Work Text:
"We passed an orchard," said Hannibal. "The other day, as we were driving. I noticed the sign."
On the way back from Reston, he meant. Will glanced up from peeling carrots for the mirepoix. They were making stock: one ought to keep some always on hand, Hannibal said. The last remaining can of Campbell's broth in Will's cupboard had quietly vanished.
"Bauman's, yeah," said Will.
"Have you been?"
"Couple of times." Will thought back. "It's a nice place. Tends to get overrun on weekends. Families with kids." He stopped short, then looked again at Hannibal, whose eyes were bright with expectation. "Is that my cue? You want to go apple picking?"
"I'd like to experiment with cider this year," said Hannibal. "And to make you a galette. Or a pie, if you'd prefer it."
"I'll eat whatever you feel like making." Will set down the peeler and brushed carrot shavings into the sink. "Does apple pie count as a fruit serving?"
Hannibal put on his most earnest face. "Keeps the doctor away."
Will surveyed him, up and down, making it blatant. He lingered on the tawny sweater, the smooth spread of it over Hannibal's shoulders and chest. Cashmere, probably. It required an effort on Will's part not to plant his face in it at any given moment, or to brush the backs of his fingers over the soft wool.
"Why would I want to do that," he said.
*
Will remembered the route: west on the highway, then north on an ambling country road. He lowered the back window of the Volvo an inch or two to let Winston put his nose to the wind. They passed the horse farm with its neat fences and green paddocks, where a pair of chestnut Belgians stood, muscular and bronzed. The turning maples on the hillsides flared like bonfires against the sky.
The orchard lay in a sloping valley, parted by a stream. The rows of apple trees stretched down the slope toward the pumpkin field, an expanse of vines that grew wildish at its fringe. A wooden bridge spanned the creek. A thin haze of gold seemed to overlay the landscape, pale with autumn sun.
Will followed the gravel drive to the main building and the cider house behind it. The parking lot was nearly empty. Winston waited outside while they chose their buckets--no plastic for Hannibal, only slatted wood--then broke into a lope as they started for the trees.
To Will's mind, apples were apples, but Hannibal had set his sights on Winesaps for cider, and some more arcane heirloom for galettes. They had to cross the creek to reach the Winesaps. Halfway across the wooden bridge Will paused to look down at the water. The current moved idly, at its own pace, carrying a spangle of floating leaves.
The apple trees were short enough to do without ladders, or even step stools. Winston trotted from one to the next, sniffing fallen fruit on the ground. The scent of rotting apples mingled with the crisper smell of leaves and grass, not foul in the open air, but sweet. Will had filled his peck with Winesaps, and was withdrawing from a clasp of boughs when Hannibal spoke from behind.
"Will. Over here."
Will turned in inquiry. Hannibal had set down his bucket. He was standing, faintly smiling, with his phone raised, aiming directly at Will.
Caught flat-footed, Will blinked over the mound of fruit in his arms. Then he leveled a stare.
"The light's good," said Hannibal, unabashed. "I don't have any photos of you." His fingers moved nimbly on the touchscreen. "I'd prefer to sketch, but my sister's requests grow increasingly strident."
Whatever Will had been about to say about consenting to be photographed deserted him. He hugged the bucket of apples to his chest. "You told your sister about me?"
"About us, yes," said Hannibal. As if it were the simplest, the most natural thing to say. He lowered his phone. "Should I not have?"
Will's fingers curled around the bucket's wooden brim. He scarcely felt the weight of it in his arms. It took him a minute to shake his head. "I didn't mean that."
He glanced around, but Hannibal and Winston were the only other souls in sight; there was no one else to ask to take a picture. A picture of them both. He'd never gotten the hang of selfies. When he turned back, Hannibal had disappeared behind a tree.
A moment later Hannibal reemerged, a single apple in his hand. It was a storybook apple, plump and unblemished, stark red. Hannibal drew a square of silk from his pocket and buffed the apple's skin until it gleamed.
"In Cornish tradition, young people would place an apple under their pillows at Allantide, in hopes that they would dream of who they were to marry."
"Allantide?"
"Also known as All Hallows' Eve." Hannibal gave the apple a final polish, then placed it in Will's basket, gently, at the top of the heap.
Will's eyes fixed on the apple. He found it difficult to look away. "Sounds like it'd make for lumpy pillows," he said. That sounded fatuous, even to him. But it was either lumpy pillows, or I dream of you already, and that was too barefaced a truth to say.
*
By the time they left the orchard, they had apples for any number of pies. The back of the station wagon was packed with them. The trouble was, Will didn't own a rolling pin. He said as much as they turned onto the highway for home.
For once Hannibal didn't cop to having one stashed in the Bentley. "Perhaps a flaugnarde, then."
Will wasn't sure what a flaugnarde was, other than probably delicious. He frowned at the car ahead of him and changed lanes. "Might be easier if--"
"If?"
"I'm pretty sure your kitchen's better equipped for baking than mine."
He felt Hannibal's eyes on him, felt when their attention shifted to the road ahead. "Is it time for a respite from my invasion?"
"You're not invasive," said Will. "We just haven't been to your place in a while."
They'd been spending more and more time in Wolf Trap, less in Baltimore. It was the dogs, in part, but not only the dogs. Will didn't mind. If anything, he felt dazed by how little he minded. But Hannibal had slept in his bed, and there were rooms in Hannibal's house he hadn't even seen.
"You've got that big shiny kitchen," he said, "and now you want to try to bake in mine without a rolling pin?"
"I like your home," said Hannibal, with a matter-of-factness that might've been disarming, had Will been armed. "I like seeing you in it. It puts you at ease and puts me at ease, as well." He turned to the window, watching the fields roll by. "My childhood was spent on a country estate, surrounded by forest. Perhaps I've missed the bucolic."
"Bucolic, huh."
"But as much as I like your home, I'm happy to lure you to mine." Hannibal turned back to Will. "Come this weekend. I'll have the cider press set up in the basement. I'll put you to work."
"Can't wait," drawled Will. But he meant it.
"As it happens, I must leave you to your solitude this evening in any case, as I'm promised to attend a dinner in Baltimore. Some former colleagues from my hospital days. A reunion of sorts."
"Are you cooking for them?"
"No, we're to meet at a restaurant. In an hotel." Hannibal's face suggested he was carefully not making a face.
"A Holiday Inn full of surgeons?" When Hannibal showed no recognition of Jimmy Buffet, Will said, "Why'd you give up being a surgeon, anyway? You've never said."
"A confluence of reasons," said Hannibal. "I'd always had an interest in psychology. Working in critical care, I witnessed over and over the aftermath of trauma. As a surgeon I could stitch up bodies, close wounds. Even so, I began to feel I was sending patients away still bleeding."
"From the wounds in their minds."
"Yes. I don't like leaving work undone. If I could practice both concurrently, I might, but it's not practical."
Will could see it: Hannibal offering the full-course menu of patient care, from the OR to the therapist's couch. "Do your old surgeon buddies give you shit about jumping ship?"
"At every opportunity."
"Assholes."
"Surgeons often are," said Hannibal, serenely, and Will huffed a laugh.
"Funny, so are psychiatrists. How'd you escape the curse?"
"Have I escaped it?" Hannibal smiled. "I hope I have. Discourtesy was always frowned on in my family."
*
They loaded the cider apples into the Bentley, and were hauling Will's share to the house when Hannibal's phone buzzed. He halted and drew it out of his pocket. The corners of his eyes crinkled.
"Will you pardon me if I take this?" he asked.
"Go ahead."
Will carried the apples inside. As the front door swung shut behind him he heard Hannibal answering the phone in French.
The dogs danced, toenails skittering, as Will and Winston entered the house. They trailed after him to the kitchen, where he set the bag of apples on a chair. He washed his hands, then clucked at the dogs to shepherd them outside.
Hannibal was seated on the porch chair, still on the phone. "Dans un verger. Il a été indulgent envers moi et j'ai beaucoup apprécié." There was a short pause. "One moment." Then he turned, eyes warm on Will. He muted the phone. "My sister would like to speak with you, if you're available."
Will opened his mouth, then shut it. The few feet of space between him and Hannibal gaped. The floorboards of the porch seemed to teeter and swoon. Hannibal extended his hand, offering the phone.
Will closed the distance and took it. His mouth went dry as he raised the phone to his ear. "Hello?"
"Hello, boy with a basket of fruit."
It might have been a title; she pronounced it as such. Like Still Life with Apples. Her accent was softer than Hannibal's, more musically French, but the cadence of her speech was familiar. As was the mischief in it.
"I, ah, I go by Will, usually," he said. "But you can call me whatever you want."
"Pleased to meet you, Will. Well, not exactly 'meet.' I just wanted to say hello, and thank you for looking after my brother."
Hannibal was observing him--observing the conversation--with obvious delight. Will gave him a look and shuffled to the far end of the porch. "I don't know what he's told you, but it's the other way around, mostly."
"Is it?" Mischa sounded less dubious than amused. "Even if it is, I know what a chore that can be. Thank you for putting up with him. I hope we can meet properly soon. I might be in the States in a month or two. Christmas, at the latest."
"I hope so, too," said Will.
He returned the phone to Hannibal, feeling as his students probably did when they handed in one of his exams. Not convinced they'd passed, necessarily, but relieved at having survived the test. He stepped down from the porch to mind the dogs in the yard, leaving Hannibal to his conversation. When he came back, Hannibal had stowed his phone and was sitting in the chair with fingers laced, looking perfectly content.
"She's good?" Will asked.
"She's very well. She's en route to Prague for a gallery opening."
The dogs surrounded the door, tails wagging. Will opened it to let them into the house. "There's something so foreign about family," he said. "Human family, anyway. How old is she again?"
"She turned thirty-eight this year."
Frowning, Will tried to revise his constructed image. "When you said younger sister, I guess I pictured--"
"Younger than you?"
"Yeah." Will let the door fall shut. He laid a hand on the doorjamb. "She called me 'boy with a basket of fruit.'"
Hannibal clamped his lips together. "Are you familiar with the painting?"
"Should I be?"
Bowing his head, Hannibal smiled downward, as if no longer able to contain it. "I'll leave you to investigate yourself."
*
It became clear, as Hannibal made ready to leave, that he was willing to ditch the assholes' reunion dinner. It was clear in the way he corralled Will, gently and without demand, against one of the square porch pillars, ostensibly to kiss him goodbye. The kiss lengthened, became plural. The goodbye was slow to arrive.
"I could call them," he murmured. His lips grazed the curl of Will's ear. His chest lay against Will's, not pressing, only present and solid and very warm. "Send my regrets."
Will supposed the slide of his own hands up Hannibal's back, over the cashmere, was doing nothing to dissuade. He made himself stop kneading. "No, go. Go to your dinner." Turning his head, he nudged Hannibal's cheek with his nose. "I'll see you Saturday."
Hannibal made a neutral sound. He sought and kissed Will's mouth again. He bent to Will's neck, nosing, and drew a long, savoring breath, as if to capture Will's scent, to hold as many molecules of Will in his lungs as he could.
"All right. Until then."
For a minute it seemed he might say more. Then he drew back, and cool air rushed into the space between them. Will straightened and shifted his shoulders against the post.
"I'll miss you," Hannibal said, walking backwards toward the car.
"Yeah, right. Don't trip."
Will stayed there, propped against the pillar, and watched the Bentley's tail lights wink out of sight before he went in.
For dinner there was coq au Riesling, left over from the night before. Hannibal had readied apples in a baking dish with cider and bourbon, and left instructions as to their fate. Will put them in the oven as directed. The smell of their juice and spices filled the kitchen as they baked.
The chicken was from a farm in Virginia. Hannibal knew the farmer, had visited the farm, had likely known the name of the damned bird. To take responsibility for an animal's death, he said, was to take responsibility for its life. Will might've put it the other way around, with dogs in mind: to take responsibility for an animal's life was to do it until death, and if you couldn't, it was on you to find somebody who could.
He hadn't considered the principle much in relation to dinner. Growing up, he'd learned to be grateful for food on the table, and never mind where it was from. Now when he passed the meat aisle in the supermarket, he couldn't help but see past plastic-wrapped packages of ribs and thighs to the feedlot, the battery cage. To those lives, those deaths.
Hannibal was careful what he put into his body: which lives, which deaths. It was a luxury, maybe, but one Will found he couldn't scorn. Even warmed over, the coq au Riesling melted on his tongue.
*
The dogs had settled around the hearth in their places. Will poured himself two fingers of whiskey and took out his phone. Opening a browser, he searched for boy with a basket of fruit, then shook his head at the results.
Hannibal had sent him a copy of the photo from the orchard. Will opened it, briefly, and saw himself as Hannibal had: wreathed in sunlight and apple boughs, a question open on his face. Flushing, he exited and clapped the phone onto the nightstand, face down like a photo after crime scene cleaners had done their work.
He changed into a t-shirt and flannels, then stood sipping his whiskey, considering the bed. Hannibal had yet to remark on the strangeness of a bed in the parlor: he seemed to accept it as he did every other oddity of Will's. But he would like it, Will thought, if the bed were in a bedroom--in one of the upstairs rooms now sitting unused. He'd help move the frame and mattress if Will asked him. Will hadn't, when he'd bought the house, mainly because he couldn't on his own.
If the bed were elsewhere, there'd be space in the front room for a couch. A long one, generous enough to accommodate long legs. Will could see it, could see Hannibal stretched out on it. Could imagine the unending battle to keep the dogs off it. He smiled, a little helplessly, and knocked back the rest of the whiskey in the glass.
He hadn't realized how different the bed would feel until he climbed in. How soon even an unaccustomed body grew used to comfort and shared warmth. He lay in the dark, facing the empty side that had been mere space before.
The apple was in the kitchen--the singular one Hannibal had picked. Will thought of getting up to bring it to bed and stuff it under his pillow, the way the moonstruck maidens of Cornwall had once done. But it wasn't Halloween. It occurred to him at last to switch the pillows, to pull the one Hannibal had slept on under his head. Some trace of scent clung to the pillowcase. Will slid his arm beneath it and closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, there was a tree growing where the apple hadn't been. The bole was old, wizened and reverend, but the foliage was new. The boughs extended over Will, over the entire bed, a canopy of profuse and shining leaves.
Fruits hung from the branches, small and greenish, newly formed. Something sinuous moved among them, stirring the leaves. A loop of coils encircled the bole of the tree.
"It was why I offered," the serpent said. "Not to beguile. To see what beautiful thing might grow." The leaves rustled. "But she didn't want it."
Will sat up slowly. The sound of the leaves was like the sound of a stream. "Didn't she?"
"Perhaps she did. But she chose her husband."
Will turned his face upward, toward the movement in the dark branches, as if turning it to bask in the sun. "I'm not sorry she did," he said, voice catching. "I want it. I want to see."
*
He woke in the dimness before dawn. The dogs snuffled in their beds, some still dreaming, some beginning to rouse. Will lay for a while, curled in the pocket of his own warmth, blinking at the place where the tree had been. Thinking of roots that sank through floorboards, deep into ground.
He got up, pulled on a robe, and went to make coffee. While it brewed he dished a heap of baked apples into a bowl. Mug in one hand, bowl in the other, he shuffled to the front door to let the dogs out.
His coffee steamed in the chill morning air. He sat down on the porch step, huddled into his robe. His phone blinked with a message from Hannibal. The time stamp was from last night, after Will had gone to bed.
Both food and company would've been better, it read, had I stayed with you.
Will ate slowly, sipping coffee between bites. Winston came back from doing his business and flopped by Will's side, not to beg, just to be near. When there was only a spoonful left in the bowl, Will set it on his knees and snapped a picture. He typed a message to Hannibal with the photo attached. Good apples, it said.
Winston looked up at him, tail flapping once against the step. Will scooped up the last bite of baked apple, then set the bowl aside. Before he could think better of it, he lifted the phone again, coaxed Winston to sit up, and hugged him. He flipped the camera, aiming it at them both.
"Say cheese," he muttered.
The result was unimpressive: poorly framed, angle skewed. Will's face in the photo was puffed with sleep, his hair half-mashed with bedhead. He'd nearly cut off Winston's nose. His thumb hovered over the delete button.
Instead he hit send. He ruffled Winston's neck and let him go. After a minute he typed: is it okay if Winston comes too? On Saturday. I'll get a sitter for the others.
He didn't expect an answer, not at this hour, but the reply came before he could put away the phone.
Of course, it said. And good morning, my love.
