Travel hopefully in life.

eatdrinkmakemerry

“I think I must’ve been about sixteen the last time I did this,” Will grins. When Hannibal arches a curious eyebrow at him, he waves a hand at their surroundings and clarifies, “Lazing around in the woods, passing a bottle of liquor back and forth.”

Hannibal hums his understanding and tilts his face up toward the sun, closing his eyes and basking in the distant warmth. He can feel the heat of Will’s knee where it brushes his arm, too, picked out in stark counterpoint to the crisp air of early spring. “Shame that it’s been so long,” he laments, opening his eyes again when Will nudges his shoulder with the butt of the bottle. “We ought not let decades go by between this time and the next.”

“I could stand to make it a habit,” Will agrees, flashing the sweet, boyish grin that Hannibal favors for its unthinking sincerity. “Provided the company is always this good.”

Gaby frowns, “You’re cooking dinner for the cat?”

Napoleon wrinkles his nose. “The quality of the canned food at the grocery left something to be desired.”

Beside him, Illya nods, face somber and aggrieved.

“Holy shit,” was the first thing Joe said after he’d wrenched the damn thing open, which was clearly not the greeting Webster had been hoping for, from the way his smile stiffened into a proper grimace. Joe blinked at him for a long, bewildered second and then offered by way of recovery, “You’re here.”

“I’m here,” Webster agreed. He swallowed, throat clenching and tongue darting out over the chapped pad of his bottom lip, and then added like he was afraid Joe might’ve forgotten, “You invited me.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Joe replied, flapping a hand at him and stepping back to swing an inviting arm into the hallway behind him. “I know I did, I just - ” he cut off sharply as the words abandoned him—there were shockingly few polite ways to phrase the sentiment ‘I was only half-serious when I said it and the part of me that was serious didn’t really believe you would come’ without offending Webster’s timekeeping abilities at the very least.

“You understand what I mean when I say ‘cozy up,’ don’t you, Peril?”

Ilya canted his head and waved a hand lazily back and forth in the air between them. “Of the two of us, which is fluent in the other’s mother tongue?”

“технически говоря - ” Napoleon started, protest splintering into an affronted laugh when Ilya fished a decorative seed pod out of the potpourri bowl on the table at his back without looking and flung it hard at Napoleon’s face.

“I’m trying to look out for you!” Napoleon chided, sucking his teeth and brushing the pod to the floor. “After Burma, we all know that you’re perfectly capable of fighting your way out of damn near any impossible situation you may find yourself in, but I think we can both agree that it is overall best to simply avoid the necessity, yes?”