#willdelia

Will keeps his eyes closed when he dances, recalling the memory, rehearsed solely in his mind. It baffles his instructors to no end, but when Will looks, when they make him share, the spell is broken and he falls, strings broken.

Hannibal, though, he and Bedelia, there’s no puppeteer for them. It’s beautiful--they’re beautiful, out here on the patio in the moonlight, his long hair touched silver and hers bathed in gold. Will loves them, ethereal, strange and unreal, his stability and his heart, spinning and laughing and so very, very much in love with each other.

And with Will, as well, by some miracle. They’ll remind him of it beneath the clear sky when they’ve finished, run their fingers through Will’s hair, more blood-black than precious metal.

That’s his favorite dance, and Will doesn’t have to close his eyes to see it.

“They have a horchata...thing,” Will tells her as Bedelia puts her arm around him, skinny and small.

(“Our wee little man,” Hannibal calls him at night before he kisses Will so hard that Bedelia can’t breathe, either.)

“What’s horchata?” Bedelia jumps as Hannibal sneaks up behind her, wrapping his hands around her waist, like they’re going to do a grande jeté right here in line at Starbucks. “What’s horchata?” she asks again, angling her head to look up at Hannibal.

“A rice-based beverage,” explains Hannibal, “here in North America, at least, where the Mexican recipe is most prominent. As for here here,” and his voice takes on the slightest tone of disgust, “it’s made from low-cost almond milk, second-rate caramel, intolerably sweet syrups, and sprinkles.”

“OooOooOoo,” says Will, wiggling his fingers in a poor approximation of being spooky. “Sprinkles.”

“No worse than a PSL, then.” Bedelia shrugs exaggeratedly, and her shoulder bumps Will’s chin.

“There is far less stigma associated with a horchata frappuccino than with a pumpkinless pie spiced latte.”

“You’re such a pretentious bastard, Hanni.”

Will snorts, drawing one fingertip over the glass case, leaving a smear as he eyes the pastries. “Says the stereotypical poster child for the basic white girl meme.”

It’s okay, though. They can poke as much fun as they want to. Bedelia came armed for battle today.

“You know,” she begins, turning in Hannibal’s arms, reaching out with her free hand to pluck the crochet hook from behind Will’s ear, “I find it interesting that the only people who have an issue with pumpkin spice girls are men. Specifically cis het men, with their ingrained patriarchal notions and knee-jerk response to police how women dress.”

Bedelia bops Will on the nose with the green metal hook, mostly because she can.

“Oh fuck,” Will says after a heavy breath of collective silence. “It’s Thursday.”

Bedelia would have been able to sense Hannibal’s frown from the other side of the quad. “It has been Thursday all day, Will, yes.”

“Beddie has gender studies on Thursdays.”

Hannibal makes a disgruntled noise in the back of his throat. “Fuck, indeed.”

“Only if you boys both behave.” Bedelia doesn’t even try to disguise her preening, simply smirks, and walks up to the open register, and orders exactly what she damn well pleases.

“Yet she has a point. A hobby could be beneficial,” said Hannibal, shrugging. “Perhaps first aid, so you can bandage yourself the next time you take to self harm to soothe your anxiety.”

Will pulled away slowly. “It wasn't self harm.”

“You mutilated your lovely feet, Will.”

And he knew he wasn't going to win this battle, not when Hannibal was so sincere in his concern. Therapists around every corner with no escape in sight. “Suggestions?”

“Perhaps you could create something to do with dancing? It would then catch your interest.” Hannibal smiled and scratched behind Will’s ear when he added, “My single-minded Patroclus.”

He started with leg warmers, because Hannibal hated them, and Will hated being coerced into crochet. Hannibal hadn’t waited for Will to choose a hobby on his own, simply showed up in pointe class with a bag full of yarn and crochet hooks and handed it to him. Will pouted through class--as if the girls didn’t make enough fun of him and Hannibal for being the only two boys to make it to pointe. It was already a woman’s world, and now Will had a bag full of women’s work.

Humiliated, Will set out to make the gaudiest fucking leg warmers in the entire world. Ballet pink, with sherbet orange stripes and silver yarn throughout that sparkled like tinsel. He crocheted a scarf to match, because...well he wasn’t sure why, beyond enjoying making the leg warmers. But the set was ugly, no matter how well-made, and if Will hid Hannibal’s regular leg warmers, then he’d be forced to wear Will’s.

Hannibal still wears them. He wears the matching scarf, too, and the soft plaid socks Will makes him for Christmas, and the earflap hat with the ridiculous crochet roses for buttons. Bedelia likes Will’s work, too, though Will gives her nicer gifts--primarily leg warmers (light pink and lacy) and scarves (chunky stitches and merino yarn) because he loves to dress her in pretty things.

This afternoon, however, on a whim, he decides to start a set of beanies. Scarves to match. Pastels. Pompoms.

Let’s see how they coordinate their outfits now. Grinning mischievously, Will picks up his needles. It is the season for tricks, after all.

Hannibal rolls his eyes. “I’m a mere two months older than you, Delia.”

“And Will’s the baby by a whole year.” Bedelia ruffles Will’s hair and adds, “Little mister genius pants.”

“Eidetic memory.” He pushes her hand off of his head, plopping his ear against her shoulder, instead.

“That’s an odd pronunciation of ‘annoyance’.” It’s hard not to be grumpy in the face of Will’s talent and intelligence, at times. Then again, it isn’t unusual for Hannibal to spend his study session on the patio in a jealous huff, because there they are, the loves of his relatively short life, sitting together and spending quality time without him.

An hour passes with only the sound of other college students in the neighborhood and the whisper of cars on the road to be heard. Will finishes first, then stands with his hands on his hips, looking around for something to do before he winds up pulling out the rake. There will be a pile for he and Ceph to jump in later, Hannibal’s certain.

Instead, Bedelia shrieks when Will starts raking the leaves onto her legs. She’s grinning, trying to trip him up, finally succeeding, and then they start throwing bunches of leaves at each other. Hannibal can’t decide if their laughter is more adorable or disruptive--he has a metaphysical philosophy class to be at the head of, and his paper is due next week.

“Jesus, Hannibal, will you just gazelle-leap over the rail and get down here?” asks Will, trying to bat Bedelia’s hands away from him. “You’re missing out!”

“Shall the leaves compose my thesis statement on the comparative philosophy of Imre Lakatos?”

But neither of them answer; they’re too busy laughing. Hannibal pouts, pondering how the situation might be used as an example of Kuhn’s idea of scientific structure.

***

“Look,” begins Will over dinner, “you have to jump in a pile of leaves. It’s a rite of passage from childhood to adulthood. It’s impossible to move on with your life until you’ve jumped into a pile of leaves.”

Before Hannibal can refute him, Bedelia says, “Hannibal’s devoted to remaining a stubborn child.”

“Doogie Howser,” and Will giggles, and Hannibal frowns, and Bedelia blows him a kiss that Hannibal steadfastly refuses to catch.

***

They always make fun of how dressed up Hannibal gets every day for class. Bedelia only has to wear heels and a skirt on Mondays and Thursdays; Will attends his courses either in flannel or, if he wakes up more sullen than usual, his pajamas. Thankfully, Will does put lounge pants over his boxer briefs, though they’re typically also flannel.

This morning is no different, Hannibal dons his ironed slacks, tucks in his dress shirt, and fixes his tie. He puts his messenger bag on carefully to avoid mussing up his hair or wrinkling himself. One last look in the mirror to appraise himself, and then he steps out of his bedroom--

--and gets tripped by a taut string, falling right into a pile of leaves.

They’re damp.

Hannibal considers the benefits of killing both his partners.

Bedelia’s only been with them for a few years, but Hannibal and Will have been attached at the hip since birth as far as she can tell. Sometimes they look at each other and Bedelia wonders if she’s interrupting a private conversation just by breathing in the same room. They turn their gaze to her, and it’s a different kind of worship, and she knows then that she’s anything but a stranger. She’s not even a penitent.

Except in this, and then Bedelia might as well be David Attenborough.

The day before a performance, Hannibal follows Will through the backyard, or across the street, down the sidewalk, around the park a mile away. Bedelia went with them, once, thinking they were taking a stroll, and they were strolling, but also on a mission.

“Bird shit,” Will finally told her.

“What about it?”

“We’re looking for some.”

Bedelia stopped, hands in her pockets. “Why?”

“Fresh,” said Hannibal, like it was a sufficient answer.

It wasn’t. “Again, why?”

So Hannibal explained to her, while Will kept at the search, focused. It was a Lithuanian superstition, apparently, that if a person stepped in bird shit on accident, they would be rich. Or get a wish. Maybe get good luck? Bedelia was still fuzzy on the details, but what mattered was that he and Will took turns looking for it, and then lead the other person over it.

“That’s not exactly an accident,” Bedelia said.

Will shrugged, still looking. “Close enough.”

For them, Bedelia knows, it is. Their quest for bird droppings did begin as an accident, Will told her later, when he and Hannibal were cleaning off their shoes. Hannibal’s aunt smiled at them when they got home, then remarked off-hand about the old Lithuanian belief. Hannibal and Will had aced their auditions and won coveted spots for instruction at the conservatory, which led to Will insisting that they find droppings to tread over before every event or performance, no matter how small.

She laughed herself hoarse, and then Will said, “Well that’s how Hannibal eventually met you. Seems pretty lucky to me.”

Looking out into the backyard, leaning on the railing, watching her two deathly serious lovers hunting for poop, Bedelia believes herself lucky, indeed. Luckier still if they step in Ceph’s shit on accident.

They take it slow through the maze, though, if only because Will shouldn’t have insisted on the difficult clues. Bedelia knows a few of them from spending time with her sorority sisters--pop culture references have rubbed off on her easily, especially from her best friend, Bella--but Will is woefully confused.

“I thought these would be about farming,” he says, puzzling over the question board at a crossroads.

“Seriously?”

“It’s a farm, Beddie.”

She does her best not to laugh; poking fun at Will’s literal thinking would be cruel. “I keep forgetting you grew up in the country,” she says, instead.

Will frowns, still glancing back and forth between the sign and the sheet, pencil tucked behind his ear, nearly lost in his hair. “We didn’t have corn. Maybe that’s the problem.”

“We’ll go to a Christmas tree maze next time.”

“Do they have Christmas tree mazes?”

Bedelia shrugs, then gives the corner of Will’s mouth a quick kiss. “I have no idea, but at least you’d be familiar with the environment.”

“What the heck even is a gingham style, anyway?” asks Will, seemingly oblivious to affection.

“Oh my God.” She grabs the list of clues from him. “That’s it, I’m taking your turn.”

They manage to get lost again two questions later, running into a dead end. Will grumbles, grabs her hand, and starts weaving them off-trail through the tall stalks. When they wind up coming out of the rows at yet another dead end, Bedelia giggles, and Will smiles, and they stand there kissing until a small group of children end up taking the wrong road, too.

They always try to spend Sunday together--in the afternoon, before Hannibal and Bedelia’s fraternity and sorority meetings, and then again afterward. Even when there isn’t a holiday to set the mood, their respective choices of genre are fairly consistent. Hannibal enjoys somber drama, Scorsese and his ilk; Bedelia loves action flicks, adrenaline junkie that she is; Will typically goes with eighties sci-fi, or else animated films.

All three of them like the classics, however, black-and-white and brilliant and beautiful. Halloween never calls for slasher films, or movies heavily loaded with jump scares. They stick with the cerebral, Hitchcock and The Twilight Zone, then sit around drinking local cider from Mason jars and craft beers from weizen glasses, behaving as pretentiously as possible. Sometimes, Will puts on his nicest clothes, too, though he doesn’t have to follow their Greek dress code.

But not tonight. Tonight belongs to Will and his VCR, to Moundshroud and Bradbury and Hanna-Barbera, three times in a row and once more while his lovers are gone, peppered with Will’s own analysis through the second and fourth viewings. Ceph sits with him, and barks at the appropriately creepy parts, and Will thinks about time and death and what they’d be like, the three of them, Someplace Else in another universe.

As for the cider, Will drinks that while they’re gone, starting without them. Hannibal and Bedelia come home and smile and cuddle his tipsy self, all sensation. That cements Will in the present even more than the static hum of the tired VCR. In those moments, Will considers himself as lucky as Pipkin, though sugar skulls and sacrificed years unneeded, life given freely without prompting from any supernatural force.