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Will Graham walks past Hannibal into his office, and with him comes the familiar scent of sweat, motor oil, dog, and something feverishly sweet. He walks – strides, really, hands protected by his pockets and chin tucked into his chest – past Hannibal without even a perfunctory glance and takes his seat on the armchair.
His armchair, because at that point, Hannibal can no longer remember a time where Will Graham’s scent had not been embedded into the soft leather. The sourness of Franklyn Froideveaux’s ambition, the fermentation of Bella Crawford’s cancer, the bitterness of Margot Verger’s fear; all of those erased in favour of Will Graham’s aftershave, and underneath that, the odour of someone undeniably in prolonged fear.
“Will,” Hannibal says cordially, closing the door with a quiet snick of the latch and a considerably louder click of the lock, and turns to face the room. The lights are dim because Will Graham prefers it that way, and Hannibal is considerate enough to account for his patient’s comfort.
Enough, he thinks, to account for comfort. Not enough to do much else. Hannibal is a gentleman, but his standards for service and morality have never quite been matched by anyone else. Looking at Will Graham’s drawn and pale face, he sees the promise of companionship. Of understanding. Not quite yet, but soon.
He inhales and lays his eyes on Will Graham. It is the second time this week Will has walked into his office, and it will be the second time this week he walks out without a solid memory attached. The strobe light and metronome are safely tucked into the chest of deep drawers by the wall. He will retrieve those later. First, a conversation will not go amiss. Will is, after all, a client, and it would be remiss and rude of Hannibal to take his time without giving something back in return. So his job first, extracurriculars later.
“Dr. Lecter,” Will says, equally reserved. Something about his tone is off, and Hannibal double-takes to scrutinise his expression, an elegant tilt of his head while crossing the room to sit in the armchair opposite to Will.
For the first time in a long while, Hannibal Lecter sees a hint of anger in Will’s face, instead of the fear-apprehension-anxiety he has so grown used to. His palms sweat – a bodily instinct he unfortunately cannot train himself out of – but he forces himself to keep them folded over each other resolutely on his knee.
“How have you been?” Hannibal asks, after a pause. He keeps his eyes on Will’s. In the time that they have known each other, Hannibal can count on one hand the frequency that Will has deigned to meet his eyes.
Willingly, he must add. A seizing Will cannot, unfortunately, be held accountable for his making eye-contact with anyone.
It is a shock, then, that Will decides to lift his chin and meet Hannibal’s gaze head-on. His eyes are a clear, confident blue. They bear no traces, no betrayal, of the fever in his brain, or the paranoia that wrecks his body daily. Will takes his time glaring at Hannibal, never breaking eye contact, and Hannibal is enraptured and unable to look away.
Beautiful, cunning boy, he thinks, and knows how the next hour will play out.
“Dr. Lecter,” Will says through gritted teeth. A vein pulses in his temple. Hannibal is nearly distracted by the movement, the viridity; he can almost smell the blood running. But if Will Graham is making such an effort to meet someone’s eyes, then, well, Hannibal would hardly begrudge him the opportunity to see.
Hannibal raises a polite eyebrow. “Will?”
“Dr. Lecter,” Will says again, after taking a deep breath. His jaw unclenches and the vein subsides back into his skin. “I was thinking,” he says. “About Abigail Hobbs and paternity.” He relaxes back into the cushion of the chair, but the tension never slides out of his body. An act, a pretence at ease. Ease that Will Graham has forgotten. The breath he had taken is held, and Hannibal subconsciously starts to count a series of eights until Will Graham finally loses that stress.
1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8. 2-2-3-4-5-6-7-8.
If Hannibal has it his way, it’ll be until at least the second half of their session before Will slumps in his chair and ceases to be appropriately conscious. Awake, yes, and de-stressed – but only by Hannibal’s efforts.
“Paternity,” Hannibal echoes. He waits.
“Paternity,” Will Graham says after a while, decidedly louder and more aggressive. “Paternity, surrogacy and responsibility. Do you want to know what I’ve found out?”
Hannibal uncrosses his legs and switches the top leg when crossing them again. His hands, slightly damp, return to their position on his knee. He cocks his head in a show of mild interest. Internally, if he were not consciously keeping count, his heart would have begun to race.
“Will?” He says, producing a close-lipped smile.
“Abigail Hobbs killed Nicholas Boyle,” Will pronounces. Then, he frowns. “I’ve said this before, I think.” Now, he looks away, frowning, then shoots Hannibal a suspicious look. Hannibal nods his head affirmatively. Will shakes his head, and a lock of curls fall into his eyes. He makes no move to push his hair away. Hannibal’s fingers itch. Will’s foot shakes where it scuffs the dark wooden flooring. Hannibal can feel his encompassing want to move, to escape Hannibal’s scrutiny and attention.
He smells sour with accusation. 7-2-3-4-5-6-7-8.
“You knew this,” and Hannibal inclines his head a fraction of an inch. It’s enough to confirm what Will is saying anyway. His clear eyes darken further with anger. “You kept this from me.” Will’s face breaks into a bitter smile. “And I know something is very wrong, because I remember saying this, I remember having this conversation, and your smug little smile over there is telling me everything I need to know.”
Hannibal’s left index finger taps imperceptibly on his thigh. They’ve completed their first eight of four-eighths. Nearly four minutes. Will’s eyes flick to his hands and away again.
“I kept it from you, and by extension Jack Crawford to protect Abigail,” Hannibal says easily.
“Yes, I know this, because you’ve told me this before.”
“Then I wonder why we’re having this conversation again.” A lie, but Hannibal adores his little untruths and misdirections. Who better to test his ability than the man with a bizarre aptitude for empathy, who can sniff a lie on a suspect a state away? Poor Abel Gideon, to have tried so hard just to be shot down by Will Graham’s unforgiving integrity. Hannibal smiles with practised reassurance. “Had a change of heart, Will? Is Jack Crawford on his way to arrest me for obstruction of justice? Should I contact my lawyer now?”
The uneasiness of Will’s frown fades into confusion, then acceptance, then defeat. Anger in the shadows under his eyes. A bitter twist of his lips. He shakes his head again, and another lock of curls falls behind his glasses.
“You – I’m sorry, Dr. Lecter. I came in midway through putting my thoughts together, so if I seem disorganised, it’s entirely my fault.” Will smiles painfully, disconcertingly. His fingers grip the armrests, pinching the leather under his nails. “I hope you’ll be understanding about this.”
“Of course.” Hannibal taps his knee again.
“I want to raise a hypothetical, Dr. Lecter.” Will’s eyes, focused to the side of Hannibal’s face, just above his right ear, sharpens. Hannibal sniffs the air inconspicuously, and is bizarrely comforted by the saccharine sickness he can smell.
“Certainly, Will.” Will’s pinched farce of a smile wavers into a grimace that looks more at ease on him.
“Hypothetically,” – and Hannibal has no reservations that whatever Will has to say next will brutally hammer in the highest degree of truth he can reveal without compromising his safety – “you are an FBI agent.”
Will’s grimace flicks into a nasty grin. “And this FBI agent – you – has been hunting a notorious serial killer for the better part of, oh, I don’t know, two years?” A reasonable timeline, seeing as Miriam Lass disappeared from Will’s classroom around that time.
If Hannibal hadn’t already been sure, now the next forty or so minutes would be glaringly clear to see. He taps his knee.
“You’ve written – updated – most of this killer’s profile already. Someone charming enough to hide the disarming sense of disquiet their presence brings. Someone educated, likely with a background of surgery. A surgeon, a former surgeon.” – Hamfisted, as Hannibal predicted – “Someone manipulative, perhaps familiar with psychiatry, someone refined in the arts, someone with a kind of complex that makes them struggle with losing power or control, but doesn’t let themselves be defined by it.” Will Graham’s foot stops shaking then. Still tense, but markedly less twitchy.
Hannibal hums. Will is in a headspace that will not benefit from distractions. When he looks up, his eyes are glazed over.
“Someone so manipulative, they could have been able to… foster a sort of environment to blind the agent. Take a girl who killed and trick her into depending on them. Take a man who killed and trick him into depending on them. Weave themselves into the net of criminal investigation so thoroughly and inconspicuously that suspicion will never fall on him. Them.”
Will loses some of that fogginess. You meaning I, them being you.
Hannibal hums. “Are the gender-neutral pronouns an effort to keep from directly accusing someone?”
Will regains his glare. 8-2-3-4-5-6-7-8. Hannibal taps his finger.
“Does it sound like anyone you might know, Dr. Lecter? Because that’s the profile I’ve submitted to the Bureau, and it’s awfully specific, don’t you think?”
“You did say that ‘they’ would be so interwoven with the FBI that ‘they’ wouldn’t be a suspect at all,” Hannibal replies amusedly, a crooked smile playing on his lips. Will clutches the arms of the chair so hard that Hannibal is partly worried for his leather, and partly amazed that it hasn’t yet torn. The cloying stench of fever spikes so abruptly that Hannibal frowns concernedly, momentarily, before smoothing his brows. Will does not look up.
Hannibal speaks softly. “If you wish to accuse me, Will, you hardly needed this meandering round-a-bout. Ask me, and I’ll tell you. One does wonder, however, why you would come if you were so certain I was moonlighting as a serial killer.” His lips twitch. He bites back his cruelty. Every word produced is gentle.
Will chews on his lips, and now Hannibal can see the wounds bitten raw lining his mouth. Will bites through one of those wounds, and the smell of fresh blood emanates in the enclosed room. Hannibal quietly takes an open-mouthed breath.
“I’m not thinking straight, Dr. Lecter,” Will confesses. “I’m losing time and memory. I see dead men in the corners of my vision. I hear sounds that don’t exist. I’m seeing your name written all over my case files on the Chesapeake Ripper, and it seems impossible to me, but I can’t trust what I’m seeing.” He looks up, vulnerability bleeding from his pores. Hannibal doesn’t lose his barely-there smile.
“Are you the Ripper, Dr. Lecter?”
Brave boy. His voice is unwaveringly vulnerable. Hannibal taps his finger for the fifth time. Almost twenty minutes. The hour is now half gone. It's time to wrap things up.
“No, Will. I’m not the Chesapeake Ripper.”
He sounds definitive and assured to himself, and clearly, to Will Graham as well. Calm, steady, trustworthy. All the markings of a good psychiatrist, and Hannibal is nothing if not fastidious in his practice. Will releases all the breath he had been holding, rigidity leaving his joints, and slumps in his chair. “Okay, okay. Good. God. That’s good.” Will scrubs at his eyes roughly, knuckles holding up the thin glasses. Hannibal feels perfunctorily satisfied. He stands up and walks over to Will, taking out an embroidered handkerchief for Will to wipe his sweat with.
“I’m glad I was able to allay your concerns,” Hannibal says nonchalantly. He bends down to take Will’s glasses off and hands over the cloth. Will clutches at it with trembling fingers, white silk sliding over his calloused fingers. He soaks up the sweat at his temples, then looks up, straight into Hannibal’s eyes, and freezes.
Hannibal smiles a shark-toothed grin and palms his pocket.
The uncertainty, the trust, bleeds out of the corners of Will’s eyes. “Oh my god,” he breathes, stiff and tense all over again.
Hannibal brings an uncapped syringe up to jab into Will’s neck.
“I’ll advise you to relax, dear Will. It causes temporary paralysis – numbness, strictly speaking; you can move but it’ll be quite difficult to – but I’m not trying to kill you. This hasn’t had any long-term ill effects on – well,” Hannibal says, depressing the plunge. He takes it out and doesn't bother wiping the thin stream of blood that leaks out from the injection site. He walks to the drawers and withdraws the strobe light and metronome.
“You’re – you,” Will stutters, eyelids fluttering. His fingers shake.
“The door is locked, so any escape you want to make will have to be through the window,” Hannibal continues, conversationally. He turns back to face Will once the equipment has been plugged in. “With your current mobility, you wouldn’t be able to outpace me. I don’t want to hurt you, dear Will, but if you force my hand I certainly shall. I really wouldn’t recommend that, so please just sit still. I promise this won’t hurt.” He makes an effort to sound earnest.
“You lied to me,” Will says, and he sounds near tears. No question about this. What does it say about you, that he doesn’t even question what might be worst for him?
“Yes,” Hannibal says. Frequently. Essentially.
“You knew,” Will says.
“Yes,” Hannibal says, again. He looks discerningly at Will, and allows Will to glean what he can through Hannibal’s depthless eyes. Will looks, because it is all he can do now. Hannibal retreats back to his chair and sits down. A sixth tap.
A look of contentment rests on his face.
“How many times have I been here?” Will asks, with an unsuppressed horror in his voice. “How many times have I done this? How many times have you let me walk in to say the same things?” His voice pitches at the end.
Exemplary. Not exactly the same though, he notes. Fourth-try Will was more brazen than his previous counterparts. It is a shockingly new experience to be outright accused by Will.
Hannibal smiles. “Four, now. Two Mondays and two Thursdays.” He flicks the strobe light on. “You’re a remarkably smart boy, Will. Every attempt I’ve made at erasing your concerns about me have failed.” Will starts to blink erratically at the pulsing light. “Unfortunately, you’re also remarkably foolish. I suppose I have done my job well as an anchor, that you would come to me regardless of your suspicions.” He hmms, calm as Will starts to sweat all over, the ridiculous aftershave fading with the stink of hormones.
The room reeks of acrid fear and blood. Hannibal relishes in Will's bouquet.
“Wh-you gon’ do?” Will slurs. “Why wait?”
“I have plans for Abigail, my dear, that concern you. They haven’t been set yet, so I can’t allow you to leave me right now with the information you have.” He shrugs elegantly. “I’m sorry to do it, but needs must.”
"Yer' pathological," Will says, and it's admirable that he manages all those syllables even as his tongue grows thick in his mouth. "Always returnin' to the scene of the crime."
"Don't be petty, Will," Hannibal chides sharply.
“Am I gon’ remember you? Ches-peake Ripper? Will I think it’s some-un else?” Will starts to lisp, his 's's sounding like 'th's.
“You'll eventually ask yourself: 'who else could it be?'” Hannibal’s smile widens as he turns on the metronome. His counting slows to sync with the consistent tick-tick-tick. 8-2-3-4-5-6-7-8. A seventh tap. Hannibal stops counting. The metronome will count for him. “Jimmy Price? Frederick Chilton? A former surgeon, tsk, you’ve revealed your whole hand, darling.”
Will’s face tightens and goes pallid.
“I trust’d ya,” Will says, lips barely moving.
“I know you did,” Hannibal says, delighted. He hasn't been so entertained in years.
Will’s eyes move under his eyelids in sync with the metronome. Tick-tick-tick. Left-right-left. In the dimly lit room, the sweat on Will’s face looks like tears. Hannibal can almost smell them; salty, fresh, alkaline. He’ll cry before the hour is up. Hannibal can hardly wait.