Work Text:
Special Agent Will Graham does not remember the last time he felt anything whatsoever.
He wakes up in the morning and his fingers are numb, and his tongue feels thick in his mouth. The light is always muted, even when the sun is already high in the sky and the patterns from the light play over skin that may as well belong to a mannequin. He walks into his bathroom and he drags a brush through his hair -- or, more often, he doesn’t -- and he knows that it tugs on his roots, that it should sting and that his knuckles should tighten on the side of his sink, and that when he sticks his head under the faucet and lets the water run ice-cold that this, too, should sting, that when he brushes his teeth until his gums bleed that he shouldn’t, that he shouldn’t watch his blood run pink under the water with little more than detached curiosity, he knows that, he knows of an entire universe of ‘should’ and ‘ought’ and--
--and he’s smart enough to know better, is the thing, his thing, his curse, his blessing, his livelihood. He knows so many things. He knows arterial spray from the pool left by a slit vein. He knows how to shoot a man in the heart from twenty paces and never miss. He knows what drives an arsonist, a fetishist, a necrophiliac, and the sometimes rare and always aching places where these things intersect. He knows that no man should know what he knows, but then, he’s always had a very uneasy relationship with ‘should.’ He’s smart enough to know that blood in his sink and under his nails and, on occasion, on his scalp, is not the answer, even if he always keeps his sweater-vest on and his shirts buttoned up to the neck and careful at his cuffs. Blood is not the answer, and he’s smart enough to know that what he does in the silence of his empty apartment is not the way out, and he should know better, that eternal refrain.
He should know better, he should know better, but, above all: he’s much, much too smart to bring himself to stop.
“You make them nervous,” says every supervisor he’s ever had, if they say it at all, which sometimes they don’t.
“They ought to be nervous,” is what he says, if they are brave enough to say it, if they aren’t so nervous themselves that he reads it in their glances and the twitches of their pinky fingers and the way they fold their arms and cross their legs and lean back in their chairs, just a little out of his reach.
There’s a moment of silence, that follows, usually, a stillness he can never get back, after this conversation in a half dozen rooms, where he is not the monster hiding under the bed but the baby agents under his care want to believe that he is, and he listens to the clock on the wall ticking and the beat of his own heart and the too-fast breath of his legal superior and factual inferior and he waits and he waits and he times it just right.
“They ought to be nervous,” he says, and slides back in his chair, bares his throat, and it is never a gesture of surrender, “But not of me.”
He always likens crime scenes to ballet.
Eyes are rolled and text messages are sent behind his back, and they’re unsettled by him and laughing at him in equal measure.
There’s a music only he can hear, steps left in blood on soiled carpets and the interval his time to stand, in the forced quiet of the profiler’s alone time, his hands outstretched and the drama of this stage moving before his eyes in the glorious technicolour of the nouvelle vague. He lies and says he’d teach it, if he could, the sick pushpull in his stomach that means he knows, he knows, the turn the killer made at the doorway, the angle at which he drove down the knife, where she hid the poison, the twist of the garotte in his fingers that made him achingly hard until the last of the breath was gone, and the pronouns blur, the pronouns blur-- until he’s kneeling on the carpet, twisting phantom wire between his fingers and something in his pants he has to hope the other agents never see. He lies, because he would never teach it, and even if he wanted to he can’t, does not know the how or the why or the reason for any of it, only that it is and that he loves it, or he would, if he remembered what love felt like, if he knew what love was and how it differs from the ghost of what he entwined between his fingers only moments before, rugburn on the palms of his hands and his breath coming in harsh pants in the quiet, the eternal, eternal quiet.
Crime scenes are a ballet, and no one ever gets it. No one until him.
He’s still drunk on it, the vapours of someone else’s kill, when he sits down opposite the doctor he’s been told can cure all his ills. (For a given value of ‘cure.’ For a given value of ‘ills.’)
“Why do you think you are here,” asks Hannibal Lecter, the sibilance of his accent betraying nothing but that he is not American and that Europe is in there, somewhere, snaking around his vowels and harshening his consonants.
It was not a question, Will thinks. Or, if it was, it was a psychiatrist’s question, the sort you’re supposed to answer with paragraphs that run minutes and minutes long, delving into the depths of yourself and coming up with jewels of truth that you never knew were there. Will Graham knows exactly what is in the depths of himself. That’s rather the problem.
“Forgive me,” says Hannibal, “You know exactly why you are here, as do I. Shall we dispense with these games? Tell me why you shouldn’t be here, William.”
No may I call you William, thinks Will, listening to his name twist in the other man’s mouth like-- and why is what slides into his head first once more the image of that garotte, blood on the floor and on his hands and spattered in his hair and--
“I know I ought to be here,” says Will, “I just don’t think ‘ought’ has very much to do with it.”
Another quiet, still, changing-everything moment, and Hannibal leans back in his chair, the long, lithe lines of his body betraying nothing but exactly what he wishes them to betray, and then--
--and then Hannibal Lecter smiles.
“Help me catch a killer.”
This is what he ought to say. This is the line he’d use on any other mark, and anyone who’s not an agent is a mark, although, if the truth be told, most of his marks are agents. This is what he should say into his phone, Hannibal’s intelligent smirk at the other end, the smirk that brooks no arguments and does not fall for lines, even when it’s Will Graham feeding him them.
“Help me catch this motherfucker,” is what he says instead, and ignores how his toes curl inside his loafers when Hannibal, after a sharp intake of breath, laughs and laughs and laughs his acquiescence.
There’s blood in his sink. He knows that it’s his, he’s got the marks on his thighs to prove it, his hands still shaky over the razor and the endorphins eliding into the apathy in his veins like the first slice into a rare steak and he knows he should stop, he’s always known he should stop, but there is a killer out there whose space he cannot step into and whose shadow he cannot dog, and he had to get this out, somehow, this thing he should not act on or even be entertaining, but he’d knelt at Hannibal’s feet and clutched at that carpet and Hannibal’s voice was steady and he knew the weight of the garotte in his hands and he ached with the want of it, drugged with how much desire itched over his skin and bloodlust itched under it, and he looked up and up and up and--
“I think I can be of assistance to you,” Hannibal had said, and no one ever notices when Will becomes the men he’s hunting, not like this, not when it makes him so hard he has to grit his teeth not to whine and he can feel the victim’s hair beneath his hands and the warmth of their skin and the slick of their blood over his fingers, and no one ever sees, no one ever sees, but when Will looked up--
--but when Will looked up, Hannibal had winked.
“Do you want to tell me about the case I am actually here for,” says Hannibal, mildly.
He’s right, because he’s always right, except for when he’s so wrong it makes something turn in Will’s gut that he wouldn’t like to try to name. They’ve been at this for days, sitting in Will’s office, side by side at crime scenes, and he’s spent all of it lying, to Hannibal, to everyone, because lying is what Will does. Lying is who he is. This was a test because of course it was a test, because Will only respects a man smart enough to beat him, which means his respect never gets stretched very thin. He set him an exam and gloried in watching him beat it, his breath catching every time Hannibal saw an obstacle and swerved before he should even have known it was there. This was a test, of course this was a test, it’s just--
--it’s just that no one has ever passed this test before.
“What do you know about the Ripper,” says Will, and Hannibal raises an eyebrow, clicks his Montblanc, waits for further illumination.
“Come into the kitchen,” Hannibal says.
“No,” says Will, “I ought to go home, sorry, God, it’s late.”
Hannibal cocks his head, his fingers inching towards a carving knife and the sleeves of his exquisite shirt rolled up to his elbows. His fingers are equally as elegant around the handle of the knife as they were, earlier, about the barrel of his pen, and Will has to force himself to look away.
“What was it that you told me when we first met, William,” says Hannibal, pressing the knife into the body of a thick, healthy tomato, “Oh, yes. That you did not care very much for ‘ought.’ Do you remember?”
Will breathes out, and breathes out, something heavy and hot in his chest, and steps across the threshold.
“Of course I remember,” he says, “I just hoped you’d forgotten.”
Hannibal cleans the knife with a quick flick of his wrist, and sheaths it, his eyes never leaving Will’s face.
“My dear William,” he says, (and Will does not have to fight to prevent his eyes fluttering shut at the silk over skin of-- he does not), “How very naive of you.”
Will Graham is covered in scars.
People have always said, trite and ignorant, that it’s the scars that you can’t see that matter, but then, people will persist in both triteness and ignorance, as Will has often discovered to his cost. Most were made by the edges of a dozen knives, the occasional razor, the tines of a fork or two. There is one, but only one, gunshot wound, a glance off his side that fractured two ribs and bruised many more. The scar is a spiderwebbed line, a little like a map of a train system. There are precisely three burn scars, two of which were self-inflicted. There are the remnants of a gash at his hairline, and residual skin-level damage from when he broke his leg at eight years old. He’s covered in scars, and they count to him in an entirely different way to other people. He sees success littered across his skin, but other people, Will is very aware, would see nothing but the failure of a brilliant man who could not resist his basest instinct, a man who knew pain was not the answer but still replied to every question he could with its icy sting.
If it’s the scars that you can’t see that matter, Will thinks, perhaps he’d have stopped driving his fork into his thigh beneath the table at dinner parties long ago, but people--
--but people, as Will knows much too well, don’t change.
“He loves them,” says Hannibal, “Or, more truly, he loves what their sacrifice represents.”
Hannibal’s house is large, but warm. Will slipped off his shoes hours ago, and splays socked toes against the carpet, faces Hannibal across a table of dark, expensive wood that has a small gash down one side from the signet ring on Hannibal’s pinky finger. Outside, it’s raining, and inside, Hannibal insisted on opera to help him concentrate.
“Of course he doesn’t love them,” says Will, and for once it’s because he knows he should, because he knows that those who wear someone else’s humanity like a mask ought to pantomime such things, from time to time, “Look at what he’s done to them, that isn’t love.”
Hannibal looks up from a crime scene photo of a young woman’s wrist, more black than purple from the contusions left by wire, and laughs, brief and mocking.
“I know that you know better than that, William,” he says, is all he says, and when he takes a sip from his wine, Will’s eyes follow the rogue drop of liquid red that rolls beneath his shirt cuff as if of their own accord.
“He’s a very private man,” says everyone Will meets, without prompting, “I’m rather surprised he’s taken such a shine to you, Agent--?”
They’re always embarrassed after their slip, fool enough to vainly hope he hasn’t noticed, usually aware enough to be aware in turn that it’s his job to catch such slips. It’s odd, of course it’s odd, erudite, genteel Hannibal Lecter and this rag-tag FBI agent, who’s barely capable of meeting your eye and whose shirts are always rumpled and hair is always a mess. It doesn’t make sense, it never quite seems to fit, the frame always needing to be frozen and one of them removed. Hannibal speaks six living languages and two dead ones besides, can recite Renaissance poetry from memory and always seems to know just the right thing to say. His shirts are always pressed and he wears colours Will didn’t even know men wore, his cheekbones could slice sunbeams and he has a smile just for Will, and--
--and, somewhere along the way, Hannibal Lecter has become the best friend Will Graham has ever had. And Will solves mysteries for a living, but somehow, somehow, he just can’t figure that one out.
“You ought to let me look at that,” says Hannibal, long fingers wrapping gently around Will’s elbow, on a cold grey morning in May.
Will had gone too far, for a given measure of ‘too far’, and for a given measure of ‘gone’, with a cut-throat razor the night before, and what remained of his exertions left a thin gash on the side of his right hand, curling across his wrist and turning pale skin angry, righteous scarlet.
“It’s fine,” says Will, jerking his arm away, and Hannibal lets him.
“You know best, William,” he says, “Of that, you see, I am most sure.”
They catch him because they were always going to catch him, because they’re a quote-sarcastic-unquote dream team and faceless men in bland rooms have made Hollywood superstars out of actors playing roles like theirs.
They do catch him-- but they catch him on a dark, wild night in October, Will soaked to the skin and mud slashed across the knees of Hannibal’s ridiculously expensive pants, Will with only one gun for the both of them and, suddenly, quite a lot of fear for what’s out there in the dark.
“Stop panicking, William,” whispers Hannibal, “I can hear you from here, old boy.”
“Shut up,” says Will, and lightning splits the sky, a deafening crack of electricity that makes the hair on Will’s arms stand on end, and when he turns around--
--and when he turns around, Hannibal is gone.
“Shit,” hisses Will, and starts to run.
He runs into the wind, freezing beneath the rain water and his glasses so blurred he can barely see where he’s going. He rounds a corner, and--
“Hello, William,” says Hannibal. He’s standing over the Ripper’s body, a crowbar in his hands and blood up to his elbows. “Did I make you worry? I’m so sorry. I’m rather concerned that he’s dead, I think I may have hit him a bit too hard, allow me to check--”
He brings down the crowbar in a glistening arc, and slams it into the Ripper’s decimated face.
“Oh dear,” says Hannibal, completely straight-faced, “Quite dead.”
Hannibal drives him home, Will blinking thickly behind glasses wiped clean of the Ripper’s blood and Hannibal in a baby agent’s hoodie, incongruous on his frame. Will cannot even bear to consider if Hannibal could tell that watching him beat an already dead man made his skin spark with arousal, and Will does not have the excuse of crawling inside a killer’s skin this time to absolve him. He looks over at Hannibal, who permits him a small smile and then his eyes return to the road ahead of them.
He stops outside of Will’s house, and walks Will to his door. When Will unlocks it and steps inside, Hannibal places his hand on the small of Will’s back, and says, “Invite me in.”
“You’ve been here dozens of times,” says Will, confused, his tongue dulled with cold and Hannibal’s hand blazing hot through the thin fabric of his shirt.
“Invite me in,” repeats Hannibal, “And I will give you what you want.”
Will glances back, and Hannibal’s face is mostly shadows, nothing but his eyes clear beneath the low glare from the streetlamps, but his eyes--
--Will swallows, hard, says, “Come in.”
Hannibal pulls his hair until it’s bruised around the roots, bites his chest until the blood runs from scarlet arcs in rivers. He makes Will beg and whine his name and kneels on his ribcage and presses his arm across Will’s throat, cutting off his air supply and counting out the seconds with the firm, steady patience of a medical man. When Will asks him quietly -- after reassuring him that he’s on two weeks leave at the very least -- he pulls back his arm and punches Will so hard in the face that his teeth rattle. After Will’s gone down he kicks him in the solar plexus, kneels above him and drags his fingernails over Will’s thighs in long, thin lines of utter burning agony.
“I love you,” Will does not say.
“Fucking Christ, do that to me again,” he says, instead.
Hannibal noses at his throat, kisses him like a drowning man, does as he is asked.
“Come with me to the theatre,” says Hannibal, over breakfast. The tonight goes unspoken, and Will shrugs, taking the tea Hannibal passes him with a hand with marks from Hannibal’s boot.
“What is it?” asks Will, because he knows a foregone conclusion when he hears it.
“The Bacchae,” says Hannibal, stirring a little milk into his tea, “You know how I adore omophagia. It is one of the greatest themes in literature, if handled by a creator capable of understanding its transcendence.”
“I suppose if I must,” says Will, pretending he does not see the smile Hannibal flashes him, indulgent, across the table, “Chess?”
“Now?” says Hannibal, “But chess is so pedestrian. I was rather thinking I ought to teach you Shogi, and then move on to Go.”
“You don’t have to do this,” says Will and he means so many things and his chest is scarsplit and sore and he hurts, he aches and he can’t remember the last time he felt like this, he can’t remember ever feeling like this, but--
--but Hannibal is smiling the smile he only ever wears for Will.
“You only ever had to ask, William,” says Hannibal, gentle and firm and terrifying with it, and, somewhere upstairs, buried beneath Hannibal’s borrowed hoodie and what remains of Will’s jeans, Will’s work cell begins to ring.