Days pass slow, then fast, and soon Will and Hannibal have found themselves in the midst of summer. The island is hot and unforgiving, and Will revels in the weight of the heat beating down on his shoulders. They tan and their scars stick out like stark white trenches dug deep into the earth.
Will had been so focused on healing that he hadn’t had a chance to consider that they’d never spent so much time together. Their lives before their fall into the Atlantic were marked by short tangles of friendship and something deeper than friendship and long periods of separation. Now, Will knows when he opens his eyes Hannibal will be there, always there.
At first it is terrifying. Once they’re strong enough to get on with their days without a handful of pills, Will worries they’ll soon grow tired. Of one another. Of the monotony of seclusion. But July comes, and with her heat she brings a revelation: They are, above all else, good together.
Four months on, and they haven’t been intimate. Not really. There have been touches, of course, the great majority of them clinical. Prodding muscles and helping wounds to heal and worrying over infections. Changing bandages and, for several weeks in the immediate aftermath, helping each other bathe through the haze of morphine.
Now, at breakfast, the sun at 8am already making the veranda steam with her rays, Will allows his mind to wander.
“What do you think would happen if we kissed?”
Hannibal pauses, midway through cutting into his sausage, and smiles. “If we kissed we would be kissing.”
Will laughs. “We would. But do you think it would change us?”
Hannibal forks sausage into his mouth, chews, and swallows before giving his answer. “It would certainly change our relationship. It may make us something to each other we’ve never been before.”
“I think we’ve always been everything to each other, regardless of our actions.”
Hannibal’s face goes soft. He drops his fork and knife. “Then it wouldn’t change us. It would only make us more of who we are.”
Will smiles, fighting against the tug of his ever-healing scar. “Come here and kiss me then.”
Hannibal pushes back from the table, the click of his shoes counting down the moments until he arrives at Will’s side. Will turns in his chair to meet Hannibal’s gaze when he kneels beside him. Hannibal’s hand is soft on his cheek. He cups the unmarred side of Will’s face and slots their lips together, and when their tongue meet, Will swears he can taste the force of Hannibal’s pulse. The blood rushing from their veins into one another’s.
Nothing changes when they part. The summer is still unrelenting and sweat trickles down the back of Will’s neck, soaking the collar of his shirt. It’s as if, somewhere, in all the other worlds stretching on for eternity, some version of the two of them have always been kissing. Their lips meet again, and it feels like home.
They kiss away the morning, and the sun shines, and the mercury swells and rises. They kiss, and nothing changes, and Will clings to the taste of the moment, hoping that nothing ever will.
Anonymous: soft hannigram please!!! I loved your amnesia one!
