Chapter Text
Bev gave Will a look when he returned, searching and curious. He nearly spun on his heel and walked right back out, just to avoid her rendition of the Spanish Inquisition.
“What’d he say?”
“Who?” Will asked, his tone forcibly mild, as if they discussed nothing more alarming than the weather.
Bev bit her lip, a considering gesture, clearly debating with herself whether she ought to press the issue. Will sincerely hoped she didn’t. He needed to get away, to go somewhere quiet and breathe in the salt air and simply…exist. Alone. Safe . Shielded.
“Will, you look like you’ve seen the spirit of Old Price.”
If she’d hoped to distract him from his stresses, she’d succeeded. Will gave her a sour look.
“The Campania is not haunted,” he said stiffly, “And if I find it’s you who’s been spreading that rumour to the new hires--”
“Ooh, gonna dock my wages, sir?” Bev teased, “ Every ship carries spirits, Will, that’s just a fact.”
For a moment, Will lost himself to it, the familiar banter, it had always been an easy rhythm between them, that back and forth. He let his wife - his best friend - pull him back from the brink of panic. They sniped at each other, each fighting back beaming smiles, until the clock began to chime.
“Well, that’s me told,” Bev said, stretching with a groan, “Off to the pits of hell again. Try and get some sleep, won’t you?”
“No,” Will shook his head, “You’re off the next two days.”
“Will--”
“Two days,” Will repeated, stepping closer and stroking her hair from her face. She’d taken a bath in the time Will had been with Hannibal, and it smelled sweet. Will took a moment to breathe her in, a familiar smell that spoke of comfort and safety and constancy.
“We can’t afford two days, Will.”
“We can afford two days,” Will murmured, wrapping his arms around her as she sighed and nuzzled against his sternum. Then, with a grumble, she relented.
“ Fine ,” she mumbled, pulling back and giving Will a look, “But you take the kid out then. I barely made it to the tub without falling over, I’m not sure I could manage the stairs.”
“Three days,” Will amended, earning a snort from his wife, “If you keep that up.”
They argued gently a while longer, until Bev’s eyes started to close and she laid back in Will’s bed, tugging the blankets up. He kissed her forehead, she returned the gesture against the soft stubble of his cheek before turning to seek her rest, facing the shadowed side of the wall. Once Bev’s breathing had evened in slumber, Will reached for his coat and softly called Medic to him.
There were parts of the ship off-limits to passengers, and Will made his way towards one such hideaway once Medic had done his business and Will had disposed of it overboard. They sequestered themselves away in a lifeboat, Will spread out on his back to watch the stars blink into existence, one by one, and Medic sprawled companionably against his side.
Hannibal had offered him something deadly, he thought. Something that would be addicting, that he would not be able to exist without once had. If Will got a taste of it he could not imagine simply returning to the routine mask of his previous - normal - life, suppressing his desires when he might know what it was to sate them instead.
He tried to summon righteous anger he knew should be there, draw on the voice that might paint and tar Hannibal as a peddler of addictive substances, an opportunist, sowing destruction for his own amusement and gain. He’d given Bev cocaine for God’s sake! And yet... no anger rose to meet the call of such thoughts. Not when he’d seen how relieved Bev had looked, how relaxed she had been after just one dose of the drug. He’d never seen her calm so quickly, had never seen pain leave her features so entirely as then. He couldn’t hate Hannibal for that, not ever.
But for the rest…
For sharing with Will such debauchery about his time in Paris, for drawing Will in, tempting him closer, for the press of warm lips scorching still against his palm…
Will drew his knees up and rolled to the side, hand fumbling for a cigarette in his pocket and the lighter to go with. He lit up with a shaky sigh and let the tobacco burn his throat.
For a few minutes he let that ground him, focused solely on the pattern of drawing in slow, rhythmic breaths. Burn. Breathe. Burn....Breathe.
Hannibal had had men before.
The thought bloomed and blazed bright like the cherry at the end of Will’s cigarette, hurt as badly as if he’d put that light out against his own flesh. A punch of ardent hunger, aching and raw.
Hannibal had men.
Boys , he’d called them, and Will tried to compare himself to the sort of pretty, fresh-faced boys he saw join the crew. All of them new to adulthood, some of them newly married and fumbling through the beginnings of the intricacies of relationships. Many of them moved with a sort of false bravado, a cockiness that came with the surety of youth.
Will tried to picture himself at the same age. He’d been… far less confident. Nervous, every day a ticking clock counting down to starvation and more time only purchased with ceaseless toil. He’d been scrambling to provide for Bev, he could not have gone to the sort of places Hannibal frequented, put on the sort of coyness Hannibal had been exposed to.
There was, all in all, no reason Hannibal should want him, when those he’d wanted before had been full of youthful vigor and beauty.
But Hannibal...he looked at Will as though he were still that youthful, as though he were not pushing forty, exhausted, well past his prime - if there had ever been a prime. He’d looked at Will as he’d spoken as though Will were the epitome of Hannibal’s fantasies, as though for Will he would stop time itself.
The cigarette burned too low, singeing Will’s fingers and his bottom lip as he inhaled, a low curse startling from him before he tossed it aside. He crushed the smoldering remains under his heel and flopped back in the boat once more, bringing a hand up to scrub over tired eyes.
They needed to be cared for, I needed to care for someone.
Goddammit. Those words sent shivers down Will’s spine, had curled themselves low in his stomach, and squeezed his lungs until he could barely breathe - Why?
He didn’t need looking after, he was a man, he was married, in charge of his household, providing for his wife…
But he wasn’t. He hadn’t been, not ever. The more Will thought about it, the more he knew, with a sinking dread, that it was Bev who looked after him. Bev who made sure he ate, who made sure he rested even a few hours every night. Bev who worked alongside Will so they didn’t starve, Bev who had stepped in to get people to back off when Will hadn’t the fortitude or tolerance for their endless barrage of emotions. Bev was the protector, and Will was…
Will was lost.
Without her he would be adrift - utterly and completely.
Yet it was Bev who was gently pushing him to allow this courtship, encouraging him to accept the attentions and kindnesses of this rich man. It was Bev who was guiding him towards this; and she would never lead him astray, Will knew that to the depths of his soul, he trusted her with his life.
It still felt like a kind of betrayal. Bev deserved better. She deserved a husband who would want her, who would worship her. She did not have, and never had, any desire to be wanted , yet she deserved someone who could . Someone who worked the way every man was supposed to work, someone who was not just the slightest bit bent.
She wouldn’t care. Will knew that. She wanted this for him, and had said as much. Loyalty to Bev was an easy out. If he wanted to be a respectable husband, if he was worried about what Bev would think, then he couldn’t possibly see Hannibal the way Hannibal wanted, the choice would be out of his hands and who could fault him for that?
If it was Will’s choice, truly his, then he was choosing to walk away. Choosing to turn his back on his own happiness. And he would choose that. How could he conceive of doing anything else? Risking his place aboard the ship, his livelihood - Bev’s livelihood. He could be arrested, imprisoned - worse.
No. Will was certain there was no other option as a sane man but to walk away from Hannibal, from the promise of touch, from the fire beneath his skin. Hannibal would be good at it, that hazy feeling that Will had never truly visualized. He tried, now, just for a moment. If he was going to walk away, he should understand what he was walking away from .
Hannibal would… Hannibal would kiss him. That, Will could imagine easily enough. He had kissed Bev before, a fumbling handful of times. He usually kissed her on the cheek now, a softened platonic thing, but he remembered how it felt. And he could still feel Hannibal’s lips against his skin...without any effort at all.
Hannibal would kiss him, and Will would feel like he was dying. He would drown in the heat and need of it, immolating from the inside out until, at last, that would be the end of him.
And perhaps...that wasn't so bad? Maybe falling upon the funeral pyre of his own desire would be a better end than the gradual petrification he faced now, the frigid and stoney scales that ensconced his heart spreading with creeping surety until he was entombed in their unforgiving embrace, suffocated not scorched.
Will pressed his palm to his cheek, to his own lips as though he could recreate the smolder of unspoken promise before yanking it away abruptly, a derisive snort leaving him.
No.
He wasn't about to playact kissing a man against his own hand in a lifeboat while his dog snored at his side. He wasn't an overwrought boy anymore.
And that was the crux of it, wasn't it? Will wasn't a youth, still in the throws of his teenhood,no longer a stupid, dreamy-eyed little thing hoping for a better future than what his life was destined to be - if he ever had been it had died in the smog of the Liverpool docks. Nor was he a waifish little thing in a Paris brothel. He was a grown man - he had a wife, responsibilities with higher stakes. Any year now silver would start its insidious path over his temples and he would look more and more like his father.
Any year now, he might die.
And he'd die without ever knowing, without ever experiencing this illicit fantasy that Hannibal offered him. Because that was all it was: A fantasy. And Will had no time for those, not when he had to claw his way through every day to merely survive.
He didn't deserve fantasies.
He didn't deserve Hannibal.
They were nearly at port, now. Only a few days more. Close enough to taste - close enough that passengers and crew alike began to thrum with restless energy.
They’d be docked for two days while they replenished their wares and swapped out crew. Everyone aboard the Campania had one of those days off to do as they pleased. Most would wander the city. Will usually preferred to nap, but if Bev was feeling better, he would have liked to take her window shopping.
He would have time to clear his head, to put all thoughts of Doctor Hannibal Lecter away entirely. He would devote himself to his wife, as any good man would.
He would never hear from the good doctor again - of that, Will was certain. Hannibal knew where to find him at the docks in Liverpool, but he had only been there in the first place to sate a need. A business transaction. Given the crisp, expensive cut of his suit, it was unlikely he spent much time amongst the grease and grime, the fishy smell of the harbor. He was very clearly not from the area. After his stay in New York, however long that would be, he would likely return from whence he came.
And Will would be on the Campania , and then in Liverpool. Then the Campania again, and so on, and so forth, until the day he died.
The thought pained him.
Going about his duties, Will caught a glimpse of Hannibal down the hall and felt a horrible ache in his chest.
He turned tail and ran.
The third time he saw him- different hall, different part of the ship entirely- Medic betrayed him, yipping happily and waddling over to the Doctor. Will watched as Hannibal knelt, holding out his palm to the animal, before stroking obligingly behind Medic’s ears when the dog graciously allowed it.
Will waited with baited breath, waited for Hannibal to look up, to call his name, to walk over, Medic in his arms, rooting Will to the spot, holding his animal hostage…
But Hannibal did no such thing. He looked around until he found Will where he stood and merely raised a hand in greeting, his smile gentle and warm. Will felt his knees grow weak, and raised his own hand in answer, tentative and trembling.
When Medic had taken his due, he trotted back to Will, and Hannibal continued on his way as though nothing had happened.
Perhaps, to him, nothing had. He’d offered and Will had declined, throwing himself out the door before Hannibal could get another word in. Perhaps, to him, this had been an offer extended to many, and Will had simply fancied himself special.
Yes.
That’s what it was. It had to be.
Will took a breath to steady himself, and turned on his heel to continue on his way, walking right into a steward carrying a pail of water.
Soaked, and apologizing as profusely as the poor steward was, Will excused himself to return to his room to change.
“Damn, Graham,” Bev greeted him as he shoved himself through the door. “What, you decided you wanted to give a go at swimming the Atlantic? Again ?”
Will took a breath and glared, but it was half-hearted at best, Bev’s nose wrinkling as she grinned and the small expression softened Will up immediately, shoulders drooping and releasing the tension they’d been holding all day.
“There was a minor collision on the promenade,” Will said instead, starting to work his sopping jacket off his shoulders. Medic took a running leap and landed on Bev’s bed with an audible oof.
“Will, I’ve seen you navigate the goddamn fish market with your nose in a book and come out without mud on your boots,” she reminded him, closing her own book and reaching out to scratch Medic’s belly as he grunted happily, “Saw Hannibal, huh?”
No one should ever marry their best friend, Will decided. Matches should be exclusively between enemies, or, at the most, lukewarm acquaintances, lest you bind yourself forever to someone who knew how to read your mind.
“He’s a passenger,” Will deflected, “I’m bound to see him about. As I see everyone.”
“Which is my job ,” he added, when she looked exceedingly unconvinced.
“And yet, when you see him your heart stutters, doesn’t it?”
Will turned to face her fully, brow furrowed. “You,” he declared, “have been reading far too many novels.”
“Not much else to do when the bossman confines you to bed,” she chirped happily. Will couldn’t bring himself to be mad at her, not when she was up and moving so soon after her monthly pains began.
“Hannibal makes me…feel things,” Will conceded, voice dropping to a whisper. He couldn’t help but look around, as if for someone who might be listening in on them, “That does not mean he is something I have a right to.”
“You know, you never actually told me what you two talked about,” Bev pressed, sitting forward and tilting her head. Will narrowed his eyes at her and pointed an accusing finger.
“Don’t.”
“That bad, huh?”
“I have to go back to work now.”
“You need to put on a dry shirt,” Bev countered with a cheshire grin, “And maybe pants, too, unless you want the passengers to think you’ve wet yourself in terror.”
Will groaned and rubbed his face before ceding with a sigh and shucking his trousers as well, tossing it all in a wet muddle by the sink.
“He… confessed his feelings,” Will admitted quietly.
“That’s a good thing, Will,”
“How is that a good thing?”
“Well, for a start, you know it’s reciprocated,” Bev shrugged.
“He doesn’t know it is,” Will reminded her, “I never told him anything.”
“Will, don’t play dumb. You don’t have to say shit. The way you look at him alone, just-”
“If anyone finds out, Bev-”
“Will, hey,” Bev peeled back the blankets to get up and Will stepped closer instead, pushing her back into bed, “Calm down, it’s okay, I’m just teasing.”
Will knelt by the bed and grasped her hand, “Bev, if anyone knew, I’d be arrested, imprisoned - hell, hanged maybe. And I can’t leave you, I can’t leave… this. Our life. I won’t squander that chasing something I can’t have, okay?”
Bev set her hands on either side of Will’s face and pressed their foreheads together. For a few minutes they just breathed together, before Bev slid her arms around his neck and hugged him close.
“No one else can tell,” she promised him softly, “I only know ‘cause I know you so well I can read you like a book. If it’s something you want, some one--”
“I can’t do that to you.”
“I want you,” Bev interrupted him quietly, pulling back to look at Will properly, “to be happy. If that happiness comes from working the ship, charming the pants off of staff and passengers alike and somehow putting up with my grumpy ass, then good. ‘Cause I ain’t going anywhere. But... ”
Will bit his lip, knowing not to interrupt when Bev was like this.
“But,” she repeated, “If that happiness comes from spending time with a man who is besotted with you, who makes you feel things,”
“Then?” Will whispered, eyes flicking between Bev’s own.
“Then good,” she smiled, “cause I ain’t going anywhere.”
The night Will Graham left him, fleeing his room into the night, Hannibal dreamt of him.
He dreamt of shaking hands, sweaty palms, that reluctant nervousness that colored the very air around Will. It was charming on him. Everything seemed to be charming on Will.
Hannibal dreamt of taking Will to bed, unveiling him piece by piece. Will would be tanned from boat work, taking off his shirt in the hot sun. His hands would be calloused when Hannibal pressed lips to each fingertip.
He would be quiet, stifling noises in his hands, though Hannibal would do his best to coax him into loudness. Not here, where they could be overheard, but at home, in the safety and privacy of Hannibal’s upstairs bedroom.
He would be so like the dear, lithe little things Hannibal had lived his first times with, and yet entirely unlike them. Will wanted to be cared for and coddled, but he was neither delicate nor dainty. His beauty was rugged, a neatly trimmed beard, scars on his skin from years of hard work...
Hannibal awoke hot and hungry. Hopeful .
He did not see Will in the dining hall taking breakfast, nor in the first class promenades when Hannibal took his coffee there to watch the water. He told himself not to seek Will out, to grant him space and time to come back on his own.
He was certain that Will would.
He had looked at Hannibal with such yearning, such hunger, that it had been nigh impossible for Hannibal to resist pulling him into an embrace and holding him tight. But Will was a flighty creature, easily frightened off, and untrusting. Hannibal had never lived the life Will had, he couldn’t imagine the difficulties, the constant stress of a subsistence existence.
So he would give him time.
He would wait, as he had so promised to do.
Hannibal had been pleasantly surprised when Medic had trotted over to him, and had given the little dog the attention he deserved. When he found Will, standing tense and nervous several paces away, he’d smiled, and Will had smiled back, and that hope that had coiled warm in the pit of Hannibal’s belly stretched and settled higher up, heating his heart as well.
The rest of the day Hannibal spent sketching; sitting on the main deck and watching people pass by and interact with each other. He sketched the rigging, he sketched the shadows of the elderly couple leaning over the railing to see the water below, he sketched children playing. He flipped to an empty page of his notebook and started drafting a letter to Bedelia, telling her about Will, about his own aching need to care for him. He could almost hear her voice in his head, chiding him gently, reminding him that not everyone wanted to be coddled.
By the time dinner was served, Hannibal had penned pages and pages to her, answering her unasked questions, faithfully writing his side of their unspoken conversation.
That night, he went to bed with a smile on his face and once more dreamed of him .
The Campania was due to dock late afternoon and the energy on board was palpable from the very early morning.
Hannibal enjoyed a light breakfast, packed his bags, made ready to disembark, then took another stroll around the ship...one last time for this trip.
He walked the passageways that Will had shown him that second day, from the third class levels all the way up to first, where Hannibal felt he knew every whirl and knot in the wooden planks beneath his feet with how often he’d paced them. He crouched at the spot where Medic had injured himself, the wood still dark with the blood that had managed to soak into it, and drew his fingertips over the mark.
Hannibal knew that regardless of Will’s answer, he could take the Campania on his voyage home when it came time to leave America. She was a sturdy ship, reliable and true, and Will loved her.
Will’s love was a beautiful, hale thing. Hannibal could see the weight of it, the spiderwebs of support sprawling out over the deck, over Beverly Graham. Will’s love held his world together like steady hemp rope, strong and unwavering. He may not have been very certain of himself and his own desires, but Will was entirely steadfast in his affection.
It was part of his appeal, that unique charm that belonged only to Will...and Hannibal had always been a covetous man. He coveted the thickly woven strands of Will’s affection. He wanted to bear the weight of Will’s attentions, and in turn, he wanted to be the rock that held Will steady, bolstering him up, soothing the wavering worry that so plagued him.
The journey home would be difficult should Will choose not to come to Hannibal, but it would be a safe and trustworthy one. Hannibal would take no other vessel, no matter how long he had to wait for the Campania to make port again.
On his way back to his rooms to take final stock of his packing, Hannibal ran into Beverly Graham. She wore oil smudged overalls, one of her suspenders coming undone. She did not seem to have noticed it yet, but a passenger walking by gave her a pinched look of displeasure.
In response, Beverly nodded her head demurely, and then stuck her tongue out once the woman had rounded the corner.
“Don’t tell Will,” she whispered conspiratorially, “He thinks I need to maintain ‘proper decorum’ at all times on the ship.”
“Your secret is safe with me,” Hannibal assured her, “Will likes to make sure everything on the ship runs smoothly. It’s an admirable quality, moreso given his position.”
“Will is a worrywart,” Beverly corrected. She grinned, the corners of her eyes crinkling. She would have laugh lines when she was older, was likely developing them now. Hannibal thought they would make her all the more beautiful. Grease could not dim her charms, and age was unlikely to do so either. Hannibal understood how Will could love her, even if his feelings for her had never blossomed beyond that.
“He is, isn’t he?” Hannibal said. “Is there anything we can do to ease his troubles?”
She knew what he was talking about, Hannibal could see it in her eyes. Her smile waned, though not entirely, as concern tugged at the corners.
“Will is what he is,” she finally said, “And always will be. The best we can do is wait to see him through it.”
She clasped him on the shoulder briefly with her clean hand and was gone, leaving Hannibal to ruminate on the thought.
Guilt stabbed him in an unwelcome prickle as he realized he hadn’t asked her how she had been feeling. Better, clearly, since she was on her feet, yet as a doctor it should have been his first point of call. But it had reminded him of something.
People were already abuzz with excitement as the ship approached land. Hannibal had seen it often enough that he didn’t stop to look, but the energy seeped into his pores, coaxed his heart into a quickened tempo.
In his room, Hannibal pulled a fresh sheet of paper from his suitcase and wrote out a prescription for cocaine for Mrs. Beverly Graham. On another page, he penned a letter to a colleague of his acquaintance who held a practice in Liverpool, explaining the situation and expressing his desire to cover the expense for any and all pain management prescriptions the Grahams would need. He folded the latter into a separate envelope and addressed it, then retrieved a vial partially filled and a syringe from his medical bag. He sterilized both for good measure before wrapping them in a swath of linen: a dose or two for them to have should the need arise on their journey home.
He would hand off the parcel to one of the staff, with instructions to deliver it to Will as he disembarked.
He wanted to keep every promise he had made to Will Graham, if only to be remembered as a man who did.
The ship’s horn sounded and Hannibal looked up, through the window of his room.
They were coming into port, the land beyond the windowpane moving faster now, even as the ship slowed upon its entry to the harbor. Hannibal swallowed. This didn’t feel like an ending, but it felt…melancholy. Perhaps he could have asked differently, offered less, so Will might not have been so frightened. Perhaps he should have done just the opposite and shown Will just how much he ached to give him comfort. Perhaps -
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
A knock came at his door, and Hannibal cleared his throat, taking up the parcel in his hands as he moved to open it. He could ask the steward or maid to take it up, buy himself more moments aboard the ship, as though those moments would gain him anything at all.
Beyond the door stood Will Graham. Flushed from exertion, eyes bright and hand still raised as though to knock again. Hannibal blinked, taken by surprise, speechless for a moment.
Outside the window the horn blew again.
“I have a million places to be,” Will said, his words coming quickly, tone kept low, “people to see to, things to organize for the disembarking process -”
“I’m certain you’ll have your hands full,” Hannibal replied, unsure, yet, where the conversation would lead him. He hadn’t detained Will as he was passing, Will had come to him--
And he came closer now; near enough that anyone glancing down the corridor would be able to see his silhouette, anyone leaving their own rooms would not encounter him in their way.
“Yeah, for…for hours,” Will admitted, chewing his lip, “For the rest of the day, into the night, through all the people and paperwork and headaches... but I couldn’t - I couldn’t just let you--”
A moment, a breath, a heartbeat...and then Will’s hands grasped Hannibal’s lapels to pull him close. They pressed together, touching at each point - lips finding lips, heart beating against heart, hips against hips...and time stood still.
Another burst of the horn broke them apart, and Will’s breath came out in a shaky little laugh that tickled Hannibal’s lips.
“I couldn’t let you go without knowing what that felt like,” he whispered, “At least once , at least--”
With that, Hannibal cupped Will’s cheek and kissed him again.