“You prayed to Apollo,” he repeated carefully, “to make us teenagers again?”
“Not per se,” Hannibal said. “After we discussed how we each lost our virginity in less than ideal circumstances, I made a wish as I tossed the coin into the fountain that we could have had our first times with one another. It was more of a stray thought. It seemed scientifically unlikely that anything would come of it. The cup doesn’t gather itself up again and the hymen doesn’t tend to return.”
“We don’t have hymens,” Will pointed out.
“Metaphorical hymens,” Hannibal clarified.
Will looked at himself in the mirror again. There was no point arguing the impossibility of what had happened when it had, in fact, already happened. He supposed there was a chance they were both hallucinating, but he knew what hallucinating felt like, and this was different. He reached up to touch his face and hold back his long hair. The scar on his forehead was gone. The bridge of his nose was as straight as it had been before it got broken at the police academy.
“I’d forgotten how damned pink I was all the time,” he muttered. “Why was I always blushing? I look like I just ran five miles.”
“You look like an angel,” Hannibal said.
Will rolled his eyes. “If this is really happening, and a Greek god that I didn’t think existed actually granted your prayers, then I’m 19 again.”
“And I must be 16,” Hannibal chimed in. “Look, we’re the same height for once.”
Hannibal cozied up to him, shoulder to shoulder, studying both their reflections. He had the beginnings of a mustache on his upper lip, a wispy little thing barely more than dark peach fuzz, but it was more than Will could say for himself.
“I guess the good news is nobody will recognize us,” Will said. “Jack Crawford wouldn’t think to took for schoolboy versions of us. Holy shit, I can see your eyebrows!”
Hannibal took hold of his arms and turned him until they were facing one another. “Will. The good news is so much more than simply hiding from the FBI! Think bigger—much bigger.”
Will looked at Hannibal’s eager, earnest face, with its forehead speckled by small points of acne, and he laughed at the sudden realization. “We get to relive our whole lives without the mistakes!”
Now it was Hannibal’s turn to roll his eyes. “Yes, yes, but I mean even bigger than that.” He clasped Will’s hands. “We get to make my wish come true! We get to have sex for the first time—with one another.”
“Wow, you really are 16,” Will said.
Hannibal blinked. He blushed even pinker than Will. “I-I mean, only if you want to.” He started to pull away. "Do you? Want to?“
To answer him, Will look Hannibal’s greasy face in his hands and planted a kiss on his disproportionately wide mouth. Hannibal responded by sticking out his tongue until it touched Will’s palate, then flopped it about with all the convulsive vigor of a freshly landed trout.
Will, still holding onto his face, pushed him away a bit.
“Is something wrong?” Hannibal asked, his lips glossy with way too much spit.
Will tried to think of a tactful way to put it. “Have you ever kissed anyone before?”
“Of course I have,” Hannibal said. “What kind of silly question is that? I’m 50!”
Will rephrased it. “Had you ever kissed anyone by the time you were this age?”
The blush returned to Hannibal’s cheeks. “No, I suppose not.”
Will cast around in his memory, trying to find whatever recollection he had of intimate encounters he’d had over the years. He’d never exactly been a player, but he knew he’d slept with people. He’d been married, for Christ’s sake! Hadn’t he? When he tried to delve into any of those memories, they retreated from him. The only incidents he could recall were kissing two girls in high school, which was the extent of his “experience” before the time he finally… he finally did what? Something sexual happened in college, didn’t it?
“I can’t remember anything sexy past this age,” he sighed. “Can you?”
Hannibal let his eyes flutter closed for a few moments. “In a way, yes, but it feels like something I read about and mostly forgot.”
“I guess that explains why you’re such a terrible kisser,” Will said.
Hannibal gasped so hard, his mullet swayed with indignation.
After dinner, they went for a stroll through the Lions Square, as everyone in Heraklion called it despite any official name. The street was packed with tourists and locals alike, and music poured out of little cafes and bars until no single one of them could be heard. Hannibal had said it would be easier to hide in bustling cities and towns than in quiet villages. Their faces would go by in a blur along with everyone else’s. Like the different strains of music, nobody would be able to pick them out among so many others.
Will was just pleasantly tipsy and warm-faced, and feeling somewhat daring. So he asked, “How old were you when you lost your virginity?”
Hannibal pursed his lips and seemed to be deep in thought for a few moments. “What are you defining as virginity?”
“The first time you had sex with someone,” Will said.
“What are you defining as sex?”
Will rolled his eyes. “This isn’t a Congressional hearing, Hannibal. Just think back to the first time you felt like you were having sex with someone.”
“I suppose that would be when I was sixteen. A boy one year ahead of me used his mouth on me, under the table, as I was sitting in the library. I was reading the treatise On Ancient Medicine.”
Will stopped in the middle of the street to gape at him. “In the library?”
“It was a quiet place to read,” Hannibal said.
Will gaped harder at him. “I’m talking about the blow job, not the treatise! Did you get in trouble with the librarian for making noise?”
“I didn’t make noise,” Hannibal said with a shrug. “It wasn’t an unpleasant experience, but neither was it an occasion for fireworks. I returned the favor with my hand later in his dorm room, because it seemed like the accepted thing to do.”
“Leave it to you to think of manners above all.” Will laughed.
Hannibal walked closer to him, not quite looping their arms together but making sure their elbows bumped one another. “And you? Was it a tender romance?”
Will snorted. “Hardly. I was nineteen. She was my anthropology professor and I’d handed in an essay late because my dad was ill. I put on a bit of a show about it, turned on the water works thinking I’d get an extension, but ah…well…”
Hannibal gasped in exaggerated outrage. “Will! Your professor!”
“Did it right there on her desk. I barely even got, you know, in her before it was all over. I was so embarrassed, I practically flew out of her office. Thank God it was the end of the semester.”
“Do you regret it?” Hannibal asked.
Will shrugged. “I suppose it would have been nice to have my first be someone I loved, but I’m not sure I even really believed in that kind of love until—” He cut himself off and glanced sideways at Hannibal.
Hannibal gave him a small smile. “I feel just the same. On both counts.”
They stopped at the fountain in the square. Hannibal launched into its history and something to do with aqueducts, and the figures depicted in the fountains multiple sides, but Will was just watching his face in profile. He thought he would like to kiss Hannibal, right there in front of everyone, but didn’t dare draw the attention from the crowd. There was only so much hiding in plain sight they could do.
Hannibal plucked a coin from his breast pocket. “The god Apollo,” he said, showing the face on one side of the coin. “An ancient priest named Chryses prayed and asked him to kill the Greeks.”
“Why do you know so much about people who want to kill Greeks?” Will asked.
“I spent a lot of time in libraries,” Hannibal said with a small wink.
Will rolled his eyes. “Did Apollo answer the priest’s prayer?”
“In spectacular fashion,” Hannibal said, and flipped the coin into the fountain.
“What did you wish for?” Will asked.
Hannibal reached down and squeezed his hand before letting go again. “If I told you, it wouldn’t come true.”
No one would know. No one in the FBI, no one in Interpol. No one would check among the most closed royalty meetings in the world at one of the most exclusive hotels in the world: the Capri Palace in Anacapri, Italy.
It was the bike that caught his eye. A vintage Triumph Trophy in pristine condition, all sleek lines and gleaming chrome, the most gorgeous piece of kit. The sight of it, parked right outside his apartment block, stopped Nigel in his tracks as he ambled out the front door, his cigarette left dangling from his lips unlit.
When asked later, Nigel would claim he didn’t notice the rider at first because he only ever had eyes for Adam, for his Star. But the truth was, he was so in lust with the bike that it took a few moments for the shapely pair of legs straddling it to come into his awareness. When they did, though, Nigel couldn’t help the way his gaze slid up slim, denim-clad calves, to the pleasingly thick thighs that rested either side of the beautiful beast of a machine beneath them.
Nigel swallowed. He might be spoken for, and happily too, but there was nothing wrong with appreciating beauty where he found it, and the combination of this bike and that body were doing things to him he had every intention of enjoying.
He let his eyes rise further, to a taut, flat stomach only highlighted by the white cotton shirt covering it. Somebody’s got a James Dean fetish, Nigel thought as he clocked the red jacket that completed the ensemble. He’d always been more of a McQueen man but he had to admit, the look was a good one, showcasing the rider’s lean, lithe form in spectacular fashion. He let his gaze linger for a moment longer on the view, the sinful curve of the rider’s body as he leaned over the handlebars, one lithe, fine-boned hand overhanging gracefully.
One lithe, fine-boned hand that looked oddly familiar to Nigel…
When Adam Towers had come to the house to interview them about the cloning patent, Elias had been annoyed. The man was annoyingly attractive, beautiful even – certainly sure to turn people’s heads. His voice was annoyingly pleasant – the British accent sure to be a hit with the local ladies. And he was annoyingly interested in the what Franz had to say about the patent. In fact they spent all their time together.
Elias contented himself to kicking around the house, very subtle in his observations of the man who was to be their guest for a few days. The very annoying man.
Adam finally wanted to talk to him on the second day.
“I’m very busy! You’re very presumptive to think I would be available.” Elias scalded him for his rudeness.
Adam grinned. “Oh? I apologise. I only assumed as you spent all of yesterday tailing me.”
Elias flustered and protested. Adam laughed and then his features softened. He teased that maybe Elias was in some way interested in him. Preposterous, of course!
By the third evening, Adam sought him out as he fed the chickens. They talked for hours. Adam only laughed with him and not at him. He also stood annoyingly close and Elias finally had to excuse himself to privately relieve the problem this caused.
Two more days of questions for his brothers and free time spent with Elias until Adam, annoyingly, had to leave.
Elias walked him to out, wringing his hands. Anxious as he handed Adam a hastily wrapped gift. Adam looked surprised, then smiled as he opened it.
“You write a lot of notes. This is a nicer pen. Very durable.”
“That’s… really thoughtful. Thank you.”
“Perhaps you could also use it to write me letters.” Elias huffed.
Adam stepped close to him – annoyingly close – and then took his hand, scrawling numbers on it with the pen.
“My number.” Adam said, before pulling Elias into a kiss. Their bodies pressed together and Elias had to try annoyingly hard not to spend himself when Adam moaned into his mouth. Finally Adam pulled back, leaving Elias breathless and sweating with need. “Call me when you get to London.”
“I… I’m not going to London…” Elias replied, confused.
“Yes you are.” Adam grinned and stepped into the taxi.
Adam typed the number into his phone with shaking fingers and took a deep breath.
He could do this.
He’d spent three hours with Harlan this afternoon carefully rehearsing this phone call. He had several contingencies: One for being put on hold, one for a rejection, and one for if he got the job. Harlan had insisted he was a shoe-in and that they practice the last contingency a few extra times.
With a nod to himself, he hit the call.
“What?”
“Uh.” Adam hadn’t rehearsed a conversation starting with what, the administrative assistant was supposed to say hello or hello, Dr. Simms’ office. The man on the other end of the line didn’t sound like Dr. Simms’ administrative assistant, but maybe she was sick? Maybe it was her day off? Maybe-
“You gonna talk or just wheeze at me?”
Adam began tapping on his thigh. This wasn’t what he rehearsed. The other person was supposed to say hello then Adam would do his speech. But Harlan had said no matter what happened, Adam should at least get through the first bit.
Adam filled his lungs with air and rushed through what he’d rehearsed. “Hello Dr. Simms, this is Adam Raki. I was interviewed Tuesday about the job with imaging and wanted to know if I’m still in consideration for the job mapping Uranus.”
Adam’s heartbeat began to slow. He’d gotten it out with no mistakes or hesitations. Harlan would be proud.
There was a snort in his ear. “That really depends on what you look like.”
Adam frowned. “I, uh, I don’t see what my appearance has to do with anything, but I’m told I’m fastidious. And that’s a good quality in a-”
“Does that mean thorough, darling?” The voice in Adam’s ear rumbled. Adam found he liked the way it sounded, even if it was a bit odd.
“Yes.”
Adam heard another deep laugh. “So you’ll really get in there? Inspect every nook and cranny?”
What an odd way to inquire about the pixel clarity. Perhaps the administrative assistants in the office weren’t versed on technical terms. “I…yes? I believe I can thoroughly scan Uranus for you.”
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