"Will, none of the psychoanalysis tonight, ok?" Jade says calmly. She places another dish into the center of the table, adjusts it so it's even, and then steps away to admire her work. Smiling faintly with pride, Jade absentmindedly untangles a long dark curl hanging over her shoulder.
"I won't, if he won't" Will spits. He's sitting to the left of the head chair at one end of the table, glasses in his hand. His eyes are unfocused and dart around the room. Jade sighs and moves over to hover over Will's shoulder.
"We decided that the both of you together mess with each other's brains. I'd very much like it if I didn't have to put you back together again once the both of you are done." Jade whispers close to Will's ear. After a moment of silence where Will made no motion of hearing her, Jade kisses the side of his face and fixes a few curls of unruly dark hair on his head.
"I make no promises."
"Don't you even think about doing your psycho-I-know-what-you're-thinking-analysis thing tonight. I'm in no mood to have to send apology cards to the guests...again." Sydnee says, leaning over the mirror to finish applying her impeccable eyeshadow.
"Yes, I supposed that would be rude." Hannibal muses from behind her. Through the mirror, Sydnee takes notice of the book in her beloved's hand.
"Hannibal, I swear to all things good, I will hide your recipe cards if you and Will go at it tonight." Sydnee threatens, turning around brush still in hand. Hannibal finally looks up from his book, looking straight into her cerulean eyes.
"I make no promises."
"Thank you all for coming! I'm so glad you could make it." Jade says, repetitively to all the guests even if she didn't mean it. It seemed that no matter how much Jade tried to hide it from Will, she didn't like the people from his OR her work very much, but Will's antisocial-ness drove her crazy. Crazy enough to throw a dinner party for people she didn't even like.
The last pair to arrive was Jade's best friend and her plus one, Sydnee and Hannibal. Though Sydnee and Jade were close, the two decided when Hannibal and Will started working together that it wasn't good for either of them. Will was perceptive, perceptive and unhinged enough to entice Hannibal to mess with his brain, and when that started happening, neither one of them got on well.
"Oh Jade, you look stunning" Sydnee gushes holding out her arms for a hug. Once received, she pulls back to look Jade up and down admiringly.
"Still a fancier dresser than I am, I see." She says after a minute. "The house looks good, are the dogs all outside? I see none of the dog beds."
"Yeah, I didn't want them running amuck, and begging food from the other guests. Winston seems to have gained that bad habit from all the other dogs." Jade confides, pulling Sydnee farther into the house so Hannibal could step inside.
"Hannibal." Jade says more out of politeness. She was familiar with Hannibal's…Err…diet.
"Ah, Jade, how is that darling husband of yours; still teaching?" Hannibal smiles; it reminds her of a predator.
"Hannibal…" Sydnee threatens warningly. Her eyes narrow infinitesimally.
"Uh, yes. Almost every day, besides the days I make him stay home with me." Jade says quickly, finally noticing the pot in Hannibal's hands.
"What's that?" Jade says, a little bit worried about what she was going to see on the news tomorrow morning.
"Who, is more like it." Sydnee mutters, moving around Jade to greet some of the other guests.
"I'm very careful about what I eat, and so I figured I'd bring something I could trust. It's non-vegetarian." Hannibal says. He brushes past Jade, careful not to touch her. Jade sits for a moment and struggles to control her revulsion.
"Oh." She whispers low enough that Hannibal had no way of hearing how disgusted she was.
"I tried to stop him. I really tried, but there's no stopping him once he's begun." Sydnee touches Jade's shoulder.
Jade looks up, very deep in thought.
"Well...uh... I'm not quite sure I want to serve everyone-"
"It's just flesh."
"Flesh. I'm not sure I want to serve everyone flesh. From a human being."
Sydnee just laughs, guiding her away from the door and into the dining room where everyone has congregated.
Hannibal has taken the seat at the head of the table, per to his infuriating self-righteous nature. Will sits next to him, eyes not making contact with anyone sitting at the table. The empty spot next to him, Jade assumes, is saved for her. Jade had long ago stopped trying to make Will take a seat at the head of the table.
"I'm very glad you could all make it," Jade says standing behind her seat, "it's a wonderful time when friends are gathered. Bon appetite!"
Jade sits down in her seat, hoping no one noticed her white lie. Friends these people were not. Will makes eye contact, staring into her eyes one second too long. Of course he would notice.
The guests around Jade chatter, many conversations going at once. More than once, she overhears many of the guests compliment Hannibal on his "pot roast". Each time, Jade cringes.
She hoped that God would forgive her for her sins, yet Hannibal was as much as her friend as Sydnee was. There was no way she'd ever do anything to get him caught. After all, he made a habit of eating the rude. Natural selection, she supposed.
"Will, you look horrid. Have you not been sleeping well again?" Sydnee says from across the table. She tilts her head to the side and puts an elbow onto the table, leaning her chin on her palm.
Jade tunes in, answering for her husband, whom she'd spent many nights with him wrapped in towels.
"More so than usual."
It was true. The closeness he had gotten to killing a human being haunted his kind heart. It pained Jade to see him so distraught over this. The FBI promised her that his days in the field were over, yet she heard more and more that he was solving another case.
And another one.
And another.
Sydnee nods her eyes sweeping over Will's tired, yet perceptive gaze.
"I'm fine. Nothing I can't handle." Will says looking somewhere over Sydnee's left shoulder.
"Nothing we can't handle" Jade echoes, stressing the important part.
"Of course, it wouldn't have anything to do with the copycat killer." Hannibal says casually smiling his predatory smile.
Will lifts half his mouth into something that was supposed to be a smile but looked more like a snarl.
"Not that you would know anything about troubles with killing people." He says.
Jade shoots Sydnee a desperate look. Will already had figured out that the "better than you" killings were Hannibal. When it got right down to it, the murders reeked of Hannibal and his self-righteous nature.
Hannibal's smile widens.
"Of course I wouldn't, it's tasteless, killing people that is." Hannibal's smug look appears on his face again.
"Tasteless." Will bites out. He rolls his eyes at the obvious pun on Hannibal's nature.
"Alright, that's it Hannibal." Sydnee says putting her fork down on the table. "I'm burning your Recipe cards."
Hannibal frowns at his beloved.
Jade snickers, and tries, but fails, to hide her laughter behind her hand. It seemed not only she worried about the boys going at it.
"But I didn't do anything." Hannibal says defensively.
Sydnee's eyebrow arches, giving Hannibal an are-you-kidding-me look.
"That's exactly what your messing-with-Will's-brain thing looks like. I've seen it far too many times." Sydnee says.
Hannibal purses his lips and sits back in his chair, taking a rather lengthy drink of his wine.
"I suppose." He murmurs after a time.
Jade closed the door the final time, having said goodbye to all the guests. Will paid them all no attention, but rather went out into the backyard to see the dogs.
When Jade went into their room a few minutes later, all the dogs were lying in their dog beds at the end of her and Will's bed. Will was wrapped up in a towel with another towel beneath him.
He looks up from the paper work in his hands when he hears the door open. Winston and some of the other dogs wag their tails seeing their mistress.
Jade goes into the closet and reappears in one of Will's old t-shirts and some baggy pajama pants, holding another set of clothes for Will, whom was still fully dressed.
"I'm sorry." Jade half whispers, "about tonight. I should have said something sooner."
"Don't worry about. He's just an arse whom we can't live without. It just comes with being near him." Will says leaning over the edge of the bed to drop the paper work onto the floor. He turns back to Jade and pulls his shirt off.
Jade flushes and hands him his shirt. Despite being married and doing married things, the sight of her Will still gave Jade butterflies.
Surreptitiously watching, while pretending not to watch, Will put his shirt back on, Jade hands him his pants and sits down with her back facing him so she could pull the pins out of her hair without getting distracted by the adorable male sitting behind her.
Shaking her hair, out Jade turns to see Will watching her with an amused expression on his face.
"You know, I really don't mind you watching me." He says, flashing a smile in her direction. Jade laughs, feeling the heat color her cheeks.
"I know. As I recall, you seem to enjoy it very much. I was just fixing my hair. The pins give me a hair headache after a while." Jade says. She turns a one-eighty, scooting closer to Will.
He looks at her. His ever perceptive blue eyes take in Jade, from her folded hands to her still red face.
Very slowly, he takes one of Jade's hands into his own. Swiftly pulling her into his lap, Will smiles down at her before giving her a searing hot kiss goodnight.
"Let's go to bed, shall we?"
All Jade can do is nod.
Sydnee stares out the window in stony silence. The tension crackles in the air. Hannibal drives the exact speed limit, his hands gripping the steering wheel, his knuckles white.
After what seems like forever of his silence, matched only by those he kills, Sydnee breaks the silence, trying to keep her tone from being sharp.
"I think it was very rude of you to do that tonight. After all Jade invited us, and then you go and make those…sick jokes. Even after I asked you not to."
Hannibal stiffens in the seat next to her. Knowing that if she backed down he would walk all over her, Sydnee doesn't move and she doesn't stop staring out into the night.
"You didn't ask. You threatened the life of my poor recipe cards, even though, if I wanted to, I could stop you where you stood." Hannibal says coldly.
"Well, I had to make sure you understood. Will's sanity is not a playground for you." Sydnee whips her head around to narrow her eyes at the side of Hannibal's face. Out of the corner of his eye, he glances at her without making no other movement.
"You act as if messing with somebody who understands you…who can get inside you head better than I can, is a bad thing." Sydnee says turning to stare out the windshield as the headlights reveal more of the road as they go on.
When Sydnee does not go on for a long while, Hannibal relaxes slowly, pulling up into the long drive way to their house set back in the hills.
"Will is… it's beyond tempting. To see him try to work it out. The murders aren't the same and he knows it. It drives him nuts. The predictability he puts on people, let alone psychopaths and sociopaths, is a little staggering. The mind of a serial killer interests him beyond any control, yet he reins it in. Stops it. Hates it. It's interesting to watch." Hannibal says lowly. Almost too low for Sydnee to hear.
"It's not your job to throw unpredictability at him, Hannibal. Your job is to make sure he's not going to drive himself so far into his mind he won't be able to get back out. Don't forget that." She says, getting out of the Bentley and closing the door.
Leaving him in the car to brood, Sydnee sashays up the front steps, pulling the clip out of her red hair and shaking it out. She takes her heels off in the front hall. Stepping lightly up stairs and double timing it to her room, Sydnee hurries about setting things in their proper place.
She sits at her vanity, dressed in a light purple nightgown, with her white bathrobe over it. She closes her eyes wiping off the day's makeup. She opens her eyes. Hannibal hovers right behind her. His sudden appearance startles her, and she whips around to look at him for herself.
"You are right; my job is to protect Will's mind, not play with it." He says, his dark eyes sliding away from her face.
"I know." Sydnee says, standing up. Moving slowly so as not to scare him, she leans forward and wraps her arms around his waist. He stiffens for a moment, then relaxes into her embrace.
"It's almost time for bed." Sydnee whispers, standing up on her tippy-toes to plant a chaste kiss on Hannibal's cheek. She moves away, stepping halfway around him, before he grabs her arm jerking her back to him. He gives her a different kind of kiss, one that makes her toes curl and grin against his mouth.
"Well, if that's how you're going to kiss me goodnight every night, I don't think I would mind at all." Sydnee says cheekily. She grins up at Hannibal and this time successfully steps away from him. She crawls into bed.
She pats the spot next to her.
"Hurry and change out of your suit. And don't leave your shirt on the closet floor. I don't want to have to iron it in the morning."
Hannibal smiles at her, his alarming predatory smile.
"I make no promises."