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Will parked his wheelchair next to the car and lifted the last box into the back seat. He looked up the driveway of the rental house. Hannibal stood next to some conical topiary talking to the rental agent. They shook hands and parted. The agent went back into the house. Hannibal came to stand beside Will.
“You’re sure we got everything?” Will asked.
“I am certain, yes. There wasn’t that much left.”
Four boxes sat in the back seat, full of odds and ends: candles, napkins Hannibal had bought before Will arrived, a few pairs of shoes, a stray tie, a number of books, both Will’s and Hannibal’s. They were out of the rented house entirely. Hannibal had given back the keys and signed the last of the paperwork today.
“Let’s go home,” Will said.
On the drive back, rain hit the windshield in soft, fat drops. Hannibal put on an opera CD and leaned back in his seat, looking supremely content with himself and his world. “It’s a good night for a housewarming.”
“We’ve been living in that house for two months.”
“Even so. Will you help me in the kitchen?”
Rain fell through the beams of the headlights in bright streaks. Will smoothed his palms down his thighs. “You’re cooking those snails, aren’t you? What do you do, boil them alive?”
“Yes. And the shells will need to be cleaned afterward.”
“I’ll clean the shells,” Will said.
“Do you rank snails above fish or any of the other animals we consume?”
“We’ve been feeding them for weeks. I’m not used to livestock.”
“They’d make rather odd pets.”
For a second, Will pictured the dogs with shells on their backs, oozing down the back hill to retrieve a thrown stick. He shook his head. “Anyway, I’ll eat them, but you can kill them. Are we having brain-shaped panna cotta for dessert?”
Hannibal looked at the road ahead blankly for a second, and then his face cleared. “Halloween. I had forgotten.”
“I get the feeling it’s not a big thing here.”
“It’s more popular than it was when I was a child, but nothing approaching the levels it’s taken to in America.”
“Did you ever go trick-or-treating?” Will asked.
“No. Even if it had been common then, I was too old by the time I came to Paris.”
“Oh yeah, thirteen. Ancient.”
Hannibal gave him an amused look as he turned off the road and onto their winding gravel driveway. “And you?”
“Sure. Not every year, but often enough. What kid doesn’t want free candy?”
“What costumes did you wear?”
Will cast back into the murky waters of childhood. “I remember making a robot suit out of cardboard boxes and tinfoil. I know I was a vampire once. All black clothes and a trash bag cape.” It had been his favorite holiday. No one he’d known back then bought their costumes. Most of them were just like his: cobbled together and kind of a mess. Will had felt cobbled together and kind of a mess most days of the year. On Halloween, it had been less noticeable.
“Did you carve pumpkins to scare away the ghouls and the ghosts?” Hannibal asked.
“Is that what they’re supposed to be for?”
“It is the explanation I’ve most commonly heard. In fact, the practice has its root in a legend about a man refused entry to either Heaven or Hell. He wandered the earth with a lantern made from a carved turnip.”
“Turned down by God and the Devil. Think that’s how you’ll end up? Should we stock up on turnips?”
Hannibal parked in front of the door under the old oak tree. “Only if you will wander with me.”
“Don’t know what else I’d be doing. No, we never carved pumpkins. Waste of money.” The last sentence came out so precisely in his father’s voice that Will felt as he had conjured the old man’s ghost.
“I bought several for soup. Shall I sacrifice one on the altar of art?”
“No, just cook it. Or carve it yourself if you want. I scooped out the insides at a friend’s house once. That was enough for me. Took forever, and that stuff sticks to you worse than fish guts.”
“It’s just as well. They’re really too small for carving.” Hannibal came around to the passenger’s side and opened Will’s door, but didn’t get the wheelchair out of the back. “May I? It won’t be much longer before you can walk on your own.”
“So you’re making hay while the sun shines?”
Hannibal looked briefly at the sky. “I’m getting rather damp actually.”
Will rolled his eyes, hesitated, and then nodded once. He reached up for Hannibal. “Okay. It’s your back.”
Hannibal picked him up the way he always did, with no apparent effort. Will thought he could just about manage the reverse, maybe, but there would be some grunting and swearing involved. Hannibal just straightened up smoothly and walked toward the house at an unhurried pace through the light evening rain.
Will put both arms around his neck and tried to be lighter. “Why do you like it?”
“It is a confluence of delights,” Hannibal said. “Physical contact that you cannot retreat from. The way you cling to me. You trust me, at least, not to let you fall. It is a particular form of care, one with an element of coercion. I’ve given it some thought since you made it clear that you dislike it.” Hannibal paused, shifting Will in his arms to unlock the door.
Will put his head on Hannibal’s shoulder and looked up at the dark sky. “I don’t hate it. I just hate needing it. Needing you. Or anyone.”
Hannibal shouldered the door open. Wig danced around his feet. Winston whuffed in greeting and wagged his tail. “Accepting help is an admission of vulnerability. Many people fear admitting weakness.” He set Will down on the kitchen counter and stood between his legs, hands on his thighs. The lights were still off, and most of his face was in shadow.
“I hate it less with you,” Will said. He looked down, aware of Hannibal’s gaze even if he couldn’t see his eyes beyond a spark of reflected light.
“Even though admitting weakness to me is arguably more dangerous than it might be with someone else?”
“Is it?” Will said. “Sometimes I don’t think so anymore.”
“You once promised to avoid harboring any illusions about me.”
Will leaned toward him and put his arms around his neck again. He slid to the edge of the counter and nearly off it before Hannibal caught him close and lifted him up, as Will had known he would.
“You catch me every time,” Will said.
“Does that mean I always will?”
“I don’t know. Maybe if you don’t, I’d rather just fall.”
Hannibal pressed his face to Will’s hair and breathed in, nuzzling down behind his ear. He crushed Will against him tightly enough to cut off his breath, just for a second, and then set him back on the counter. “I’m going to get the boxes from the car. Wait for me.”
“Where would I go?”
Hannibal watched him a moment longer, expressionless. He turned and strode off, Wig on his heels.
Will leaned back on his hands. No wheelchair, no way to slide down off the counter without hurting himself. Normally, it would make him nuts to be left like this. Right now, it didn’t bother him. He opted not to think about why.
The front door opened and closed. He heard footsteps, the dogs, and the sound of boxes being set down in the hall. The lock on the front door clicked. Hannibal came in sight. He was pushing the wheelchair, but he left it parked against the wall.
He slid his hands up Will’s thighs again and didn’t meet his eyes. “Perhaps you will stay here while you help me with dinner.”
Here, stranded and at his mercy. Will put a hand over his. “Sure.”
*
Hannibal brought in the snails in a small tin bucket. They rattled disconcertingly against the sides of it. Will imagined a bucket full of bones, finger bones maybe. Fingers and toes. There were a lot of small bones in the foot, as Will knew from having just about every one of them broken.
Hannibal set the bucket down on the counter and paused, studying his face. “Shall I put them back outside?”
Will swallowed. “It’s not the snails.”
Hannibal nodded. He upended the bucket into the pot of boiling water. Will watched the snails tumble and clatter and splash to their deaths. “You killed more people than you displayed,” he said.
“Yes.”
“You killed to eat.”
“Yes,” Hannibal said.
“So what did you do with the parts you didn’t eat?”
Hannibal gave the snails a stir. “What are you imagining I did with them?”
“Buckets of bones,” Will said. “Lined up in the basement, clattering in the dark. Thousands of teeth.” He hunched his shoulders. “I’m pretty sure I’d prefer reality to my imagination in this case.”
“It’s far more prosaic.” Hannibal poured the snails into a strainer in the sink. The clack of the shells sounded exactly like teeth. “I took what I wanted, cut up the rest, put it in garbage bags, and disposed of it.”
Will stopped staring at the snails and looked at Hannibal instead. “You don’t mean you put them out with your trash, right?”
Hannibal seemed to find that amusing. “No, although I was sometimes tempted. I left them in dumpsters far from home, or weighed them down and threw them in a river, or buried them. Sometimes the remains were discovered, but they were never connected with the Chesapeake Ripper or with each other.”
“You used different tools to cut them up.”
“Of course,” Hannibal said. He put the drained snails in a bowl and set them next to Will. “Can you extract them for me? I’d like to start roasting the pumpkins for the soup.”
Around the fifth snail, Will finally shook the impression that the shell openings were mouths, that the snails were tongues, and that any second he would get his finger bitten off. “How many?” he asked.
“Not more than two a year. I tried to be cautious. I enjoyed my life in Baltimore.”
Two a year. Even assuming he hadn’t had time while he was in medical school and during his residency, that had to be something like forty people. Just for food. Forty lives. Will pulled on a stubborn snail until it popped free. He dropped the body in one bowl and let the shell fall into the other. He could feel Hannibal watching him.
“This is not the ideal moment for second thoughts,” Hannibal said. He set a gleaming cleaver against a small reddish pumpkin, lifted it up, and swung. The pumpkin fell into two halves.
“I’m not having second thoughts. I’m wondering why I feel worse about the snails than about twenty years of your midnight snacks.”
“You answered your own question already, I think. You’ve been helping me care for them. You have a protective nature. When you care for something, you’re not inclined to let anyone hurt it.”
“Are we talking about the snails or you now?”
“I was actually thinking of Ms. Lounds. You have gone from intense dislike to tolerance to some fondness.”
Will made a rude noise.
Hannibal’s eyes creased minutely at the corners. “Perhaps that’s putting it too strongly. Let’s say some amount of favorable feeling, which began, I believe, when you would not let me kill her.”
“You say that like I could’ve stopped you if you’d decided to go for it.”
Hannibal slid the pumpkin into the oven and came to stand by Will, one hand on his knee. “I wanted it to be your decision. You made your choice by a narrow margin, but, when I threatened her outside Drake’s house, the thought of her coming to harm was upsetting to you. Your protection, once offered, is not easily withdrawn.” He picked up a snail shell and examined it. “Even from dinner.”
“I wish I could tell Lounds you compared her to snails.”
“Snips and snails and puppy dog tails. Isn’t that how the rhyme goes?”
“That’s for boys,” Will said. “And I’m not buying that you didn’t know that. You lived in the US nearly as long as I’ve been alive.”
“Perhaps.”
Will eyed him. “And don’t call me sugar and spice.”
Hannibal leaned in, sliding his palm up the inside of Will’s thigh. “I think it’s the perfect description for you. For your taste and for your temperament.”
“I would’ve gone with bitter and overcooked.”
“Burnt perhaps, or at least singed.” He kissed Will’s neck and the hollow of his throat. “Bitter once upon a time, but not anymore.”
Will slid his arms around Hannibal’s shoulders. Across the kitchen, the china dogs from his old house in Wolf Trap marched along the windowsill above the sink. Hannibal hadn’t said a word about them. He cleaned them when he cleaned the windowsill and he placed them back in their spots with care and precision.
“Maybe,” Will said. “There are reasons for that.”
“Almost any flavor can be ameliorated with the correct additions to the dish.”
“Is that what you’re doing? Fixing me up so I’m fit to serve?”
“Isn’t that what we’re both doing?” Hannibal said. “We are in the process of becoming more palatable to one another.”
“And to ourselves?”
Hannibal made a thoughtful noise against his neck. “Is there a difference?”
Will pulled him closer, thighs pressed into his hips and chin on his shoulder. “Maybe not.”
*
Dinner was snails with garlic-herb butter, served in their shells; roasted pumpkin soup served in small pumpkins; and a chicken roasted inside a sourdough bread crust. It was golden-brown, and the smell when Hannibal cut it open made Will’s mouth water, but he still regarded it with suspicion.
“This isn’t some turducken thing, is it?” He gestured around at the pumpkins and snails served in their own mortal remains. “I mean, given the theme.”
“Not this time,” Hannibal said. “I was considering the rôti sans pareil for Christmas.”
Will paused with his spoon in the air. “Roast without equal. Is that French for turducken? Or something worse?”
“Seventeen birds with layers of forcemeat and chestnuts between them,” Hannibal said.
“You don’t think that’s overkill for two people?”
“We might increase our social circle by Christmas.”
"Are we going to increase it by seventeen hundred percent? Because I think that's how many people we'd need to eat that thing."
"I always meant to try it."
“I guess we could freeze some of it,” Will said. “Or feed it to the snails.”
Hannibal looked intrigued.
“That was a joke,” Will added.
“They will eat flesh, although I have never tried feeding them on cooked meat.”
“I think your frankenbird is going to be horrifying enough without being covered in snails.”
“Two of the birds would be difficult to acquire anyway. The bustard is endangered, and it is illegal to kill or capture the ortolan bunting.”
“What’s an ortolan bunting?”
“A small songbird, traditionally prepared by being gorged, drowned in armagnac, plucked, roasted, and eaten whole. A delicacy. I would like to make it for you someday. It is a unique experience.”
“If you get arrested for buying contraband birds, I’m leaving you to rot in prison. Don’t you dare.”
Hannibal gave him an oddly warm look. “Perhaps another time. There is some discussion of lifting the ban. I can wait.”
Will ate his soup and remembered their conversation of a few weeks ago. They had time. Half their lives. It left him smiling a little stupidly at the chrysanthemums in the centerpiece.
Hannibal gave him a questioning look.
“Forty years,” Will said. “That’s a lot of time to kill. Got any plans?”
“I plan to carry you to the couch after dinner and kiss you until you make me stop.”
Will’s wheelchair was still parked against the wall. He hadn’t sat in it since they got back to the house. Hannibal had carried him from the kitchen to the couch and from the couch to the table. It was the first time Will had sat in the dining room chairs since he got back from DC, and it was a strange feeling. His casts moved smoothly over the wood floor, and he was half convinced he could stand up and walk on them.
“Not exactly a life plan,” he said. “Making out on the couch.”
“You fear I will grow bored.”
“I know you’ll grow bored,” Will said. “I fear what’ll happen when you do. You talked about learning a second instrument.”
“I feel as if I am,” Hannibal said. “This summer was full of hard lessons for both of us.”
“You can’t—“ Will stopped and took a deliberate bite of bread. He chewed and swallowed. “You’re going to get bored with that sooner or later too. It won’t be this hard forever.”
“I think you underestimate yourself, Will.” Hannibal was looking at him sideways, expression almost innocent.
Will fought down a smile. “I’m serious, asshole.”
“And what about you? Mine is not the only perilously fertile mind at this table.”
“I’ve got the consulting work. Fishing. Your bookcases to build.”
Hannibal made a considering noise. “The days pass quickly enough, filled with such minutiae.”
Will shrugged. “That’s life. For most people.”
“I had never thought it could be anything but the worst sort of torture for me. But, at the moment, I find I am content.”
“Me too,” Will said quietly. “More than content.”
Hannibal touched the back of his hand with his fingertips, and they went back to their dinner.
*
Later, on the couch, with Hannibal stretched out on top of him and kissing his neck with almost overwhelming attention to detail, Will saw the rest of the chrysanthemums. Two entire buckets of purple and white and yellow flowers sat next to the door out to the patio.
“Hannibal.” He got no answer and tugged Hannibal’s hair lightly. “Hey. What’s with the flowers?”
Hannibal raised his head and blinked at him for a second before he answered. “For the dead. For Toussaint, All Saints' Day. It’s the tradition.”
“You do have a lot of dead people you should probably buy flowers for,” Will said warily. “Doesn’t seem like your style though.”
“It’s not. They were selling them at the market. I thought briefly of taking some to my aunt’s grave.”
“Oh,” Will said. He couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“She is buried in Paris. My uncle as well.”
“We could go. It’s not that far.”
Hannibal shook his head. “It was only an impulse. A foolish one. If I had been serious, it would have been more practical to buy them in the city once we arrived.”
“Will you take me to see her some other time?”
“If you wish, yes. Of course. I would like to take you to Paris for Christmas. A celebration once you can walk again.”
“Not for Christmas day,” Will said. “We’re spending that at home. But before that would be fine.”
“Very well. Christmas at home.” Hannibal bent his head so that their noses touched. He took Will’s lower lip gently between his teeth and let it slip free again, tongue dipping into his mouth.
“What are you going to do with the flowers?” Will asked, words half lost to the kiss.
Hannibal didn’t answer, and Will gave up expecting anything but more kisses pressed in a line down over his chin and throat, but Hannibal paused. He thumbed the first button of Will’s shirt open and laid his cheek there against Will’s chest. “Mischa used to make waterlilies from flowers and leaves she found around the garden. Roses floating on maple leaves. Buttercups and ivy. Forget-me-nots and silver birch.”
“Plenty of leaves outside,” Will said. He rested a hand on the back of Hannibal’s neck and rubbed lightly over the soft skin there. “How did your aunt die?”
“She drowned,” Hannibal said.
An odd prickle climbed Will’s spine. Despite the warmth of the fire, good food inside him, and Hannibal’s solid weight, he grew cold. The world shifted in greens and blues around him. For a second, he was looking up at a wavering surface, unsteady with the rippling leaves of waterlilies. His grip on Hannibal’s neck tightened. “How did she drown?”
Hannibal sat up. “That is a story for another time, I think. Will you come down to the water with me?”
Will nodded. He couldn’t imagine refusing.
*
Hannibal carried him down to the pond and set him on a blanket beside a candle in a glass lantern. A damp wind bit at his exposed skin. He watched Hannibal walk up the hill toward the house, a dark shape against the lit windows. He tried to recall the safety he’d known in Wolf Trap, looking at his house across the fields. He felt safer inside the house now, safer with Hannibal, despite everything.
Hannibal returned with the buckets of chrysanthemums. He sat them and himself down beside Will. “There was a stream on the edge of the estate. Mischa would set her lilies on it and watch them float out of sight.”
“Is that what we’re doing tonight? Sending the dead on their way?”
“They won’t leave us,” Hannibal said. “The water is still. We are simply filling our pond with ghosts.”
They did it anyway: white chrysanthemums on red oak leaves, purple on green chard, yellow ones like dots of light on dark green blackberry leaves. They set a dozen or so adrift. Hannibal took the rest of them and plunged them into the water so that their stems lodged in the mud and their heads were just above the surface.
“I have never felt the need to mourn,” Hannibal said. “But my memories have grown persistent of late. They pick at me like the unraveling of a tapestry, thread by hanging thread.”
“Memory gets the better of everyone sometimes.”
“Not of me. I have worked hard to tame it. Successfully, until now.” Hannibal nudged the floating mass of flowers with his foot.
“You’re still human. Sorry.”
“You’re not sorry. You take great joy from any weakness I display.”
Will leaned into his side and turned his head to kiss him. Hannibal lingered with their lips pressed together, despite the irritation in his voice.
“It’s not weakness,” Will said. “And if I’m happy about it, it’s because the cracks in your walls are my only way in.”
“And when my house comes crashing down around us?”
“We’ll fix it, just like we did with this one.”
Hannibal glanced back at the house and then he bent his head to lean against Will’s shoulder.