Work Text:
now we're back at your place
we rely on stale dialogue
i ruined what could have been long ago
what i need tonight doesn't matter now
For all her experience as a psychologist, Alana’s really having issues calming herself down at the moment. The dogs alert her to Will’s impending presence before she even hears his car on the driveway, and she rises on unsteady feet, trying to summon the strength for the conversation they’re about to have.
Argument. It’ll probably be an argument.
Because Alana Bloom is fucking scared, and when she’s scared she gets stern. It’s a thing. Applesauce senses her unease and whimpers, before rushing out the screen door to join the rest of the pack in the yard.
Her legs move of their own accord, propelling her to the door of his tiny house, the house he’d easily given her keys to even before she’d had to take care of the dogs. Funny how one little house could invoke so many emotions at so many given times; the first time she saw it, she’d been charmed. When her eyes had settled on it earlier today, a knot of disgust had wadded in her throat.
She steps out onto the porch, her eyes settling on Will. The anger, fear, and disgust all temporarily course out of her veins, replaced with that familiar tumble her stomach used to do when she’d see Will at the academy.
He’s hunched down, a pilgrim finally returned to his holy land, the dogs leaping and barking and rejoicing around him. It’s nothing Alana’s ever seen before. For a moment, that scared, quiet man she’d first met so many months before is the one huddled down on the ground in the cold, surrounded by his pack. His light’s so bright she wants to shield her eyes from it.
When he finally looks up at her, she sees the darkness again, returned a hundred fold, a dark shroud around him summoned for defense. He’s clearly expecting a fight as well, and she can’t quite blame him. Except she does. She does blame Will for this. For Hannibal.
Alana takes careful steps toward him, boots impossibly loud on the old, creaking front porch, and then she’s joining him in the yard, her hands in her pockets.
“Welcome home,” she says, voice cool, the fight starting to rattle around again in her ribcage. I don’t even know you anymore! she wants to scream. Frustrated, that’s it. She puts her thumb on the feeling, files it away. This is frustration. It’s not just at Will, either. She doesn’t want to say ‘I told you so,’ mostly because she’s an adult, but. Didn’t she tell them so? Didn’t she tell them Will wasn’t meant for this? That old, protective urge rears its head inside her and she wants to cry out, because it’s really not possible to indefinitely sustain all the warring feelings inside of her. One will inevitably win out.
And she really, really doesn’t want it to be the anger, but she’s not sure it can be anything else. Not when he’s looking up at her, that blank, calculated mask pulled taut over his face.
I used to know you.
Or did I?
She did, she thinks. She did know him, and she knew herself, and she knew Hannibal and she knew Jack. Now nothing’s really clear, and to a woman for whom clarity is so important, that lack of knowing any of the people around her is really the most jarring thing of all.
“Thank you,” he says, two dogs pulled tight against his chest like he’s afraid if he lets them go he’ll be back in his steel cage in the hospital.
Grief burns through her veins. Will was innocent, she reminds herself. Will is innocent.
Or, rather, he’s not the Chesapeake Ripper. Alana wouldn’t stoop to calling him innocent.
“For looking after them,” he continues, as Winston pushes him back onto the ground and begins licking his face. “They seem happy.”
“They’re happy to see you.”
“You don’t seem happy to see me.”
It’s not a question and his tone is level. He doesn’t meet her eyes. He’s angry too, she realizes. Obviously.
“You challenged my whole framework of assumptions about who you are, about the way I think you are,” she spits, quick, her eyes flashing angrily. Here it comes. Inside her pockets, her hands curl into fists. It’s not like she particularly likes arguments, but Alana hasn’t gotten to where she is nor become the person she is by backing down from a fight. She’s right on this, god. How can she not be right on this? All the facts are so clear cut.
Now Will meets her eyes, stands. The dogs are still tucked close to his legs, threading through them and jumping up onto him, and if his eyes weren’t so cold he really wouldn’t look all that menacing. Will Graham, dog whisperer. It scares her that there are so many sides to what must be the same coin.
“Well, the way you think I am isn’t always a reliable guide, is it?” he asks through grit teeth, his voice low and … hurt in his throat, and it hits her right in the gut when she thinks back on all the times she’d visited him, and all the times he’d maintained his innocence, his eyes begging her to believe him.
And she hadn’t believed him, because the evidence had been … so clear cut.
“I was wrong,” she says, quietly, feeling distinctly like she’s caught in the middle of a tug’o’war between two very different men. “I was wrong about you.”
“Because you didn’t believe me? Because you didn’t believe in me? Because you let me question my sanity, my sense of reality?” His voice is shaking and Alana has to take a second before she speaks, because she knows hers will shake too.
“You tried to kill Hannibal, Will.”
Which is a fact. It’s not like he’s denying it.
“You’re wrong about him,” she continues, heat entering her tone. The facts – she has to focus on the facts.
And the fact is that Hannibal is not the Chesapeake Ripper. In a sea of uncertainty, this is a buoy she can hang onto. She’d tried so hard to be that buoy for Will, and she’s not sure that she can anymore. She’s not sure she even wants to be.
“No, you’re wrong about him,” Will counters, and she feels distinctly like they’re in primary school at the moment. “You see the best in him. I don’t.”
“What was done to you doesn’t excuse what you did, Will. You have a right to feel angry, but that anger is severely misguided. Hannibal is not a killer.”
“He’s dangerous, Alana.” She’s not sure anyone’s sounded so exasperated with her since she still lived with her parents, but he’s not the only one feeling frustrated. It’s about to boil over, she can feel it, so she reaches down to grab Applesauce’s lead off the ground.
“I’m not having this conversation again, Will. We’re leaving. Come on,” she says, trying to keep the cold out of her voice when she addresses her dog. Will blinks, just now noticing her.
“Who’s this?”
Alana looks up at him, marveling at how Will can turn such a 180 when it involves animals.
“Applesauce. She’s mine, I rescued her.” After a second, “She likes applesauce.”
“Make sure she doesn’t eat too much. It’s alright for them, just in moderation.”
Thank you, Will. Alana closes her eyes in frustration, because this man is impossible. She just doesn’t want to believe that the same man who kissed her so sweet and tentative in front of his fireplace, and the same man who’s giving her advice on her dog is the same man who conspired with a psychopath to kill Hannibal Lecter. None of it makes any sense, and she is usually so good at making sense of things, of people. Nonsense is what she understands.
“Thanks. C’mon,” she says to her dog, flicking the lead a bit. Applesauce glances at her, and then back to the pack.
Oh, god. She’d only been living with them for months. Of course she doesn’t want to leave them. Besides Alana, they’re what the dog knows now. They’re her family.
“I don’t think she wants to leave her friends,” Will says helpfully and Alana closes her eyes in frustration.
“No kidding.”
He gathers up the dogs and heads inside, the door shutting loud behind him. Applesauce tugs on the lead, trying to follow them, and Alana feels distinctly alone. She could go see Hannibal. That would make her feel better, right?
For a few minutes she tries in vain to get Applesauce to head back to her car. She does everything short of yanking on her, but the dog won’t budge. With a sigh, Alana takes an experimental step toward Will’s house, and Applesauce immediately perks and starts trotting, tugging when she gets to the end of the leash.
Alana follows along after her dog, and when they get up on Will’s porch she knocks loud on the door. This is humiliating – it’s hard to make a semi-dramatic exit when your dog won’t let you. She glances sidelong at Applesauce, idly wondering if the universe has it out for her.
Will appears at the door and glances down at Applesauce as well. By the look on his face, it’s clear he’s trying not to laugh… and fuck, Alana’s trying not to as well by this point, because it’s just all so fucking ridiculous. All of it! The entirety of their lives is absolutely ridiculous.
“Dammit, Applesauce,” she laughs, completely botching the trying-not-to-laugh thing. “Will is tired, I’m sure he’d like to get reacquainted with his bed.”
He looks tired, but she supposes a couple months in a hospital for the criminally insane will do that to you. The guilt comes back.
“Why don’t you come in for awhile?” he suggests, stepping back and holding the door open. “She’s going to have a bit of separation anxiety, but we can try and ease her out of it.”
Alana hesitates for a second, then nods and steps into the house, where Applesauce barks excitedly at her pack mates. She snaps the leash off her collar and the dog disappears into the crowd of them in his living room, happy as a clam.
Well, that makes one of them, at least.
She glances over at Will, feeling awkward. She’d really only meant them to have a bit of conversation before ducking out. Wham, bam, say her piece, get the hell off his porch, get him the hell out of her life.
But standing there in his foyer, the leash hanging limply in her hands, she knows she can’t. This stray dog of a man isn’t so easy to get rid of. It’s just not that simple.
He tried to have Hannibal killed, her brain supplies helpfully. That’s fairly simple, easy enough for her brain to understand. Murder, yeah. That definitely violates her moral code, and she’d spent the better part of the last week asking herself “What if? What if?”
What if Hannibal had died?
The heat from earlier just isn’t there, but in its place is something different, a tender butterfly of an emotion struggling out of the damp chrysalis of her anger.
“We should talk about this,” she suggests, using her very best psychiatrist voice.
“We should.”
But Will’s closing the distance between them, the corners of his mouth soft as he says her name, and when she looks into his face she’s surprised by what she sees there.
“Yeah?” she replies, biting the inside of her lip as she looks up at him. She knows that look. She should be stepping back away from that look, from the man wearing that look, because he plotted to kill her boyfriend and that’s severely unstable behavior.
He’s kissing her then, effectively cutting off the rest of her brain’s protests and rationale. There’s not much room for rational thought with him crowded all up into her space, his hands resting tentatively on the backs of her hips. His kiss is gentle and questioning, not what the mouth of a murderer must feel like, and her hands lift of their own volition to slide against his shoulders. It’s bliss for approximately ten whole seconds, before the loud shrill of her cellphone causes her to leap away from him. With a slightly shaking hand, she reaches for it.
Will sees the caller ID as well and takes her phone from her, setting it aside, the irritated crinkles in the corners of his eyes the only other intimation that it bothers him.
Why does he hate Hannibal so much? Why does he think he’s the Chesapeake Ripper?
Her struggling brain is effectively silenced again when he brushes a soft lock of hair back out of Alana’s face, the backs of his fingers ghosting against her jaw.
“I’m glad you were the first person I got to see,” Will says, voice just above a whisper, and something somewhere inside of her breaks, because woah. In spite of everything, she reaches a trembling hand up to hold his palm to her face, her mouth twisted into a frown. She really should not be here. She should be back in Baltimore with Hannibal, eating caviar that costs more than it takes to fill up her entire gas tank while listening to the soft strains of his harpsichord. Instead, she’s here, feet rooted to the floor, gazing up into Will’s eyes like she’s afraid he’s not real.
Which is exactly the case. It’s impossible to tell who the real Will Graham is, and with that idea in mind, she means to tell him that she has to go… but the words don’t come out. It’s that damn aftershave, she swears, that quintessential Will Graham smell that makes her want to bury her nose in his flannel and inhale.
She doesn’t know what to say to him in reply so she just doesn’t say anything at all, opting instead to fist her hands into the front of his shirt, yanking his mouth down to meet hers again. This time it’s all teeth and lips, a fierce, wordless conversation that she thinks conveys how she’s feeling better than anything she says could. Will responds in kind, closing the space between them, his hands finding her hips a second time as Alana parts his lips with her tongue. Their kiss is a mess and so are they.
Somehow, given the events of the past couple months, it all seems very fitting.
Their pace slows after awhile, the intensity still there but their mouths less frenzied, and Alana finally loosens her grip on his shirt, satisfied he’s not going anywhere (at least for now).
“We should-” she starts, but Will’s already nodding, both of them breathless, and then he’s leading her by the hand up the stairs to the bedroom she’s never seen. She’s scared that if she looks anywhere but him it’ll break the spell she’s under, ruin the tentative truce she has with her mind right now, so she just stares up at him as she tips herself back onto his bed, her fingers working at the wood buttons of her coat. He helps strip her out of it, tossing it gently aside, then begins kissing a hot trail down the column of her throat, a hand splayed lightly against the side of her breast as he kneels between her legs.
Just when it feels like she’s going to go crazy out of her mind, Will moves his attention downward. Nimble fingers slide her skirt down her legs, making quick work of her stockings and her panties. When she’s bare to him, he crouches down on the floor, pulling her gently to the edge of the bed. Everything about him is gentle right now, from his fingers to his face, and the voice in the back of her head is quieted, probably just as hung up in anticipation as she is. Will turns his head to the side and presses a sweet kiss against the inside of her knee, before moving up along the inside of her thigh. She can feel his stubble scraping her skin, rough and delicious, and she leans her head back against his rough quilt as her hips cant up of their own accord.
No one’s ever overwhelmed her as much as Will Graham overwhelms her. Not before, not ever. When he finally descends his mouth over her, her hands come down to his shoulders, nails scrabbling for purchase as he eats her deeply. He alternates placing loud, sucking kisses on her clit and teasing lightly against her, swift changes that leave her off-kilter and frenzied, a heel digging into his back in something caught right in the middle of pleasure and frustration.
He’s not the most skilled, but it’s his enthusiasm that surprises her, leaves her breathless and wanting, her nipples peaked under the fabric of her bra.
“Ah, Will!-” She can feel the light, surprisingly deft graze of teeth against her sensitive folds and a gush of wet leaks out of her; her hand drops to the back of his neck, frantic. Her brain is drawing rude, unwanted comparisons between his and Hannibal’s techniques, and she shuts her eyes tight, trying to will them away.
He helps. Never has she felt so distracted and still so rooted in reality than she does right now. Will is light between her parted knees, the darkness dissipated from him and from the room and from her heart, at least momentarily, and Alana cries out into the silence of his bedroom as her fingers curl against the back of his neck.
Her toes curl when she comes, her orgasm mute but intense, Will’s mouth still sloppily working her through it until she’s boneless on his mattress, her hand gone slack against his shoulder. For a second she feels very far away from consciousness, drifting somewhere on the outskirts of her mind, listening to Will’s sharp pants fill the small silence in his room.
He’s got his head leaned up against her knee when she finally gathers herself up on her elbows to look at him, hair mussed around her shoulders. He looks blissed out, his eyes closed and his mouth still slightly open, and she stays quiet so she won’t shatter whatever moment they’re having.
There’s a swell of tenderness curled in her chest when he finally opens his eyes to look at her, a flush coloring his cheeks like he’s sort of just realizing that he was the one to bring her off. When he rises up off the floor, a little stiff from kneeling in the same position for so long, his arousal is obvious in his jeans, and Alana reaches out without thinking.
He catches her hand in his, gives it a squeeze, then settles himself on his back next to her. They lay there together, quiet and contemplative, fingers still laced lightly, until Alana hears her phone ring again.
“I guess I should’ve been gone more than an hour ago,” she finally says, tone soft as she hangs onto him, strangely unwilling to let go. It’s the post-orgasm hormones, she supposes. They’re dulling her senses, quieting her thoughts; her brain hasn’t made so much of a peep about Will being a murderer for a good ten minutes now.
“I guess,” Will replies, rolling over onto his side to look at her. His words are unspoken but they’re deafening regardless: I don’t want you to go.
But she can’t stay here. Not with him, not right now. Not when things are still so messy.
Not when she’s still involved with Hannibal.
But she waits as long as she can before slipping her hand out of his and moving off the bed to gather her clothes, slipping her panties and her skirt back on under a gaze that is so far from appraising it makes her want to cry, all sappy emotions and puppy love. She doesn’t think she’ll ever understand Will Graham, or the way he makes her feel.
All she knows is that it’s different – different from men of the past, and different from Hannibal, and she doesn’t want to examine the feelings too closely right now, for fear of what it might all mean.
They descend the old, creaking stairs carefully, Will right behind her as her hand slides down the banister. The dogs are all waiting for them downstairs and Applesauce swivels her head toward Alana when she sees her.
“C’mon, girl,” she calls, and the dog trots forward to sit at her feet. Alana looks back at Will, raising a skeptic eyebrow, like it’s too good to be true.
It is. Applesauce won’t budge. She gets as far as the porch this time before whimpering and running back into Will’s house.
Alana sighs. She’s tired and overwhelmed and she just wants to change into flannel pajamas and curl up under her covers, preferably with her dog. That just isn’t in the cards for tonight, though.
“Why don’t you come back tomorrow afternoon?” Will suggests, and he’s back to being Will Graham, Dog Whisperer, because there’s nothing in his face or his tone that says he expects a repeat of what just transpired. He’s just genuinely concerned for the mental well-being of her dog. Her heart seizes, gives in her chest, warmth leaking out of the ventricles and leeching through her entire body, because of course he is.
Under all of that darkness, Will Graham lives.