Chapter Text
I can't say that
I am sorry
For the things that
We done
At least for a
Little while, sir
Me and her we
Had us some fun—Bruce Springsteen, "Nebraska"
Dr. Alana Bloom picks up the phone on the first ring.
"Bloom."
"Hi, baby."
"Hi." Margot.
"How's your day?"
"Fine..." Not quite true.
On the screen of her laptop is the front page of Tattle Crime. The top post screams RIPPER REBORN? SURGICAL TROPHIES TAKEN FROM VICTIMS OF FLORIDA MASSACRE, POLICE SAY.
"You saw it then," Margot says.
"Yes." She doesn't have to ask what Margot's referring to.
One day ago, in Marathon, Florida, a family of five had been found dead in their home. All five had died of massive blood loss from multiple knife wounds. No cash was found in the house, and the refrigerator had been raided. The family had just concluded a cookout, and the grill was still hot.
It appeared that the killer or killers had taken the opportunity to cook the "surgical trophies" missing from the victims over the smoldering coals before departing.
It is too familiar, even with the flat notes of the food and the money. Too close. Alana is not afraid yet. She doesn't know if she can believe Will and Hannibal are still alive.
The bodies were never found, but making her peace has taken a long time, and she's in no hurry to reopen those wounds without hard proof.
The mourning had been intensely difficult. It had felt like grieving two people she had invented, had never really known at all. She wants to believe she knew them once, but it's hard to say anymore. The feelings are complicated and sour.
Alana may not be afraid, but she's very angry—at the copycat aping the Ripper's crimes. It strikes her as unspeakably tasteless to raise her friends' ghosts, not to mention those of the real Ripper's victims, for the attention of the Freddie Loundses of the world.
That the murderer chose Hannibal to imitate does not surprise her. Among a certain segment fascinated with true crime, Lecter and Graham have quickly become a sort of modern-day Bonnie and Clyde: criminal lovers who chose to die together rather than live the rest of their lives apart.
As much as Alana hates to admit it, she can see the appeal. Will and Hannibal's mutual obsession had frequently confused and disturbed her, but she can still feel the crackle that would fill the air of a room they both occupied, especially towards the end. Brought together they sparked.
Something stirs in her memory and she thinks:
The road was so dimly lighted;
There were no highway signs to guide;
But they made up their minds
If all roads were blind,
They wouldn't give up till they died.
"Alana?"
"Yes, yes, um, I'm here."
"Don't think about it too much, baby, okay? Be here. This has nothing to do with you. Do your job and come home and play with your son and kiss your wife."
Alana smiles. That's exactly what she wants to do. And have a big-ass beer or three. No, no beer. Not anymore. Something with liquor, a gin and tonic. Watch a movie, hold Margot close, and find something to scrub Bonnie Parker's wistful sing-song words out of her head:
Some day they'll go down together;
And they'll bury them side by side;
To a few it'll be grief
To the law a relief
But it's death for Bonnie and Clyde.
Jack Crawford does not read Tattle Crime now that it is no longer his job to do so. He reads the newspaper, because he has always liked reading the newspaper and he cannot stand TV news presenters. Death of print be damned.
He sees the headline as soon as he picks up the Baltimore Sun. He stands there on his concrete stoop and looks at it. After a moment he unfolds the paper and reads.
His expression would be hard to interpret, if anyone was trying. An observer might settle on something between incredulity and relief.
Outside Will Graham's hospital room, Jack Crawford stands trying to force himself to enter. He looks at the flowers he bought in the gift shop downstairs and sighs. Finally he turns the handle.
Will is sleeping, or knocked out on pain meds. The many machines attached to him, keeping him alive and monitoring his vitals, remind him unpleasantly of his wife. He shoves the thought from his mind and sits down, setting the flowers on the little table. Under the dressings his throat itches maddeningly and he takes a deep breath, trying to will away the urge to scratch.
"Hello, Jack." Jack jumps, then smiles.
"Hi, Will," he says. Will has cracked one eyelid and is returning his smile wearily. "They got you on the good drugs?"
"The best. I'm actually more relaxed than I've been in a long time. High as a kite." He makes a noise that's almost a laugh.
"Good, good."
"Surprised to see you. Out already?"
Jack touches his neck. "They wanted me longer, but the only thing that will fix this now is time."
"Yeah." Will closes his eye. "Time."
The clock on the wall ticks for nearly a full rotation before they speak again, as if to underline the words.
"I won't keep you long, I guess," Jack says, toying with his hospital wristband. "I was on my way out of here and I'm sure you need to rest."
"Did you get him, Jack?"
Silence again. "Not exactly, no."
Will's sigh turns into an awful pained cough. He screws up his face.
"Do you need me to get someone?" Jack asks quickly, reaching for the button that pages the nurse.
"No, God no," Will coughs. "Please, they're always here."
Jack frowns in sympathy—Will can't function without time alone—and nods as Will's coughing fit peters out. He picks up the glass of water on the bedside table and holds the straw in range of Will's mouth. Will drinks and Jack puts the cup down.
"I'm sorry, Will," he says, and looks at his hands.
"Don't be. You didn't do this."
"No, I'm..." Jack twists his hands in his lap and looks around the room as if searching for someone to help him get his words out. "I'm sorry...about...Hannibal."
Will looks at him. "What do you mean, Jack?" He closes his eyes and swallows painfully, then asks, "Is he dead?"
"No, he's very much alive. We think he left the country. Guess I should have done this official and gotten that stop on his passport."
"Then what are you talking about?"
"Well," says Jack, deeply uncomfortable, "I know you...cared about him. And I'm sorry that he did this to you."
Will props his eyelids up as much as he can and stares at Jack warily.
"You were the best chance we had, and I'm not proud of it, but I'm not gonna apologize for taking our last opportunity to bring him in. Just...I'm sorry that..." He sighs and tents his fingers across his mouth as if to temper the words. "I'm sorry we had to take advantage of your feelings for each other to do it."
"Feelings?" Will goes into another wracking coughing fit. Jack reaches for the buzzer again and Will tries to waves his arm, no no no. "Jack, I...didn't..."
"I'm trying to be sensitive about this!" Jack barks, agitated by how awkward he feels. He's ashamed to be raising his voice. "I know you loved him, and with Bella...going, this...kind of thing has been on my mind, okay? In this line of work...when you go undercover...I don't know, sometimes things are complicated!" He reaches the end of his rope and gets up to stalk around the room, clasping his hands behind his back.
"In this line of work..." he repeats, softer this time, "in our line of work, if you try to act unaffected, eventually the chickens come home to roost and you end up tied to a desk or out of a job."
Will rolls his eyes up to the drop-tiled ceiling, maybe praying for assistance himself.
"Jack..." he says weakly, "it wasn't...like that."
Jack makes one more circuit of the room and sits back down, smoothing his tie. He looks at Will.
"Will. We all knew."
Jack can see Will's horror.
"That's what made this...so difficult. Like I said, these things happen. You work with someone, you see them every day, you're in tight situations, dangerous situations, and sometimes...these things happen!" he says again, rapidly exhausting his store of euphemisms. "He was your therapist, for Christ's sake! And you weren't in your right mind! Then having to play the part and pretend to be someone he could trust—"
Will grimaced. Jack hadn't meant to put it that way.
"It just...happens. So please...accept the apology."
"I accept it," Will says tiredly. "It's accepted."
"Okay." Jack is able to sit back. "If you wanna talk...I'm here, and I can come by whenever I'm not with Bella. I have the time now."
"Thanks." A pause. "Really, thank you," he says again. "It's been...hard." He smiles at the enormity of the understatement; so does Jack. "But...I'm...it wasn't...real."
Jack looks at him seriously, feeling a strange mix of emotions, not sure how to communicate what he wants to say. "Will...if you feel it, it's real," he says slowly. "It might not be right, or good, or fair, but..."
He exhales and looks away. "We all liked him, Will. I didn't want to believe it. I let myself be blind to it for longer than I should have, and that's on me. And believe me, I feel it. It's damned heavy. But...I hate to say it now, but we all wanted you to find some peace, Will. And if you got any peace out of your...time with him, don't throw it out now. You're going to need it."
Jack sees a tear sneak down Will's face. He seems unaware, then with an expression of discomfort he sniffs violently. He tries to bring a hand to his face but his arm rises only an inch before it drops back and he grits his teeth. "Goddammit," he says thickly, hopelessly frustrated. "Fuck."
Jack stands up, not meeting his eyes. "I'll see you soon, Will."
"Jack, wait. Abigail came by earlier. We need to talk about what's going to happen when they discharge her."
Jack looks at him with what he's sure must be an odd expression. He can't bring himself to do it.
"Get some rest, Will," he mutters instead. He picks up his hat and shuffles into the hallway, closing the door behind him. In the hallway he stands with his eyes closed just outside the door and breathes for several minutes. Behind his lids his eyes sting.
They drive a long way on that first night before they stop.
The night clerk is slouched across the check-in counter, reading an abandoned large-print John Grisham paperback at arm's length, when the car pulls into the empty lot. The motel has been completely vacant for three days and he had been enjoying getting paid to do nothing. Oh well.
He sits up straighter and knocks his hat against the counter a few times before reseating it on his bald head, then leans over to see what there is to see through the glass door. He guesses it will be a sloppy drunk trailing some hired pussy.
Instead two men get out. He squints.
About the same height. One darker, one fair. Each carries a bag. He watches as the fair one touches the darker's back and leans very close to whisper something to him, and although he can't hear the words, he can see it just fine when the darker-haired man smiles and kisses the other.
Fucking disgusting.
"How much for the night?" the one with dark hair asks when they reach the counter.
The clerk's eyes flick to the other man's face. It strikes him as almost unnaturally expressionless.
"Motel is shutting down end of this month," he grunts. "We only got two rooms set up still, both singles. You want two beds you gotta buy both. Sixty each."
"One," the dark-haired man says, digging a damp-looking wad of cash out of his back pocket and peeling off three twenties.
The clerk's face settles into a look of distaste. He feels the other man's eyes on him and looks up.
"Problem?"
"Not at all," the man says. He has some sort of accent. "You seem a bit unhappy."
The clerk mutters something under his breath.
"Pardon?"
"You heard me, queer!" the clerk hisses, going red in the face. "I called you a fucking fag! Now I got no plans to sit here listening to you two hump all night, so how's about you and your little boyfriend move along!"
"Hannibal," the dark-haired man says.
"I think we'll stay," Hannibal says pleasantly. His smile makes the clerk very uncomfortable for no reason he can place and it's pissing him off even more. "By the way, if we should have need of you later, are you on duty until morning? When does your relief come in?"
"You don't worry about that and just get the fuck out, faggot," the clerk says hotly.
The foreign-sounding man makes no move to comply. His eyes touch on something behind him on the wall. Work schedule.
"Not until noon? My," he says to his companion. The other man sighs and makes a I wash my hands of it gesture.
"What the hell does that mean?" the clerk demands, face twisted in disgust.
Hannibal turns his cool vulpine eyes to him and he feels cold all over.
The room does not have a stove, just a microwave, so Hannibal Lecter commandeers the kitchenette in the room off the lobby. The cabinets prove to be nearly bare. Hannibal makes steaks, which require no other ingredients. They eat at a picnic table set up out front under a floodlight swarming with moths.
Will Graham picks at his dinner.
"Kindly don't play with it, Will," Hannibal says, teasing and entirely serious.
Will puts his fork down.
"Don't scold me like that. I'm not a child."
Hannibal looks up at him, chewing.
"You're worked up," he says. "What about?"
"I don't know," Will grumbles.
"Because we're only a state away from Molly?"
It was Will's idea to start in Florida. They visited Molly first, without her knowledge, of course. Will just wanted to see them, her and Walter.
When they arrived, a red pickup was cooling in the driveway. Walter, Molly, and a man in a baseball cap got out with groceries and went inside.
Will went straight back to the car and Hannibal followed him. Immediately he had insisted on driving into Marathon and making their first kill, a big one, five people.
"She'll know," he says now, gloomily. "She'll read about it and she'll know it was me."
"Us," Hannibal corrects delicately, with a small inclination of his fork. Will bites at the inside of his cheek.
"She'll know I'm alive," he says, stubborn.
"And she will be hurt that you didn't stop by?"
"No. She'll...tell...I don't know." Molly had no information whatsoever.
"Darling, try to relax," Hannibal says reassuringly, patting Will's hand. "We're on vacation."
Jack waits all day for Alana's call. Instead she appears unannounced on his doorstep that afternoon, wife and son in tow.
"Jack," she says, smiling, when he opens the door.
"Dr. Bloom!" he says. "Margot, hello."
"And hello to you," he says to Morgan in a cooing tone that Alana could have never pictured coming out of Jack Crawford. Morgan Verger, four years old, stares back at Jack with huge eyes, thumb in his mouth, slobber soaking the arm of his tiny sweater. "Come in."
Alana leaves Margot and Morgan in the living room and joins Jack in the kitchen as he makes the coffee.
"Jack, we have to talk about this."
"Do we?"
"Yes," Alana whisper-hisses. "Don't you think so? What are we going to do?"
"I," Jack says, "am not planning on doing anything."
He presses the button on the coffee maker and leans against the counter, crossing his arms. Alana is in disbelief.
"Are you serious?"
"Very," Jack says.
"Do you think it isn't them?"
"It's them."
"Doesn't that scare you?"
Jack looks at her sadly. "No."
Alana does not understand. She says nothing, trying to figure it out.
"Do you...want them to...?"
"No. I just know they won't be dropping by. Alana, all they ever wanted was each other, and out. It's still fucked up, but I see it now." He raises his eyebrows. "I don't think they need any other revenge. They're living well."
Alana still doesn't get it, and it's making her feel frustratingly stupid in a terribly familiar way. "So you're fine with this."
"No. I will never be 'fine' with murder. Of anyone, by anyone." The coffee maker beeps and Jack reaches down three mugs.
"What I am is at peace with the fact that those boys are no longer my problem. Goddamn thankful, as it happens. If Hannibal was on his own, I might be watching my back a little more carefully. But I know," Jack stresses, making it clear that he has no interest in debate, "know Will is not going to be party to my death. And I think that means I'm in the clear."
Alana is skeptical. She debates anyway, as Jack knew she would.
"You really think you can assume Will is still Will? Jack...Miriam Lass. He wiped her clean and rewrote the whole book. He programmed her like The Manchurian Candidate."
"I know what happened to Miriam Lass," Jack growls.
He turns his back to her and starts pouring coffee, trying to stay patient. Alana...just never saw it. Jack isn't sure why he did, but he does. He wonders if he should be worried about that.
"I can't believe you could so easily forget what Hannibal is capable of," Alana says, shaking her head. She twists her wedding band.
"Alana, you knew Will Graham and you knew Hannibal Lecter. You don't know Will and Hannibal. I guarantee you, if they're really out there somewhere together, they are an entirely different creature together than either of the men you knew."
Alana sips her coffee and doesn't argue further.
The shower in the motel room is a very tiny, narrow tub (complete with horrifying ring) behind a mildewed liner. When Will turns the water on, the showerhead spits and gurgles before producing a stream, and even then it occasionally stutters. At least it's hot. Will inhales and exhales a few deep lungfuls of steam before he begins washing his hair.
"Room for one more?" Hannibal inquires, and begins jamming himself in behind Will without waiting for an answer.
"No! There's hardly room for me as it is!" Will says, laughing, as Hannibal wraps his arms around his waist from behind and kisses the back of his neck.
"I'll stay out of your way. Go about your business."
Defiantly Will does so, exaggerating his movements to splash Hannibal as he rinses out the shampoo. Hannibal takes one hand off Will's waist to help.
"Are you going to wash behind your ears, Will? From back here I can see you've been slacking."
"Stop," Will groans. "Can't a man take a shower in peace?"
"No," Hannibal says, and wraps a soapy hand around Will's cock, starting to kiss and suck at his neck.
His wet grip is the perfect combination of firm and slick. In light of this sudden turn of events, Will is starting to feel better about things. Better and better. The hot steam seems to melt him into Hannibal, their bodies the same temperature as the air. Hannibal is making him feel amazing.
Will lets his head lower back to his lover's shoulder, breathing heavy.
"There we are," Hannibal whispers to him, pleased.
Hannibal is hard against him now. Will leans over and holds to the rim of the tub, parting his legs as far as he can in the cramped basin. He prays that when he slips the faucet will only break all his teeth, not poke his eye out with the top of the little rod that plugs and unplugs the drain.
From behind Hannibal spreads him and slips one of his duplicated middle fingers inside to twist in and out. Will sucks in steam with his sharp inhale, already very uncomfortable in this position but unwilling to move. When Hannibal touches him he goes on autopilot, moving only in reaction to Hannibal's movements. Something about Hannibal's touch drops him into a strange place in his head.
Two fingers, three...Will writhes against their motion, feeling so full and good and stretched. He moans helplessly, blood rushing to his head from the acute angle at which Hannibal is bending him now, making him dizzy in tandem with the steam.
Hannibal must be enjoying himself up there, because he takes his sweet time with this, pressing in and pulling out in long slow strokes like a gradient of sensation from his fingertips together to the base of all three. The muscles in Will's legs tremble and he breathes in short hard gasps. This might end before Hannibal even starts fucking him.
"Oh, please...Hannibal, I need it..."
"What do you need?" he asks softly. "I can give you my cock, but I can't let you cum."
Will doesn't want to cum now, not yet, before Hannibal gets inside him, but being told he can't raises an interesting feeling in him like mental goosebumps.
"Well?"
"Your cock. I need your cock."
Hannibal nearly drags him back to the main room and gets him facedown on the bloody sheets, shoving into Will hard right away after preparing him for so long. The jolts up Will's spine are both the impacts of Hannibal's body and bright streaks of pleasure. They're not under the hot water anymore but he still feels like he's melting, fading away into it, dissolving into the sheets until he half-shouts and cums all over the hand Hannibal's working over his cock.
Hannibal slows and pulls out. Will is trying to remember how to breathe. He forgets pretty often these days. Hannibal lays down on his side next to him and kisses his face, whispering, "Sweet thing."
Will takes one last deep breath and lets it out slowly. "Lay back."
He does. Will moves and takes Hannibal into his mouth, sucking and jerking.
"Yes...just like that, Will," Hannibal murmurs, breathless. "Yes, that's perfect..."
Hannibal takes hold of his hair, tightens his fingers in it, Will can feel the tension in his arms, shoulders, neck. He can feel Hannibal straining not to reflexively yank his head down on his cock, force it down his throat. Will can't do it yet—Hannibal does it exquisitely.
Hannibal's hips angle upward and he's caught like that for a moment and then he moans "yes" one more time and shudders against him, Will finds holds on his hip bones and digs his nails in, sucking Hannibal through his orgasm. He doesn't swallow until Hannibal opens his eyes. Will likes him to know.
They are laying there cuddling only in the most inactive of ways when Will remembers he was upset about something. By this point Will is feeling positively enlightened. He forgot entirely about Molly and the boring old guilt-and-shame routine, the bizarre anger he felt when he saw the man in the baseball cap. Once in a while he can be in the moment, and it's usually when Hannibal is in him, making him moan and beg and writhe and cum.
"What a day, huh?" Will whispers eventually, trailing a lazy hand down Hannibal's ribs.
"One for the books," Hannibal says, drowsy. His eyes are already closing.
The bed is wet from them, but neither of them care. The moisture feathers the edges of fresh blots of the clerk's blood soaked into the sheets. They drape their arms over each other loosely, settling in towards sleep.
The room is hot with steam and sex and there's no air conditioning unit, so they don't bother untucking the sad thin comforter. A sweet summer night smell comes in the slightly open window, from behind the curtains.
The next morning, bright and early, Freddie Lounds sits cross-legged on her bed, staring at the headline she's composing for her new blog entry. No. She pokes at her backspace button and begins typing again: "WE HAVE TO STOP MEETING LIKE THIS": MURDER HUSBANDS' BLOODY MOTEL RENDEZVOUS. She sits back and nods, smiling.
JUST LIKE OLD TIMES: Over the weekend the Southern United States boiled like a stirred anthill with the news of the first confirmed sighting of Murder Husbands Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham, previously presumed dead.
The lovers' gruesome exploits, which seemingly ended 13 months ago in a dramatic murder-suicide (which was which?), were previously covered here extensively by this reporter (this phrase is a link that leads to posts on Tattle Crime tagged #murderhusbands).
In the last 48 hours six people have died in ways eerily reminiscent of the Chesapeake Ripper's crimes, committed over decades throughout the Delmarva area by Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter, but many refused to believe he and his murderous lover could have survived their fateful swan dive.
Now there's proof! A faithful reader thought quickly enough to capture an image of the two together Saturday night, in the flesh, and even managed to escape with his life!
Reader, I must warn you that the following photograph is very disturbing. Please use caution when viewing.
Freddie takes a sip of her Starbucks and starts laughing hysterically. "Sorry, Will," she chokes, wiping a tear from her eye.