#cedar writes

     The man’s thigh presses against his, and a thrill of desire runs up Geralt’s leg and into his throat. He drinks, then looks sideways, meeting Gaunter’s sparkling gaze. The desire begins to claw its way into his stomach. Looking away, he takes another gulp of his beer.

     “Isn’t a gentleman supposed to treat one to dinner before making advances?” he mutters into his tankard. Gaunter chuckles, the sound so close to Geralt’s ear that it sends goosebumps racing across his skin.

     “Oh Geralt,” Gaunter murmurs. “I never would have thought that I might enjoy playing someone else’s game nearly as much as I enjoy playing my own. Then you came along, and here we are.” 

     He raises a hand, deftly catching the barkeep’s attention despite the typical nightly chaos in the tavern.

     “Two helpings of your best fare, if you please!” he calls. The woman nods and heads over to the fire where a big pot is simmering. Geralt stares after her, slightly incredulous, then turns slightly to meet Gaunter’s eyes again. The usual friendly good humor in those eyes is now mixed with something else, something that makes the witcher swallow hard, butterflies fluttering to life in his stomach. 

     Suddenly the room falls silent. Geralt looks around, startled by the abrupt change. The tavern patrons are frozen in place, glassy eyes unblinking, spoons lifted halfway to mouths. He knows he has seen this before.

     “Why?” he asks Gaunter. The man smiles sweetly, his mouth curling up at the corners in an endearing yet infuriating way. 

     “Because I would like to sample an appetizer before our meal arrives,” Gaunter replies, leaning closer. “And I like to savor things uninterrupted.”

     In spite of himself, Geralt chuckles. 

     “Alright Gaunter, you win,” he says, “Though I’m sure you’ve heard that before.”

     Gaunter slides a hand around Geralt’s waist and pulls him closer. Throwing caution to the winds, Geralt leans down, closing the distance between them, and kisses him gently. For a long, delicious moment, there is silence but for the sound of their combined breath.

“Yup,” Matthew says, glancing guiltily at Will’s cane. He’s not dressed for the weather, wearing only a light jacket and track pants, but he isn’t shivering. “They put me on mood stabilizers.”

“You feel more stable?”

“Not really, but I’m good at fooling the nurses.”

Will isn’t feeling particularly stable either. There’s a cavern in his chest where his heart used to beat, darkness heaving and coiling within. “What will you do now?”

“Not sure. I’ll probably go back to drifting. Pick up some work at a prison out of state.” 

The thought of Matthew going under cover as that lisping dullard again doesn’t sit right with Will, but he shakes the feeling off. Not his business.

Matthew helps him up the porch steps, a steady hand at the small of his back, careful not to let him slip on the black ice. Will’s instinct tells him to push him away, but the support is… surprisingly nice.

It takes a while for Will to open the storm door. The lock always sticks when it’s cold, and he only has one hand to fumble with the key.

“Here, I got it,” Matthew offers. He deftly unlocks the door and holds it open. The living room beyond is dark and dusty.

Will pauses at the threshold, his dogs milling around at his feet.

Matthew has that fresh-out-of-jail look: pale, jittery, hair grown out over his forehead and ears. He’s rumpled and scarred and could use a bath. It’s kind of cute in an ugly sort of way—Will’s worst weakness when it comes to strays.

The obsession is still there. His eyes are too wide, too fixed on Will, like they’re trying to absorb him entirely. But Will’s used to obsession, knows how to handle it. Hell, he has a bit of it himself these days. And it’s not like he has much left to lose. 

He rolls his tongue across his teeth before asking, “Do you know anything about boats?”

***

It takes several months to repair the Nola, but it would’ve taken much longer without Matthew’s help. He does all the heavy lifting for the first few weeks, hefting engine parts and sailcloth, operating the boom at Will’s direction.

“This is just like Castaway,” Matthew says as he watches Will rewire the bilge pump. “You’re Tom Hanks, and I’m the volleyball.”

Will wants to say that volleyballs don’t talk half as much as Matthew does, but the truth is he appreciates hearing a voice coming from outside his head.

Sick of the draft, Matthew takes care of the shattered living room window (“What the hell kind of mutant stag crashed through here anyway?”). In the evenings, he runs the dogs around the backyard until they’re too tired to jump all over Will. Once, when Will slips off the deck and lies face-up in the snow, paralyzed with gut pain, Matthew runs to him, carries him indoors, and frantically checks his stomach for tearing. Will isn’t allowed outside the house for three days after that.

Matthew cooks when Will doesn’t see the point of eating. Ham sandwiches, boiled hot dogs, and Kraft mac and cheese in cartoon shapes (“The extra crevices trap the sauce better”) are a welcome change from what he’s used to being served. Will doesn’t complain when his pancakes are burnt or when they have instant ramen for the fifth time in a row. He’s just happy to be completely sure of what he’s eating.

Mostly it’s nice to have someone else making noise around the house. The clatter of kitchen cabinets and the rat-tat-tat of video game gunfire keeps Will from getting lost in Hannibal’s kitchen, where he lies bleeding out on the floor, hands scrabbling uselessly at Abigail’s hemorrhaging carotid, distant footsteps echoing down the hall before the front door slams shut.

Matthew’s constant attention reminds Will that he’s not a ghost, especially in the middle of the night, when life is most like a dream.

Sometimes he comes down from the upstairs bedroom for a glass of water and finds Will staring out the newly-fixed window.

“Are the shadow people creeping around again?” he asks, peering over Will’s shoulder. For him, there’s nothing out there besides the gnarled hickory leaning over the driveway.

Will knows Hannibal isn’t really there, standing knee-deep in the snow, scarf snapping in the wind. The real Hannibal is done chasing. He wants Will to find him instead.

He glances back. Matthew’s shirtless—like always—except for the bathrobe he found buried at the back of Will’s closet when he first moved in. This close, he can feel the heat emanating from Matthew’s chest. He’s like a fucking furnace.

He’s tempted to reach out on a chilly night like this, if only to feel something, anything. He wants Matthew to press him against the mattress and make him forget. But Will’s teeth are growing sharper by the day, and his hands remember snapping Randall Tier’s neck mere inches from the bed. If he lets himself get too close, if Hannibal appears, sitting in the armchair by the fire, watching them…

Matthew places a warm hand on his shoulder. Sniffs subtly, checking for whiskey on Will’s breath, but he hasn’t had any tonight. “Come on, let’s get you back into bed.” 

Will wants to protest whenever Matthew plays the orderly—this isn’t a nursing home, and Will isn’t his patient, for Christ’s sake—but he can’t find the energy. He lets Matthew guide him under his covers and swallows a pill with the water held up to his lips.

Matthew sits on the floor, head resting on his arms crossed on the mattress. He studies Will, unblinking. No one has ever cared this much about Will without asking for anything in return. It’s an awful feeling. He doesn’t deserve it.

Right before Will drifts off to sleep, he feels gentle fingers brush through his hair.

***

Come June, Will’s all healed up and the boat is hooked up to a truck, gleaming with a fresh coat of paint, ready for launch in the nearest marina. He does the final checks in the early morning, when he knows Matthew is still asleep. Once he’s sure she has no leaks or loose wires, he hops off the stern and pulls out the keys.

Matthew is leaning against the truck door, blocking his way. “Thought you’d sneak off on your own, did you?”

Will squints at the empty green field and over the trees, toward the sun rising in the east. “Listen,” he says awkwardly, shifting on his feet. “Thanks for all the help.”

A muscle in Matthew’s jaw twitches. “It’d be easier sailing with a second hand. We could sleep in shifts.”

Will doesn’t trust himself alone on the open sea with Matthew, not for the full month it’ll take to cross the Atlantic. Already, he struggles with perception. People are flatter, washed out, like watercolor illustrations in a children’s storybook. He looks at Matthew and sees raw material. He sees meat.

“I only packed enough food for one.”

Matthew lets out a disbelieving laugh, voice thick with pain. “You still think about him, don’t you? All the time. After everything he did.”

It hurts to say it, but Will won’t lie. “Yeah. Yeah, I do, but—” He scuffs a foot in the gravel. “Stuff like that doesn't really go away, does it? Part of me probably will always think about him.”

Matthew’s face screws up, tilting to the side as he processes that. Will wants nothing more than to draw him into an embrace, but how cruel would that be, when he doesn’t know if he’s ever coming back?

“I’m going to kill him, Matthew,” he murmurs. “I’ll cut him out of me, one way or another, and then I’ll be myself again.”

Matthew nods, but he doesn’t seem reassured. Reaching into his back pocket, he pulls out a hunting knife and folds Will’s hand around it. The wooden handle has a pleasant heft.

He pulls Will’s head close to his, forcing him to look into his bright green eyes. There’s anger there, but fierce determination, too. “Whatever happens, I’ll be here when you get back. Me and the dogs. Remember that, okay?”

A rewrite of the Marcus Hotel scene from Silence of the Lambs (except Will is actually getting plastic surgery haha):

The doors of the elegant Hotel Marco in Rio de Janeiro slid open and hit Hannibal with a gust of air conditioning. He wore comfortable white linen and a Panama hat. His hair was an ungodly shade of bottle blond. A neat surgical bandage covered his nose and cheeks. Soft piano music drifted from the lounge. At the bar, Hannibal could see two people with bandages across their noses. A middle-aged couple crossed to the elevator, humming a Jobim tune. The woman wore a gauze patch over one eye. “Boa tarde, Sr. Wyman,” the concierge greeted him as he passed the reception desk. Hannibal nodded to him before joining the couple in the elevator. He set his bag of groceries down in the kitchen of the penthouse suite. The suite seemed luxurious to him after his long confinement. He enjoyed running his hands over the cotton bed comforter and the stainless steel fridge. After sorting the groceries, he indulged in a long shower. From the window, he could see across the street the premier clinic for craniofacial surgery in Brazil, where Will had recently undergone maxillary reconstruction and received a four molar dental bridge.  This was the one place in the world where Hannibal could walk around with a bandage on his face without exciting interest, and he’d taken advantage of that to make his first foray into the public since their flight to Rio. A short walk to the convenience store less than one block away. Voices laughing in Portuguese, and the buttery scent of street wagon empadas and brigadieros. Life pressing sweetly on him from all sides.

And later:

Will looked at the bacon fat heating on the stove. He spoke in hesitant Spanish, knowing Hannibal wouldn’t respond to anything else. “What do we have here?” After weeks of communicating using pen and paper, Will had made a reluctant return to speech, unfamiliar now to his damaged hard palate. Add to this the strain of learning a new language—rolled Rs were particularly painful for his stitched tongue—and he was perfectly happy to stare at Hannibal in silence for days on end. Each word Will spoke aloud, Hannibal knew, was a gift. “Farofa for feijoada, a hearty black bean stew of regional significance. I’ve made it before, but this will be my first time using authentic Brazilian sausage.” He’d been looking forward to it but was in danger of losing concentration with Will this close. He smelled of blood—from the butcher most likely—and forest underneath it. “You’ve been to Tijuca National Park again.” “Lots of tourists there,” Will said, as if in explanation.

(They're not staying in Brazil--that's why Will's learning Spanish instead of Portuguese)