It is night, and in the woods behind his home, Will Graham is wandering aimlessly among the trees. He tries to remember how he got there, but his memory fails him; whatever purpose he had out here, he cannot remember it now. Picking his way carefully over a fallen tree in the dark, Will hears behind him the sound of snapping twigs and the rustle of undergrowth as something large approaches. Without having to turn around, he knows that it's the stag, the creature that has been stalking him since Jack brought him back into the field. He can hear the antlers scraping against the limbs of the trees around it, and the edge of the moist cloud of its breath warms his back in the chill night. Stepping over the dead trunk creates a pointless barrier between them. A cold wind cuts through Will, causing him to shiver. He should continue walking, find his way back to his house - to his bed. Instead, he turns around.
Among the trees, just beyond the fallen trunk, stands not the stag but the ghoulish specter that is Garret Jacob Hobbs, shirt riddled with bullet holes, dead eyes staring through the darkness. Standing there with the dead man that won't die, Will feels his reality starting to slip away. The world gets fuzzy on the edges, everything slipping in and out of focus, everything except for Hobbs, who stands in front of him, waiting. Waiting for what? Will starts to panic.
"No, no, NO! You're dead! I killed you!" Will yells, and he grips his head in his hands to fight off the spinning of the woods around them. Hobbs continues to stand there, and Will pleads with the man,
"You're dead." Will's voice cracks, and he feels something cold and metallic against his head. There's a gun in his hand. Why is there a gun in his hand?
He points the gun at Hobbs and empties six rounds into his body, decorating him with six new holes in his chest. Hobbs falls backward without any vocalization of pain or protest. As Will watches the body settle amongst the underbrush, blood begins to bubble out of the new bullet holes, soaking Hobbs's shirt and pooling on the ground around him. So much blood, more blood than should be coming out of a body. And red. Even in the darkness, Will can see how red it is, the light of the moon reflecting off the deep pools of it that are forming. That mocking red is the only color in the world, and Will can't stop repeating over and over,
"You're dead; I killed you. I killed you."
Will starts awake in the darkness of his bedroom. His heart is pounding wildly, and the sound of his ragged breathing is ringing in his ears. His clothes and the sheets beneath him are moist with the sweat from his clammy skin. But worse than the slowly receding panic and the dampness is the pang of embarrassment and guilt as Will gradually becomes aware of the aching in his groin. Rolling onto his side toward the drier edge of the bed, he runs a hand over his face and groans.
The dreams aren't new, but his body's reaction to them is. For a month now he's been waking from his nightmares with his body inappropriately aroused. He shouldn't be reacting to his dreams this way, not when he dreams of killing Hobbs over and over again, the dream version of Hobbs as immortal as the Hobbs that haunts him during the day.
But his body is aching for release, and it takes some resolve not to simply reach down and quickly get himself off. It's been weeks since he's found any sort of release. He refuses to finish off what his macabre dreams have started; he's not sick enough in the head to allow himself to get off on killing, even if his body seems to be hinting otherwise. Even when he attempts to relieve his needs during the day, he finds his mind wandering back to those dreams, to those images of Hobbs bleeding on the ground, his chest riddled with extra holes or his head blown apart. When he feels himself grow harder in his hand from these recollections, he snarls in disgust and reluctantly stuffs himself back in his pants, preserving a shaky dignity.
However, his reluctant abstinence is beginning to take its toll. He's become moody, quicker to snap at his colleagues as his frustration mounts. A few nights ago he woke up from his dreams to find that he had already come in his boxers, his body's need for release met without his consent. But even that regrettable incident isn't enough to sate his body. The dull ache between his legs as he lies in his bed begs his attention, and the arousal takes longer to recede than normal. Will presses his face into his hands and sighs miserably.
A week later, Will is pacing across the floor of Hannibal's office as Hannibal watches him from his desk. They are talking about Abigail. Alana's told them that she's been experiencing nightmares recently, waking up screaming in the middle of the night. Hannibal resolves to go see her later in the week, and Will offers to go with him. Hannibal agrees, then, eyes tracking Will on the other side of the office, asks,
"And how have your dreams been lately, Will?" Hannibal knows that Will's sleep has been disturbed in the past months, but he doesn't know the contents of the dreams or how Will's body has begun to react to them.
Will pauses his traversal of the office, stopping in front of the statue of the stag. He reaches out and runs his fingers over the antlers.
"They're not any worse than what I see when I'm not sleeping," Will says, distracted.
"Given your recent excursions with Jack, that's not very reassuring." Hannibal crosses one leg over the other and leans back in his chair, "What is it that you see in your dreams, Will?"
Will looks over at Hannibal and then back at the stag, "I see . . . Hobbs," Will admits, "I'll be in my house or doing a lecture, and I turn around and suddenly he's there. I start to panic, and I . . ." Will wraps his hand around one of the points of the antlers and presses his thumb against the tip, feeling the metal bite into his skin, "and I kill him. But he just doesn't seem to want to stay dead."
"And this disturbs you."
Will releases the statue and turns to Hannibal, incredulous, "That I keep dreaming about killing a man who's been dead for five months now but can't seem to stay in the morgue? Yeah, it's a little disconcerting."
"Perhaps your dreams are a reflection of unresolved reservations you have about taking Hobbs's life."
"I don't feel guilty for killing Hobbs!" Will bursts out. He presses the heel of his hand to his temple, "Guilt wouldn't . . ." The momentum of the sentence slows as his self-awareness catches up with him before he says 'wouldn't explain why I wake up hard.'
"Well, then, perhaps Hobbs represents something else besides his own death. The Hobbs case was your first case after returning to the field, and the beginning of a time of great stress. Your repeated killing of Hobbs in your dreams could be an attempt to regain control that you feel you've lost in other aspects of your life."
Will considers it, and though he doesn't like admitting that he's not entirely in control of his own mental state, he has to concede at least partially to Hannibal's theory.
"So . . . if I'm trying to regain control would that . . . would that, uh . . ."
Hannibal waits patiently, "Would that what, Will?"
Will crosses his arms to stop his hands from twitching, "Recently I've been, uh, waking up . . . aroused. After these dreams." He doesn't look at Hannibal, "I don't understand why; it just keeps happening."
Hannibal considers for a moment. "If indeed these dreams are ways for your subconscious to regain control, it doesn't seem unlikely that your body would respond in such a way, especially if such needs are not being regularly met."
Will is silent, not liking the turn their conversation is taking.
"How have you been dealing with this arousal when you wake up?"
Will throws his hands in the air and begins pacing the length of the office again. "What, you want me to jack off to the thought of blowing Hobbs's brains out?" He closes his eyes and presses his fingers to the closed lids. "I haven't been dealing with it." His voice is miserable.
Hannibal nods, "It's understandable that you wouldn't want to indulge in such a thing when it springs from something so seemingly morbid, but prolonged sexual frustration is not something that is conducive to a healthy lifestyle. Might I suggest if you find you cannot take care of these needs yourself, asking someone whom you would trust to help you satisfy them?"
"Oh my god!" Will is totally abashed, "Are you really trying to tell me that I need to get laid?"
Hannibal frowns at the crude phrase, disliking the twisting of his words, even by Will.
"What I'm saying, Will, is that repressing one's sexual needs is not a healthy habit." Hannibal pauses, "Although your health is important to me, you may be right that this area of your life is not something I should be attempting to advise you on."
Will snorts in agreement.
"Why don't you tell me about your newest case instead, Will?"
This time he is in the Hobbs residence, standing in the kitchen where he watched Abigail get her throat slit and where Garret Jacob Hobbs died propped up against a cabinet. The kitchen is clean, no signs of what happened here months before, no visual legacy marking the spot where too many lives changed for the worse.
Will doesn't want to look at it anymore. He turns around, and Hobbs is standing in the hallway behind him, an echo form the house's ghastly past. The sight reminds him too much of his first experience there, and all Will wants to do is push past the man in front of him and leave. But the thought of brushing past Hobbs to get to the front door makes his stomach turn, so he remains where he is, watching Hobbs. A slow anger builds in him the longer he stands in the kitchen, growing furious over Hobbs's intrusion.
There is a glint of metal on the counter. A knife is lying on the smooth surface, and Will reaches out to grasp it. When he feels the coolness of the handle press against his palm, he looks over at Hobbs, and the anger bubbling inside him peaks. In three steps he is in front of Hobbs, slicing the blade across the man's abdomen. Blood spurts from the wound, and Hobbs collapses, dead eyes starting into nothingness. Will pauses before kneeling next to the body. His anger slowly turns to calm as brings the knife down into Hobbs's chest and and abdomen again and again, leaving horrible gashes from which torrents of blood are emerging, soaking the knees of Will's pants.
Will does not know how much time passes before he stops and stares at his bloody hands. He is watching the sticky liquid glisten in the shadowy light when he hears the sounds of heavy hooves striking the wooden floor down the hallway. He hears the antlers knocking against the narrow walls, and Will wonders how the animal can fit through such a small space. He looks up, but instead of the stag, he sees Hannibal walking towards him.
With characteristic composure, Hannibal looks down on the lacerated body without surprise or disgust. He kneels on the other side of the body across from Will, and when his eyes meet Will's, Will is overcome by the intensity he sees in them. It is not fire or passion that he sees, but a dark, hidden thing that stirs behind them. It takes a terrifying amount of control not to look away from those eyes. It takes even more not to be drawn in by them, to be taken in by the thing that lurks beneath Hannibal's skin.
It is Hannibal who breaks eye contact to look down at the body between them. His lips are slightly pursed when he reaches out a hand to caress the face of the dead man, and Will can only watch with mute fascination as Hannibal lowers his head to the body and tears a piece of flesh from the abdomen with his teeth. Hannibal straightens, and Will moans when he sees the slick coating of blood on the man's lips. Hannibal's eyes close in pleasure.
The light of the moon through his windows makes Will think it's dawn when he wakes, gasping and shaking, from his dream. The image of Hannibal's blood-stained face is still in his mind when he feels once again the persistent ache that makes his hand twitch with the need to satisfy it. He squeezes his eyes shut and presses his head back into the pillow. God, he just needs to come once by his own hand. He rolls over onto his stomach, ignoring the dampness of the sheets, and presses himself into the mattress. Exhaling a shaky breath, he groans.
He thinks about what Hannibal said to him, about repressing his sexual needs, and he can't tell if he is agreeing with Hannibal or using the argument as a convenient excuse when he reaches into his boxers. As he grasps himself, he tries not to think about Hobbs, tries not to imagine the knife carving into Hobbs's flesh and the hot spurt of blood that sprayed into the air in an obscene pattern.
If you find you cannot take care of these needs yourself, ask someone whom you would trust to help you satisfy them.
The vision of Hobbs's hemorrhaging torso is replaced with that of Hannibal walking towards Will down the shadowed hallway, eyes glinting in the darkness. Will desperately attempts to banish Hannibal from his thoughts as his hand works frantically to find release. He tries not to remember what the outline of Hannibal's body looked like when he knelt over Hobbs. He tries not to remember that dark intensity unfurling behind those eyes.
Hot sweat is beginning to mix with the cold sweat from his dreams. Will thinks about Hannibal leaning forward over Hobbs, his mouth seeking out a rendered piece of flesh that he bears his teeth down on and tears away. As he chewed, Hannibal had allowed his eyes to close, his face composed as he savored the taste of the meat. Will remembers the blood-stained lips.
Later, he will regret his abandon at these images, but for now, they are providing him with a path to relief he has not properly felt for much too long. Will grunts and presses his face into his pillow. A minute more and he comes, hard, rolling his hips into the mattress as he lets the pleasure pulse through him. The damp pillow muffles his moans, and his movements gradually slow until he is still. When his heart starts to beat normally once more, he rolls over to the other side of the bed. His mind is numb, his body limp as he lies there, not allowing himself to process what he has just done. As his eyes flutter shut, he does not think about Hannibal sighing with delight as he swallows Hobbs's flesh. He does not think about the tip of Hannibal's tongue emerging to delicately sample the glistening blood on his lips. Outside Will's window, the moon, low on the horizon, glows red in the night.