Archive of Our Own

There’s a part of him that thinks twice about burning Neal Caffrey, once and for all. A part of him that sees a real life in his oxfords, wearing his skin. Its begun to fit better, losing some of the warp and stretch that results from a personality taken, not formed. Neal Caffrey was the amalgamation of hundreds of different men and women, light refracting into color, all pieces of a larger, unsolvable puzzle.

It was what made being him so attractive. 

The years he spent as a beat cop in New Orleans, those three formative years where he mingled with the scum and the righteous, how everyone thought themselves the latter; the nights pouring over case files far more interesting than the typical drunks he dealt with; where the crimes had victims, but not ones of viscera and flesh and blood; where there was darkness, but not the kind that would self-destruct him, not the kind that crawled into his head and chewed his morals, nibbling bit by bit away, deeply impacted him. Dealing with senseless assault after senseless assault night after night certainly made most white-collar crimes look like the light at the end of a tunnel. 

Eventually, when his cases ran dry, when patterns emerged, he’d spend his days off in art galleries, on his laptop looking at pieces, researching them. Will hadn’t picked up a pen with the intention to do anything but mindlessly fill out schoolwork or forms—similar in tedium—since he was still living with his pops in one trailer home or another, but one night, one random night, as men screamed in the drunk tank behind him, he did. 

He can remember being twenty, hands cramped from report after report of the same kind of offenders, the same twist to their humanity, and simply allowing the ink in his pen to possess him, to use him instead. He remembers being twenty and despising himself, exhausted and ears aching, unable to focus, unable to remember why he’d tackled the latest bastard. Eyes dazed but intent, soon enough the rough sketch of his last arrest, a serial rapist, appeared on his writing pad.

Strong, stark lines of pressed pen, jagged lines where his hand stilled, fingers angry but hesitant, came together to form a stormy brow, jowls that were cubical, and pinched lips. 

They could be bold, with the right angle, he had thought, offering himself a quiet kindness, a respite from constant internal critique. His lines…Never bright, but something that pops out, dark, but not of the dark.

He’d stared for a good while before returning to his work, but all he could think, head pounding from the rowdiness of the men in the cells, was that this could be something. 

He’d thought so, and didn’t stop until it was a perpetual droning, a background noise that never faded. He looked at his shitty apartment, the one that a part of him still loves, all these years later—the part of him that grew to withstand change but never accept it, the part shriveled and atrophied and disregarded because its protests were never strong enough to not get bulldozed over by reality, by thoughts like: ‘moving makes sense as a poor mechanic’s son’, and ‘you’re not human enough to stay in one place for too long without people noticing you’re just a thief, a thief of personality, a wannabe of sincerity’—and knew that his problem had been his determination to stay Will Graham, to stay authentic in some way.

Until one day he looked at the near indistinguishable copy of a Renoir resting on his cheap, thrifted easel, and saw nothing wrong with being a fraud. Not when it could be so beautiful. 

He doesn’t regret trying someone else on for a change, even when the aliases pile up, and life gets complicated, and Kate leaves and never comes back and he never even told her, never even got to tell her where his real stash is, who he really is, was, once. 

But he wouldn’t do it over. If given the chance he’d spurn it. Even when everything gets complicated in his head and he doesn’t quite know how to refer to himself, to who his thoughts should be ascribed to, he is accepting, if not content. 

He is similarly accepting of the fact that Neal Caffrey has a good run. 

He thinks he could be honest with the people in Neal’s life, could build on the rapport, the camaraderie he’s spent the last few years establishing. He loves Peter like a brother and he would take a bullet for him, he gives up his fortune for El and would do even more. Moz is his brother and leaving him, conning him, is what makes long nights longer, spent restless. His fingers never stop twitching towards the burner he never burned, his mind never stops composing messages of thanks, of sorrow, all about mockingbirds. 

He enjoys the way Sara looks at him, her intelligence, and he appreciates Jones’ wit and Diana’s dryness, and he knows he could live the rest of his life doing good, viscera pushed away, pushed down alongside southern drawl and disdain for the way fitted suits cling to his back. It’s what he wanted, after all, to live free of bloody thoughts and the slow, oozing sludge of corruption he’d felt building up in his veins. 

But then, after Gordon Taylor, after they let him loose, sans anklet even after the baseball memorabilia is safe and sound, after the stadium is just a stadium and not the site of a crime, he begins to itch, antsy in a way that has him turning his phone off and dumping its battery in his other pocket.

He walks to a borough far away enough to feel like an entirely different city, hunching a bit, hat obscuring his features, and punches in the code to a storage unit under a different man’s name. He gets feelings like this on occasion, something screaming at him to turn around, to look.

Listening has saved his ass more than once; as a cop dodging a thrown beer bottle, as a con artist jumping out a window. Listening to it is instinct. 

He checks the prepaid phone sitting in a random corner in a random box of trash to anyone other than him, and sees a single, months old text from his pops, from Beau Graham:

I’m dying.

And he stops thinking.

There’s no elaborate cipher, no x marks the spot goose chase waiting for those who know Neal Caffrey. He simply hands June a bulging envelope dated a week in the future, and he can tell she knows, can tell by how she leans in, silently asking for a hug.

“We’re not coming back from this one, are we?” She asks, tone light but face tucked into his shoulder.

“Thank you,” he says, and he can see the surprise in her eyes at the faint drawl to his voice, can see her analyze him, take in the looseness of his posture, the flannel peeking out of his duffel bag so foreign from the fine blazer stretching across his back, “Thank you for everything.”

There’s a sad smile curving her lips, but her back is unbent, unbowed. Neal knows she’ll be okay. Neither of them do goodbyes, there’s no need for melancholy.

They say hello instead.

“It’s nice to meet you, young man,” June says, ever observant, ever such a brilliant mind. She sticks out a hand, and her grip is just as strong as it was when they first met in that thrift shop, her late husband’s suits on the counter and grief in her eyes, “Would you mind telling me your name?”

Will Graham stares at her, and impulsively decides to give it to her. It’s the least he can do; there’s no letter with her name in the envelope she’s clutching. It's an impulsive decision, but so is leaving. There’s no justification, no mental high ground to let him avoid the resignation in her expression, the sad glint of acceptance in her eyes. 

He smiles at her, and it’s unfamiliar. He wants glasses to hide behind, or unruly hair to brush into his face; there’s no badge on his chest but there’s honesty in his eyes, even if there’s no charming sparkle, no charisma so practiced it’s almost real.

“Will,” is the first entirely true thing he tells June Ellington, “My name is Will,” are the last words he says at all.

The manhunt goes on for weeks, but the media attention dies down quickly. He hasn't been a hotshot criminal for a long time. His mug hasn't been pasted onto newspapers and blinking on screens since before Peter caught him the last time, and it doesn't hurt that he’s very familiar with who's after him, in a way distinct from just knowing habits, proclivities, and preferences.

He knows the White Collar division down to their very core. They do not have the same advantage.

Eventually, when there’s been no conspicuous art thefts, no forgeries entering the market, his name bumps down the Most Wanted List. Name by name, his priority lowers. For all intents and purposes, Neal Caffrey is dead. That name will never be used again, as useful as the ash of a long extinguished fire. Interest will only decrease, and resources will be diverted. 

His old team will have already made it through several new cases by the time he’s by his father’s bedside and Will Graham again, with the past decade of his life rewritten, with commendations he never got to earn on his record, and recommendations from every corrupt cop in his old precinct just a call away. 

The dust of his escape has begun to settle, but does it matter? He is late, far too late.

“My wily boy,” his pops jokes, the only person in the entire world who had a decent chance of knowing him, knowing who he is behind the masks and the funhouse mirror that is his brain, “My Will.”

His skin is yellow, his eyes are jaundiced, and he is hopped up on so much fucking morphine that his last words are interspersed by giggles, a delight that eluded Beau Graham his entire life finding him at last. 

He wasn’t the best father, but Beau loved him, loved him enough not to visit in prison, enough to always wait for him to reach out first.

Will remembers, with the luminosity of a brain that can never forget, how his father had reacted when he had turned in his badge, had traveled up north to Louisiana's border where his father had lived at the time, knocked on his apartment door, soggy and downtrodden and excited.

“I think I’m going to try being someone else for a while, pops,” he had explained, sitting at the small plastic fold out his father called a table, legs splayed out, unable to fit underneath. 

His father, standing and leaning against the edge of his kitchen counter, having finished perusing his fridge for a beer, popped the cap off with a butterknife, silent and sipping for a while, before turning to him, hand outreaching and coming to rest on his rain-damp curls.

“Okay,” He had said, no judgement. His eyes were averted, both of them staring at linoleum tile, but it wasn’t out of avoidance, simply mutual habit, “Do you think it’ll help?” Help you, help your brain, help your problems.

“Maybe. Yeah.” He amended.  

His father had made a small noise of consensus, before turning to him, a little smile pulling at his lips, “Well,” He said after another sip of beer, “At least my son won’t be working for the man anymore.”

A false shudder at the expense of the government is enough to loosen both of their shoulders, the air no longer stilted— and perhaps not comfortable, but certainly affectionate. His father’s little snipes had been less amusing when he’d been earnest about serving, but even then, Will had appreciated the humor—perhaps not in its entirety—but certainly the reasoning behind it. 

He’d looked up at his father, nameless in front of the man who had named him, and offered a smile in return. 

Beau loved him enough not to ask, and for that, he had dropped everything to become his son again. He would have done it anyway, he knows, but it sounds better, when there's some grand call, and not just a man bored of his life with an excuse at the right time.

His pops dies with Will by his side, answering all of his questions, gripping his hand and pouring water into his mouth, quenching his thirst like a dutiful son, like he’s a good son, one who knew his father’s prognosis before the end, when chemotherapy was an option, when there was a chance at life, a chance to live.

Will holds his hand far past the last beat of Beau’s heart, and when he stands up, he doesn’t feel so nebulous anymore. He feels dusty and wrong, but that’s never been unusual as a Graham.

He feels quiet for the first time in his life.

He finally gets his degree. 

Will Graham saved up by saving lives on the force, joining after a gap year with his father, a year spent working alongside him as a mechanic. Will Graham is a policeman at nineteen, a beat cop for five years, before his promotion to junior detective at twenty-four going on twenty-five. He’s made senior at thirty, and he quits right before his thirty-second birthday, telling those who ask that it's to better himself, and allows his father’s death to explain where the motivation for that came from.

New Orleans is a big city, and money talks. His ruse will hold, would have held, before he spent a few forgeries worth on smoothing over the fine details, the nitty gritty, like where Will Graham liked to get his lunch on and off duty, which of the regulars remember him, what his landlords have to think of him, the friends he had, where he liked to buy his clothes, and every other infinitely small detail that make up a life. He pays off enough people to feel like a politician with more skeletons than closet.

He’s accepted into George Washington University, and they consider his field experience, his time served. They call around, and before long he’s on track to earn a graduate degree in forensic science.

He reads about blood splatters and using decomposition rates to determine time of death, and thinks about aging paintings in his oven, about turning signatures upside down so they become easier to mimic, loops instead of letters. 

Will Graham graduates at thirty-four, and in a fit of pique, applies for the FBI. He remembers why he shed his first skin when they deny him based on his disorder, on an evaluation he knows he passed, but red marks are red marks and he has a history of them. 

But he knows how the FBI works, so he applies again, this time to teach, and he knows he’s in even before the congratulatory email, before the plans to onboard him with the faculty are in his inbox.

If there’s one thing that unites all his aliases, all his skins, it’s that he is always different, always prized. Perhaps not displayed, but certainly kept. 

Life is quiet. He talks about gruesome deaths and how to get into the mind of serial killers. He teaches students from a distance, and sometimes, he even lets a few talk to him during his office hours. He has a home, a real home, in Wolf Trap, Virginia, an hour's drive away from headquarters. He has five dogs, but he’s had more; he keeps the ones like him, the ones that won’t get a home anywhere else because they are different and dusty and have a horrible, drooling little underbite. His mind is quiet.

He’s thirty-seven when Jack Crawford barges into one of his lectures, eyes narrowed and voice authoritative. He’s thirty-seven when impulse takes hold of him once again, and he can’t find it in himself to say no.

Will Graham begins to consult for the FBI. It’s a heady feeling to be looking over case files without a tracker on his ankle, without ‘CRIMINAL’ stamped on his forehead.

He goes from smiling for a living, to being expected to tout a perpetual frown, to look at the ghastly and let it seep into his soul.

His mouth hurts either way. 

Dr. Hannibal Lecter. It’s a name Will momentarily envies— so bold, thoughts of an unyielding spirit, of an impossible march through snowy alps, of victories no other man could have led coming to mind. He could never use something so memorable for an alias. 

Eldon Stammets for the same reason: so remarkably unremarkable, so bland and uninspired that it stood unique.

Dr. Lecter sits across from him, legs artfully crossed. It’s a pose he misses, the comfort of slotting one leg atop another, pressed tightly against himself. There is a certain restriction in it, just as much as there is elegance. Will Graham sits with his legs apart, not too wide, but not too close either. Ready to run, ready to leave at a moment's notice.

“If your intention was to kill him,” Dr. Lecter says, continuing to prod him no matter his dry remarks or deflecting use of wit, “It’s because you understand why he did the things he did.” He pauses, lending a certain heft to his words when he speaks again. “It’s beautiful in its own way, giving voice to the unmentionable.”

The flames of the fireplace flicker behind Dr. Lecter’s chair, and for a moment Will can feel heat on his back, the tinny echo of an explosion ringing in his ears. He can feel Abigail Hobbs’ blood on his hands, the fluttery sensation of her neck splitting open, life force draining out under his fingers. There is the weight of death, of murder, on his shoulders, but it’s nothing new.

“I should’ve stuck to fixing boat motors in Louisiana.” Will says, allowing honesty to spill from his lips like rot does from an old apple, disintegrating in his hands. So many lives, her life, he thinks fleetingly, could have done without his presence.

“I should have stayed.” Will thinks bitterly, barely speaking above a whisper, more self-deprecation than confession.

Should have stayed Will Graham. Should have stayed a beat cop with nothing better to do than twiddle his thumbs and hate himself.

Dr. Lecter appears expectant when Will glances back at him, eyes leaving the fireplace. He’s not discourteous enough to give voice to his curiosity, Will thinks. Dr. Lecter doesn’t like rudeness to the point where enacting it is unthinkable, so Will ignores the burning look in his eyes, so much more raging than the flames casting shadow over his hollow cheeks, and sighs.

“I understand too much.” Will offers instead. 

Created in his image, Will ponders, as Dr. Lecter goes on about power, about churches caving in, roofs dropped on devouts. He’s made himself into many images, reflected what others wanted to see, to hear. He’s created many scenes, forgeries of both emotion and paint, yet he’s never ascribed it to religion. To God. 

Will has never thought to describe himself as anything other than man, than fallible and foolish. 

What does it say about you, Dr. Lecter? He thinks, pulling his coat tight around his shoulders, stepping into the pouring rain, That you hold death to such divinity? Ascribe such holiness to hurting, to killing?

His fingers twitch on the steering wheel the entire drive home.

He feels faded, like the edges of a burnt photo curling up but not seeping, ink evaporated. Will is lecturing, going through the motions on a case he can’t find it in himself to care about, answering questions that he wished were more insightful, teaching students he can’t help but be disappointed in.

Will looks up, and it’s not a surprise to see Jack Crawford marching into his class. He’s interrupted more than one and his more observant students have already begun to grab at their belongings, shoulders slumping, eyes rolling in annoyance.

But Jack doesn’t say anything, doesn’t boom into his lecture hall and disrupt the fragile quiet, the one that manages to persist past the sight of gore and death and murder, but never him. It discomforts Will, this new voyeur.

But not as much as the sight of two crooked fingers waving together, pointing from him to Jack, Jack to him.

He blinks, ink in the air, disoriented, and he can see the images of people long abandoned in Jack’s place, fingers together in an authoritarian manner he’s only ever seen feds and self-important people do.

Will averts his eyes, nodding in understanding.

When he looks up again, no one is there.

“Wait your turn, Signor Winston,” Will scolds, feeling oddly playful. It’s been a long couple of weeks, but something in him feels grounded, even as the volume of the noise in his head keeps getting turned up. His dogs bark by their bowls, knowing the drill. It’s only Winston that circles his feet, eager as he goes to grab their food.

“Down boy,” he says, tone conveying his meaning more than words ever could. Winston, paws outreached as if to swipe at the bag of kibble, lets out a small whine, eyes glistening, definitely trying to manipulate him. He feels, ridiculously enough, a little proud, but it’s short lived. He staggers, suddenly dizzy.

It takes him a moment to recuperate, and it’s these spells, these bouts of discombobulation, that prevent him from feeding his dogs with anything other than the half-off kibble he’d stocked up on a couple of months ago. 

It’s these spells that have been keeping him off balance, as if he’s had blinders on for the past week, fumbling his way through life. Winston whines up at him, nosing his ankles, and a fissure of fondness breaks through the throbbing in his head, in his heart, in every cell of his body. 

Will babbles down at Winston, trying to talk himself out of his brain, out of the pulsing in his ears. 

“Hello,” He croons down, a little smile pulling at his lips at how Winston changes gears, immediately turning back to the kibble, so intent he’s almost in a pointer position, “What a little conman,” He sighs, before he bends down, opening the bag and going to sneak Winston an extra handful, “Not like I can complain about tha-”

A creak gets his attention, head whipping over to his doorway where Hannibal stands, lunch bag in hand. He smiles, and it is almost sheepish. Almost ashamed to have been caught.

“I haven’t heard anyone speak Italian so beautifully in such a while,” Hannibal offers in lieu of an explanation for why he was creeping silently into Will’s home, why he must have purposely left his car half a mile in, otherwise Will would have heard him on his gravel driveway, “Would you like some breakfast?” He says, master of the non-sequitur.

Annoyed, Will responds, only faintly sarcastic, “Yes Dr. Lecter, I would,” because there’s not much else to do when interacting with the man who holds his entire career in his hands. Also, because Hannibal’s cooking is better than whatever gas station slop he would have picked up on the way to work. 

Hannibal’s smile is toothy, and even as Will responds back only in English, he doesn’t stop speaking Italian until they’re at headquarters.

He notes, days after the fact, when he’s feeling a little bit better, enough to feed his dogs a proper meal, that Hannibal had a unique inflection to his syllables, one that is possibly Florentine, as opposed to the general dialect he chose when learning. He has a vague accent in nearly all of his learned languages, preferring the ability to obfuscate, to claim origin anywhere he needs to.

Hannibal wields his accent like a trophy, like initials carved into tree bark, like a cheap lock on a fence, like scrawled graffiti on a bathroom stall, declaring he was there.  

Will watches his dogs feast, and tries not to think of bloody wings and dead angels, all-seeing but ignorant. 

Hannibal’s cooking is divine, the sort he could only afford after he’d sold his first forgery, lips pursed and eyes anxious. It tastes like the selling points of restaurants Kate dreamed of being their routine Friday night reservation. The wine is similarly exquisite, definitely not box wine poured into a vintage label, and he finds himself instinctively swirling it, oxygenating the wine before taking a sip. It was clearly fine, and he couldn’t bear to waste it.

He doesn’t realize it for the slip up that it is until he looks back up and Hannibal is appraising him, his own glass clutched delicately at the stem. His eyes are minutely narrowed. It is the intensity that resides within them, tricking brown into red, that alerts Will.

“A Chianti,” Hannibal offers, continuing to absentmindedly swirl his own wine, albeit a good distance from his nose. He says it like he’s bestowing grace, as if Will was just mimicking his actions, mirroring. 

“It pairs well with the lamb.” Will responds, glancing down at the braised chops, at the artful swirl of polenta amidst the colorful placement of vegetables, because he can’t resist, not when he’s being so blatantly condescended to. He takes a purposeful sip, letting it sink into his palate, 

“A Classico, a particularly dry year considering the increased sweetness of the aroma. A rather historical choice, Dr. Lecter.” 

After a pause, “One that seems to be a pattern with you. Is there some significance within Etruscan history to you? First that vase, now their grapes- I can’t help but wonder.” 

He’d clocked it immediately, but had planned to keep quiet. It was expensive, he could tell that from a glance, the sheen proving to be authentic to his eye even from several feet away. 

Will had assumed Hannibal was wealthy, his suits were blatantly custom and extremely well tailored, his house was cavernous and decorated to an exact taste. No man of middling wealth could afford the heating bill, or to throw such lavish dinner parties—as he’d learned through the society pages—but that vase, that vase spoke of a deeper wealth. Dr. Hannibal Lecter was a man of greater means than just an accomplished surgeon, a renowned psychiatrist could achieve. He enjoyed the fruits of generations. 

“Ah,” Hannibal breathes, allowing only a hint of surprise, a humble allowance for his earlier assumption, Will thinks, “I’m fortunate that you recognize the pairing. While it is delightful seeing my guests enjoy the results of my craft, it can be disheartening for the finer details to go unobserved.” The deflection is expected, Will wasn’t expecting a genuine answer why there was an art piece that could go for over half a million simply sitting in his foyer. 

“Tell me, Will,” Hannibal puts down his glass, hands straying to his fork and knife as he responds to Will’s subtly probing question with one of his own, “Where did you acquire such a discerning palate? Is it a product of your empathy, the ability to parse context where no one else may, or was it learned? Cultivated.”

He’s too comfortable. He knows it, and yet he’s paralyzed, unable to work against the mistakes piling up, the sutures at the edge of his identity pulling loose.

Will Graham smiles, and it’s an awkward crooked thing, no beaming white teeth.

“A little bit of both,” he sheepishly admits, remembering to avoid eye contact, eyes darting down to admire the meal Hannibal had cooked, “A little bit of both.”

“Have you ever killed anything?” Will asks, eyes roaming the expanse of Hannibal’s shelves, having paused in front of the ladder, fingers trailing over the side, before moving on, as if he was actually intent on the titles hosted, and not just avoiding eye contact, avoiding the flames on the other side of the room.

There’s a pause. Will doesn’t assign it to any particular emotion until Hannibal finally replies, a barely discernible upwards lilt to his voice.

“Define anything.”

Will turns around, almost shocked at the playful tone. Hannibal’s face is unreadable, his words spoken slow, carefully parsed, “I have killed dreams and butchered pigs. What are you asking, Will?”

I don’t know, he thinks. 

For a moment, he feels like he’s back in New York, back in the office with Peter, playing that game of cat and mouse they both pretended wasn’t happening. There’s an undercurrent to his conversations with Hannibal, a constant implication that puts Will on edge.

Unlike with Peter, there’s no manifest to chase, no Degas to replace, no hearing to miss. There’s no one to kidnap, no lost art to carve an almost guilty hole in the concave under his ribs. There’s no barely missed heart to heart, there’s no backup, no storage unit with his easiest to liquidate treasures buried under trash and a simple, antiquated prepaid phone.

There’s just suspicion. He doesn’t know why, but he knows it’s there, and that puts him on edge more than the entire White Collar division ever did. He just hasn’t determined what type of edge, not yet. 

Will shrugs in response. “About you. I’m asking about you.”

Hannibal diverts, deflects, distracts. There’s been another tragedy: a church on fire. 

Will is antsy. A sense of guilt has taken root ever since Tobias, since Hannibal was injured. It tugs at him, but not completely. He knows what a mask looks like, a skin suit, and Hannibal seems to have as many as he has obnoxiously flattering and plaid suits in his haute couture closet. 

There’s a case, and he lets it eat his mind up.

Corpses mutilated, skin flayed and spread, organs at first amateurishly laid out, then sewn together to create abstract, but not themeless art. It’s gruesome, and evolving, signature remaining the same, but technique ever changing, advancing. 

When the call came that the blood of one of their victims matched the blood used in a recent painting, one exposed as a forgery, a connection was made, and the file found its way to his hands, but he’d been aware of the case for far longer. Not when the last victim turned up, not even particularly recently, but months ago, there had been a single deviation, and it had occurred locally. A liver had been missing from the arrangement. The blood had been drained, the hair had been cut, everything was as expected.

Except the liver.

Their killer was an experienced artist, but a rigid one. Likely went to a traditional art school, one that dismissed any method used later than the Impressionists. Their killer could not experiment in their art, in their imitations, so they broke free, finding artistic freedom in other means. Their techniques consistently evolved, but their method, their signature never did. All but once.

It should have set off alarm bells, he should have excused himself, taken leave at the first mention of ‘art’ and ‘fraud’, but he didn’t. Because his mind wasn’t quiet, because he was comfortable, because he was concerned, because he knew no one else would be searching for the Chesapeake Ripper here— and because Will Graham had started to forget he had ever been anyone else.

He walks into headquarters with Alana on a middling, perfectly average day, sky turning the faint wispy blue-gray that hints the clouds are ready to burst. They quickly fall into pace with one another, Alana taking a moment to finish her call with Dr. Lecter. 

“He seems happy,” She reveals, eyes alight with a mischief that he only became privy to recently, when the lines between them began to blur, when her interest became less professional and more personal.

“He would be,” Will responds dryly, pausing for a moment to clean his glasses on his flannel, “Jack’s called him on to run interference with the art experts. He’s getting paid to discuss his passion with people who can’t leave.”

“Give or take the murder,” Alana says, a little more solemn than her words would imply.

Will says nothing in response; he’s not entirely sure anything could dissuade a determined Dr. Lecter, much less something as psychologically riveting as a mind that had sought to create something so primal, so deceiving as landscapes of life created with brushes of human hair and painted upon a base of human blood; in control enough to hide, but not to resist temptation, to avoid flaunting. 

They round the corner, allowing a comfortable silence to fill the air between them. 

That’s the problem, he muses, grateful for his flannel in the chilly, climate controlled halls. He’s comfortable. Will Graham is comfortable, so he doesn’t register what he’s seeing, not until it’s too late.

Katz waves them over, entirely too cheerful for someone who hasn’t taken off her bloody gloves yet. Price and Zeller are nowhere to be found, Will assumes they’re still processing at the lab. Briefly, he finds himself distracted by the thought, a feeling of fondness stealing over him.

The mating habits of mid level government employees, he hears Mozzie say, and it’s almost enough to make him smile.

Jack Crawford is speaking to an agent, but Will can’t tell who, not with their back turned. There’s a few familiar faces off in the corner, one of the agents nods at him before doing the same to Alana.

It’s Hannibal who’s the catalyst, blocking his escape, preventing him from backing out the door the moment he sees Diana speaking to him, the moment he realizes the man over in the corner with Jack is Peter, and that the agent who just walked past him is Jones.

“Ah,” he says looking up, his preternatural ability for causing Will consternation spot on, “It’s good to see you, Will.”

Diana, putting the case files in her hand down—photographs of other forged paintings they’ve come to confirm contain human remains, he’s sure—naturally looks up with Hannibal, staring at him politely before it registers, her lips parting in a stunned ‘oh’.

“Neal?” She asks, voice uncharacteristically shrill. He can see her phase through confusion and sadness and grief and rage, and decides the best course of option is to obfuscate. He tries to ignore the feeling that it's his only option.

He glances behind him, looking at Hannibal as if to say What? and almost falters at the curiosity in Hannibal’s eyes, the amusement. As if he sees right through him.

“Neal?” Will asks in return, ensuring his voice is as gruff as Will Graham’s voice is supposed to be, “I’m Will.” He doesn’t offer a last name.

But Diana is resolute, and they have played this game before, and now everyone’s attention is on them because she’s marching over, hands reaching to grab him by the collar, “You son of a bitch-”

When Jack steps in, brows furrowed, and Peter finally turns around.

“Excuse me,” Jack says, “I don’t know who you think Will is, but I can assure you, his name is not Neal.”

Will would feel a bit touched by the protectiveness, but it's dampened immediately by the look Peter is giving him. It’s tired and desolate. It’s knowing.

“You can’t stay away,” he breathes out, “can you, Caffrey.” Is the first thing Peter Burke says to him in almost six years. The conviction in his voice is resolute, mirrored in Jones and Diana’s expressions. There’s nothing to be done: even if he manages to leave the building, the Bureau has his address, they have his face. 

The four of them know that Will Graham’s faculty photo would register as a facial match to Neal Caffrey; they know that he would have worn latex the day of his fingerprinting, and that if he was stamped now, there’d be nothing to deny, nothing to do at all. 

The charming, devil-may-care smile that stretches his lips isn’t unfamiliar, but it doesn’t fit right. He knows they see this, by the faint grimace twisting their lips, and he drops it accordingly, recalibrating. 

Those that know him as Will Graham do the same. There is confusion warping each of their faces, except for one, and in him there is a hunger so blatant, that it is almost terrifying. It’s not hunger for hunger’s sake, no, instead there is an inquisitive gleam in his eyes, the type aroused by unfamiliar cuisine. Will shelves that particular reaction away to be examined later. If there is a later, he comments, not nearly morose enough. 

He’s surrounded by FBI agents—he isn’t getting out of this one—so instead he slowly raises his arms, putting his hands where they can see them. There’s a strained silence, and he almost goes as far as to motion towards Peter’s belt where the handcuffs hang, but restrains himself. No one goes to cuff him. 

He relaxes his posture in increments, until his hands are down by his waist, but still clearly in view.

“Why copper,” he drawls instead, the same part of him that’s leading him to speak, to tease, as if there isn’t the better part of a decade between their last conversation delights at the bewilderment on Jack’s face, on Alana’s, on Katz’s—on all those people who thought they knew him, had his number down to the bone—“I thought there was a script to these things.”

Do this in private, he screams out, projecting as hard as he can, hoping his placid actions will persuade Peter to allow this to happen quietly, Please, not here.

But Neal Caffrey left cruelly, carelessly, and it seems that Peter took that to heart.

“Did you really think we’d be okay with just some fucking letters?” Peter bursts out, before stopping, fingers coming to pinch the bridge of his noise in a movement so achingly familiar, only his professionalism holding him back, “You were almost out, Neal. You were this close,” His fingers pinch the air, only a sliver of space between them, “To becoming a legitimate consultant. Instead you cut the anklet and ran-” 

Jack looks alarmed, “Agent Burke, if you would care to enlighten,” he grits out, “The rest of us, it would be appreciated.”

Peter ignores him. “Was it all a con, Caffrey? Just a long haul until you could disappear into the sunset, stolen riches galore, laughing about how fucking stupid the government is?” He pauses, before his shoulders slump a bit, a bitter smile stealing onto his face. 

“We thought so, we all did. Until we realized Mozzie didn’t know where you were. Until June invited El and I over, and told us to call off the manhunt, because something had spooked you. Because you were gone for good.”

“Will,” he says, as if saying the name for the first time, testing it on his tongue, “Was that the name you told June? Is that the name before all others?”

There is no plausible deniability to be had, and something deep inside him wriggles, guilty, because he knows that if there were, there was no way in hell he’d respond, he’d divert, divert, divert, until there was a way out.

Instead, he takes off his glasses, combs his hair back with his fingers, and sighs. His back is straight, and he allows some of Caffrey’s grace to line his movements as he walks over to the conference table, sitting down. He needs to sit for this. He debates swinging his legs up on the table, perhaps calling back some nostalgia for his old team, but he’s no longer entirely Neal Caffrey, and that’s not something Will Graham would ever do. He leans over instead, elbows on his knees.

“June didn’t tell you?” He asks, almost conversationally, as if he isn’t dropping the equivalent of a nuclear bomb on his current life. Across from him, Hannibal pulls out a chair, sitting down as well. His eyes are intent and bright, and Will knows without a doubt that he’s being psychoanalyzed. 

“You know she wouldn’t.” That’s why you told her, goes unsaid, but not unheard.

“Will?” Suddenly interrupts them, Alana walking over, her voice soft but certainly not calm, “Will, what’s going on?”

Jones takes this as a cue to speak, his taste for comedic timing clearly not having suffered as a result of the years passing, “He’s a conman. One of the best. So good that the FBI snatched him up and put him on a leash, so that he could do some good.” His tone is sardonic, “Until he chewed through and ran.”

“I was never a conman,” Will says, softly, having the grace to ignore what Jones was implying, “Neal Caffrey was.”

There’s no time for Will to see how his old team digests that, because suddenly Hannibal is speaking, and he sounds so excited, so thrilled, like it’s Christmas and he has the biggest present under the tree.

“Your empathy,” Hannibal says, eyes so dark for a man with a tone so bright, “You slipped on someone else’s skin.”

“Frankensteined it.” Will allows, leaning until his back was flush with the chair’s backrest. “You’d think as a beat cop I’d pick up violent traits, and not a thousand petty ones.” He shrugs, because despite the pain he’s not repentant.

“Somewhere along the way that morphed with the passion my pops told me to put down in favor of something more realistic, and before I knew it I’d been around the world, made more money off a few little forgeries than my pops did his whole life.”

A little smirk pulls at his lips, because this moment above all else, is a performance, “Not bad for trailer trash.”

“No,” Hannibal murmurs, “Not bad at all.”

“You’re telling me,” Apparently Zeller had arrived somewhere in the midst of Will’s life falling apart, “That the FBI hired you not once, but twice?” 

His tone is incredulous, as if someone is trying to get him to believe that the Earth is flat, or that the sky is actually pink, or that Will Graham isn’t just the little freak he thinks he is. Takes charisma to con, to pull wool over someone’s eyes and convince them it's the golden fleece. Charisma, Will Graham with his penchant for avoiding eye contact, with his blunt way of speaking, could never muster. 

“Mm,” Will hums in response, playacting at genuinely thinking the question over, an unusual wave of bitterness washing over him, “How do you define hiring? If ‘we need you so bad we’ll bust you out of prison’ qualifies, then spot on Zeller.”

Diana’s fingers twitch, seizing in a cupped motion as if to strangle him.

“We both know that’s not what happened,” She says.

Will cants his head at her, “Is it?”

“Berrigan,” Peter warns, stopping her in her tracks, where Will is almost certain she was about to attempt to murder him in Quantico of all places.

Will chances a look at Jack only to see him look absolutely dumbfounded, as if a unicorn had walked up to him and farted in his face, before disappearing in a puff of rainbow sparkles. It shouldn’t be funny, but he’s lived a life laughing at the unconscionable, so it is. It’s so funny.

“You’re telling me that my consultant is actually your…” He trails off, “Pet con? Your escaped pet con?” His tone is incredulous, which, fair. 

“If you want to be derivative about it,” Will interjects, “Yeah.” 

Almost as if in afterthought, he turns to Peter, “Don’t do anything the Humane Society wouldn’t?”

His rights are being read to him as he’s hauled up and handcuffed against the conference table before he can blink.

The cuffs chaff, and the steel back of the chair they’ve sat him on is rigid, unyielding, just barely not painful if he doesn’t focus on it too hard. Will sighs, head lolling to the side as he breaths, slow and deep. He’s expecting to get read the riot act, something something about a prison sentence. Someone’s going to drop a line about him never seeing daylight again. 

If he’s lucky, a higher up will see him for what he is, what he’s always been down to his core, no matter the names and skins he slipped on to find himself, and they will put a collar around his neck. He’s proved too useful to let rot, but there’ll be no leash, nothing to slip. He might even get chipped. 

So, it’s surprising when someone walks in, and it’s not Jack, or Peter—maybe even both if karma was feeling particularly bitchy—but instead Hannibal. There's a look in his eyes, like Will is the last unbruised apple in the farmers market, and he's not about to let some other hussy take him. It's concerned, but in a possessive way; worried about quality, instead of care.

He shakes off the fog rolling in on his thoughts, squinting at his visitor. He’s been blurry recently, blurry in mind, blurry with time. Everything blurs by. 

His name is Will Graham, it’s sometime in the afternoon, and he’s been arrested. Again.

“Dr. Lecter,” he says, because as much as he wants to be impersonal, to act as if Will Graham was just another con, he can’t, because it wasn’t, not entirely, “Hi.” 

He tries for a little smile, but it doesn’t even make it from his mind to his lips. 

“Hello Will,” Hannibal responds, accent inflecting around his name, saying it like it’s something to be revered, an undeniable object of admiration, “I’m going to inject you now.”

His gait is steady, but his steps are hurried. The cameras aren’t on yet, and he thinks they both know this. The mask hasn’t been dropped, but a glimpse of something other has been revealed. He peeks at it, and it stares right back.

“What?” Will yelps, as the glint of a needle catches his eye, mind spinning, “Hannibal, wait-”

He doesn’t. He stabs Will in the neck with one hand, the other swiftly covering his mouth, assuming correctly he was about to yell, that his gasp of pain had been commandeered as a cry for help.

Why? Will doesn’t say, can’t say. He looks up instead, eyes going wide as he implores Hannibal to explain.

“You will be fine,” Hannibal says, his fingers brushing strangely, softly over his jugular, before pocketing the syringe, “I am helping you, Will. Stay silent on this matter, and you will find yourself rewarded.”

Hannibal’s hand falls off his lips, leaving them cold in the exposed air, and he’s out of the room, just a glimpse of his silhouette flashing by before he’s gone.

Will means to prod his neck, the injection site, but he finds his hand drawn to his mouth instead, covering his lips in much the same way Hannibal had.

“Cryptic,” He whispers, muffled. He feels worried, concerned, but there is an edge of thrill—more aptly hysteria—that causes a little smile to part his lips, teeth against flesh. 

His head falls back, his hands drop, but the smile remains.

Minutes later, Peter walks in.

“You’re underdressed.” Is the first thing he says, managing to baffle Will out of his listlessness. 

“I’m not much of a suit person,” Will says, not bothering to shrug. “I never have been.” 

The stray comet of hurt streaking across Peter’s face enters the atmosphere of his conscience and burns, burns like Will’s skin, the sweat dripping down his face. He’d been cold before. Now, he is so, so hot. It’s stifling, and he finds it hard not to pant. 

“Not exactly Hemingway,” Peter starts with, settling down into the chair before him. In the back, as the door shuts, he spots Jack, brows furrowed, eyes angry. The man looks betrayed, and that, if anything, amuses him. 

“Not exactly,” Will hums. “I got my degree though.”

Peter nods, almost amiable, going along with him. “I heard. Forensic science. I’d say that surprises me, but I’ve never really known you, have I, Will?”

Between them hangs their last interaction.

“I know what this opportunity means,” Neal says, voice solemn but eyes bright.

Peter sighs, not in exasperation but something else, Neal thinks fondness. There’s a faint smile on his face as he hands Neal the baseball tickets he’d attempted to gift back, as if he isn’t going to go straight to Jones and let him try to convince Peter into going, albeit unknowingly. 

“See you tomorrow,” Peter says.

“You never did,” Will responds, brows furrowing as two Peter’s look back at him, “But,” He slurs, tongue feeling heavy in his mouth, so hot he wouldn’t be surprised if his cuffs had fused with his wrists, “I think I wanted you to.”

He slams into the metal table, feeling his body begin to shake, and takes comfort in the startled screech of Peter’s chair, the familiar sound of “Neal-” being yelled before it all goes dark.

He wakes up in a hospital bed, and the nurse tells him he has encephalitis. That his brain is on fire. His hands are restrained, but his legs are free, and his brain is on fire. Was on fire. Will isn’t sure of the specifics yet, all he knows is he’s been rotting for a good week, and that his last free meal will be of the disgusting, hospital variety. 

Hannibal walks into his room sometime later, enough later that he could, given a blank canvas, recreate the individual specks of the popcorn ceiling above him in great detail. Will knows that the chances he was somehow injected with encephalitis is low, so he doesn’t bother insulting Hannibal by asking. He knew, somehow. He knew, and he didn’t act on the knowledge until it was useful. Until now.

The thought sinks heavy, settling nervously in his gut. 

“Why’d you help me?” He asks instead. Suspicions are better unvoiced, particularly when dealing with someone who had apparently been prepared to induce a seizure at a moment's notice.

“Why not?” Hannibal replies, perfectly evasive. He sets down a lunch bag, and pulls out a bowl of soup. 

“Fancy chicken soup?” Will asks, trying to tamp down his nerves, as well as the eagerness to be fed some of Hannibal’s cooking. He feels Pavlov'ed with the way his hands immediately reach for the bowl. He’s stopped by the restraints.

He shrugs at Hannibal, only to blink and have the man reaching over him, body pressing into his own as he releases Will’s arms. His touch is gentle and efficient, and he is so warm.

“Not quite,” Hannibal finally responds, settling everything and putting Will’s bed tray into place, “A light vegetable soup cooked in simple pork broth. Nothing too heavy, yet appropriately nourishing.” 

Will thanks him for the food, and only when it's in his hands, does his demeanor change. The soup isn’t hot enough to do any damage, but the bowl is solid. His hands are free, and that’s a mistake most people don’t make twice.

“So. Why’d you help me?” He’s a little rude, but the corners of Hannibal’s eyes crinkle anyway.

“You are adept at deceit, and yet you endeavor for honesty.” Hannibal says instead, ever fond of his fucking riddles. Will is tired, and while he enjoys speaking in metaphors about art and cuisine and culture with the man, the hospital’s LED’s are spearing his eyes like kabobs, his brain aches like someone tried stirring it up to make a fucking soup out of it, and he’s hopped up on medicine he’s never even heard of, so he just comes out with it. It’s honest, direct, and part of him hopes Hannibal might be able to see the trust it requires for him to do that. It takes him a moment to think of the right way to translate his intent. 

“Do you want to bone me?"

For once, Hannibal is speechless, before letting out a loud, shocked laugh. It’s not particularly welcoming. Will can almost see it curving in the air like a scimitar. Like the initial note of a struck bell, it rings, it resonates.

“Perhaps,” Hannibal responds, before settling down, growing uneasily rapt. “I do not know why I want you. I just want you.” He says, as if he’s just parsed that out himself.

Primly, without giving Will a chance to respond, he flashes a passport at Will, one with his face and a foreign, strange name. He does the same with another, sensing Will’s question, and there is Hannibal’s face, a similarly fake name under his photo. 

“How do you feel about Florence this time of year?” Hannibal asks with a straight face, as if he isn’t suggesting that they literally run away with each other, likely into the sunset if they go now. He’d been wondering, vaguely and in boredom, what Hannibal had been doing the week he’d been unconscious, and now he has his answer.

Will looks at him, and sees something odd shifting under his skin. Saying yes will have its difficulties, but certainly less than saying no. Dr. Hannibal Lecter seems to hold as many secrets and intricacies as Will himself does, and he’d be lying if he said it didn’t intrigue him. 

“My dogs?”

Hannibal, without flinching, “I took the liberty of sending them over.”

It’s Will’s turn to be speechless— but he doesn’t let that stop him for long. Presumptuous or not, he appreciates the consideration. He doesn’t get much of it these days. 

“When do we leave?” Will asks, because he’s not one to turn down an opportunity. Especially one so interesting.

He’ll figure it out; he always has.

Hannibal tilts his head, as if considering, even though they both know he’s got this planned down to every single possible minutiae, "Now."

And they do.

Jack Crawford motions for a lackey to rewind the footage, brows still furrowed close enough to give Alana a migraine just from looking at them.

“You seeing this?” He asks, turning to her and the other agents gathered around them. Agent Burke and his team don’t look surprised, but they didn’t know Hannibal like they did, like she did. She still doesn’t understand why he would do any of this, and if getting into other people’s heads, attempting to understand them wasn’t her job, she’d be cooped up at home, splayed over her couch with a bottle of wine and contemplating how she’d been fraternizing with two would-be fugitives, and liked both of them.

“Seeing Neal Caffrey make his escape via wheelchair with the help of a walking mid-life crisis?” Agent Berrigan comments, sharing a dry look with Agent Jones, “Yes, we do.”

“Goddamn it.” Jack groans, hands coming up to rest on his face, steepling around his nose as he hunches slightly, “Freddie Lounds is going to have a field day.”

She does.

Will sips his prosecco, the chattering of socialites as familiar as it was grating, and tries to fool himself into believing there isn’t that perfect thrill in his veins, the one he’d been so desperately searching for; that Hannibal doesn’t have that dark, assessing look in his eyes as he prowls in the crowd, the one that promises to fill their stomachs and pack their freezer.

He sips, and stares out the balcony, at distant rolling hills and nearby bustle, and wonders where he’d be if he hadn’t been in the habit of baby-talking to his dogs in Italian. 

“Nowhere like this,” He mutters under his breath, scorning his surroundings. Turning from the fresh air, he watches once more as Hannibal circles the heir that had been rude to them earlier, the one with the snide tongue, before a little smile tugs at his lips, involuntary. The stitches of his fake-husband’s person suit are practically falling apart at the seams.

Nowhere like this, he thinks, and can’t quite find it in himself to mean that derogatorily.