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Molly was gone by the time Will got home. There was a note. She'd taken Walter to her mother's house out in Oregon. Will knew she wouldn't be back. He couldn't blame her.
Despite her absence, he could see a light in the family room. He found Hannibal on one knee feeding the fire. Hannibal froze in place for a second, back rounding minutely like a cat, but he didn't look up. He poked the log deeper into the blaze.
"You don't seem surprised to see me here," he said.
"I'm wondering if you're real," Will said. "I've seen you before. I used to see you sitting at the end of my bed at night when I couldn't sleep."
"But not anymore?"
"Not for a while."
Hannibal stood and came toward him, and Will was hard pressed not to step back. Hannibal stopped inches away and closed his eyes and breathed in.
Will turned his head away. "Don't say one goddamned word about my aftershave."
"What would I say? You have given it up for whiskey and nightmares again. Did you forget the bottle in some hotel room? Will your stepson be disappointed?"
Will grabbed the front of Hannibal's sweater and jerked him a step closer. "Don't."
His phone rang. He answered without letting go of Hannibal and listened while Jack told him about Hannibal's escape from the hospital. He assured Jack he would be careful, that he would call with any news, and then he hung up and turned off the phone.
"So you are real," he said.
"To the best of my knowledge. Are you so sure I wasn't real before? I spoke with you often in my memory palace. Perhaps at the very moments that you saw me at the foot of your bed."
"Jack's looking for you."
"He will send someone here to protect your family. He doesn't know that they have already gone. Or does he? Perhaps he knew the inevitable result of your involvement in this case just as you did. Is that why you took it?"
Will let go of his sweater, planted his palm on Hannibal's chest, and shoved him back hard enough that Hannibal staggered and caught himself against the mantle. Will watched with an ache in his lungs and the growing heat of anger in his throat. It seemed strange that they had never come to violence before this. Hannibal had slipped the knife into him so tenderly.
"Why did you come, Hannibal? Did you think I would want you here?"
"I thought I would like to meet the woman around whom you reshaped your mind. She must be a kind person, your Molly Graham. You were very nearly kind to me during that first visit. At the time, I wanted to cut her throat for it."
Will was on him faster than thought or even emotion, an instinctual firing of synapses that landed both of them on the floor with a hand in Hannibal's hair and one grasping his jaw.
Hannibal smiled up at him. "I prefer your honesty," he said.
"I was honest with Molly."
"You were as honest as a classified document. How many sections of your mind did you overwrite with black ink before you spread your pages open for her? Or did you make yourself anew from whole cloth?"
Will tightened his grip. "I told her as much as I could. I didn't lie. Did you think I was saving myself for you?"
Hannibal's expression cracked at that, a dire spark of red in his eyes that might have been reflected firelight and the slow roll of his jaw muscles beneath Will's hand.
Will leaned down until he could feel Hannibal's breath on his face. "What are you going to do if I refuse you again?"
Hannibal brought a hand up to stroke Will's cheek. "The possibility never occurred to me," he said.
Hannibal raised his head and stole their first kiss from Will's slack mouth. Will pulled back and sat up. His chest heaved with tight, rapid breaths. Hannibal looked up at him calmly, but there was heat in his eyes, and his touch on Will's face had been as hot as a brand.
"Is there even any point to this?" Will said.
"There is for you. It will be a release. And a bond."
"We have a bond."
Hannibal slid a hand under Will's shirt and let it rest against his side. His fingertips moved lightly on Will's skin. Will closed his eyes. Everything about him, his touch, his scent, his expressions and speech and the movement of his body had found a home in Will's chest. They had nested in some hollow place, and Will had held them close to his heart, and now everything Hannibal did and said was like coming home.
"I said I was done with you."
"You knew it even then to be a lie. Didn't you? I did."
Will dug his fingers in behind the curve of Hannibal's jaw. It must have hurt, had to hurt, but nothing showed on Hannibal's face. Will pressed harder and bent to kiss him again. That was oddly like coming home as well.
Hannibal spoke his name between their lips and nosed along Will's neck and spread his legs wide so that Will fit between them. Will grasped his shoulders to press him into the floor. "Do you want this?" he asked. "Or is this just another way to get to me?"
"I see no distinction between those things," Hannibal said. "You draw lines where there are none."
"There are for me."
Hannibal smiled. "Yes. And I wait on the other side until you cross them one by one."
Will squeezed his eyes shut and kissed him again. It was easier to let his body take over. He was getting hard, and he could feel the line of Hannibal's cock against his stomach. He ground down, and Hannibal raised his knees on either side to keep him in place.
The kisses came hot and heavy and wet. He got a fistful of Hannibal's hair and dragged his head back. Hannibal squeezed his thighs tight around him and hooked his fingers into the hollows behind Will's shoulder blades, nearly clawing at the bone. Will bit him, his lip and his jaw, and Hannibal's body arched up and contracted around him, as if they had reached some critical mass and would sink into each other, implode in the ruins of Will's old life.
Will got a hand between them and rubbed deliberately over the solid ridge of Hannibal's cock, again and again, until Hannibal caught at his arm. His hips were jerking up, and his eyes were fixed on Will's face. He always looked at Will as if there was nothing else in space or time that could matter as much. He always had.
Will kissed him again with tears in his eyes. He wanted to swear, to rail, to say I hate you and mean it. All he had left were the raw, uncomfortable truths he had buried and unearthed again and again like a dog hiding the same bone in deeper and deeper holes.
He started to pull at the zipper on his jeans and then it be, let both of them be. They were naked enough. He thrust down, and Hannibal rocked up against him. It went on with only their harsh breath and the crackle of the fire for a soundtrack until his cock felt raw, until he was shuddering with effort, continually on edge and aching.
Hannibal dug his nails into Will's back. "Come with me," he said. "Come with me. Come away with me."
Will licked into his mouth, sloppy with haste and too much need, and Hannibal answered it with his own. Their kisses were full of sharp teeth, and they came within seconds of each other, still clutching, still thrusting, muscles aching and sweat on their skin.
Will held him still tighter. "I'll never get rid of you, will I? You'll never leave me alone."
"No," Hannibal agreed. "I'll never leave you."