It's not hard to lose track of time in his new setting.
Will's not used to feeling so genuinely safe in a house while other people are still in it. He's always enjoyed being at home when he could manage it - it's more private, more contained - but his dad would always have the other key. His dad would wander in and out, a quiet huff of a man, and weight down the air.
Hannibal and Neph don't make him feel like he has to shove aside all aspects of himself to get along. They don't make him feel on edge and defensive to be breathing in the same area.
"What are you reflecting on?"
Will jolts up from laying across two and a half of the couch cushions, arms unfolding. The back of one of his hands peels off the cover of his forgotten book. "Uh." He sighs into a stretch, plants an elbow up on the couch's armrest and drags himself up and backwards, until he's sitting up.
And facing Hannibal, who sits politely coiled into his lone half a couch cushion, laptop open but ignored across his thighs. "You look distracted." Hannibal sounds bizarrely smug for that observation. Will does a quick mental inventory of recent in-jokes, threats, and secrets and comes up blank.
"Dunno. Just thinking about-- this place." Will marks his spot in the book with the library rental receipt and tucks it in against his stomach. "Sounds like you had an idea about what I was thinking about?"
Hannibal hums, turning back to his laptop screen. "I was thinking about last night."
Will's pretty sure he didn't actually time taking a sip of his soda poorly enough to aspirate it, but he coughs nonetheless. "You what?" He wipes his mouth, tacky cola smearing on the back of his hand. "I thought you said you were doing your essay about your internship."
Hannibal looks back up, mouth a cross line. "I finished that two hours ago, Will. When you first fell asleep."
"Of course you did." Will watches him, shaking his head and failing to squash back down a smile. He takes another drink of half-flat soda to hide it. "Glad to know last night came in a close second after your internship on 'things you're going to brag about today'."
Hannibal smirks, and Will chuckles, and then the room presses quiet against them once again.
Will slowly turns around, book tugged along with him. Tentatively, he leans their shoulders together as he re-settles with his book inside Hannibal's space. Hannibal isn't watching the computer screen anymore, and as Will adjusts against him Hannibal's face ends up turned in towards his hair.
"I don't know how you can breathe in there." Will says. His cheeks feel warm despite the AC. Hannibal's nose is directly behind his ear, buried in what Will knows are wild curls that are probably doing their best to blind him.
"It's a mystery how I don't lose my breath more often when you're in the room."
"Oh please." Will's blush blooms down his neck. He elbows Hannibal softly in the ribs and Hannibal moves a few centimeters, radiating fond smugness. "Go back to reading your romance novels and leave me out of it."
"I really think you'd enjoy this era of literature if you tried, Will. Perhaps starting with Mary--"
Will and Hannibal both shift as the barest, familiar creak sounds from the front hall. There's a trick to opening the door soundlessly, one that no one adheres to because announcing your presence, in this home, is the most polite thing you can do when entering or exiting.
It's silent after, which is odd even for Neph, and Will cranes his neck and moves to sit up straighter, expectantly waiting for her to yell out. He's about to himself when Hannibal's hand is suddenly over his mouth.
"There's a stranger in our apartment." Hannibal's nose in his hair no longer feels warm and intimate. He whispers so quietly Will can feel the vibrations more than he hears his words. "Do you know how to fight?"
Will's heart is already pounding away in his chest. Hannibal sounds so deadly serious, and Will's mind is a blur of veiled insinuations and some of the rare frank talks about Hannibal's and Neph's respective pasts and skills.
If it picked the front door, at least, Will feels reasonably sure it isn't a kelpie that's come to call.
Hannibal is moving off the couch, cold air swallowing Will's side where he had been, and Will instinctively follows him. Now, when he strains to listen above the rush in his ears, Will can hear - or perhaps feel - even and careful movements from the hallway that runs parallel to their living room.
Someone's stalking towards them.
Hannibal reaches the doorway first, flattened against the wall like he's got any right to look like he's ambushed someone before. Hannibal turns back to look at him, mouths 'three of them' and then picks up a pen off the end table. In that moment, Will isn't sure if he's more afraid of the abyss in Hannibal's eyes or the fact that they're about to get jumped in their own home.
It happens quickly after that. The breath of footsteps at the entryway to the living room, Hannibal striking forward like a snake, a grunt and shout from a man with a bat.
Will leaps forward as footsteps suddenly pound from the entryway, and all hope of stealth is abandoned.
There's already blood. On the first man's thigh, a glint of metal and dull shine of plastic in the middle of his upper leg - the pen. Will ducks a fist from someone who surges past the doorway and straight at him. His heart knocks against his lungs as he runs backwards, remembers the coffee table at the last moment and scrambles over it as the man charging him down has to break concentration to climb it too.
"Get the fuck over here, mutie." And suddenly it all coalesces into an awful picture for Will, and he knows what's happened here. What's happening here.
Are they here to kill them? Publically? Are they going to throw their bodies out the window or sneak them away in trucks to dump them in the city center?
Will grabs a lamp on instinct, wings it at the man's head and misses that but connects with his shoulder. The lampshade is disappointingly soft, halts the swing of it, and Will drops it in his panic afterwards trying to get away from the arc of a bat.
He dodges one more swing, hits the wall behind him, and then ducks right into the grip of the bat hitting his stomach.
"There's a fourth person." Hannibal says, or Will assumes Hannibal says. It's in French and clearly a warning, but it doesn't do anyone much good. Will staggers sideways, ducks the next swing of the bat, and considers his odds on getting to the window to crawl from their balcony to the one below and get a head start running to a phone.
Would the police even come? Would a mutant hate group being arrested at Hannibal's home get him kicked out of medical school?
"Tommy!"
The room stops. Will looks over at Hannibal, stomach still in pain and worried about how that feels. Hannibal has a knife against one of their throats. His eyes are black and deadly and for a moment, Will is absolutely frozen looking at him.
It makes it easier for the next swing from the man with the bat - presumably Tommy - to connect with Will's head. Will grunts, staggers, and is caught against someone's chest. Will's breath strains as he's held from behind and something sharp appears at his own throat.
"I'll kill this one right now if you fucking try anything, kid."
Will thinks, for a second, that this man just got supernaturally lucky. Will still isn't sure if or how anyone could value him enough to care about this kind of threat, but he also knows Hannibal's pride - that flint in his eyes - wasn't going to stop for anything else.
It turns out this was enough.
Hannibal's face is fury etched in stone, cold hard edges that don't budge an inch even as he drops the knife and is unceremoniously punched down onto the floor. Will watches him be ziptied up until he's shoved against the nearest wall himself.
The ziptie's so narrow and right under the jagged bone at his wrist. Will reminds himself not to squirm or make a sound. His heart's still slamming against his ribs, but his mind is starting to drift out and above him. He feels numb despite the shaking in his fingers.
"Anyone else here?"
One of the men who wasn't needed to subdue Will and Hannibal is coming out from the hallway. "Unless one of them's a cross dresser, there's a girl here too."
"Wait for her. You two." They're getting tugged towards the door. A bag goes over Will's head, and he can no longer keep track of Hannibal. All the footsteps crunch together.
Whatever car they're tugged into several minutes later must be parked in an alley, right? How did they even get them out of that building without nosy neighbors calling the police? Will's head hurts, and worrying at the logistics isn't helping.
Everything is dark, and cold, and uneventful with one sitting in the back of the van with them the entire ride over.
It's not until they're about to be removed from the vehicle that Hannibal apparently decides it's worth one last effort to escape.
*
Will's never felt an injury like this before.
In a lot of ways, it's less painful than his head injuries from months prior. It doesn't interfere with his hearing or his vision, for one. It doesn't throb whenever he thinks to hard.
But walking with a stab wound in his calf turned out to be way more difficult than he'd even imagined. Like stepping out onto hardwood and it suddenly bends and breaks like straw.
Hannibal's leg is pressed up against it, hard. Too hard, but Will hadn't needed a medical student to explain to him the danger presented by bleeding out. They're being ignored just enough that Will has enough free time to worry about if he'll die from blood loss or an infection first.
Will notices her before Hannibal.
He ducks a shoulder down, taps into Hannibal, who's been studying everyone's movements in the room too much to care for the door opening practically behind them. "Neph," he barely whispers, but that's enough to get Hannibal's attention cracking around to look for her.
They probably don't look too bad while sitting. Will has a bruise on his temple, or so he assumes, and Hannibal has a godawful-looking nose that's dripped blood down across his lips and chin, but his eyes are so alert and his mouth so hard that Will sincerely doubts he even feels it.
Will's pale under his tan, though. Half his pant leg is red, his jeans soaking it down his leg and saturated nearly to his knee. His sock feels sticky and anytime he moves his foot he feels the way the wet fibers catch on his skin. His heart feels no less pounding than it did before - if anything Will would swear it's going faster.
Neither of them are the loudly taunting kind. Neither of them have a physical power to suddenly unveil and help out with.
So neither of them say a word. Just stare across the room full of people who hate them and seek out the eyes of their friend.
no subject
Will's not used to feeling so genuinely safe in a house while other people are still in it. He's always enjoyed being at home when he could manage it - it's more private, more contained - but his dad would always have the other key. His dad would wander in and out, a quiet huff of a man, and weight down the air.
Hannibal and Neph don't make him feel like he has to shove aside all aspects of himself to get along. They don't make him feel on edge and defensive to be breathing in the same area.
"What are you reflecting on?"
Will jolts up from laying across two and a half of the couch cushions, arms unfolding. The back of one of his hands peels off the cover of his forgotten book. "Uh." He sighs into a stretch, plants an elbow up on the couch's armrest and drags himself up and backwards, until he's sitting up.
And facing Hannibal, who sits politely coiled into his lone half a couch cushion, laptop open but ignored across his thighs. "You look distracted." Hannibal sounds bizarrely smug for that observation. Will does a quick mental inventory of recent in-jokes, threats, and secrets and comes up blank.
"Dunno. Just thinking about-- this place." Will marks his spot in the book with the library rental receipt and tucks it in against his stomach. "Sounds like you had an idea about what I was thinking about?"
Hannibal hums, turning back to his laptop screen. "I was thinking about last night."
Will's pretty sure he didn't actually time taking a sip of his soda poorly enough to aspirate it, but he coughs nonetheless. "You what?" He wipes his mouth, tacky cola smearing on the back of his hand. "I thought you said you were doing your essay about your internship."
Hannibal looks back up, mouth a cross line. "I finished that two hours ago, Will. When you first fell asleep."
"Of course you did." Will watches him, shaking his head and failing to squash back down a smile. He takes another drink of half-flat soda to hide it. "Glad to know last night came in a close second after your internship on 'things you're going to brag about today'."
Hannibal smirks, and Will chuckles, and then the room presses quiet against them once again.
Will slowly turns around, book tugged along with him. Tentatively, he leans their shoulders together as he re-settles with his book inside Hannibal's space. Hannibal isn't watching the computer screen anymore, and as Will adjusts against him Hannibal's face ends up turned in towards his hair.
"I don't know how you can breathe in there." Will says. His cheeks feel warm despite the AC. Hannibal's nose is directly behind his ear, buried in what Will knows are wild curls that are probably doing their best to blind him.
"It's a mystery how I don't lose my breath more often when you're in the room."
"Oh please." Will's blush blooms down his neck. He elbows Hannibal softly in the ribs and Hannibal moves a few centimeters, radiating fond smugness. "Go back to reading your romance novels and leave me out of it."
"I really think you'd enjoy this era of literature if you tried, Will. Perhaps starting with Mary--"
Will and Hannibal both shift as the barest, familiar creak sounds from the front hall. There's a trick to opening the door soundlessly, one that no one adheres to because announcing your presence, in this home, is the most polite thing you can do when entering or exiting.
It's silent after, which is odd even for Neph, and Will cranes his neck and moves to sit up straighter, expectantly waiting for her to yell out. He's about to himself when Hannibal's hand is suddenly over his mouth.
"There's a stranger in our apartment." Hannibal's nose in his hair no longer feels warm and intimate. He whispers so quietly Will can feel the vibrations more than he hears his words. "Do you know how to fight?"
Will's heart is already pounding away in his chest. Hannibal sounds so deadly serious, and Will's mind is a blur of veiled insinuations and some of the rare frank talks about Hannibal's and Neph's respective pasts and skills.
If it picked the front door, at least, Will feels reasonably sure it isn't a kelpie that's come to call.
Hannibal is moving off the couch, cold air swallowing Will's side where he had been, and Will instinctively follows him. Now, when he strains to listen above the rush in his ears, Will can hear - or perhaps feel - even and careful movements from the hallway that runs parallel to their living room.
Someone's stalking towards them.
Hannibal reaches the doorway first, flattened against the wall like he's got any right to look like he's ambushed someone before. Hannibal turns back to look at him, mouths 'three of them' and then picks up a pen off the end table. In that moment, Will isn't sure if he's more afraid of the abyss in Hannibal's eyes or the fact that they're about to get jumped in their own home.
It happens quickly after that. The breath of footsteps at the entryway to the living room, Hannibal striking forward like a snake, a grunt and shout from a man with a bat.
Will leaps forward as footsteps suddenly pound from the entryway, and all hope of stealth is abandoned.
There's already blood. On the first man's thigh, a glint of metal and dull shine of plastic in the middle of his upper leg - the pen. Will ducks a fist from someone who surges past the doorway and straight at him. His heart knocks against his lungs as he runs backwards, remembers the coffee table at the last moment and scrambles over it as the man charging him down has to break concentration to climb it too.
"Get the fuck over here, mutie." And suddenly it all coalesces into an awful picture for Will, and he knows what's happened here. What's happening here.
Are they here to kill them? Publically? Are they going to throw their bodies out the window or sneak them away in trucks to dump them in the city center?
Will grabs a lamp on instinct, wings it at the man's head and misses that but connects with his shoulder. The lampshade is disappointingly soft, halts the swing of it, and Will drops it in his panic afterwards trying to get away from the arc of a bat.
He dodges one more swing, hits the wall behind him, and then ducks right into the grip of the bat hitting his stomach.
"There's a fourth person." Hannibal says, or Will assumes Hannibal says. It's in French and clearly a warning, but it doesn't do anyone much good. Will staggers sideways, ducks the next swing of the bat, and considers his odds on getting to the window to crawl from their balcony to the one below and get a head start running to a phone.
Would the police even come? Would a mutant hate group being arrested at Hannibal's home get him kicked out of medical school?
"Tommy!"
The room stops. Will looks over at Hannibal, stomach still in pain and worried about how that feels. Hannibal has a knife against one of their throats. His eyes are black and deadly and for a moment, Will is absolutely frozen looking at him.
It makes it easier for the next swing from the man with the bat - presumably Tommy - to connect with Will's head. Will grunts, staggers, and is caught against someone's chest. Will's breath strains as he's held from behind and something sharp appears at his own throat.
"I'll kill this one right now if you fucking try anything, kid."
Will thinks, for a second, that this man just got supernaturally lucky. Will still isn't sure if or how anyone could value him enough to care about this kind of threat, but he also knows Hannibal's pride - that flint in his eyes - wasn't going to stop for anything else.
It turns out this was enough.
Hannibal's face is fury etched in stone, cold hard edges that don't budge an inch even as he drops the knife and is unceremoniously punched down onto the floor. Will watches him be ziptied up until he's shoved against the nearest wall himself.
The ziptie's so narrow and right under the jagged bone at his wrist. Will reminds himself not to squirm or make a sound. His heart's still slamming against his ribs, but his mind is starting to drift out and above him. He feels numb despite the shaking in his fingers.
"Anyone else here?"
One of the men who wasn't needed to subdue Will and Hannibal is coming out from the hallway. "Unless one of them's a cross dresser, there's a girl here too."
"Wait for her. You two." They're getting tugged towards the door. A bag goes over Will's head, and he can no longer keep track of Hannibal. All the footsteps crunch together.
Whatever car they're tugged into several minutes later must be parked in an alley, right? How did they even get them out of that building without nosy neighbors calling the police? Will's head hurts, and worrying at the logistics isn't helping.
Everything is dark, and cold, and uneventful with one sitting in the back of the van with them the entire ride over.
It's not until they're about to be removed from the vehicle that Hannibal apparently decides it's worth one last effort to escape.
*
Will's never felt an injury like this before.
In a lot of ways, it's less painful than his head injuries from months prior. It doesn't interfere with his hearing or his vision, for one. It doesn't throb whenever he thinks to hard.
But walking with a stab wound in his calf turned out to be way more difficult than he'd even imagined. Like stepping out onto hardwood and it suddenly bends and breaks like straw.
Hannibal's leg is pressed up against it, hard. Too hard, but Will hadn't needed a medical student to explain to him the danger presented by bleeding out. They're being ignored just enough that Will has enough free time to worry about if he'll die from blood loss or an infection first.
Will notices her before Hannibal.
He ducks a shoulder down, taps into Hannibal, who's been studying everyone's movements in the room too much to care for the door opening practically behind them. "Neph," he barely whispers, but that's enough to get Hannibal's attention cracking around to look for her.
They probably don't look too bad while sitting. Will has a bruise on his temple, or so he assumes, and Hannibal has a godawful-looking nose that's dripped blood down across his lips and chin, but his eyes are so alert and his mouth so hard that Will sincerely doubts he even feels it.
Will's pale under his tan, though. Half his pant leg is red, his jeans soaking it down his leg and saturated nearly to his knee. His sock feels sticky and anytime he moves his foot he feels the way the wet fibers catch on his skin. His heart feels no less pounding than it did before - if anything Will would swear it's going faster.
Neither of them are the loudly taunting kind. Neither of them have a physical power to suddenly unveil and help out with.
So neither of them say a word. Just stare across the room full of people who hate them and seek out the eyes of their friend.