Happy birthday ficlet for @damnslippyplanet!!!
Hannibal woke when he heard the motel room door opening on creaky hinges. A shift in the air that told him Will was leaving, but he didn't find his voice in time to call out in protest.
"It's not safe," he whispered at the door as it closed, his throat dry and aching, and still tasting like the sea.
A wave of pain, as dark and turbulent as any the Atlantic could offer, swept him back down into unconsciousness.
He woke when he heard the door opening again.
"Will?" he croaked, not even bothered to hear the note of desperation in his own voice.
"It's me," came the reassuring answer.
"It's not safe to leave the room," Hannibal said. "Wait until Chiyoh comes back again."
"I was only gone for a few minutes," Will said. "I was careful."
The bed dipped as Will sat beside him. In the darkness, he could make out Will's silhouette against the grim and pallid light seaping through the cheap curtains, but he wanted to see his face. Needed to see his face.
"Why haven't you turned any lights on?"
Will sighed. "I'm...pretty hideous."
"Impossible," Hannibal scoffed.
He wanted to sit up but the dual pressures of the freshly stitched wound in his gut and Will's steady hand on his shoulder convinced him otherwise.
"Your stitches will pull," Will tutted him. "Just go back to sleep for now. I'll have a surprise for you when you wake up again."
The next time he woke, it was to the distinctive odor of a freshly struck match.
Will sat down beside him again, cupping a small candle in his hands. In the dimness offered by that flickering sphere of light, Hannibal could make out the gauze on Will's face and the bruising all along his cheekbone.
"You're not hideous," Hannibal said, recalling their earlier conversation.
"Well, you know what they say about candlelight," Will said. "It's flattering to everybody."
Will held out his hand so that Hannibal could see he'd been holding more than a candle.
"Is that...a Twinkie?" Hannibal asked.
"It's your birthday cake," Will said. "Hurry up and make a wish and blow out the candle. Twinkies might be flammable, for all I know."
"It's not my birthday," Hannibal told him, even as he blew out the candle as he'd been instructed.
"It's the birthday listed on your new, very fake passport," Will said. "By the way, your new, very fake name is Albert."
"I suppose I can live with that," Hannibal said.
After a long silence, Will set the Twinkie down on the nightstand. (Hannibal was relieved he wasn't expected to eat it, although he would have if it had come to that.) Without the scant light from the birthday candle, Hannibal couldn't judge the expression on Will's face.
"Do you suppose you can live with me?" Will finally asked, his voice suddenly shy. "If I promise next year's cake isn't a Twinkie?"
Hannibal fumbled in the dark until his hand latched onto Will's. "In fact, it was the very wish I made."
