Work Text:
Will drags himself out of whatever dream state he’s been in. The details of it drain away as he glances towards Hannibal’s voice in the darkened lecture hall. It takes him a moment to shake off the haze and process the doctor’s words.
“I have a twenty-four hour cancellation policy.”
He squints blearily. “What time is it?”
“Nearly nine o’clock.” Hannibal’s voice is surprisingly quiet in the cool, still room.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he groans, reaching up to scrub his face.
“No apology necessary,” Hannibal assures him, but Will can hear the disappointment—not censure—in his voice. Had Hannibal missed him? He’s certainly been motivated by something to come down to the FBI Academy instead of simply calling. Will’s glad he’s here, anyway. Before he’d…fallen asleep(?), his mind was a whirlpool of pressures, images, conflicting theories.
After his customary complaints about nightmares, he invites Dr. Lecter to give his opinion on the pictures he was examining. They’d talked about the case back, front, and sideways in their sessions, of course, but the doctor hasn’t had access to the evidence or files before. There’s was only so much one can extrapolate from secondhand information. Will finds himself gravitating physically towards Hannibal, as though he’s the eye of Will’s personal storm. He represents everything that working for Jack has ripped away from him—composure, stability...cleanliness. Even as he’s pulled into the doctor’s warm, spicy scent, he cringes at the thought of what he must smell like. He’d showered and put on a clean shirt—yesterday? This morning?
It’s all he can do not to lean against Hannibal, close his eyes and truly sleep; let the doctor take care of the nightmares. Instead, he gathers his thoughts, forming into words the impression he’s gathered of the Ripper from walking in his shadow: “These aren’t the Ripper’s enemies, these are pests he’s swatted.”
“Their reward for their cruelty,” Dr. Lecter offers.
“Oh, he doesn’t have a problem with cruelty,” Will scoffs. “Their reward is for undignified behavior. These dissections are to disgrace them. It’s… It’s a public shaming.” There’s a hint of admiration in his voice. He can no longer distinguish the Ripper’s disgust towards his victims from his own.
Hannibal makes a considering noise. “Takes their organs away because, in his mind, they don’t deserve them.”
“In some way,” he agrees, stunned by the confluence of Hannibal’s thoughts with his. He’s struck by the sudden feeling that if he stands too close, Hannibal might absorb him. It makes him edge away slightly, ambivalent.
“Who’s this?” The doctor slides the picture of a detached arm out of the pile.
“It’s Jack Crawford’s trainee. She’s not like the other victims. The Ripper had no reason to humiliate Miriam Lass.”
“Seems to me he was humiliating someone.”
“Yeah, he was humiliating Jack,” Will tells him wryly.
“Did it work?”
“I’d say it worked really well.” He suppresses a dark twinge of satisfaction at that, but Hannibal’s arched eyebrow tells him it wasn’t missed.
~
He and Hannibal are still standing over the table full of pictures when Crawford arrives. Will has gravitated back to Hannibal’s side, their thoughts so closely in tune it feels like they’re finishing each others’ sentences. Times like these are the only times Will feels real anymore.
When Jack bursts in they both immediately straighten; Will leaning away from the doctor like a teenage girl caught mooning, Hannibal putting on his “polite company I don’t really care for” smile.
“Will, there you are. And Dr. Lecter, what a surprise.” His voice doesn’t exactly drip with sarcasm, but it’s there. “We have a lead. Would you care to, uh, help us catch the Ripper?” The satisfaction in his tone borders on smug.
Will and Hannibal’s expressions, on the other hand, are evenly divided between skeptical and mocking. Will has almost come to believe the Ripper can’t be caught—unless he chooses to be—and they both know if he is, it won’t be as easy as this. But Jack has developed an Ahab-like obsession with his target, and it’s clearly futile to do anything more than trail along in his wake and wait for whatever evidence he thinks he has to fall apart.
“How could I refuse?”
~
They tag along through the ambulance bay, Hannibal looking around curiously, like a kid on a field trip. Will keeps his head down, his mind rolling through possibilities. The pieces fit, he has to admit, but something doesn’t feel right—and above all, Will Graham has learned to trust his feelings.
“Does he want to be a doctor?” is the only question he throws out as he keeps pace with Hannibal. He lets Jack and Beverly take the lead on this, riding the wave of their excitement while he swims underneath, trying to bring into focus the vague shadows of the undertow.
Hannibal leans over and says, “This is very educational.” The hint of dark humor makes Will smile. He feels like the two of them are there as mere observers, taking in a scene they both know isn’t what the participants assume.
~
He can almost hear the dramatic music swell as the SWAT team surrounds the ambulance. This is the scene of the movie where the villain is finally brought low, and it does feel like a movie scene—surreal, forced. He hangs back with Hannibal as the others rush forward, maintaining the sense of being outside looking in. He feels strangely calm and quiet; this has nothing to do with him, it’s not the Ripper. It’s somebody else’s problem.
“Dr. Lecter!” Jack shouts from the ambulance, startling Will out of his trance. Hannibal strides forward immediately, Will tagging along as though they’re connected by a string.
“I need you to assess the situation here, Doctor,” Jack says tersely.
Hannibal steps up into the ambulance, his suit out of place against the harsh lights. Will tries to imagine him in a surgeon’s scrubs, as he once would have been, examining bodies like this routinely. The image makes him shiver with a strange combination of desire and fear.
“He was removing his kidney,” Hannibal states impassively. “Poorly. I can stop the bleeding.”
“Do it.”
Will watches the doctor remove his jacket, roll up his sleeves, and don surgical gloves. It’s like watching someone at a masquerade flirtatiously lower their mask. A flicker of recognition teases at the edge of Will’s consciousness, mixing with heated thoughts of peeling off the rest of Dr. Lecter’s disguise and touching what’s underneath.
Because Dr. Lecter is wearing a disguise; that fact has never been more clear to Will than now, although on some level he’s always known it. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say the doctor is the disguise, and whatever lies underneath is Hannibal. My Hannibal, he thinks fiercely. Something dark and passionate wells up in him, spilling out and reaching for the man in front of him, elbow deep in someone’s body, bloody hands keeping them alive.
He doesn’t even spare a glance for Silvestri, the supposed Ripper. All his attention, his entire being, is focused on Hannibal. The doctor glances up, holds his gaze for a moment, and Will can only hope the shadows conceal the darkness of his thoughts.
~
He stands awkwardly in Hannibal’s kitchen, feeling like a stain on the immaculate tile and stainless steel. Watches the same hands that held in a man’s blood deftly manipulate ingredients on plates, preparing a purposeful, artistic presentation for his audience. He feels his earlier grasp of the man slipping away; the mask is firmly back in place.
Both of our masks, he thinks, pushing back thoughts of Hannibal’s hands inside his body, his mind; holding together the pieces, keeping him from bleeding out.
He feels less connected to the doctor now, in this sterile space, than he did in the middle of a crime scene in progress.
“I have to go,” he says finally, handing over the bottle of wine he’d possibly purchased with a different type of evening in mind. “I have a date with the Chesapeake Ripper.”
“Or is that Rippers?” Hannibal questions archly.
“Devon Silvestri was harvesting organs, but not with the Ripper. There’s no connection between them,” he says dismissively. They both know that. Silvestri was an amateur, someone like the Ripper wouldn’t stoop as low as organ harvesting for profit.
“Jack must be devastated,” Hannibal comments, just a little too deadpan.
“I imagine he is,” Will murmurs.
Hannibal looks sharply at him, catching his gaze, and for a moment Will feels the same sense of heated connection he did at Silvestri’s crime scene. There’s a promise held gently between them—the masks will come down one day.
And that will be an interesting day.
“Enjoy the wine.”
“Thank you.”