Hannibal’s eyes narrowed slightly in thought. The opportunity to watch Will going through his emotional contortions was delightful: his displeasure, his disgust, the ache it left behind his eyes and at the base of his skull. Hannibal wondered how high his fever was climbing and whether moments like these—moments in which Will used his brain to its full extent—caused it to reach an even higher pitch.
The temptation to reach out and place the backs of his fingers against the side of Will’s neck or forehead, or even his cheek, was enough to make the soft leather of Hannibal’s gloves creak softly.
It was Will’s job, not his, to see what he could that the evidence hadn’t revealed, but Hannibal indulged him briefly, casting his gaze about. His mind was neatly sorting Will’s words through a sieve of psychoanalysis, bypassing his own instincts until the creak of the wind coming in at the wrong angle made Hannibal tip his head, just slightly, the mask easing enough that his expression would appear even more neutral than usual.
“Will,” he said calmly, waiting until the other man’s eyes were focused on the vicinity of his face, though not his eyes, not now, not when Will felt so exposed, “based on what you have seen today, when would you estimate that the killer had last visited this house?“
Will didn’t need Hannibal to do his job for him. He didn’t need anyone to make the jumps between the dark stain of fact and the spark of indecipherable intuition. Jack had given him the chance to quit, and he’d clung on to the chance for whatever he was worth at the end of it all.
What he wanted – with the dull hollow of hope, and the sudden acrid clarity of comprehension – was a differing conclusion. For the facts to somehow add up differently in the reliable sanity of another man’s mind.
Will lifted his chin in prey-like increments, focused on the tip of the doctor’s ear where the shadow curled deep and distorted. He wanted to step back into the five seconds before this moment, to a place where the silence wasn’t pregnant and a sharp slap in the dark wouldn’t feel like exposure. The click of his holster unclipping had almost the same effect, drawn unconscious and blind in the dark.
"Visited," he managed, an even voice in an ocean of uneven impulses, "implies completion."
Will plowed ahead like a ship set on its course, and Hannibal trailed unerringly in his wake, amused and patient. Whatever stormy thoughts rumbled through Will’s mind remained unspoken, but he bristled as blatantly as any hermit forced into interaction. A hint of Asperger’s made him ill-suited to social niceties, yet he had learned to play the game (when he wasn’t ignoring it wholly).
“Spanish pigs are lean, almost as lean as wild boar, and they are fed on a diet of acorns. Their meat takes on a subtle, rich flavor which pigs fed on an inadequate diet in confined conditions lack. There is also a matter of ethics,” Hannibal added casually. “I prefer knowing that the pig lived as natural a life as possible. What we put into our bodies has an impact on how we can expect them to perform.“
The wind was sharp, but Hannibal’s blood was northern, and the briskness only registered as pleasant.
"But you can judge the difference, or lack thereof, for yourself.”
Will’s fingers looked rough against the twine. Hannibal’s started to loosen the ties on his own bundle. One step behind, one beat out of rhythm.
“Your performance or his?” Will muttered. The analogy was infinitely transferable, and anything where the talking animal got eaten at the end was a pretty apt fable for life.
Will considered himself a quiet man subject to disjointed eruptions, feelings boxed into the pressure-cooker of circumstance, expectation or gaucherie. There would always be a deep vein of coded childishness in him, the taught temptation to tantrum so long as his work and dedication was nothing less than exemplary. But he’d also been living in the real world for almost a decade now – the gritty, rusted-out place where he was just one more run-down, almost-normal face; the sum of how much his muscles could lift rather than how aesthetically they could lift it.
Will let out the cold air in his lungs and folded the paper sharply back over the first glint of a bad bargain.
“I put on shoes, Mr Lecter."
Describe the scent of your shampoo.
Hardcover or softcover?
First thing you wash in the shower?
Most played song on your iPod/iTunes?
What’s the last thing you ate?
Favorite chapstick flavor?
Hannibal had steeled himself to deal with the dogs, but they barreled past him with nary a glance, sparing him the indignity of feigning interest in their slavering. He watched them bound off, seemingly within boundaries known only to them and their owner, and returned his gaze to Will.
Sweatpants were not precisely a fine suit, but they were more appropriate to a social visit than threadbare boxers. Hannibal was unsure whether the new shirt was an improvement over the old one, but it did appear somewhat less sweat-stained. As Will walked towards—and past—him, Hannibal fell into step, holding out one of the two packets wrapped in butcher’s paper and tied carefully with butcher’s twine. (Good-quality cold cuts deserved to follow an aesthetic theme.)
“My sandwich will be somewhat less substantial than yours,” Hannibal admitted with a wry smile, allowing Will to stay that half-pace ahead of him. Perhaps he would realize just how impolite he was being; perhaps he wouldn’t. “I do hope you enjoy Spanish ham.“
"I don’t know. Are Spanish pigs any different to other pigs?"
It occurred to him just before they reached the end of his choppy little driveway (a blast of onshore wind came to greet them, worming through the knit of his pants): with legs two inches longer than his own, Hannibal Lecter should have caught up with him easily. Will was walking with determination, no particular desire to prolong whatever conversation they were about to have, or to suggest that a sandwich from Maryland - or from Spain, for that matter - somehow made it acceptable, to come digging around for someone who clearly wanted to remain lost. But Lecter was choosing to keep out of pace rather than giving him space; lodging their rhythm stubbornly (nimble and precise, to the point of daintiness) in an effort to make Will slow, to yield the extra step.
Nervousness or casual power-play?
Will huffed out a laugh, out of sync with the conversation. Nervousness wasn’t their business. It wasn’t good business. And it certainly wasn’t in the straight lines of twine, wrapped with military precision around sharply folded paper.
Food was food, but Will wasn’t buying it.
He wasn’t selling it, either. He ground his jaw closed on the observations, wrapped up in the safety of justifications that always sounded saner, less paranoid, in the mirror confines of his skull.
Will kept his step ahead as the isolated property bled out into rockier land, the occasional speck on the water disappearing entirely, or gradually gaining shape into hard metal lines that glinted in the sun. But even on his own terms, in a place he’d known well before and come to know again, the silence and the eyes on his back were drawing Will’s shoulderblades together inch by inch, until he felt like wool turned tight on a spindle, muscles threatening to fray with the tension. When they reached an old stone wall, forgotten boundaries to a property that had fallen down well-before the jet skiers and the summer camps, Will’s face was abruptly angry to match his abrupt stop. The shape of the shore was more distinct from here, and he traced it, trying subtly to crack a crick in his neck that wasn’t there.
He slipped a finger under the twine as he waited for Hannibal to catch up, distorting and unraveling its symmetry in a proxy for its undaunted origin.
//rīdēns.
//prandium.
//quis garum in lectum ferat?
//mens sana non est necessaria.
//faciēs tua non est necessaria.
//rudis.
//rīdēns.
//et speciōsus terminus sānitātis.
//mens sana non est necessaria.
//faciēs tua non est necessaria.
// think if we wrote this in Latin, I could swap it for my thesis?//Hoc dignitas attentassent est.
//et speciōsus terminus sānitātis.
It would be fair to call Will Graham a prairie dog wearily easing into and out of his den, far too attuned to danger for his own good. But prairie dogs didn’t drink themselves into early deaths, nor could they muster the degree of poise Will embodied when he was at his most crotchety. It would have been easy to give in to the urge to grin, to bare his teeth, to put the fear into Will’s sharp, guarded eyes.
Hannibal nearly praised the angle of Will’s hips before he caught himself. If he got ahead of his quarry, Will would disappear back into his warren with a flick of his tail and the loss of a priceless opportunity.
“I will do that regardless of whether you prefer walking barefoot or not,” Hannibal said instead, wondering just how embittered Will Graham had become. There was nothing in him of the seventeen-year-old prodigy at first glance, only cagey, betrayed eyes and the type of mouth angle that belonged on an octogenarian sailor at some drafty bar.
“I apologize for not calling, but your number was unlisted. I did bring an early lunch, if you would be willing to walk and eat? I thought that if I ended up wasting your time, I could at least compensate you in some small part with a good sandwich.”
Will looked like he was going to say something, a halting pause in his shoulders and mouth. This hadn’t gone the way all the previous visits had; this was off-script, missing too many of the pieces, and too early in the morning (even if the sun was good and high in the sky). He swallowed in a false gesture of decision, and glanced one more time between Lecter’s car and Lecter, snorting quietly.
“If you’re allowed a good sandwich."
Will had never gotten into the habit of ‘a good’ anything, and he didn’t think times had changed so very much. But he let the screen door swing shut, without waiting for a reply, and backed away into the cool certainty of the crumbling house.
A few minutes later, Will had splashed two rounds of cold water on his face, then given up and put his head under the faucet. He swapped out the slept-in t-shirt for a fresh one, and found something more substantial than boxers to deal with the wind which whipped up off the lake.
The dogs preceded him out of the front door when it pushed open, careening off towards the surrounding landscape on different length legs. Which, a couple of seconds later, only left the two men and the sound of animal play, standing in the awkward camaraderie of the front yard.
Will didn’t lock the house behind him. There was no-one out here, and nothing worth stealing in there – not even records. Hannibal Lecter had been back to his car, and something about that felt permanent and unsettling. Will refused to look at what he was carrying, fixing his gaze on the edge of the lake a mile away, and began to walk.
This suit was new, before its first dry-cleaning. Hannibal looked down at the crimson smear and was nearly irritated. Then, Will’s blood was soaking into the wool, digging deep, and Hannibal knew that it would remain below the surface long after the visible staining was removed. That thought alone almost brought a smile to his lips.
“I cannot seem to find a signal,” Hannibal murmured, pocketing the gun with what he hoped was a non-professional’s absentminded touch. He ignored the manner in which Will was focusing his unstable sight past him in the direction of the boathouse, fiddling with the phone before finally giving up. “Perhaps if we drive out to the main road—"
A set of headlights appeared at the very end of the long drive. Serendipity.
“We need to get you into the Bentley, Will. Now.”
Not pique.
Will heard the faint grind of an engine, unwelcome déjà vu that dry-chambered a second shot of adrenaline to his nerves. Hannibal was already urging him up, hands under his shoulders, and Will exhaled hard through his nose so he wouldn’t yell as he shoved his heels into the dirt, getting some weak traction.
The need to say something, hours of training and lecturing the training, facts that might somehow make a difference to their survival (he had the badge, even a temporary one) was drowned out by the taste of blood in his mouth.
Will focused on moving: one foot in front of the other, trusting Dr Lecter’s hands to shove his forward motion in the right direction as they stumbled across the driveway. Behind them the car was accelerating into the turn, probably no more than half a minute away from their vantage point, and Will fell against the doctor twice on their slippery short-cut down the bank, pumping a fresh glut of blood over his fingers.
The Bentley opened automatically when they reached it, no flash of lights or telltale beep, and Will had just enough time to see a gray SUV top the curve before he was being pressed into the back. His chest burned, and the tense seconds between the sound of his door closing and Dr Lecter sliding into the front crawled, timed with the ragged beat of his breathing.
It was a straight shot down the bank. An easy, pedestrian kill.
