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He was thrust from the sea, not on his own accord. Unceremoniously, bloody and screaming like the day he was born. Wet sand, wet clothes, red-black glistening under the moonlight. He coughed and spluttered and his cheek ached. His shoulder protested with every breath. The halo of white reflecting behind his closed eyelids as he slipped into unconsciousness.
He woke under the still dark sky, the moon’s watchful eye resting on him, balefully, as he lay on the sandy shore.
Will drug himself to his knees as he casted his eyes around. He was utterly alone amongst the crashing waves.
-
Will sat under the pale orange sky as the first rays of the sun touched his bloody cheek. It felt like an admonishment. Pain brought tears to his eyes and Will let them run with the rest of the salt water dripping off of him, desperate to return to itself. Will could relate.
He hadn’t moved in hours save for the laborious rise and fall of his chest. His eyes flicked back and forth back and forth left to right over the endless crescendo of sea foam in the distance. He had no reason to go anywhere else.
He kept watch over Hannibal in the day like moon kept watch over them in the night.
-
The passage of time meant nothing, not any more. The sun came and went, the breeze ruffled his sea-crisp hair and passed him by. He slept upright when he could no longer keep his eyes open, days later. Still he watched.
Will felt nothing. The ache in his injuries have turned to a full-blown beast, his muscles have run off their adrenaline and have gone lax with disuse. Petrified. He rested on his knees and no longer felt his lower half. Pins and needles gave up on him. Still he waited.
His stomach turned in on itself, desperately searching for remnants of a last meal. Death row. Will’s mouth was sand paper, salt water clinging to his tastebuds made it near impossible to produce adequate amounts of saliva. He couldn’t produce a sound if he tried anymore.
A single bit of bloodied cloth reached him on the shoreline, rejected by the depths that claimed the rest of him. Will’s hands stayed resting on his knees, but his eyes zeroed in on the tattered remnants of what once could’ve been called a shirt. It’s color was so faded but Will would know it anywhere. A single tear tracked down into his torn cheek as he let his eyes lay back onto the horizon. Still he watched.
-
Infection wasn’t a thing that crossed Will’s mind, not that anything really did anymore. A fevered frenzy began to fill the red-caked remains of his shoulder and cheek. Finally. It throbbed in time with his heartbeat, as did the chills that wracked his body. Still he sat.
It‘s beautiful, Will knew. He remembered. He longed for the feeling of Hannibal’s body pressed so tightly to his in the last embrace of love they’d ever receive. In this life. The visceral feeling of pure euphoria that had gripped his lungs as tight as Hannibal had gripped the side of Will’s shirt. Then, nothing but the roaring in his ears of the wind clearing a path for them. The stomach-dropping feeling of falling, of being turned midair. The bile-inducing, split-second realization that Hannibal was going to take the impact of the drop for him. No time to twist them again. They were falling and then they were gone. Hannibal was gone.
Gun shot wounds to the stomach were typically fatal, adding a solid smack into the sea was a guarantee for death. Will should’ve known. Can’t live with him, can’t live without him. He understands the severity of that statement now. Will’s train of thought stops there, the weight of his infection melting his brain into goop. As his encephalitis once had, back when things were simpler. He dry-heaves into the sand and the entirety of his spine cracks as it curves for the first time. A life time ago. The moon stares him down with what feels like pity.
Why, he thinks, Why me?
Can’t live with him, can’t live without him. So he waits.
-
Will Graham died alone on the beach at the bottom of a cliff. Above him rests a beach house, it’s shattered glass window allowing the moonlight in, turning the blood staining the floors midnight black. The dried blood crusted to his body reflects it in the same way. The infection that riddled his body from his untreated wounds finally ran it’s marathon and reached his heart, cutting him off at his source. His dying wish had been for the moon to allow the waves to draw his corpse back into their embrace, so that he may rest for eternity with Hannibal in their murky depths. His wish is granted three days later, as the sand beneath him washes away enough during high tide. He floats back and forth has the tide draws him out further and further, as the waves tumble over his lifeless body. His murky eyes stare unseeingly at the moon, his face forever suspended in his last look of relief.
Hannibal’s shirt takes up a constant vigilance in his absence
Together, Hannibal and Will rest at the ocean bottom, decaying and dancing with the current on the seabed.