Chapter Text
Mischa does not ask her brother what he will show to Will to convince him. In truth, she doesn’t much care. The bet had been a way to pass the time, with consequences neither had predicted, but she had always anticipated he would win Will over far faster than she could, and is content to watch him do so properly now.
She does not ask him, but instead goes to Alana, reading quietly in one of the sun rooms that faces out into the gardens on the first floor, a clear view of the lake and stables beyond through the light drizzle of rain that falls on the estate. Mischa would laugh at how Alana startles when Mischa calls her name, but she did come with purpose, after all.
“Miss Bloom, I would like to take a walk.”
“In this weather?” Alana rests her book in her lap with gentle fingers between the pages. “It would be ill-advised, Mischa, you will catch cold, and it would be far from a pleasant stroll -”
“It would be with purpose.”
“Even purpose should know reason,”
“Love knows no reason,” Mischa points out, walking towards the window to stand on her toes, as though by doing so she would see farther out into the garden, and catch a glimpse of Will from where she watches.
“Are you in love?” Alana asks, voice lightening.
Mischa snorts. “No. Are you?”
The question colors Alana’s cheeks scarlet in an instant, and she finds herself grateful that her charge is still peering out the window. “For what purpose do you seek to drag us both out into the rain?”
“One should always seek to remedy their mistakes,” Mischa declares primly, folding her hands behind her back in a voice and manner so entirely like her brother that Alana blinks, surprised. “We need to arrange a meeting.”
“With whom? Oftentimes when one has made mistakes, the best solution is in fact to be less involved -”
“They need us,” Mischa says, cutting off the quick flurry of Alana’s words. Like a general preparing for battle, the girl pulls her shoulders up tall, and lifts her chin.
Alana sighs. “If you’ll pardon my saying so, I don’t think that Mr. Graham has any more desire to speak to you than to speak to your brother.”
“He will not be speaking to me,” Mischa agrees, turning on her heel and bouncing up on the balls of her feet. “And Hannibal does not need him to speak, merely see. But for that they need to be in the same place, at the same time, with perhaps something preventing both from leaving.”
“You cannot force two people to reconcile -”
“No,” Mischa concedes. She steps closer and lowers herself gracefully into one of the chairs, facing Alana as she draws her feet up onto the seat, curled beneath her. “No, I cannot force. And I suppose what Will chooses to do is something none of us can know or predict, but…”
Mischa bites her lip in thought, brows drawing just enough before she relaxes her face, clears her expression.
“There is something to be said for past friendships and the histories they hold. I think Will would listen if Hannibal spoke to him.”
Alana hums, turning to look outside again. The rain is not heavy but it is unpleasant, a sheer veil of slowly falling drops, like gossamer. Quick to get beneath even the most tightly folded clothes, and threaten one with a cold for going near it.
“They are both stubborn,” she allows after a moment of thought. Her brows knit, and then raise. “But I’ve an idea. Or at least, I’ve someone who will have one, which is as good as having one yourself, really.”
Mischa’s eyes alight as Alana stands, setting her book aside. She moves towards the window herself, now, as her charge’s grin widens.
“By the lake, I think, where there’s bound to be privacy in this weather. Tell your brother.”
“When?”
“Tell him now - for as long as it takes him to dress, the times should coincide,” Alana muses. “And I will do my part to make right these wrongs. Go,” she says, sweeping a hand towards Mischa who bounds to her feet. “I need the services of a certain stable-master.”
---
“Oh no,” Beverly responds, before Alana’s managed a word. The determination in her eyes, the smile snared in one corner of her lips, it says everything before the woman’s said anything at all. “Don’t you come at me like that.”
“I’ve not come at you, I’ve come for you.”
“Worse yet.”
“You don’t mean it,” Alana frowns, folding her arms. The ruse falls flat, and Beverly tips up her hat, a dubious brow lifted. They stand beneath the overhang of the carriage house, rain dripping in a curtain beside them as it slicks down the roof.
“Ask me what you’re going to ask, and then we’ll see how much I mean it,” Beverly decides.
Alana takes a step closer. Another. They stand near enough that Beverly can smell the powdery perfume Alana wears, delicate and feminine. Near enough that for Alana, the scent of horses clinging to her paramour is overwhelming. She clears her throat, and leans a little nearer still.
“Mister Graham -”
“No.”
Alana blinks. “But -”
“I’ve no wish to be involved in your games, Alana Bloom,” scolds Beverly, but her eyes widen and her voice quiets when Alana presses a hand to her hip, curled around the rough-fabric’d breeches. “Unfair.”
“All’s fair,” Alana says, grinning. “Mister Graham is needed beside the lake, upon the path beneath the trees, immediately.”
“To what end?”
“Yet unknown. Perhaps a fish has perished upon the shore, its smell unpleasant. It hardly matters -”
“And if I do send him on this fool’s errand?”
“To your end,” Alana promises, leaning to brush the tips of their noses together, “involvement in more of my games, reserved especially for you.”
Beverly lifts a gloved hand, and brushes calfskin-clad knuckles down Alana’s cheek. Dark eyes search between hers, and she grins. “When did you become so devious?”
“Since you made it so easy,” she answers. Their lips touch softly, just brushing together, and before they’re seen, Alana draws away. “No more, until you’re done.”
“And then?”
“Come and find me, and I’ll make sure you’re done properly.”
---
The rain does not ease, but nor does it increase, as Will makes his way to the lake, head down and drops collecting and slipping from the brim of his hat as he looks, futilely, for the fish Beverly had claimed was there. It is rare that the fish make it to shore without external help, from a fishing rod, perhaps, or a cat or a bird.
In this weather, Will would put his money on birds, hungry and seeking, but none are at the lake’s edge now.
Just as, to his genuine frustration, there is no fish.
Will lifts his head, closing his eyes to catch the light rain against his face, before he sighs and continues on. He does not look up again, mind distracted and body in rhythm, now, of slow steps and a turn of his head, and he startles when his shoulder strikes against a solid form. Too warm to be a tree, too stoic to be any sort of animal. Will lifts his head, eyes wide with apology, and blinks at the man before him, impeccably dressed, even in this weather, gloved hands holding the long, elegantly curved handle of an umbrella now covering them both.
For a moment, Will doesn’t speak, but he turns his eyes away from Hannibal as quickly as they had landed on him, lips pursing and throat working in a swallow before Will adjusts his hat and shrugs his coat against himself closer.
“I’m sorry,” he offers, trying to step around the man to continue on his search.
“Do not be,” Hannibal tells him gently. “Not ever to me.”
The words hearken back to thoughts Will would rather not have, and pull a shiver through him that he resents. His lips thin and he takes a step, only for Hannibal to move before him again. In his other hand, a little book bound in black leather. Will averts his eyes to the shore again.
“I’ve work to do. Please, excuse me -”
“And if I do not?” Hannibal asks, but there’s no threat in his words, only a hopeful playfulness that does no more good than to narrow Will’s gaze further. “You do not have to listen to me -”
“Then I will not.”
Hannibal’s jaw flickers with a quick tension, and he ducks his head. Cradling the umbrella in the crook of his arm, against his shoulder, Hannibal takes the book in both hands and offers it forward.
“Do not listen, then. Look, and see.”
For a moment he wonders if Will truly will just step around him and go on his way, but something holds him, some tug of curiosity, something more, perhaps. Instead, Will brings his hands to his chest to work off his gloves, finger by finger, to avoid wetting the pages of the book he takes.
It is a bound journal, one that has been mended multiple times, and inexpertly - some pages pushing out farther than others, no longer lined up neatly as they had been at the beginning. The corners of the cover are worn soft, and Will is careful when he opens it, blinking at the first page.
On it, in inelegant childish hand, are Latin verbs, written and rewritten, with red markings beside, suggesting corrections needed. For a moment, Will’s brows furrow and he wonders why he holds Hannibal’s old schoolbook in his hand, wonders if it is another taunt to push their distance more to the forefront of his mind. But then he sees it, a bare sketch fading with time, of curly hair and a softly rounded jawline. No eyes, on this image, but the fringe worked to suggest it merely covers them. It is clear who the picture is of, and Will’s cheeks color.
He swallows, does not look up, and without a word turns the page.
On and on they go, until the sketches take up more room than lessons, and then the lessons just fade to nothing. Better and better the drawings become, with shading and depth where at first there were only lines to suggest shape. Will with his head ducked over a book, Will with his hands on a fishing rod he had made - the detailing of his hands takes up most of the page, like a study of his fingers, then little and inexpert in tying a lure. Will smiling, Will frowning, Will’s back as he stands before - or behind - an elaborate window, just looking into the garden. Will with broader shoulders and a stronger back.
Will as he had grown, with Hannibal but never with him. Always seen, never forgotten.
Will’s throat clicks when he swallows and he parts his lips, eyes up to Hannibal who watches him quietly, holding the umbrella to protect them both from the rain. Will bites his lip and releases it with a sigh, trying to find words and feeling his tongue too heavy to make any. He swallows, again, and presses his lips together.
“You were always so good at sketching,” he whispers.
Hannibal closes his eyes, a beat longer than a blink, and allows his relief to show in a soft smile.
“You made me good,” Hannibal tells him. He reaches, to turn the page again, to one dated on the night that Will brought his puppy to him. He recalls the flurry of paper, moved quickly aside from the desk. He recalls how near they had come that night to kissing, and his cheeks warm.
The older boy lifts his hand, slowly so as not to startle, and when Will does not protest, Hannibal brushes his thumb beneath his friend’s eye, across his blush.
“Always my favorite subject,” he says, a breath of laughter inflected in his words. “I could draw you from memory, at any age, even now. I thought it simple familiarity, longing for childhood - I explained it all away many times, and did not understand, until you came to me and spoke.”
He lowers his hand and sighs, accepting his own defeat as gracefully as one might hope to.
“I have, I think, always loved you. I will, still, even if only allowed from a distance,” Hannibal says, and the finality in his voice grates soft as porcelain edges, cracked but held together, their rough edges feigning wholeness. “You may keep it, or throw it away. Whatever pleases you. I imagine I will continue regardless.”
Will closes the book carefully again and holds it in his hands, just looking at the cover, stroking fingers over the worn leather and card beneath. He unbuttons his coat and sets it into the pocket against his chest before crossing his arms over his middle and just watching the ground. Around them, the rain has increased, no wind, yet, but heavier drops that beat against the umbrella and drip around them in a wide circle.
Will takes a step closer, and after a moment, he rests his forehead against Hannibal’s shoulder.
“You hurt me,” he says softly, feels Hannibal’s heart hammer against his chest, an admission without words, an apology in the soft hand that finds his hair as Will shivers and leans into him more. “Don’t do it again.”
Hannibal’s breath shudders, reserves depleted to bear himself as the Lecter heir, the head of household, as anything more than just a boy in love, hopelessly in love with the only friend he’s ever known. He touches his lips to the damp curls of hair, against his temple, his cheek, and when Will lifts his head just a little, they kiss.
Around them the world melts away to grey, but between them, colors explode. Their lips part reddened, their cheeks bright, each touch a luminous spark - Will’s hand gathering in the front of Hannibal’s coat, Hannibal’s fingertips beneath Will’s chin. Only a smile parts them, only words, now, easy words between.
“I promise, never intentionally, not again,” Hannibal whispers. “And if I do by mistake, make me good again.”
Will just smiles, pushing up on his toes to kiss Hannibal again as the other holds him close, as the rain around them shivers to a shower and they stand dry beneath the large black umbrella. They wait together there until the torrent eases once more, until they can walk side-by-side and not get wet for the effort.
But even in that, Will is the first to break from the safety of the oiled silk and whalebone, to run with a whoop into the rain and jump with a bright splash into a puddle.
Perhaps he has not yet outgrown childish things, Will thinks, as Hannibal watches him, wide-eyed and awed, before bringing his hand out into the rain to check the fall of it. Primly, he folds the umbrella closed and sets it against the nearest tree. Childish things like chasing each other in the rain without fear of catching cold, like the mud upon their clothes, like catching slippery hands and pulling each other near, like falling in love.
Perhaps neither of them have, Will thinks. He hopes they never do.