Chapter Text
Loin.
Leg.
Belly.
Hock.
The pig’s head sits on the other side of the table, gazing at him with death-clouded eyes, mouth set in a permanent smile. His knife and his saw make quick work of the rest, each segment of the body broken down to primals, to useful muscle groups, to well over a hundred meals if he gets creative. He works steadily, confidently. The room he’s in is cold, but he doesn’t mind.
His playlist ran out half an hour ago, but he hasn’t noticed. There is only the knife, the parting of muscle, the faint animal smell of chilled flesh. His workspace is clean and carefully organized to his preferences. There’s nothing extraneous, nothing distracting, nothing to interrupt. It’s taken a long time to get to this point, and he appreciates it.
A chime pierces the quiet, the front door opening. Will Graham puts down his knife, rinses his hands, and goes out to meet his customer.
“Capons? Tricky, but you’ve got a few options.”
The man behind the butcher counter can’t be more than than forty. If Hannibal had to guess, he’d say the jaded but nearer side of thirty-five. His dark hair, restrained by an unflattering hair net, is dark, untouched by premature greying, and tries to curl free of its confinement. A pale scar rips across his right cheek, a bright line in the thicket of his half-grown scruff, and he favors one shoulder. It’s subtle; an old injury, one Hannibal suspects the butcher barely notices these days, but it must impact how he handles the dead weight of a carcass.
“Not something I can order directly from the shop, I take it,” Hannibal summarizes.
“Mm, probably not.” His eyes are blue and pointedly averted. The butcher makes eye contact three times in a given transaction: the start, the finish, and some randomly chosen, electrifying moment in between. He doesn’t have a name tag on, and has never offered his name. It feels gauche to ask, at this point. “Or not if you want them in the next few weeks, anyway. Bit of a specialty item,” he adds in a drawl, the barest hint of a southern accent creeping in. “Most of the local farmers do only short runs on direct sale. I’d have to put a request in.”
“Please do,” Hannibal says. “I’m willing to wait.”
The butcher cocks a brow, and there it is, the moment he meets Hannibal’s gaze. Holds it. “No rush?”
“No rush,” Hannibal says. “And I enjoy the opportunity to patronize the shop.”
The butcher snorts and turns away, grabbing up a pad. Paper and pencil; charmingly old fashioned, rather like the entire shop. “Right. How many?”
“How many would make it worth the effort?”
The butcher shrugs. “Six to ten,” he says.
“Then ten,” Hannibal says.
The butcher glances back at him.
“I have room in my freezer,” Hannibal adds.
“Right.” He scratches a note. His handwriting, from what Hannibal can see from this angle, could be called chicken scratch only charitably. “Anything else?”
“Half a pound of leaf lard,” Hannibal says. “A pound of duck legs, and a beef tongue.” All look fresh and pristine in the case; if he had to guess, they were all pieced out within the last twenty-four hours, barring perhaps the lard.
The butcher nods assent and begins pulling each item. His hands are nimble but callused, and his forearms don’t have the tattoos so common in his profession these days. Really, he doesn’t look like a butcher, though Hannibal knows that’s largely arbitrary. He just lacks a certain flavor that food industry professionals tend to have.
No, there’s something slightly more… academic in his bearing. Strangely intriguing, along with all the rest of him.
It’s tempting to watch the butcher wrap up his purchases, but his attention has certainly outstayed its welcome. Instead, he looks around the shop, at the alterations to signage of specials, a few new displays of locally made condiments, some cookbooks set out with more finesse than seems characteristic of the man behind the counter. There are, of course, other employees. An owner, with taste and opinions of her own. But Hannibal mostly stops by on days when this man is working, and the entire shop breathes with him. The notes that don’t fit are jarring.
Like the daintily executed chalk drawing on one of the boards proclaiming Whole Pig Butchery! with a date next week scrawled below in a looping, feminine hand.
“The shop gives classes?” he asks, on impulse.
The butcher grunts. “New thing,” he says. “It booked up in three days, though, so Margot must be on to something.”
The owner, presumably. Hannibal glances at the butcher, then back at the board.
Instructor: Will Graham .
“Are you teaching?” he asks.
He’s answered first by the pull and snap of a piece of tape, the rustle of butcher paper.
“Yes,” says Will Graham.
Hannibal turns to face him. Will . The name suits. He tries not to look overeager as he pulls a business card from his pocket and sets it on top of the glass case separating them, the same one that Will Graham puts his purchases onto a moment later, tidy packages stacked into the cooler bag Hannibal brings with him every time. “In case there are any cancellations,” he says, when Will eyes the card dubiously. “Surely there’s a waitlist?”
Will looks back up at him, the finale of the interaction. For a long moment, he doesn’t move, and Hannibal is possessed of the strange and thrilling certainty that Will is seeing past the mask he wears, into the depths of him. That there is a connection, something living and furtive, dancing between the synapses of their brains, modulated by hormones, by society, by something far, far deeper.
“Probably,” Will says, finally, and palms the business card. “I’ll let Margot know, Dr. Lecter.”
He disappears into the back.
Hannibal clears his schedule.
The class is a two-day affair the following weekend, held at a local rental venue and starting at eight in the morning, wrapping up in the early afternoon, a light lunch provided. The first day, the confirmation email says, will be dedicated to the large scale: breaking down a hog into primals, subprimals, but nothing beyond that. Sunday will cover the finer piecework and a few recipes for sausage, charcuterie, simple meals. Less interesting, and possibly disappointing; still, attending both will maximize how much time he’ll have to observe Will Graham.
And he would dearly like to take his time.
The other students are, on average, his age, though split into two distinct groups: older hunters, often with a more cosmopolitan spouse who found the class in the first place, and younger tech-types who want to dabble in a new, earthier hobby. He stands out not just because of his accent or his suits, but by the fact that he’s attending alone; the class seems to catch couples, primarily. He can feel Will Graham’s eyes on him the moment he enters, though whenever Hannibal glances his way, the butcher is pointedly looking elsewhere.
The first half hour is for mingling and set up. Laughter ripples through the room, mostly of the nervous type. Hannibal hangs up his suit coat and carefully folds his sleeves back, then washes his hands in one of the deep basin sinks. The space is well laid out, geared towards a higher end of caterer. There are string lights tangled with fake foliage in the false rafters.
When Will tells the group to don gloves, Hannibal refrains. That earns him his first glancing look, halfway to a glare.
There are three halves of pigs, set out on each counter top. One for Will to demonstrate on, the other two for the students. It’s not entirely dissimilar to an anatomy lecture series. Hannibal stands at the back of the crowd around Will’s operating table, as he’s one of the taller students.
“This,” Will says, holding up a blade, “is a boning knife. It’s your workhorse. Flexible blade–” he bends it to demonstrate “--and able to take a very sharp edge. Over time, as you hone and sharpen, the metal will erode, leaving you with this.” He lifts up another blade, same handle, stubbier with a more triangular blade. “It has different uses at every point in its lifecycle. Take care of it, and it’ll take care of you.”
Half the students scribble notes. The others just shuffle on their feet. Hannibal clasps his hands behind his back and watches.
“The first thing you’re going to want to do is get the carcass into more manageable chunks,” Will continues. He has the longer boning knife in hand again, and touches its tip light against the base of the spine, and again behind the shoulder blade. “The head goes off first, usually before you’ll get your hands on it. We’ll talk about what to do with it tomorrow. From here, we take the body apart into the front limbs, thoracic cavity, back legs.” Thoracic cavity comes out close to thorax , and Hannibal’s head tilts slightly. “A lot of folks use a band saw, but that’s not necessary. A hacksaw, at most. The body wants to come apart– you just have to know how to encourage it.”
His knife slips in between vertebrae, then down and out through muscle and skin. The half hog falls into three neat sections. He slows down then, goes over every cut a second time now that he can tilt each piece to show his audience. None of them are going to be able to replicate those cuts with anywhere near that finesse; even Hannibal barely saw him tense his arm, barely saw him press.
He sets aside the front quarters and abdomen for now, turning instead to the hind quarters. “You can leave the ham whole,” Will says, knife sliding along the line of the pelvis, freeing muscle from muscle, “smoke it, cure it. You have to be careful, though. One bad spot spoils the batch.” He disarticulates the femur from the pelvis, rolling the thigh cut-side up onto the table. “Otherwise,” he continues, “you can start to follow these seams here, making smaller cuts that are more easily manageable in the kitchen.”
Fascia parts with a whisper under the tip of the boning knife, exposing flawless flesh, unmarred by any hasty nick of the blade.
And then Will’s hands still, after the briefest of motions takes the knife away from the meat. His gaze sharpens, darkens, and there’s a subtle tensing around his mouth. Under his stubble it’s barely visible, except that it tugs at the bright slash of scar tissue along his cheek.
“Can anybody tell me what this is?”
His voice is as even as it’s been all class, which is to say that it borders on rude with a constancy that is remarkable, and speaks to a great deal of inner control. He resumes cutting, a few quick releases of tissue to bare what he’s been looking at, too fast for the class to have any hope of following. The meat is a rich, deep pink, but scattered across its surface are darker spots, starbursts against the field.
The class is silent. Hannibal knows what he’s looking at, but gives everybody else time to chime in. Nobody even ventures a guess.
“Minor capillary hemorrhages,” Hannibal says.
Will’s gaze lifts to him, but whether he’s impressed or irritated is hard to say. “Industry term is bloodshot , but, yes, that’s what it is.” He quirks a brow. “Do you know what it means?”
“The animal was stressed when it died,” Hannibal says.
“The pig saw the knife coming,” Will agrees. “Slaughter was sloppy .” The final word drips with derision. “For the hunters in here, you’re going to see this fairly commonly. Difficult to avoid. But if you’re getting your meat from a farm, a decent operation isn’t going to result in this. I’m going to need to call this supplier.”
A few of the other students shift uncomfortably. One of the hunters cocks his head. “Does it make the meat taste bad?”
“Not directly, though the adrenaline that accompanies it can. Like I said, with deer, elk, you’re going to run into it pretty much unavoidably. Your goal there is just to minimize it as much as possible. The real quality issue is for making any kind of cured whole-meat product, like prosciutto; any blood still in the meat is a spoilage risk.” A pause. “The rest is ethics.”
Hannibal wonders which aspect matters more to Will Graham.
Soon enough, they’re let loose on their own pigs. The little crowd around Hannibal’s half is hesitant, so he makes the first cuts. Encourages, gently, their explorations. He can feel Will watching him, and catches him scowling more than once as he helps the other group, as he cleans up behind them.
The rasp of the saw as Hannibal cuts through the hock is accompanied by the crackle of oil in a pan; Will starts cooking their lunch while he can’t watch. Intentional, or coincidental? Enjoyed, he thinks, either way.
There are two long tables in the main event space that Will lays out lunch on, multiple plates of various pieces of pork, most prepared the night before. No cooking lessons today, after all. There’s salad, too, and wine. Good wine, though not spectacular. Hannibal drinks his more slowly than the rest of the group.
Will is sitting at the other table. Hannibal tries not to take it personally.
After, Will ferries their carcasses back into cold storage, a standard walk-in that Hannibal nevertheless prefers to imagine as a morgue, each pig loaded into its own sliding drawer. The rest of the class begins to drift off. Hannibal washes his hands one last time, then carefully folds his sleeves down again, dons his suit jacket. Will emerges from the back.
“You’re a skilled teacher,” Hannibal says.
Will brushes past him. “You knew most of what I told you.”
“I did. That doesn’t mean I didn’t benefit from the instruction.”
“Thought you were a psychiatrist, not a physician,” Will says, gathering up the dishes.
“My background is in surgery.”
Will scowls. “Odd career path,” he mutters, not so Hannibal can’t hear, but so his irritation is noted.
“Not as odd as forensic entomology to sustainable butchering,” Hannibal replies.
Will’s scowl turns into a pointed, aggressive glare, there and gone again as he takes everything over to the sinks. Hannibal trails after, only stopping when Will sets the dishes down in the basin and turns on his heel, arms crossed tight over his chest. “I didn’t ask for your help,” he points out, and nods in the direction of the door. There’s only one other student still in the room, coat half-on. “Class is over, Dr. Lecter.”
“Hannibal. Please.”
“No. Whatever it is you think you’re doing right now? No.”
“I’m simply being sociable.” Sociable and intrusive. They both know it. He can feel the walls of Will’s inner forts resisting his incursion. Boiling oil, no doubt. “God forbid we behave like adults.”
“Social pressure to get along doesn’t work on me.” Will’s voice doesn’t waver. He doesn’t look flustered or embarrassed. “Get out. I don’t want to see you here tomorrow.”
“I’ve paid my tuition.”
“Yeah, and you can afford to waste it.” He turns away, perhaps realizing that Hannibal is simply enjoying his sustained attention, regardless of the barbs that come with it.
He must; he walks into the back and doesn’t come back out.
Hannibal honors Will’s request and doesn’t attend the second day of class. Margot Verger sends an email to check in on him, and includes the day’s recipes. Boudin blanc, rillettes, bacon– all things he knows how to make, all things he does not want new recipes for. He has to concede that Will is right; he can afford to have wasted the class fee, except for the renewed distance between himself and the butcher.
But Hannibal is capable of patience. He doesn’t stop back in to the shop until he normally would. His trip falls on a day Will is working, but Will works most days. Hannibal is polite, appropriate, boring enough that he can see Will’s defenses falter, his mind racing to make sense of Hannibal’s unexpected maturity.
He visits again. A third time. Everything is normal.
Until the Chesapeake Ripper displays his latest victim in a butcher shop across town, and Hannibal recommends that Jack Crawford call one Mr. Will Graham to help interpret the scene.