Chapter Text
The quarter was a mess of overlapping street music and neon vibrance. Will had fought off the stirrings of a migraine at the station, with the help of aspirin and cheap coffee, but now it was hitting him in full force – pounding behind his eyes in time with the heavy bass spilling from the clubs flanking the thoroughfare. He slammed his foot on the break, wincing at the harsh jolt that shot through his neck, as throngs of people milled about the road as though the sidewalk didn’t exist; harrowed commuters, starving artists and revelling tourists alike. With gritted teeth, he afforded himself a brief moment of catharsis, in which he imagined ploughing through the crowd and leaving a stroke of red in his wake.
The day had started badly, as most of his days tended to, lurching from a nightmare to the urgent buzz of his alarm and the muffled dispute of the couple in the next apartment. He reached too hastily for his phone and knocked it to the floor instead, where it continued to drone as Will dropped his head back to his pillow and considered the damp patch on his ceiling. He had taken to affording himself five minutes in the morning to wallow, but now his wallowing was being disturbed by his mobile as well as what he could only assume was the lid of a saucepan clattering against the wall. When he did manage to force himself out of bed, the cheap polyblend of his uniform made him shudder and he had to adjust the collar of his shirt three times before he could bare to move on with his morning. He ate his cereal to the sound of the muffled wailing of a baby across the courtyard.
A tedious shift followed; hours of booking disruptive day-drinkers and filing complaints. There was very little satisfaction to be had in a job where each day was the same and his colleagues, with whom he had nothing in common, enjoyed pointing out his socially awkward tendencies and referred to him as grim Graham.
“Cheer up, Grim,” Bates, the fresh-faced deputy, had said the second Will walked through the door.
Will had deflated; even the new guy felt confident enough to poke fun. He wondered if Bates knew that the grimace he had contorted his lips into was actually his best impression of a smile. It left him numb, at least emotionally. He would have killed for his apathy to manifest as physical detachment so that he could have a break from the feeling of his brain writhing around his skull like a squid in a jar. There was no chance of that happening back at his noisy, shoebox apartment though and so, like he did most evenings, Will left work and headed straight to the middle of nowhere.
As he finally escaped the nocturnal chaos of New Orleans in the midst of Mardi Gras, and nosed his volvo into the quieter residential streets that would eventually open out onto the highway, his fingertips ceased their tapping on the steering wheel and he felt his shoulders unfurl.
The concealed cabin on the bayou where Will had spent the final years of his youth, with its rusted tin roof and creaking porch, was more to his tastes than his current dwellings. His father had settled them there, half-balanced above the bog on rickety stilts and nestled among thick trees with weeping branches, when social services made it abundantly clear that his vagabond lifestyle could only be having a negative impact on his teenage son. Will hadn’t thought to venture far to join the police academy, finally able to be stuck in his ways – clinging to the familiarity he had been gifted just a little bit too late into his emotional development. Even so, the commute from the Bayou to the City wasn’t one that could be tackled twice on a daily basis, and so he had been forced to rent something closer to the station. He was orphaned shortly after, if that term could really be applied to a man of twenty-two years,and had soon realised that familiarity wasn’t half as comforting when the memories evoked were of a dead man. Suddenly, he was shackled to a place he couldn’t stand; no longer young enough to be of concern to the people who had advocated for a permanent homestead and certainly not old enough to know where to begin in finding himself a new one. Despite what coming-of-age movies had led him to believe, it was not a simple case of venturing to a new and exciting part of the country, landing an honest job and stumbling onto the property ladder. Rusted shacks with a tendency to flood didn’t go for much and so while Will had a nest egg, it was closer to that of a hummingbird’s than the emu-sized monstrosity he would need to start anew.
Herein lay the need for the middle of nowhere. Will’s hobbies required space, of which his apartment had none, and quiet, of which the entire city in which he resided was equally without. Even if he had managed to stack towers of boat motors along his walls and block the noise of his neighbours long enough to tie a lure or two, there was still the fact that Will Graham did not enjoy people. He understood them, but relationships required one to be understood in return and in twenty-two years Will had not found a single person who could make sense of him. People had tried, often with a reductionistic approach. He’d been labelled ‘psycho’ by his peers, ‘autistic’ by his teachers, ‘poorly mannered and recalcitrant’ by the principle of his school and ‘emotionally stunted’ by his case worker. Will supposed he was some amalgamation of the four, if one squinted and looked at him sideways. If there were a personality scattergram on which everyone had a spot, he’d be the little dot on its own in one corner, often mistaken for a spec of dust.
So Will found his solace in an unlikely space; a sprawling industrial zone roughly ten miles west along route 61.
Syd’s Storage consisted of thirty rows of yellowing garage-style units, accessible via an enormous grid of gravel roads. On Will’s first visit to the reception, which looked an awful lot like a temporary building pushing it’s luck, Will had noted that the racks of copper keys for rows one through six were empty, with only several keys missing from the ten rows after that. He promptly asked for access to a unit on row thirty, a full five-minute drive from the entrance. A year later, he had yet to see another soul anywhere near what he had come to think of as his row and, other than the distant hum of the highway, everything was blissfully quiet.
Unit 302 – because odd numbers made him uncomfortable – was an emblem of escape for Will and, as he juddered to a stop outside of it for perhaps the hundredth time, he sighed heavily enough that one might think all of life’s problems resided in his lungs. He’d recently oiled the hinges of the roller door, and it ascended smoothly with just the quiet clunk of the mechanism within. The ceiling light, suspended by its own wire, clicked to life immediately, illuminating his tidy respite – a clean concrete floor, a steel shelving unit housing his tools, and a neat workbench and folding chair at the centre. With the cool evening air sneaking in through the open front, Will allowed himself to get lost in the intricacies of a vintage boat motor.
It must have been 9pm when the sound of tires and spitting gravel made his chest seize. He dropped the rotary cog he’d been attempting to fit and glared out into the intrusion of someone’s high beams. When the car stopped and the headlights flicked off, Will was left squinting, half-blind, into the night.
“Hello?” He called; voice rough from disuse.
For a long moment, nothing happened. The car was a sleek, black thing and the interior lights remained off so that the driver was an indecipherable silhouette – an unsettlingly still silhouette which seemed content to stare motionlessly from the window with its head tilted just so.
“Hello?” Will tried again, equal parts spooked and frustrated. He reached for the spanner on his workbench and the car door swung open.
“Sorry to have startled you,” the silhouette said, stepping from the vehicle and into the light spilling out of the storage unit. The voice had a deep, unique cadence – a guttural, but not unpleasant, accent.
The face it belonged to was equally unique; sharp and ungiving – more reminiscent of a Victorian death mask than the soft human flesh on which one would be cast.
Will blinked a couple of times before bending down to retrieve the cog. The man still seemed to be awaiting a response when he righted himself and so Will did his best to mask his irritation when he replied.
“Didn’t startle me. Just didn’t expect anyone to be here.”
“Hmm, so late,” the man agreed, still content to stand at the threshold of Will’s personal space.
“At all,” Will corrected, rather bluntly, “There are plenty of units up front, it’s less of a drive.”
He watched as the man’s lips tightened and silently cursed his fortitude. A lesser man would have snapped back at him, allowing Will to lead them into a gruff to and fro which would ultimately lead to the other finding another unit, far far away.
“You’re a mechanic?” The man asked, eyes dancing briefly to Will’s oil-stained hands. “Perhaps I could ask for a business card. My engine has been a tad temperamental of late.”
Will considered the man’s car. It had practically purred its way onto the lot.
“I’m not a mechanic.”
“Shame,” the man replied, and stepped back into the shadows to lock his car.
Will returned to his motor as the other stalked a little way down the row and let himself into unit 304. This was a remarkably unpleasant turn of events. He could feel his headache returning already. It took three attempts to fit the cog, and by the time he had, the stranger was back in his car. Holding his breath, Will did his best to move his hands as if he were still busy with the hunk of metal in front of him while glaring out of his periphery. He expected the man to peel away, hopefully affronted, but he merely shifted into first and ambled slowly to his own unit. Hoping to catch a glimpse of what the man had come to store – with any luck it would be something seasonal and he wouldn’t have his space invaded again until next Christmas – Will peered round the edge of his little workshop. The car, a Bentley of all things, was reversing into the unit. In several seconds it was fully tucked away and Will heard several purposeful steps before the unit door hurtled down to the ground. He scowled at the disrupted gravel left behind.
It was a cold night, but not bitingly. Will had thrown a tan body warmer over his jumper and was comfortable enough. Stuffing an entire car into a unit, just to avoid the exposure of walking ten feet to and from the trunk was more than a little extreme; especially since the man in question had been dressed to the nines in a tailored coat and a truly ugly black ushanka. Perhaps he was Russian. It would explain the accent and the sculpted, Slavic features, though not the apparent aversion to the cold. Perhaps, the law enforcer inside him urged, he was doing something untoward and Will should go in guns blazing and ban him from ever returning to Syd’s Storage again. He huffed, scratched the back of his neck, and got back to work.
There were five blissfully quite minutes or so, where Will began to believe it might not be so terrible to have a neighbour. With both the car and its occupant out of sight, and only the familiar hum of distant traffic, things were no different than before. Then, just as Will reached to spin the newly-fitted propeller with a satisfied hum, a grating, metallic sound reared up two units down. It sounded like the electric file Will’s father had used during a short stint as a carpenter, but infinitely more annoying for that fact that it wasn’t his father, but the very unwelcome stranger. It groaned on for ten seconds then stopped and Will shuffled out into the open to glare at the closed unit. Another ten seconds or so of noise, and then silence. Will felt his hackles rise. Even with the barrier of 303 between them, the sound was loud enough to rattle around his skull. Exhaling sharply through his nostrils, emitting an angry puff of condensation, Will stormed back to his unit and pulled the door down harshly enough that it clanged, and the sound rattled out down the row, echoing from the faded fronts of the sealed units. The grinding sound stopped abruptly. Will held his breath. Ten beautiful seconds of silence followed. He thought he heard the man hum, but it was too muffled to be sure. A truck’s horn lowed far in the distance; all was right in the world.
And then the grinding started up again.
Will sank into his chair with his hands in his hair and groaned. Perhaps the stranger was attempting to fix his perfectly functioning engine himself, though why he would have to spend a night in a storage unit to achieve that was beyond Will. After a while, the long groans turned to short, sharp pulsating whirs that were ten times more obnoxious than the previous sound. Will span the propeller, as he had been planning to do, but it was impossible to tell if it whistled cleanly through the air as he had hoped or if it was loud and laboured since all he could hear was the damnable man in 304. He had started alternating between the two sounds, as if finding the formula for maximum irritation.
Whir whir whir griiinnnddddd.
Whir whir whir griiinnnddddd.
It was late, about the time that Will would normally be getting home, but to do so now would feel too much like admitting defeat. Instead, despite his aching head and a vague sense of hunger, Will began fitting and the motor’s exterior.
Whir whir whir griiinnnddddd.
A tiny screw slipped from his fingers and rolled off into the obscurity of the dark, dimpled concrete floor. Will ground his teeth and laughed through them mirthlessly.
Whir whir whir griiinnnddddd.
His screwdriver slipped and jabbed the knuckle of his left thumb, taking a sizable chunk of skin with it.
Whir whir whir griiinnnddddd.
There was a pack of stale cigarettes somewhere; Will had quit cold turkey when lung cancer had seen fit to take his only family from him. Now, he scrambled through the orderly stack of tool and tack boxes until he found them, shoved one between his lips and flung the door open; stepping into the night with his hands cupped, protecting the flame from his zippo until the end glowed orange. He was half way through his second, and feeling mildly nauseous, when the sound stopped, the car emerged from the unit, and the stranger from the car.
Leaning against the edge of the entrance to his own unit, Will watched him with thinly veiled disdain.
The stranger offered him an affected smile and put his hands behind his back. There was a moment, when he rocked back on his heels and appeared to be appreciating the quiet, that Will itched to stride forward and punch him.
“That was loud,” he said, instead.
“I hope I didn’t disturb you,” the man replied, with a challenging twinkle in his eye.
Will took a long drag and blew the smoke out forcefully in his direction.
“Are you done?” He asked.
Instead of answering his question, the man tilted his head and considered him. It made the hairs at Will’s nape stand to attention. He gripped his cigarette a little tighter.
“Truly, I didn’t expect to see another soul this far from the entrance,” and his face held the aura of a smirk, even while his mouth remained perfectly straight, “though I must say you are terribly territorial over this stretch of gravel.”
Will pushed himself off of the wall, unsure why he felt the need to make himself appear larger though compelled to do it regardless.
“I like the quiet,” he said, dropping his cigarette – unfinished - to the ground and stomping it out under the ball of his foot.
Up close, the man appeared to be only a few years older than Will himself. Perhaps his youth was more obvious without the hideous hat. Strands of his hair had fallen into his face, giving him a ruffled sort of poise.
“And the privacy, I’d wager,” the other said, closing the distance between them.
“What can I say,” Will replied, with narrowed eyes and a one-sided shrug, “I’m a private kind of person.”
“And I,” the other purred, stopping inches from Will and offering his hand. “Hannibal Lecter,” he added, when Will’s ingrained southern manners compelled him to take the proffered hand. His skin had a powdered feel to it.
“What were you doing in there?” Will asked, unable to help himself.
When it was clear that Hannibal wouldn’t restore the distance between them, Will shuffled back a few steps until his back was pressed to the wall again.
“Sculpting,” Hannibal said, then; “You’re being terribly rude.”
Will guffawed.
“Excuse me”?
“I gave you my name.”
Will huffed.
“I didn’t ask for it,” but then, because even Will could only be so impolite until he started to feel awkward, he added “Will Graham.”
Hannibal gave him a tight-lipped smile.
“You realise there are art studios in New Orleans?” Will grumbled.
“Yes, I’m aware but I like to keep my work to myself, at least until the grand reveal.”
“Sculpting,” Will muttered, like it was a dirty word.
“Hmm,” Hannibal replied, slinking backwards to his unit to pull the door closed, “I would be more than happy to show you my work in the future. Maybe even involve you in the process.”
“I really don’t find sculpting that interesting,” Will said with a grimace.
Grim Graham. He really couldn’t help himself.
Hannibal stooped to click the padlock into place and regarded Will over his shoulder.
“You might, with the right medium.”
Will didn’t like the steady way the other held his gaze. He darted his eyes up to the sky – there was very little light pollution this far out. The Great Cluster in Hercules was watching him back just as steadily.
“My medium is spark plugs and engine grease,” Will stated flatly.
“Ah, well if we’re referring to our work then my medium is the human body.” Hannibal replied, and then – before Will could reach for his spanner a second time – “I’m a medical student at Tulane University.”
Will swallowed audibly. His level of discomfort was inching steadily towards unbearable.
“I’m afraid I should be off, Will.” Hannibal said as he unlocked his car and slipped into the front seat.
Good riddance, Will thought, as the driver’s door closed.
The Bentley, which no student had any business driving, turned and as it inched past Will’s unit the window rolled down to reveal Hannibal’s mocking smile.
“I’ll see you again very soon, Will.”
The car made a smooth exit, front lights slicing through the night before turning the corner and dissolving into darkness. Will watched it go with a pit in his stomach. Just like that, his slice of self-imposed solitude had been stolen. How much time could a medical student really have to sculpt for pleasure, though? Will reassured himself as he began tidying the disorder he had created in his wild search for a burst of nicotine. He still felt a little queasy from that second cigarette and imagined that if he were to look in a mirror he’d have taken on a pallid, yellow hue. He blamed Hannibal Lecter.
It was nearing ten, and the lot was deserted, by the time Will’s beaten up Volvo followed the Bentley’s tracks through the gravel and out onto the highway. The drive back into the city was never as relaxing as the drive out, and this time that was particularly true. The whirring and grinding, and the unwelcome headlights and spitting gravel, seemed to follow Will home - playing on repeat in the back of his mind. When he arrived back at the apartment block, it was to the sound of muffled crying. He wondered if it had been going on like that all day and if, as a man of the law, he should act on it. He was still wondering as his feet carried him over the threshold to his own building and had all but forgotten about it when he reached the door to his apartment. Cereal again for dinner, then a lukewarm shower before bed. He stared up at the damp patch until its black edges crept out and engulfed him, and he dreamt of nothing but babies in ushankas, carving death masks from granite in the low light of Syd’s Storage.