Chapter Text
Will Graham worked for him two years ago, solved three cases with unparalleled efficiency and then ran head first into The Ripper murders. Dead ends, cold clues, a trainee missing, and his best profiler living on all coffee and no sleep. Will wasn’t reinstated back to teaching because he wanted it. No, that was something Jack wanted. When he heard Will talk of divine punishment and making the victims presentable to the world, that was when Jack did him the favour and sent him home. It felt like a better solution that losing his nerve on Will and his disrespect towards the victims. No one was in a good place back then. Took the guy several months to get back into teaching and they never spoke of it since. Jack left him alone for a good long time until girls started disappearing around Minnesota and his own team ran into dead end after dead end.
Will Graham had his issue, but Jack didn't have time for that, for his rosy rhetoric and ever avoidant eye contact. The Beta was a hard thing to read, but Jack had even less time for that. He wanted answers, theories, results, anything. Being the head of the FBI’s Behavioural Science Unit weighted on him. People were expecting thing from him, expecting him to make a breakthrough. Young girls disappeared left and right, up to eight at this point, and still no progress on the case, no bodies. That was why he went against better judgement, against Dr. Bloom’s advice, and pulled Will out of the classroom and into the field. He had his break, a good long one too. This was worth the discomfort.
Jack gave him five minutes to shake off, do his thing, get his head under the water if that’s what it took to calm him, but when the time ticked too long he stepped into the bathroom himself.
“What are you doing in here?” The head of the BSU was on edge, a roar just waiting to fly out of him. First the killer takes the girls and now he’s returning them, albeit less alive then when they disappeared. Will called it an apology and that was too vague to fly with Jack. He wanted his answers thorough and palpable and he wanted them fast.
“I enjoy the smell of urinal cake,” Will deadpanned as he wiped his face with a paper towel. The Beta was blatant with his tongue, especially when tension was high. In Jack’s eyes it made him simpler to talk too; less status related nonsense getting in the way, less courteous cowering in the presence of a superior. Those things were grating. Results rarely came from cowards.
“Me too. Let’s talk,” and he would have, Jack was all but ready to pounce the subject with fervour because that’s why he was in there, standing in a fancy red-and-white bathroom that vaguely smelled of urine after a full day of use. Someone stepped in and Jack smelled the other Beta before he even opened the door. They should have picked their place for discussion a little better, but it was too late in the day for Jack to care and the intrusion was just what he needed to release the pressure with his voice.
“Use the ladies room!!!”
The guy was positively mortified with the bellow the Alpha released on him, backtracking and running out of the bathroom like devils chased him. All spirits left Will’s face at that as well, drained of colour at the sound bouncing off the walls. He gripped the rim of the sink and leaned against it, willing away his pallor as he was sure Jack would want to continue their talk, unperturbed by Will’s sudden loss of voice. Alphas had that effect on people, especially when they’d raise their voices.
“What’s the killer apologising for?” And his tone was back to normal with the turn of his head.
“He couldn’t honour her,” Will paced away from Jack, drawing distance before he offered the rest of his explanation. “He feels bad.”
“Sorry? Feels bad?” The reaction Jack had was a lot more baffled than angered. “Feeling bad defeats the purpose of being a psychopath, doesn’t it?”
“He’s a different kind of crazy. This guy...” Will paced about the bathroom, nerves rattling behind eyes that couldn’t stick to one spot. Less so, Jack suspected, for the tone of his voice than for the memories his mind dug back up over and over. “He loves these girls! And it’s not that kind of love, but he does. Love them. By association. They are a replacement for someone he loves, and in her stead they also get a piece of his love. He’s respectful about it, doesn’t want them to suffer, kills them quickly.” Will stopped again, meeting Jack’s gaze but only for a moment. “This is mercy in his eyes.”
“Sensitive psychopath,” Jack mocked, “that still doesn’t answer half of my questions like why he risked—”
“He’s eating them,” a details Will was sitting on ever since he had a closer look at the wounds left on the returned body. A discovery made as his thoughts jumped from factor to factor, left for forensics to prove valid. “She had surgical wounds and her liver was tampered with. Something must be wrong with the meat...”
The silence was deafening as possibilities, soon to be facts, settled on their minds. It’s hard to congratulate anyone on such a find. When Jack looked at his profiler he saw eyes lost in a stranger’s madness, struggling to pull out. He decided it was definitely time take Dr. Bloom’s advice and introduce the Beta with some form of stability. He was too valuable not to have around, and so was his mind. Someone needed to keep him in check.
+++
Franklyn was increasingly difficult to be around. The same predicament that had him bouncing from dozen upon dozen of psychiatrist was once again surfacing, once again his interest had shifted from personal improvement to an unhealthy fixation with his therapist.
Dr. Lecter did not cut their session short, though, not even as he smelled a familiar Alpha enter his waiting room. Familiar but unwanted. He was free to close for the day after Franklyn would leave, but clearly that would not be the case now. As he escorted his patient out, Jack Crawford was all but ready to barge in and have their talk. Dr. Lecter, polite but harsh, told him to keep waiting in the lobby. First came paperwork, then came unexpected guests. Authoritative behaviour was frowned upon, especially in his castle.
“You should have called,” the doctor said with a smile as Jack was finally allowed entrance.
“This was a bit of a last minute decision, doctor.”
It was considered improper to continuously receive psychological evaluations by the same doctor, so Dr. Bloom sent him some two months ago with a recommendation to Hannibal Lecter, an esteemed colleague of hers. Jack was sceptical at first, what with receiving a psych eval from another Alpha, but his doubts were quickly dispersed after a shared meal himself and Alana Bloom attended. Such an erudite gentleman, Dr. Lecter, it felt improper and below him, both of them, to even consider a pissing contest in his presence. Jack felt much the same now as he did before, after waiting fifteen minutes in the lobby; he should have called. But that act would be reserved for a man who had a lot less on his mind that Jack did.
“I don’t suppose this has anything to do with your evaluation?” Dr. Lecter offered him a seat and took his position behind the desk.
“No, no. Nothing quite that serious, yet,” Jack joked but in reality such things were rarely laughing matter. “I’m here because I’d like you to help me with a psychological profile.”
“Oh?”
“One of our special agents, a Beta. He’s a profiler himself and, well, saying he has some issues would be drastically oversimplifying it. Frankly, I don’t know what goes around in his head, but I would like to know and I would like for it not to get out of hand for him.”
Jack shared as many details about Will Graham as he felt comfortable to share. Mostly he referred to his body of work and the effect it had on him. Nothing piqued Dr. Lecter’s interest more than mentioning his potential future patient used to work on The Ripper cases. With the FBI offering to cover any and all expenses, it was a hard opportunity to refuse. The real pitcher was not the money, which Hannibal Lecter had plenty, or esteem that would come with it, but the person.
“He’s eerily good at figuring out the way our serial killers tick, but I find his reclusive life worrying. I just want to be sure his mind doesn’t take him places we can’t follow. That’s where you come in. Alana Bloom refused the offer for professional reasons, but also, I suspect, as not to inconvenience him.”
Dr. Lecter frowned at that. It was hard to imagine a person who would be inconvenienced by Dr. Alana Bloom. Very few were the people – Hannibal could count them on one hand – that could match her in wit and charm. She was brilliant at soothing people, opening them up to conversation, and it had less to do with her Omega nature than her use of skills she picked up during the time he mentored her.
“Graham suffers from repulsion,” Jack explained. “It can get difficult for him.”
+++
Smelling the air of the room warned Will something just wasn’t right. It felt a little like an ambush being stuck in a room with two Alphas, Jack Crawford who called him to his office and another, some guy he never saw before, observing the pinboard of victims of the recently named Minnesota Shriek. Will eyed cautiously the stranger’s back as he took a seat across Crawford.
“This is Dr. Lecter, I’ve asked him for some help on this case.”
The man turned and, before he could do anything silly like walk over and shake his hands, Will raised the plastic cup of coffee he walked in with in a mock salute, silent. The Alpha took it well enough, with a tiny smile and a nod, before taking a seat next to Will.
“The latest victim is all over Tattlecrime.com. Freddie’s found herself someone here to squeeze for info.”
Crawford was terribly offended by the thought of someone under his wing stupid enough to do that, and Will all but mirrored his contempt. “Tasteless,” he muttered.
“Do you have trouble with taste?” The question came from Dr. Lecter just as Will had another sip of coffee, sugarless not by volition but by the lack of it in the machine. It felt almost appropriate to round out these bitter days of wallowing in someone else’s madness with an equally bitter coffee.
“My thoughts are often not tasty.”
“Nor mine. No effective barriers.”
Will blatantly ignored the doctor’s attempt at banter, concentrating his eyes ahead on his boss’ hands. Jack shuffled through a mountain of papers on his desk as he went over the details leaked on the site. They were abundant, and Will doubted whoever leaked got paid well enough for it. He saw the man next to him move and tilt his head in the corner of his sight.
“Not fond of eye contact, are you?” Dr. Lecter said with a lilt to his voice, a tell-tale sign of the confidence he had in his words, already making further assessments than those.
“Eyes are distracting. You see too much. You don’t see enough.” Will managed to behave for the first few lines, but as he turned and glimpsed the self-assured smile, eyes not threading further than the finely sculpted lips, his tongue was hard to hold back, even with the company. “And it’s hard to focus when you’re thinking, ohh those whites are really white or they must have hepatitis, or is that a burst vein? So I try to avoid eyes whenever possible.”
The snide comment did not dither the other man. In fact, it gave him more of an incentive for a winded response. “I imagine what you see and learn touches everything else in your mind. Your values and decency are present yet shocked by the jumps you make, appalled by your dreams. Little place to hide the things you love from all that taint.”
Will went eerily silent when he recognized himself in those words. He aimed a look of betrayal at his boss and asked, “What case is he really working on?”
Dr. Lecter played his cards well in the short lived dispute that followed; he offered an apology and he picked a side, aiming both at Will. The Beta was eager to leave, vexed by the trap he felt his boss pushed him in to, but Jack gave him a sharp look and spoke with the calmest voice he could draw.
“Sit down, we’re not done yet.”
Jack was an efficient boss. When he spoke people heard him and not just his status. Dr. Lecter sat still in his chair and quietly observed, mostly his soon-to-be project. He was so close to storming out, even with a command like that given not just by his boss but by an Alpha. Atypical for a Beta to be this brash, but not unheard of. Jack didn’t use a harsh voice, after all. Will settled for the safe choice, one that wouldn’t elect a yell that would freeze him at the door, and sat down quietly after prolonged seconds of contemplation. There was a point to this meeting and it had everything to do with a sliver of evidence found on the latest victim.
Dr. Lecter had heard it before the Beta came in, and found little amusement in hearing it again. He kept his interest watching Will Graham spring to conclusions out of thin air, pure associations. He made his gift of empathy look a lot like a curse, and who wouldn’t when made to tread deep waters full of unpleasant, vicious thoughts. A frightening gift it was to assume such a sharply defined point of view of those that society deemed abhorrent, to understand them in such an intrusive way. The waters of Will’s own mind could so easily get polluted, couldn’t they? Or they already were.
A better opportunity for games Hannibal Lecter could not have gotten even if he asked. Modern life was a tedious set of affairs and a man like Dr. Lecter, a man of fine taste and odd proclivities, he made his own entertainment right under the nose of an administration that would have him locked and medicated. Would have, if he didn’t know all the tricks, if he wasn’t himself part of the administration. Psychological evaluations were a trivial things to fool, even more so when one knew all the tricks. A plebeian way of establishing civil behaviour among the ranks of people susceptible to abuse of power. Dr. Lecter had his own though about civil behaviour, though they did not always align with the system. Or at all.
And here he was, well over four decades of life and two decades of practice under his belt and the system was yet to evaluate him as a threat to himself and others. Working as a psychiatrist certainly had its benefits, beyond the sheer joy he got from digging through foreign minds and rearranging the furniture.
+++
The reason Crawford had them sitting in his office was evidence – a tiny scrap of metal, shred from a pipe threader found on the victim’s clothes. The lab results came soon after. Certain kinds of metal, certain kinds of coating – they all factored in the creation of a list of five construction sites. The list was in Will’s hands and he was eager to get out of the office and do some work. Not quite as eager to have the doctor come along with him but his boss made it non-debatable.
“Curious how the FBI goes about their business,” Dr. Lecter said as their car pulled up towards the first construction site they would investigate that day. “I was expecting a lot more doors being kicked down.”
The words broke the stale gaze Will held on the road they parked on. He gave a crooked smile and said, “TV exaggerates.” He managed a side-glance that reached as far as Hannibal’s noise before he pulled them back to finish parking. “We’re lucky we’re not doing house to house interviews.”
Hannibal watched the Beta more closely while the other had his eyes on the rear-view mirror. His clothes felt drab and lifeless, washed one too many times with detergents that did not respect colour. The only thing that stood out on Will was his unkept look. Not a man to attract attention, probably didn’t want any to begin with. A shame, Hannibal thought, for the Beta was easy on the eyes under all those layers designed to detract needless socialising. But the real prize on him was the mind. The machine ticking inside his skull worked with exceptional precision. Nothing about this Gareth Jacob Hobbs guy seemed suspicious beyond the bad book keeping, a mistake far too easy to gloss over. Will Graham didn’t. They spent a good hour drawing grimaces from the secretary as they rummaged through boxes of paperwork and the only thing that caught his sight was the lack of an address on Mr. Hobbs’s resignation letter. Hardly a thing to be suspicious about, but in Will’s own words, it wouldn’t hurt to check it out.
Hannibal suspected Will didn’t quite think his words through. It was bound to hurt, especially if the man turned out to draw suspicion in Will. A moment alone in the office gave Dr. Lecter a chance to make a phone call, a little courtesy call to make things interesting. Either something would happen from it or nothing would. As they drove towards the Hobbs residence, Hannibal cycled through all the possible outcomes and found the most desirable one to be the outcome where the Beta pulls out with blood-stained hands. There was potential here, he felt, untapped and raw. A mind like his was something that deserved careful exploration.
What Dr. Lecter’s little phone call gave him was even better than that. Before they could park, the wife’s body got pushed out the front door, blood gushing on the asphalt.
“Stay in the car,” Will warned as he scrambled out of the vehicle and towards the body, “and call for backup!”
Hannibal did a part of what he was told. He called for backup as his eyes wondered curiously over the Beta and the thousand silent no-no-nos stringing out of his dry lips. He tried to stop the bleeding with his hands but with a large slice over her throat, the wife was too far gone and beyond help. A scream from indoors drove Will to his feet and Dr. Lecter out of the car. He didn’t plan on just sitting there, not when this turned out to be quite a show already. Not when the profiler stood up and grabbed his gun with blood-stained hands, shaking, but no less courageous to push through the door and run inside. Hannibal reached the wife just in time to see her eyes glaze over. Too late for her, nothing to ruin his clothes over. He heard shots fired, one-two-three-four. There were more coming but he sneezed and sneezed again, unable to count them all pouring out in quick succession. Ten would be his estimate when the noise stopped. Hannibal was quick to recognise that smell that itched his nose – an Omega was in there, losing blood and losing it fast. But the full picture that unveiled as Hannibal stepped into the kitchen, unrushed and careful, was something else.
Gareth Jacob Hobbs lay dead, riddled with bullet holes. His daughter also lay on the kitchen floor, blood gushing with the rhythm of her frantic heart out of the half-slice on her neck. Dr. Lecter switched to breathing through his mouth in order not to sneeze again and crouched besides her, trying his best to stop the gushing with his hands around her neck. She lost a lot of blood but could still be saved. Curious, though, for where was Will to assist her? When the doctor’s hands settled over her injury properly and stopped needles spillage, he looked around and found Will behind the kitchen table, out cold and collapsed next to a pool of his own vomit.
He recalled then Jack’s words, the reason Alana Bloom found herself to be an inadequate choice to keep the profiler stable. Dr. Lecter knew a thing or two about repulsion, it itched his nose right at that very moment, but never did he hear of a condition being this severe. The sound of police and ambulance sirens soon filled the Hobbs driveway and Hannibal found he couldn’t wait to get home, pull a few strings and have Will Graham’s health record delivered to him.