Chapter Text
Hannibal Lecter becoming Will’s psychiatrist after the Hobbs shooting was a near miss.
“I’m not seeing an Alpha psychiatrist!” Will said flatly, pacing back and forth in front of his desk in agitation. He cast a quick glance over at Jack and Alana, both of whom were regarding him with a mixture of consternation and pity.
“Will…” Alana started, but Jack held up a hand.
“You were involved in a deadly force incident, Will. You need field clearance before you go back to work,” he said.
“Hannibal was with you when you shot Garrett Jacob Hobbs, he’s best placed to-”
“No,” Will interrupted, shaking his head rapidly. “Maybe it’s not politically correct of me but I’m not opening my head to an Alpha, I’m surrounded by them all day here at Quantico. I have the right to treatment with a doctor of my own designation. Alana…”
“I’m your friend Will, I shouldn’t be your therapist too.”
“Do you know any other Omega psychiatrists?” he asked, and saw her hesitate, saw the conflict in her eyes. Jack knew when to keep his silence, simply crossing his arms over his chest.
“I can tell you now, my approval for your field clearance would be conditional – ongoing sessions to monitor your mental health, not just a one-off for the paperwork,” Alana said. Will sighed, tucking his hands into his pockets and looking down at the floor.
“And you won’t publish about me?”
“I promise, I won’t publish about you.”
“Okay,” Will said. “Once a week, no more.”
*
The problem with Hannibal Lecter, Will decided, wasn’t so much that he was an arrogant, overdressed, snobbish Alpha psychiatrist, but that he had no right smelling as good as he did. Will had caught his scent the first time they met, and found it almost dizzyingly intoxicating – the scent of chilli and dark chocolate and lime, mingled with a deep musk that was all his own. And he was handsome of course, with distractingly exotic features and warm brown eyes that almost glinted red in the light. Powerfully built but lean, downplaying his physique in his impeccably tailored suit. Will had felt a sharp stab of attraction, walking into Jack’s office, which was not like him at all.
Then the man opened his mouth.
Will amused himself thinking about further adjectives to describe Hannibal Lecter while he answered Alana’s questions about Garrett Jacob Hobbs in their first session. An intrusive, elitist, domineering, peacocking Alpha who had sized Will up and tried to boil him down to a set of pathologies, then had the nerve to bring him breakfast like he hadn’t just tried to poke through Will’s grey matter for clues.
Smart, though. Will had to admit that.
When he walked away from his session with Alana, vindicated by the field clearance form signed off in his hand, he took it straight to Jack’s office – and had to stop in the hallway as Lecter stepped out, hair neatly swept off his face.
“Will,” Lecter said, a slight crinkle of his eyes standing in for a smile. Will hadn’t seen him since he found Lecter asleep by Abigail Hobbs’ hospital bed – and had left before he woke up.
“Dr Lecter,” Will said guardedly. “What are you doing here?”
“Jack has asked me to officially consult with the BSU, as my schedule allows,” Lecter said pleasantly.
And keep an eye on me, Will thought venomously.
“Don’t you have a practice that needs attending?” Will asked, and this time Lecter smiled properly, his lips curling up.
“I’ve reduced my patient hours this year to pursue academic interests, which allows me more flexibility. Would you have dinner with me on Friday night?”
Will blinked rapidly at the non-sequitur, unintentionally meeting Lecter’s eyes in surprise. His gaze was warm and open, and Will clenched his fist around the paper in his hand. Oh god, Lecter wanted to date him. Another conceited Alpha sniffing around the nearest unbonded Omega to hand. Will knew he wasn’t mate material, which meant Lecter was looking for something Will wasn’t prepared to give.
“Oh no. No, absolutely not,” Will said, knowing he was being rude. Lecter tilted his head at him, apparently unoffended.
“You have yet to find me interesting then,” Lecter said with amusement, and Will gritted his teeth. Lecter took a measured step forward, making Will take a hasty step back. “Perhaps you would prefer a traditional courtship?”
Will thought of the nightmare of traditional Alpha courtships – the declarations of intent in the papers, the ritualised gift giving, the demonstrations of strength and athleticism. Somehow Will couldn’t picture Lecter dragging a freshly hunted and slaughtered stag up to his front door in one of his pristine suits. Though courtships were still practiced in some circles, the idea was laughable. And the reality was it would be an empty gesture - a way to pacify Will long enough for Lecter to get what he wanted - sex, a psychological profile, both, it didn’t matter.
“I don’t want anything from you, Dr Lecter,” Will said tersely. “If we have to work together, I’d prefer we keep things professional.”
“I’d like to think we could at least be friends,” Lecter said softly. Will shook his head.
“I don’t need or want any more friends. Now if you’ll excuse me…”
“Of course. Good day, Will,” Lecter said, stepping aside so Will could pass. Will felt his eyes on his back as he knocked on Jack’s door and let himself inside.
*
Elk Neck State Forest, Maryland. Will stood amongst the sunlit trees, keeping half an ear on the rest of the team discussing the mushroom body farm in front of them, occasionally chipping in with his own commentary. He heard someone talking to the local police at the tape line behind him and turned to see Dr Lecter ducking under the tape. Both he and Jack looked out of place in the forest in their crisp suits.
“Dr Lecter, good of you to come,” Jack said, ignoring the betrayed look Will shot him.
“Of course, I wouldn’t miss it,” Lecter said, replying to Jack but his eyes on Will. He stepped carefully through the underbrush, coming to stand beside Will. In the close confines of the forest, his shoulder brushed Will’s and he had to work not to flinch away.
A silence fell amongst the team, and they all began stepping deliberately away from the bodies while Will stepped forward, trying to focus on the stillness of the crime scene to centre himself. He glanced back over his shoulder to see Lecter had not stepped away as the others had and was watching attentively. Will sighed and turned back to the shallow graves.
He closed his eyes, letting the pendulum swing, and when he opened them again, he saw time rolling backwards – the mushrooms shrinking, the bodies reversing their decay, until the man lying closest to him was clean an naked in the dirt. Will heard the narration of the crime in his head; shovelling dirt onto the victim, affixing his hand to a metal rod with an IV drip in it, and securing a breathing tube in his mouth with duct tape. Will was kneeling beside the body when suddenly the face changed – it was Garrett Jacob Hobbs in the grave, staring up at him with milky dead eyes.
Will breathed in sharply, closing his eyes and shaking his head minutely – it wasn’t real, it wasn’t real – but they flew open again when the supposed corpse reached up and grabbed his forearm. The victim opened and closed its fleshless mouth and Will could feel himself starting to shake.
“Don’t touch him, don’t touch him!” Jimmy Price called, rushing over with a few other techs. Will pulled away from the grasping hand, rising to his feet hurriedly and backing up into someone, who clamped steady hands down on his upper arms to brace him.
“Are you all right?” Lecter asked in his ear, and Will nodded shakily, trying to get his breath back.
“Jack!” Will called, and the older man stopped watching the live victim long enough to clock Will’s expression.
“Go,” he called back, and Will nodded with relief.
“Let me drive you back to Quantico,” Lecter said, dropping his hands, and Will turned to him. He’d ridden to the crime scene in Jack’s car, who would no doubt be here for a while.
“Yeah, please,” he said, swallowing hard. He scrubbed a hand through his hair in embarrassment, avoiding Lecter’s eyes.
They hiked their way through the forest and back to the path in silence, and Will was thankful for it – it gave him time to regain his cool, for his hands to stop trembling. When they finally made it back up the path and to the Park’s carpark, Lecter led him to a shining grey Bentley that made Will want to snort with derision. Pretentious, that was another adjective for his collection. When they slid into the car, Lecter twisted around to fish for something on the backseat, eventually turning back with a thermos that he handed to Will.
“You need this more than I do,” he said evenly. Will didn’t say thank you but opened the thermos and was grateful for the scent of strong coffee. He poured himself a cup and sipped at it – it was still hot and very, very good. He caught Lecter’s scent as he smelled the coffee and decided to spend the car ride breathing through his mouth.
While he drank, Lecter opened the glove box and retrieved a small travel bottle of alcoholic hand sanitiser, tipping some into his palm and rubbing his hands together briskly. He offered the bottle to Will, who shook his head, finishing his coffee. Fastidious. Another one.
It was past three by the time they got on the road again. Will knew he wouldn’t be getting any more information about the body farm until the next day, or perhaps the day after that. It took time to autopsy a body and carefully comb it for evidence, and there were nine of them. Well, eight currently, but he didn’t imagine the ninth victim would survive for much longer. He thought of it gripping his arm weakly and shuddered.
“I intend to visit Abigail Hobbs this afternoon. Would you like to come with me?” Lecter asked after a while, breaking the silence. Will brightened at the thought.
“I would, actually.”
“Why don’t we head to the hospital first, and I can take you back to Quantico after?” Lecter asked, and Will nodded his agreement. Lecter cast a sidelong glance at him. “Or you are welcome to come back to my home for dinner.”
“Nice try,” Will said flatly, and Lecter gave a one-shouldered shrug.
“If at first you don’t succeed…”
They fell into silence for a while, and Will was hoping it might last the entire trip when Lecter spoke up again. “What did you see, in the grave?”
“I saw a corpse grab my arm,” said Will in disgust.
“No, before that. You reacted a moment before the victim revived. What did you see?”
Clever, clever, clever. Will turned to examine Lecter’s face for judgement, but he was blandly neutral, focused on the road. Will was fairly certain that the man’s pleasant demeanour was actually a case of blunted affect – an inability to display emotion on anything except a superficial level. He bet it proved handy in his psychiatric practice, as his patients would never see his true thoughts or feelings on his face. He wondered what cracks Lecter had in him to cause that.
“Garrett Jacob Hobbs,” Will said abruptly. “I think Alana’s clearance for active field duty may have been premature.”
“A hallucination?”
“Yes. I saw him there, in the grave,” Will said, and held up his hand when Lecter opened his mouth again. “And don’t analyse me on this. You’re not my psychiatrist.”
“Very well,” Lecter said. “Will you tell Alana?”
“I don’t know,” Will said pensively. “I know what she’ll say – that this job is bad for my mental health, it takes too much of a toll on me.”
“Is she right?”
“I can save lives,” Will said, knowing it was not answering the question.
“Tell me Will, when Jack sends you into dark places, who will lead you out?”
“Are you encouraging me to leave the field? You’ve known me for two minutes,” Will said incredulously. Lecter cast him an inscrutable look.
“I’m encouraging you to trust your psychiatrist. If you won’t talk to Alana, and you won’t talk to me, then who does that leave? Who becomes your paddle?” Lecter said. He flicked his indicator on as they approached the hospital parking garage, which at least meant Will wouldn’t be trapped in this conversation for much longer.
“I’ll think about it,” he muttered, and Lecter smiled at him.
“That’s all I ask.”
*
Visiting Abigail soothed him. Even with Lecter hovering in the background, poking him with questions about his sense of obligation towards Abigail (and admitting to his own), Will took comfort in seeing the girl was stable, breathing on her own and expected to wake up.
Lecter drove him home afterwards, even though it was well out of his way, thankfully letting the topic of Will’s hallucination of Hobbs lie, and Will was glad to be home by the early evening to his dogs. He had a moment wishing Lecter hadn’t driven his gleaming car up Will’s potted driveway to his little cottage house - well maintained but bordering on shabby by virtue of age alone - but Hannibal didn’t press for an invite inside and simply wished Will a good evening before driving away. He played with his dogs in the dying sunlight in the field around his house, cooked himself a juicy steak, and finished the night sitting on the porch with a glass of whisky, appreciating the silence. He knew he’d be thrown back into the chaos of the case the next day, so whatever relaxation he could get in the meantime was worth it.
That night he dreamed he heard the hoofbeats of the stag on the porch outside his window.
A day later found him in his BSU office in the morning, waiting for the autopsies to finish up by early afternoon. He already had a small office in the Academy’s teaching wing, but Jack hadn’t wanted him that far away when working on cases, so now he also had an office down the hall from Jack in the BSU. It wasn’t much – a desk with two chairs, a pinboard and a bookshelf, but the door had a lock and this part of the building didn’t receive a lot of foot traffic, so it was quieter than the office he shared with another instructor in the academy halls.
Jack had given him the casefile for the Chesapeake Ripper after Minnesota, asking Will to bring himself up to speed to provide a formal profile. Will had lectured on the Ripper before, but the full casefile hadn’t been provided to him with that, only summations of the crimes and victim profiles. There was what they’d called a full ‘murder book’ back in Homicide for each victim – each a folder an inch thick with every avenue of investigation neatly indexed, everything from witness statements to area maps, toxicology reports to the victim’s assets. And Will had to familiarise himself with all of it.
He was poring over the first victim’s folder when there was a knock at the door, and Will called distractedly for whoever it was to enter. The door opened, and it was Hannibal Lecter of course, wearing some brown and red windowpane suit that he somehow managed to pull off. His hair was loose today, falling across his forehead, and Will had the urge to sweep it back with his fingers. Scenting the air automatically, Will detected a touch of cologne complementing Lecter’s naturally warm scent, something spiced and earthy. Will opened his mouth a fraction so he wouldn’t keep inhaling it.
“Did you just wander around the building knocking on doors until you found me?” he said, turning back to his file as Lecter closed the door behind him and took the seat across the desk from Will without asking.
“Jack gave me your direction,” Lecter said, amused. He leaned forward. “What are you working on? Not our mushroom farm, I assume.”
“Chesapeake Ripper,” Will said shortly. He made a note in the pad he was keeping beside the folder.
“Ah. Jack has also provided me with the files and asked me to give an opinion. I was hoping we could compare notes.”
“I guess,” Will said reluctantly. “It’s going to have to wait until after mushroom guy.”
“Perhaps we could confer over dinner?”
Will slowly and deliberately set his pen down. Adjectives: pushy. Persistent. Relentless. “What, is it because I’m Omega? Because you’re a big strong Alpha and I’m the fragile Omega in need of rescuing? There used to be a time when an Alpha wouldn’t dare close a door on a room alone with an Omega out of respect.”
“There also used to be a time when Alpha nobility could claim Prima Nocta, but we don’t observe that ridiculous custom anymore either,” Lecter said. He was enjoying this, Will could tell.
“And you’re nobility too now, are you?” Will snorted.
Lecter inclined his head. “Count Hannibal Lecter the Eighth, at your service.”
Well he walked right into that one. Old money, Will thought. No wonder he could reduce his practice hours.
“Tell me what you want from me, Dr Lecter, tell me why you’re pursuing me so relentlessly.”
“I want to get to know you Will, nothing more and nothing less,” Lecter said softly. “I sense a connection between us that deserves examination and exploration. I feel we could reflect the best of one another and accept the worst.”
Will’s mouth went dry, and he inhaled through his nose without thinking, getting another headful of that damnable enticing scent. Lecter was silent, waiting him out, only touching his tongue delicately to his bottom lip, a motion Will couldn’t help but track with his eyes.
“Every Alpha I’ve ever known has viewed me as either a challenge or a conquest,” he said quietly. “They want to break me or bend me to their will, and I have promised myself I’ll never be some Omegan notch on an Alpha’s bedpost.”
“I don’t have any notches, Will,” Lecter said gently. “I’ve never pursued a romantic relationship with an Omega before. There’s been no conquests.”
They stared at each other in the silence that fell – Will studying the maroon flecks in Lecter’s eyes, not tempted to look away or use his glasses as a shield. It was so quiet and still that Will jumped when there was another knock at the door – Jack opened it and stuck his head in.
“Autopsies are done, let’s go!”
He left, leaving the door open, and Will hastily stood, shutting the folder on his desk and heading for the door. Lecter let him step out first, his hand touching Will's lower back as he locked the door behind them, and he felt it like a brand.