.” A pause. “Not when I do what I… came back here to do.”

The sentence does not specify its object. It does not need to. Hannibal’s gaze drops briefly to Will’s pocket.

“What are you carrying, Will?” he asks. 

Will does not turn immediately.

“It doesn’t matter right now,” he says. He turns back then, and the wild spark in his eyes has not diminished. He steps toward Hannibal again. “I didn’t come all this way to confront a shadow of you. If I’m going to decide anything—if I’m going to act—I want you capable of standing in front of me.”

Hannibal studies him carefully. “You require me at full strength,” he says slowly. “Not for my sake, but for yours.”

“Yes,” Will answers without hesitation. “Because if I do this while you’re hurt, it becomes mercy. Or vengeance. And I’m not interested in either.”

For a moment they stand close without touching. Then Will reaches for him. He slides a hand beneath Hannibal’s arm and guides him to stand. The movement pulls a sharp breath from Hannibal as his ribs protest. He does not resist.  

Will’s hands move to Hannibal’s chest.

He begins with the black wool vest, dark, bloodied, stiff where the fabric has dried. His fingers work at the buttons, not fumbling, not rushed. The wool peels away slowly, the weight of it shifting as it loosens. Hannibal watches him from beneath lowered lashes.

Will sets the vest aside without looking at where it falls. His hands move next to the collar of Hannibal’s shirt, the white fabric stained through with rust-colored bloom. He unbuttons it methodically, one button at a time.  The collar parts. Cool air touches skin. Will’s gaze drops to the bruising beneath, the mottled shadow across his collarbone, the faint swelling along his ribs. 

He simply looks. The bruises bloom in variegated purples and blues beneath his skin like submerged galaxies; the cuts along his shoulder and flank glisten darkly where blood has not yet fully clotted. He eases the shirt from Hannibal’s shoulders, peeling fabric carefully away from the places where it has adhered to drying blood. The cotton resists faintly; the separation pulls at tender skin. The shirt falls open completely, then slides down his arms. Will gathers it without looking at where it lands, adding it to the dark heap of the vest. 

There are more cuts than he had accounted for. Thin, angular slices along his side from shattered glass; a deeper gash just below the ribs where impact met edge; faint abrasions across his shoulder blades. Blood moves slowly from some of them still, reluctant, viscous. Not a torrent. A seep. Will’s jaw flexes.

Hannibal follows the line of Will’s gaze downward, noting the way crimson gathers at his hip before slipping toward the waistband of his trousers. He thinks of the dying Christ. Of flesh pierced, of side opened, of blood and water pouring forth not merely as biological consequence but as symbol, sacrifice, forgiveness, redemption purchased in red. Forgiveness is monstrous. Primitive. Grand. Divine. It bleeds.

Will’s fingers hover over the cut at his side.

“How deep?” he asks.

“Not fatal,” Hannibal replies.

“Deep enough.” Will presses lightly around the wound, testing the edges. Hannibal’s breath falters for a fraction of a second. “You’re going to scar.” 

Will steps back half a pace and looks down at the remaining barriers, Hannibal’s trousers. He hesitates only for a moment before he reaches for the button.

Hannibal watches him. Will unfastens the button, lowers the zipper with a soft metallic rasp. He slides the fabric down carefully. The trousers fall with a heavy sound. Hannibal stands now in nothing but the thin barrier of undergarments, skin marked and open to the humid air. Blood continues to bead and trail in narrow lines, gravity claiming what it can. It gathers at the hollow of his hip, follows the contour of muscle, drops faintly to the floor.

Will’s expression darkens further. Hannibal feels again the tremor in his hands, the fatigue threatening to buckle his knees. He resists the instinct to conceal it. Across the room, on the counter, the instruments gleam in the muted light. Tools designed for closure.

Hannibal’s gaze lingers there for a moment.

Closure.

Is that what this is?

Will follows his line of sight briefly, then looks back at him. Without breaking eye contact, he begins to unbutton his own suit jacket. The fabric falls from his shoulders. He lays it aside. Then he reaches for his sleeves and rolls them upward, exposing forearms corded with tension, skin marked faintly with travel and recent strain.

“Get in the bath,” he says.

His boxers are damp at the waistband. He removes them himself. The fabric clings, releases, is dropped somewhere beyond the tub’s edge. He does not watch where it falls.

The water accepts him slowly. His legs bend, knees breaking the surface, and Will’s hands are on him, not to steady, but to gather.  Will’s gaze does not travel lower. Will’s eyes remain fixed on his face, and then on his chest, and then on his face again. 

“Easy,” Will says.

Heat envelops his thighs, his hips, the long ladder of his spine. The wounds announce themselves, not in screams, Hannibal does not scream, has not screamed since he was a boy in another house, another country, another life Will has seen the bones of, but in insistence. A sharp, blooming ache where the water finds the torn flesh, the bruised muscle. 

Will kneels. The tile must be hard against his knees. But Will gives no indication of discomfort. He lowers himself slowly, until he is level with the bath’s edge, until his face is close enough that Hannibal can see the individual lashes framing his eyes.

His eyes look sad. It is a brief thought, fleeting as mayflies over water. He does not dwell on it. He does not permit himself to dwell on it. But the thought exists, has existed, will continue to exist in some quiet corner of his consciousness, waiting.

Will’s hand moves. It hovers for a moment above the water’s surface, and Hannibal watches it as he has watched Will’s hands for years. The hand descends. Water parts around his fingers, and when he lifts them again, they are cupped, filled, heavy with liquid.

He brings this offering to Hannibal’s face.

The water is warm. It runs over Hannibal’s lips, his chin, the bridge of his nose where the skin has split and begun to swell. It dilutes the blood, thins it to pink rivulets. Will’s thumb follows these paths. He does not wipe so much as erase, smoothing away the evidence of Jack Crawford’s righteousness with slow, circular motions.

“He hit you hard,” Will says, almost sighing out the words. 

Hannibal shudders. “The first was to my jaw. He was not yet committed. The second was to my ribs, and by then he had found his conviction. The third—”

He pauses. Will’s thumb traces the curve of his cheekbone, feather-light. “The third was to my face. He struck me with such force that I tasted blood. Not my own, yet. His. Perhaps his knuckles split against my teeth.”

Will exhales. It is not a steady breath; it shivers on its way out, catches on something in his chest, emerges fractured. His hand stills against Hannibal’s cheek, and for a moment they are both frozen there, caught in the amber. Does he know, Hannibal thinks, how much I have missed him? The question has no answer. It is not the kind of question that admits answers.

Will’s hand returns to the water. The water accepts Will’s fingers as it accepted Hannibal’s body, reluctantly, then completely. Ripples spread outward, concentric circles. Will cups his palm, gathers water, lifts it toward Hannibal’s face.

And Hannibal catches his wrist. He draws Will’s hand closer. Slowly, he presses Will’s palm against his cheek. His eyes close. The lashes flutter against his skin, against Will’s skin. He cannot help it.Will. The name forms in his throat but does not emerge. It lives there, like his longing. 

Will shifts on his knees. His free hand rises, finds Hannibal’s hand, the one still gripping his wrist, and holds it. Hannibal opens his eyes. Will is looking at his palm. There is a wound there. Circular. It is not deep; it will heal without sutures, without significant scarring. But it is there, this small signature of violence. Will’s thumb traces the edge of it. He does not ask how it happened; he knows.

Barthes wrote of love’s circularity, that we spend our lives returning to the same wound, tracing the same orbit around the same beloved object, unable to escape the gravity of our own desire. We believe we are moving forward, progressing, healing. But love, Barthes knew, is not linear. It is a circle. It is the serpent eating its own tail. It is the return, again and again, to the place where we were first unmade.

Hannibal looks at Will’s bowed head, at the dark hair still damp from travel, at the vertebrae visible above his collar. He thinks: I have returned. He thinks: I would return a thousand times. Will raises Hannibal’s hand to his face. Hannibal watches, breath caught somewhere in his chest, as Will’s lips part. As his head lowers. As his mouth approaches the small, circular wound on Hannibal’s palm.

He does not kiss it. Instead, Will presses his open mouth to the broken skin, lips parted, the barest edge of teeth grazing the torn flesh. He exhales. His breath is warm, damp, intimate. 

He watches the sweep of Will’s lashes against his cheek. He watches the subtle movement of Will’s jaw, the slight pressure of teeth, the way Will’s entire body seems to still around this single point of contact. He watches, and he thinks of nothing, and he thinks of everything.

“Will,” he says. His voice is not his own. “Will. Come into the water with me.”

They are very close now, his face still bent over Hannibal’s hand, his mouth still pressed to the wound. He does not move. He does not speak. His gaze travels from Hannibal’s palm to Hannibal’s face, and something shifts there, not recognition, he has always recognized, but acceptance. The laying down of arms. The surrender of the last fortified position.

“I know you,” Will says.

Hannibal nods. He does not trust his voice.

“I came to find you,” Will says. His thumb continues its slow circuit of Hannibal’s palm, tracing the wound’s perimeter, following the curve of the circle Barthes described. Round and round. Return and return.

“Yes,” Hannibal says. “Come to me.”

Will releases his hand. He stands slowly. His shirt is wrinkled, his trousers damp at the knees, his hair falling across his forehead in disarray. He looks, Hannibal thinks, like a man who has walked a very long distance. His fingers find the buttons of his shirt. One. Two. Three. The fabric parts, revealing the pale column of his throat, the hollow at its base, the first suggestion of collarbone. And then he stops.

His hands fall to his sides. His gaze meets Hannibal’s, and something passes between them, not words, not even thought. He does not remove his shirt. He does not remove his trousers, his shoes, the thin socks that have left his ankles exposed and vulnerable. He simply steps into the bath, fully clothed, and lowers himself into the pink-tinged water.

His shirt darkens, clinging to his chest. His trousers weigh him down, dragging at his hips. The water rises, settles into its new configuration.

Will crawls between Hannibal’s legs. He moves on his knees, his hands braced on either side of Hannibal’s thighs, his body folding into the narrow space available. The water sloshes gently, rhythmically, a small tide responding to this new moon. His face rises to meet Hannibal’s, close enough that their breath mingles, close enough that Hannibal can see the individual flecks of green in Will’s irises.

His palms press against Hannibal’s cheeks. His thumbs trace the arches of Hannibal’s brows. His fingers slide into Hannibal’s hair, still damp, still cool from the water’s retreat. And then his mouth. It is not a kiss. Will’s lips find the cut on Hannibal’s cheekbone. They linger there, warm and soft, tasting the residual salt of blood. They move to his brow, where the skin is swollen and tender. They trace the bridge of his nose, the split at the corner of his mouth, the shallow laceration along his jaw. 

“I don’t know how to feel,” Will says. His voice is muffled against Hannibal’s skin. “Seeing you like this.”

Hannibal’s hands find Will’s waist. The fabric of his shirt is sodden, translucent, offering no barrier. Beneath it, Will’s skin is warm, almost feverish. Hannibal can feel the rapid flutter of his heartbeat, the subtle tremor of muscles held rigid by force of will. He does not pull Will closer. He does not push him away. He simply rests his hands there, at the narrow curve of Will’s hips, and waits.

Will’s mouth reaches his. It hovers there, a breath away. His lips are parted. His eyes are open, fixed on Hannibal’s. Water drips from his hair onto Hannibal’s chest. “I’ve dreamed of you,” he says.

Will's hands grip his shoulders. They dig into the muscle beneath his clavicles, seeking purchase. Will is shaking. His mouth moves to Hannibal's brow. The skin there is swollen, tender, the faint blue of bruise beginning to surface beneath the epidermis. Will's tongue traces the edge of it, following the contour of the impact. His breath is warm and uneven, catching on small sounds that never quite emerge as words.

It hurts, Hannibal thinks. This has no end. Will's tongue finds the split at the corner of his mouth. His fingers tighten on Will's hips, the damp fabric twisting beneath his grip. He can taste himself on Will's breath. Will's mouth reaches his throat. Hannibal's head falls back against the porcelain rim of the bath. He does not command it; it simply happens, his body responding to the pressure of Will's lips against the vulnerable curve of his neck. His pulse beats visibly beneath the skin, and Will's tongue finds it, presses against it, follows its desperate rhythm.

"I don't—" Will begins.

He does not finish. His voice breaks on the second word, splinters into silence. His mouth continues its slow exploration, moving from Hannibal's throat to his collarbone, from his collarbone to the hollow at its base. 

He is in a trance, Hannibal thinks.

The word is inadequate. It suggests a passive state, a suspension of agency. What moves through Will is not passivity but possession, the occupation of his body by something older and more urgent than conscious intention. His mouth continues. His tongue continues its smearing, spreading Hannibal's blood across his face, his throat.

Suddenly, Will is pulling him closer. His arms wrap around Hannibal's neck, his chest presses against Hannibal's chest, his face buries itself in the curve of Hannibal's throat. The water sloshes between them, displaced by this sudden convergence. Will's entire body is against him now, full length, full weight, full desperation.

He squeezes.

Hannibal's breath stops. The pressure is exquisite and unbearable. Will's arms are wrapped around his shoulders, his fingers tangled in the damp hair at Hannibal's nape. His chest is flattened against Hannibal's chest, their hearts beating through the thin barrier of skin and water and saturated fabric. His hips press against Hannibal's hips, his thighs against Hannibal's thighs. There is no space between them. There is no distance, no separation, no self. And his arms tighten further.

The bruised ribs protest. Hannibal feels them shift, the deep ache of compressed tissue, the sharp insistence of nerve endings overwhelmed. Will's embrace does not strike him; it envelops him. It does not wound from without but from within, pressing against already damaged tissue and demanding that he bear it.

This consoles him. Will's arms tighten further. This devastates him, Hannibal thinks. He cannot separate the two responses. he consolation is the devastation; the devastation is the consolation. Will's embrace both mends him and unmakes him.

Will's mouth finds his throat. His teeth, just barely, just briefly, graze the skin there. It is not a bite. It is the suggestion of a bite, the memory of a bite, the promise of a bite that may never arrive. And then Will releases him. The absence is immediate and absolute. Hannibal's lungs expand, drawing air in a sudden, desperate gasp. His vision clears. His heart, that stubborn organ, continues its reckless assault on his ribcage. His hands, still curled at Will's hips, grip the sodden fabric with renewed urgency.

Will is moving.

He shifts backward, his knees finding purchase on either side of Hannibal's thighs. His hands slide from Hannibal's shoulders to his biceps, gripping there briefly before releasing. 

"Turn around," Will says.

Hannibal turns. The movement is awkward in the confined space. But Will guides him, hands on his shoulders, hands on his hips, turning him until his back faces Will's chest and his face faces the opposite wall. Will's arm wraps around him once more. It emerges from behind, sliding across his chest, crossing from his right shoulder to his left hip. The forearm presses against his sternum; the hand grips his opposite side, fingers splayed across the curve of his ribcage. Will's chest presses against his back. Will's thighs bracket his hips. Will's breath is warm against the nape of his neck.

His tongue traces the line of Hannibal's trapezius, following the muscle from neck to clavicle. His lips press against the skin there, open and wet. His arm tightens further around Hannibal's chest, drawing him closer, holding him still. The flood of his breath. The stuff of myths. Will's brain. Will's skull opened along the sagittal suture, the hemispheres exposed to light and air. He sees the grey matter, the intricate folds and fissures, the pale pathways of axon and dendrite. He sees his own fingers lifting the frontal lobe, accessing the temporal regions where memory and language reside.

He would eat it. Forgive him that way. He has fallen. He is falling still. The descent has no terminus, no bottom, no solid ground where he might finally rest. He will fall forever into Will Graham, and he will call this falling by the name it deserves.

His arm remains wrapped around Hannibal's chest, his hand still pressed against the bruised ribs. His breath continues its warm rhythm against Hannibal's neck. His body remains curled around Hannibal's back, containing him, holding him, refusing to release him.

"I don't know how to stop," Will says. His voice is barely audible. It vibrates through Hannibal's spine, his sternum, the small bones of his inner ear.

"Don't," Hannibal says.

Will's hand slides lower. His tongue traces the split on his cheekbone. The wound has ceased bleeding; the blood that remains is drying, flaking, the deep red darkening toward brown. Will's tongue wets it, loosens it, carries the taste of it back into his own mouth. His lips follow, pressing against the laceration with something approaching tenderness.

His hand continues its descent. The water parts around his fingers, offering no resistance. His palm slides over Hannibal's navel, the fine trail of hair that leads downward. His thumb traces his belly, following the curve from flank to groin. His fingers spread, spanning the width of Hannibal's abdomen, pressing gently into the muscle beneath.

"You opened me here," Will says. His voice is muffled against Hannibal's cheek. His thumb presses harder, seeking the memory. "Do you remember?"

Hannibal shudders. Yes, he thinks. He remembers. His fingers have reached the junction of Hannibal's thigh and pelvis, the crease where leg meets torso. They pause there. His thumb presses against Hannibal's lower abdomen, just above the pubic bone, and his palm curves around the curve of his hip. He is remembering too, Hannibal thinks. He has imagined them at the innumerable unnamed battles where they faced the Roman war machine and refused to break. He has imagined them streaming with blood, their wounds uncounted and uncountable, their bodies reduced to vessels of pain and purpose.

He has imagined two of them. Perhaps, in the chaos of some forgotten engagement, two men found each other across the carnage. Perhaps they recognized something in each other's eyes. Perhaps, wounded beyond recovery and exhausted beyond endurance, they fell into each other's arms. They rushed upon the blades held out. Their delirium was so furious, perhaps the Carthaginians felt afraid.

Hannibal opens his eyes. Will's face is very close to his own. His pupils are dilated, black eclipsing the pale blue of his irises. His lips are parted, stained with Hannibal's blood. His breath comes in short, uneven bursts. Something similar has come upon Will now, Hannibal thinks.

Will's mouth descends. It finds Hannibal's lips, and for a moment there is only contact, the pressure of flesh against flesh, the warmth of breath exchanged. Then Will's tongue emerges, sliding along the seam of Hannibal's mouth, tasting the blood that still lingers there. His hand, still pressed against Hannibal's lower abdomen, shifts its position.

His fingers find Hannibal's cock. Will's palm wraps around the shaft, his fingers curl, his grip is warm and wet and certain. Hannibal makes a sound. He cannot handle this, Hannibal thinks. He cannot endure this. Will's hand moves. His thumb circles the head, under the water he leaks into. His fingers tighten slightly, adjusting their grip. His mouth remains pressed to Hannibal's, his tongue continuing its slow exploration of lips and teeth and the split at the corner of his mouth.

He cannot handle this, Hannibal thinks again.

His body does not agree.

The response is slow, slower than it would be under ordinary circumstances, slower than it has ever been. His bloodloss is significant. But Will's hand continues its patient rhythm, and Will's mouth continues its patient attention, and Will's body continues its patient pressure against Hannibal's back.

He hardens. Will’s hand accommodates the change, adjusting its grip, continuing its stroke. His thumb presses against the sensitive underside of the shaft.  Hannibal shakes. His teeth press together, his jaw clenches, his breath escapes in short, uneven bursts. His grip on Will's forearm tightens, fingers digging into the muscle beneath the saturated fabric of his sleeve.

Will's mouth releases his. His hand does not. His thumb continues its circuit of the head. His fingers continue their stroke along the shaft. His gaze meets Hannibal's.

His mouth returns to Hannibal's face. His tongue traces each wound with the same frantic attention, tasting the blood that continues to well from lacerations. The pressure builds.

His muscles tense. His breath accelerates. His fingers rise and curl tightly in Will's hair, pulling him closer, pressing his mouth more firmly against the wound on his cheek. His hips move more urgently against Will's hand, seeking, demanding.

Hannibal's hips buck. His breath escapes in a sound that is unmistakably a moan, low, urgent, involuntary. His grip on Will's hair becomes almost painful. His vision narrows, edges darkening, the periphery collapsing toward a single point of focus: Will's face against his, Will's hand on his body, Will's presence everywhere and nowhere and impossible to escape.

I submit, he thinks. I submit. The pressure peaks. His body arches, his chest pressing against Will's chest. His breath stops. Time itself seems to stop, suspended in the infinite moment between one heartbeat and the next. And then he comes. His semen spills into Will's hand, into the water, into the warm space between their bodies. His hips continue their urgent rhythm, pressing himself through the aftershocks. His breath returns in great, desperate gasps. His fingers release Will's hair, then grip it again, unable to decide between release and retention.

Will's mouth continues its work. And his hand does not stop. His fingers continue their slow stroke along Hannibal's length, even as Hannibal's body trembles through the final spasms of release. Again, Hannibal thinks. He wants me again. Again, and again, and again. No recovery. 

The second peak approaches more quickly than the first. His body has not had time to recover, has not had time to replenish what it spent. But Will's hand is insistent.  I cannot, he thinks. I can. Will's mouth finds the cut above Hannibal's eye and his tongue traces it, his lips press against it, his breath warms it. Hannibal comes again.

It is less than before, a smaller release. But it is no less intense, no less overwhelming. His body arches. Will groans. It is a sound of recognition, of participation, of a man who feels in his own body what is happening in the body of another. He feels it too, Hannibal thinks.

The ache has not left his heart. There is no love after this. The past and the future are no longer linear categories. They are before him and after him. Hannibal feels no fragmentation now. He feels convergence. The ache is whole. It is indivisible. It does not permit dispersion into other objects or other futures. It insists upon singularity. The wound, the site to which the lover returns again and again, unable to escape its orbit. Will has returned. Across oceans. Across blood. Across betrayal.  There is no love after this.