Hi! I know I'm still working on my Lost story Aftermath, but I needed a little break and as Hannibal may be my all time favorite show, I decided to do a one shot :) Will is a girl in this (not because I have anything against slash, I probably have an unhealthy obsession with the amount of slash Hannigram I read) but just because I thought it would be interesting to write from a girl Will's perspective. I also changed the gender of Alana Bloom (back, really). Anyways, enjoy, and please review!
Disclaimer: I own nothing (if I did, Hannibal and Will would be a thing. I'm still not ruling it out, though.)
Home Is Where the Heart Is
She can't remember who kissed who.
Maybe it was her who lunged forward in the proximity of a breath between their lips, or maybe it was him who closed the distance. All she knows is that they ended up here, kissing ferociously in his office chair. Teeth bite and catch her lip, tongues meet in a war for dominance.
She can't remember who kissed who, and she can't remember how they ended up here in the first place.
xxx
"Will," Jack has called back her attention, and she turns, eyes skittering up to take in the put together figure (although not as put together as he usually is, she will find out later) standing in Jack's office doorway. He is tall, much taller than her. And his eyes are very dark. She barely meets them before she turns back to the investigation board.
Jack sighs. "Dr. Lecter, this is Will Graham. She's a consultant on the case."
"I see. Hello, Miss Graham," he says from behind her, and she can hear his smile mocking her in the thick accent that coats his syllables.
"Will. You can call me Will," she tells him absently, finally turning back and taking a seat across from Jack's. "I don't know, Jack. I've told you all I can."
The rest of their meeting is a rush of irritation and anger hurled straight at the good doctor, but the thing she remembers most are his eyes. They seem to really see her, past the simple if not a bit large square framed glasses that slip down her nose every few minutes and into her very soul.
He acts as if he knows her. She absolutely hates him.
xxx
She finds herself awkward around Abigail Hobbs, because she killed her father. She wakes up screaming in the night, the thrust of a gunshot still pushing her shoulders back and the wetness of another man's blood plastering her long brown curls to her neck instead of sweat.
She discusses the dreams with Dr. Lecter, reluctantly at first and then somewhat more easily because, as she discovers, they are becoming somewhat like friends. If she can call it that. She doesn't know much about friends, because no one ever really seemed interested in being friends with a freak like her. Sure, there was Beverly, who was nice and whom she admired because she was a badass, and then there was Alan, who seemed more worried than friendly most of the time. But none of them were Hannibal Lecter.
"You feel she will hate her because you killed her father," Hannibal notices one day in his office, which is darkly extravagant and she likes because she can roam around the walls and pretend to look at book titles instead of facing him.
This is what she is doing at exactly this moment, while he is seated in his chair, legs crossed and not a single hair out of place.
Will sighs. "I guess. I guess I don't really understand why she wants to spend time with me if it's not because she's plotting her revenge or something."
"You don't think the reason she is requesting to spend time with you is because she regards you as an older sister figure?" Hannibal offers, and she turns to stare full on at him now.
"Are you kidding? No one could see me as that."
She is proved wrong when they are all in the car one day driving Abigail home. Will is seated shotgun and spends most of the journey staring out the window, while Abigail is seated comfortably in the backseat.
Hannibal is driving. There was never any question about it.
"Did you ever have boyfriends in high school?" Abigail asks abruptly, and Will starts from her thoughts, which were centering around blood and death, obviously.
"Um," Will swallows. "Yes, one. Why?"
She doesn't see the way Hannibal's hands tighten ever so slightly on the steering wheel.
Abigail shrugs. "I don't know. I was just wondering, I guess."
Will's lips twist to the side and she goes back to staring out the window.
"Did you have a lot of friends?" Abigail asks again, and this time a small smile flutters to Will's face.
"Not really. I don't think people found me particularly endearing," she says flippantly. It had never really bothered her, back then. She had preferred to be alone. She was the type of person who didn't have to be lonely when they were alone.
Now not so much.
"I find you endearing," are the next words that come out of Abigail's mouth, and Will is left blinking in astonishment through the freshly cleaned glass of the window.
xxx
"Are you alright, Will?" Hannibal asks when she has burst into his home one night, shaking and unsure.
She opens her mouth once, closes it on a gasp and grind of her teeth. She doesn't want to tell him, because that would be awkward, right? But she has to come up with something to explain why she rushed here, doesn't she? It's not like she usually barges into her psychiatrist's home in a complete panic.
"Alan kissed me," she blurts out the words before slapping her hand to her mouth in horror and, in an uncharacteristic moment that displays just how out of sorts she is, meets Hannibal's eyes full on.
He is staring calmly at her, dark depths catching hers and holding tightly. The longer she looks, the more she can swear she sees a tinge of maroon glare back at her.
"And?" Hannibal finally prods, and she pulls her eyes away to skitter across his kitchen's marble countertop.
"He said he can't be in a relationship with me because...because I'm unstable," she says as she tries not to show how much this hurts her.
He stares at her for a few moments before replying in a voice that is like balm to her soul. "I am very sorry to hear that, Will."
That is the last thing that is said on the matter. He offers her tea because he knows she likes that, it makes her feel at home, and they sit and talk about her case instead.
The thought comes to her later, when she is in the edge between being awake and falling asleep, that he hadn't seemed very sorry at all.
xxx
She is in a panic. She has been losing time, and she feels almost as if her grasp on reality is extended thin like the thread she uses to prepare her lures for fishing.
She is fraying at the seams, and all she needs is him.
So she arrives at his office with the simple explanation that she woke up at a crime scene without knowing how she got there and might be losing her mind. She is the one sitting, this time, in his own chair, which he pushed her down into as she panicked. Her hands scrunch in her hair, fingers curling and uncurling around the wild locks.
She doesn't know who she is anymore.
He crouches in front of her, takes her chin in his strong but gentle hand and tells her that she is Will Graham.
She remembers now. It was her that kissed him. He was so close, a breath away, and she was already so unhinged.
That was how they ended up here.
When she had imagined it (and she did, much more than she liked to admit), she had always thought he would be gentle and focused.
He is focused, that much was true. Gentle isn't even part of the equation.
He is rough, biting with teeth and lips and his fingers circle her wrists so tightly she knows bruises will spring fresh and blue in the morning. Her fingers clutch into his pristine shirt when he slips his hand inside her jeans and touches her for the first time. She almost comes right there.
Instead they end up with her shirt half unbuttoned, bra pulled to the side so he can stroke a nipple, mouth and lick and nip (that came as a surprise, she revels in the sharpness of it) and his shirt has a rip in the bottom and buttons are scattered on the floor because she was too eager to feel his skin.
He looms over her in the gothic chair, and she tilts her hip up on a gasp as he hastily unbuckles his belt and rolls on a condom that he got somewhere, it doesn't even matter, because he is inside of her and thrusting hard and deep, and she is here, she is home.
She is home.
xxx
Sometimes, she thinks back to the moment she finally figured it out. The knowledge that flooded her brain on a calm wind. She hadn't thought it would be like that, had thought that a betrayal that huge would be more detrimental to her brain, earth quaking, ground shaking, large.
Instead it floated, fell softly, suspended in air and then there. She knew suddenly and innately, like she knew her hair was brown and her name was Willow Eliza Graham.
As she sits in her cell and thinks back to the very second, the very moment that she knew, she wonders that if she had played it differently she would have ended up where she is now. Baltimore's Home for the Criminally Insane.
She tells Jack, pleads and begs and insists in vain, but he doesn't believe her. No one believes her, because they all believe that she is capable of killing all those people and lying about it.
That betrayal stings almost more than his.
She has never felt so utterly and completely alone.
Except she doesn't, not really, because when he finally comes to visit her in her cell she still feels that anticipation that pulses in her stomach, flutters and flies like butterflies. She still feels that sense of comfort when she fully meets his eyes, despite her glare and his calm and cool gaze back.
She still feels home.
But despite this, she is determined to fight back. She is determined for the truth. Because the truth often hurts, and she's learned this over the years. She has to listen to her brain this time, even though she knows her heart will be stuck in this hospital either way the story goes.
Because home is where the heart is, isn't it?