Chapter Text
Will Graham’s life is a study in avoidance and questionable coping mechanisms.
He knows this about himself. He’s not so oblivious that he’s not aware he’s a mess, some useful skills, a broad knowledge base, and a few less desirable traits all cobbled together into what, on most days, resembles a functional human being.
That’s the word that pops into his head as Jack Crawford approaches his podium. Functional. He knows that’s how Jack sees him, as a potential tool in his arsenal first and a person second, and while Will is used to that particular brand of appraisal, it doesn’t make it any less distasteful. His first instinct is to leave, to run, but he clamps down on that urge and forces himself to stay put.
It’s his classroom, goddamnit. He won’t let himself be chased out of his own space.
His students file out, and Jack approaches. Will pulls his glasses out of his blazer pocket and pushes them onto his face, settling the frames on his nose so that the top rim bisects his pupils. Immediately his head starts to hurt, a dull, throbbing pain that settles directly behind his eyes, but it’s a price he’s willing to pay to not risk meeting Jack’s eyes.
“I’m Special Agent Jack Crawford,” Jack says, and holds out his hand. “I lead the Behavioral Science Unit.”
“We’ve met,” Will says shortly, reaching out to shake Jack’s hand. He keeps his eyes cast downwards, focusing on gathering his notes from the podium, and he knows Jack notices. Jack, though, makes no effort to help in his avoidance.
“Yes.” Jack laughs softly. “We had a disagreement about the museum when we opened it.”
Will grimaces, but he doesn’t look up. “I disagreed with what you named it.”
“The Evil Minds Research Museum?”
It’s almost physically painful to hear. Will has a myriad of problems with the name, beginning with evil and spiraling from there, but he doubts Jack is there for a lecture, even though Will has one already starting in the back of his mind. “It’s a little hammy, Jack.”
It’s the gentlest of disagreements he could manage, and he still catches a minute stiffening of Jack’s shoulders, the barest hitch in his casual stride. Will almost laughs. He sees too damn much, even without looking into someone’s eyes, even when he doesn’t want to, and he knows that’s why Jack’s here, knows that’s what he’s after.
He just wishes Jack would get to the damn point.
“I see you’ve hitched your horse to a teaching post,” Jack says, with a deliberate sort of casualness to his voice. “And I also understand it’s difficult for you to be social.”
There’s an emphasis on the last word that has Will swallowing back an instinctive protest. “Well, I’m just talking at them,” he says dryly. “I’m not listening to them. It’s not social.”
“I see.”
Will sees the movement of Jack’s hand even before the man asks, “May I?” in a tone that implies it’s not really a question, and even as he tries to lean back away from the touch Jack doesn’t let him. The other man’s fingers grasp the temple of his glasses and he lifts the frames, gently centering them on Will’s face.
Will flinches, jerks, and his eyes flick up of their own accord, seeking out the safety of the rim of the frames, only to find, of course, that it’s missing. His eyes meet Jack’s, and Will, abruptly, falls into him.
A beige office with a single desk. Stacks of paperwork that have been ignored for more important tasks. A slightly younger, slightly brighter Jack Crawford sits at his desk as a young woman waits nervously before him. Her blond hair is pulled back into a tight, neat ponytail, and the hero-worship in her eyes is almost palpable.
“I’m assuming that you’re familiar with the Chesapeake Ripper?” Jack asks.
And Miriam Lass, eager to please, nods. “Yes,” she says.
The image shifts and melts into something new. A beige bedroom. Jack is older. Gray. And he’s not alone. The woman laying on the bed is his wife – or all the parts of her that remain, and at this point, there are not many.
Jack injects enough morphine into her IV drip to ensure that she does not wake from her fitful dreams, and he wishes, desperately, that it did not feel like the right thing to do.
Will comes back to himself with a sharp, unsteady breath, leaning back out of Jack’s reach. He immediately drops his eyes to the floor, unwilling and unable to risk a repeat of what he just experienced. Fuck. The room tilts a little, swaying on its axis, and Will forces himself to breathe, to calm the erratic beating of his heart and the frantic spinning of his mind.
To his bitter pleasure, Jack takes a step back as well. “You just did it, didn’t you?” he asks, and there’s a healthy amount of wariness in his voice, but it’s mostly curiosity. Will grits his teeth and keeps his gaze fixed on Jack’s shoes.
“It has a name,” he mutters, reaching up to scrub the back of his hand across his mouth.
Jack shrugs one shoulder. “I haven’t read the journals. Or the conspiracy blogs.”
That pulls a harsh laugh out of Will’s chest. It doesn’t escape his attention that Jack doesn’t ask what he saw – but whether it’s a healthy dose of disbelief or an actual fear of knowing holding him back, Will’s not sure. “My horse is hitched to a post that is closer to science and psychology than myth and magic, Jack.”
“But you have to admit that what you do doesn’t exactly fall within the defined boundaries of science and psychology.”
Will shoulders his bag, adjusting his glasses on his face so that the frames bisect his vision again. “Cocognition is an observed phenomenon. It just hasn’t been studied enough to be entirely explicable yet.”
Jack raises an eyebrow. “Some people would call you a psychic and say that explains everything pretty well.”
Will grimaces. “Just as well as ‘evil’ explains the types of killers in your museum,” he says tightly. He goes to move away from the podium, but Jack catches his arm, holding him in place. When Will looks up, his carefully positioned glasses preventing accidental eye contact, he notices that Jack even has the good sense to look mildly apologetic.
“Speaking of killers. Can I, ah, borrow your not entirely explicable brain?”
Will knows he should say no, knows he should stay with his classes and his students and the safety of it all – but he also knows Jack wouldn’t be asking if he didn’t need the help.
He sighs, and Jack smiles, and Will tries not to feel like he’s lost their little exchange.
Again.
He doesn’t try to tell Jack that he won’t be helpful until they have a body. Despite Jack’s claims about not reading the journals or conspiracy blogs, he seems to know plenty about how Will works, how the special wiring in his brain makes him useful. An eidetic memory coupled with how long he’s been studying serial killers makes Will a veritable walking encyclopedia, and he’s always been adept at picking out patterns, at seeing important things before the people around him do.
In any case, it doesn’t take long for the body of Elise Nichols to show up.
Will looks down at her, feeling regret bubble up in his throat even though it’s not his fault she’s lying there. She looks… peaceful, in a way, like at any moment she could wake and rise and greet her parents. Will doesn’t want to touch her. He doesn’t want to be the one to disturb her. Defile her.
“Take your time,” Jack says, his voice quiet and assured in the dark bedroom. “When you’re ready to talk, you talk. If you don’t feel like it, you don’t talk.”
Will doesn’t want to think about talking, about explaining what he’s going to see in Elise’s memories. He presses his lips together in what could, maybe, be considered a smile, and nods tightly.
Jack looks like he wants to reach out and pat Will on the shoulder, but he refrains. “We’ll be downstairs. You let me know when you’re ready for us to come in.”
Jack leaves, shutting the door behind him, and Will turns to the body. He takes a breath, trying to ignore the way the scent of death lingers in the air, heavy and dark, and then, carefully, he bends down over Elise Nichols. And as gently as he can, he pulls back her eyelids.
Will’s eyes meet her cloudy, empty ones, and he falls into her.
Consciousness comes with hands around her throat and the sensation of her ribs cracking in her chest. She tries to breathe, tries to scream, clawing at the fingers stopping her from drawing air into her lungs. But he doesn’t stop. He doesn’t let her go.
She looks up, and despite the light of her bedside lamp, her attacker’s face is still shrouded in shadow, her vision going dark around the edges as her body starves of oxygen.
His eyes are the last thing Elise Nichols sees before she dies.
“You’re Will Graham.”
Bile tastes bitter on the back of Will’s tongue as he leans back, away from Elise Nichols’ body. The room tilts dangerously, more than it did back at Quantico – at least when he gets a snippet of past and future there’s a little balance, but when all he sees is past, when all he sees is death…
“You’re not supposed to be in here,” he manages to say, glancing up just enough to see one of Jack’s techs approaching him. Her hair is dark and her jacket is brown, and that’s all he catches before he makes himself drop his gaze again.
His glasses are in Jack’s car, tucked away for safekeeping. An oversight, on his part. He won’t let it happen again.
“You wrote the standard monograph on time of death by insect activity,” Katz continues, and the admiration in her voice is impossible to miss. She pauses, though, a few feet in front of him, and shifts her stance. “You, uh, not real FBI?”
Will swallows against the swell of nausea. “I’m a special investigator,” he says, his voice still shaky, still ragged and uneven.
Katz makes a disbelieving sound. “Never been an FBI agent?”
“Um.” Will looks towards the door. Where the fuck is Jack? “Strict screening procedures.”
“Detects instability. You unstable?”
I wouldn’t know, Will thinks, as Jack enters the room with a rescue for Will and a scolding for Katz. The world’s never stops spinning long enough for me to try to get my balance.
By the time they’ve gone through the forensic evidence, Will’s headache is nearly blinding him. Any other day, that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, but Jack is still expecting results from him, and Will wants to have some semblance of perspective when he offers up the disappointing information he has.
“Does anyone have any aspirin?”
Jack reaches into the pocket of his jacket and pulls out a small bottle, holding it out to Will, and Will takes it gratefully. He swallows two pills dry, and just the promise of relief on its way has him feeling a little better, a little more grounded.
“She saw him as he was killing her,” he says, and he’s immediately aware of not only Jack’s attention on him, but Katz’s and the other two techs’ as well. He does his best to ignore them.
“So you got a look at the killer’s face,” Jack says. “Do you think you can sit down with a sketch artist?”
Will shrugs one shoulder, keeping his gaze fixed on Jack’s lapel. “I could, but it’s not going to help. She was already asphyxiating by the time she got a good look at him. I’ve got some basics. White male, forties to fifties, maybe.” He pauses, seeing that last image flash in his mind. “Blue eyes. Sorry. It’s all blurry, shadowy. I might know him if I saw him, but I’m not going to be able to give anything useful to a sketch artist.”
Jack sighs, nodding. “That’s fine. It’s more than we had.” He pauses. “Are you okay?”
Does it matter? Will thinks, only a little bitterly.
“Fine,” he says aloud. Turning, he looks back at the body of Elise Nichols, and he feels that same swell of regret. This time, though, he recognizes it for what it is, not his own emotion but the lingering echo of someone else’s.
“Whatever he did to the others, he couldn’t do it to her,” he says, and he thinks about the killer’s hands around Elise Nichols’ throat, tight and merciless, and wonders what sort of act he could possibly have found her unfit for. He swallows tightly, gesturing at the scene. “This is an apology.”
He doesn’t need to look up to know the others in the room are all exchanging looks. They’re profilers. They know what an incomplete ritual like this means.
Their killer is going to strike again, and he’s going to strike soon.
They go home, and Will dreams of Elise Nichols gored open on a rack of antlers.
Afterwards, shaky and sweaty and sick to his stomach, he buries his face in Buster’s fur and thinks about calling Jack and telling him no. And, even as he thinks about it, he knows he won’t. If he can help, then he has to help. It would be so incredibly selfish to hold a few sleepless nights in the same regard as people’s lives.
Two days later, with the revelation that the killer is eating his victims still fresh, Jack calls Will into his office. For updates, he says over the phone, and Will has never been the most socially adept, but he likes to think he knows when he’s being lied to.
He still goes, of course, because it’s Jack doing the asking.
He feels vindicated when he arrives to find not just Jack, but another man as well. Will doesn’t recognize him, but he exudes a quiet sort of superiority, not the kind that indicates a complex, exactly, but the kind that’s been earned. The main thing Will notices, though, is that the man doesn’t try to meet his eyes, not even when Jack introduces them. Will has his glasses situated firmly in defense, cutting his vision neatly in half, but when he looks up in an effort to be polite, he finds Dr. Lecter’s gaze fixed firmly on his cheek.
And Will, just a little, finds himself relaxing.
Jack lays out the details of the false confessions they’ve received, and Will can’t help the sound of disgust that tears itself from his mouth. “Tasteless,” he mutters, and he feels more than he sees Lecter turn towards him, feels that gaze settle on him, heavy and observant.
“Do you have trouble with taste?” Lecter asks, and Will can’t help but think what an odd question that is.
“My thoughts are often not tasty,” he replies, before he can think better of it, and out of the corner of his eye he catches the faint twitch of Lecter’s smile.
“Nor mine,” the doctor murmurs. “Nor effective barriers.”
Will adjusts his glasses, fixing his own physical barrier. “I build forts.”
“Associations come quickly.”
Will laughs under his breath. “So do forts.”
He takes a sip of his coffee as Lecter moves around the office, eventually settling in the seat next to him. Will expects another odd question, perhaps a delve into his thoughts on forts, but instead the doctor cuts straight to the point. “Not fond of eye contact, are you?”
His tone is so knowing that Will stiffens, teeth clenching as he glances over at Jack, glaring daggers at the safety of his shirt collar. “You told him?”
Jack sighs. “When Dr. Lecter agreed to consult on this case, it became a possibility that you two would encounter each other in a professional setting. Since we’re all on the same team here, I told him what he needed to know to protect his own privacy and try to make you more comfortable, Will.”
I told him what he needed to know to protect himself from you.
Will knows how to read between the fucking lines.
With the last dregs of his self-control, Will resists the urge to laugh bitterly. “I’m pretty good at making myself comfortable,” he says, his fingers curling against the armrest of the chair. And then, sighing, he turns his head just enough to see Lecter out of the corner of his eye. “Eyes are distracting. You see too much, you don’t see enough – and every time I see something it’s like having the world turned upside-down and inside-out for a few seconds. It makes it hard to focus. So, yeah, I try to avoid eyes whenever possible.” Will swallows, turning away. “Jack?”
“I imagine what you see and learn touches everything else in your mind.”
Lecter’s words are unbidden, unasked-for, unwelcome, and the sharp, barbed accuracy of them makes Will’s skin crawl. He turns and opens his mouth to say something biting back, but Lecter, evidently not finished, beats him to it.
“Your values and decency are present, yet shocked at your associations, appalled at your dreams.’” Lecter pauses, his eyes flicking up just enough that Will catches a glimpse of maroon and gold and amber, focused at some point over his shoulder. “No forts in the bone arena of your skull for things you love.”
Will thinks of the memories that linger, the ones that are not his own, and with an anger that’s slowly turning incandescent he takes a deep, shaky breath. “Whose profile are you working on?” he demands, and then he spins in his seat to face Jack. “Whose profile is he working on?”
Jack’s unimpressed expression is far more revealing than any answer he could have given.
“I’m sorry, Will,” Lecter says, though Will doesn’t detect an ounce of genuine apology in his tone. “Observing is what we do. I can’t shut mine off any more than you can shut yours off.”
The difference, Will thinks bitterly as he gathers his belongings, is I at least try.
He doesn’t run away from the conversation. He doesn’t. He has a class to teach.
He pretends the excuse doesn’t sound hollow, even to his own ears.
They find another body, and despite the fact that Will is certain it's a copycat, the killer earns himself a name: the Minnesota Shrike.
Will can still see the nightmare dreamscapes his mind conjured up of Cassie Boyle's bare, bowed body and gouged out eyes when the knock comes at his motel door. He staggers to it, still half-asleep and completely underdressed, but he's tired and irritated and near running on empty – Jack can deal with the sight of him in boxers and a t-shirt.
But it's not Jack at his door.
“Good morning, Will,” Lecter says, far too bright and chipper for the early hour. Will sighs, reaching up to scrub his hand across his face, simultaneously showing his frustration and protecting his eyes, but Lecter doesn’t seem to notice. “May I come in?”
“Where’s Crawford?” Will asks, voice flat, but even that’s not enough to break Lecter’s pleasant mood.
“Deposed in court,” he replies. “The adventure will be yours and mine today.”
Adventure. Will almost laughs, except for the fact that the doctor is entirely in earnest. He really thinks trudging around construction sites in Minnesota with Will constitutes an adventure.
“May I come in?” Lecter asks again, and Will, albeit reluctantly, steps aside.
He doesn’t notice the bag and thermos in the doctor’s hands until he’s already in the middle of setting up on the motel room’s rickety little table, mugs and plates and tupperware laid out carefully in two place settings. Lecter catches him staring and smiles good-naturedly, gesturing to one of the empty seats.
“I’m very careful about what I put into my body,” he says as Will all but collapses into the seat. “Which means I end up preparing most meals myself.”
He opens both tupperware containers, and immediately the scent of the food inside hits Will’s nose, making his mouth water. He hadn’t even realized he was hungry, but now he’s abruptly starving, and the rich smell assaulting his senses is just making him more acutely aware of that fact.
“A little protein scramble to start the day,” Lecter continues. “Some eggs, some sausage.” He sets the container down in front of Will, and Will doesn’t hesitate to stab his fork into one of the pieces of sausage and lift it to his mouth.
The flavor explodes over his tongue, rich and dark and complex, and he knows he makes a soft, involuntary sound. A quick upwards flick of his eyes shows Lecter’s mouth curved in self-satisfied smirk, and, well… Will didn’t really expect anything less.
“It is delicious,” he admits quietly. “Thank you.”
Lecter’s smirk widens just slightly, and Will looks away. His glasses are on the bedside table, and it’s too early in the day to deal with delving into someone’s mind. Especially over breakfast.
“My pleasure.”
There is an entirely inappropriate amount of true pleasure in Lecter’s voice, in the lines of his body, in the delicate curve of his mouth that Will can still see out of the corner of his eye. It’s an observation that Will trips on, just for a moment, and it makes him remember something else odd about the man.
Bracing himself, Will looks up, and for the first time in a long time, he seeks out someone’s eyes. Lecter’s gaze, however, is fixed firmly on the sleeve of Will’s shirt. And Will, despite himself, finds his interest piqued.
“Not too fond of eye contact yourself, are you, Doctor?”
Lecter’s gaze doesn’t move from his sleeve. “They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. Tell me, Will: would you consider that an accurate assessment?”
Will thinks of how it feels to look, how it feels to come back to himself, and he shakes his head. “No,” he says after a moment. “It’s a hell of a lot more violent than that.”
Lecter nods. “I’d gathered it was at least mildly uncomfortable for you.”
Will shrugs one shoulder. “It is,” he says. “But I was under the impression Jack didn’t really care about my comfort, given the fact that he’s having you profile me.”
Lecter sighs. “Uncle Jack is merely concerned. I think he sees you as a fragile little teacup, the finest china used for only special guests.”
And it’s the mental image that conjures up that draws a full, throaty laugh out of Will: Jack, taking Will out from behind a cabinet and placing him carefully out in front of the latest serial killer. The finest china, the most delicate of his tools, used only on the most brutal of cases. The dichotomy is startling.
He has to laugh, or he’s going to cry.
He leans back in his chair, scrubbing a hand over his mouth. “How do you see me?” he asks after a moment, and he doesn’t bother looking away or keeping his gaze fixed on a safe point. He trusts, at least for the time being, that Lecter will be careful enough to ensure they don’t make eye contact.
Will doesn’t buy his reason for it, though. Lecter strikes him as the type of person who enjoys making people uncomfortable – showing up at Will’s motel room unannounced and his casual invasion of Will’s personal space is proof enough of that. No, Will’s fairly certain that the good doctor is hiding something, something that he very much does not want Will to see.
What have you done? Will thinks idly, and settles back in his seat as Lecter draws in a breath to speak.
“The mongoose I want under the house when the snakes slither by,” he says, and Will feels a shiver roll up his spine.
He’s used to looking. He’s used to seeing, to sussing out what other people are hiding, the pieces of themselves they keep tucked away from polite society. He’s used to getting a glimpse of that truth with no more effort than it takes to meet someone’s eyes.
But he is not used to someone else seeing him that clearly.
“That’s an… interesting assessment,” Will says quietly, and the corner of the doctor’s mouth twitches.
“You’re an interesting man,” Lecter replies, and, finally, Will drops his eyes.
“Yeah?” He flashes his own smile, quick and bright and barely-there. “And what if I don’t find you all that interesting?”
If he wasn’t watching for it, he would have missed the minute tensing of Lecter’s shoulders, the clench of his jaw, the way his grip shifts on his fork. But he is looking, watching, cataloging, and he files away every little reaction, adding it to what he knows about the man before him.
“You will,” Lecter says confidently, and Will just smiles down at his plate.
“We’ll see.”