"Isn't there a pill for that?" Will smiled over the lip of his coffee cup.
The turn of Frederick's mouth, by contrast, was sour. "I'm so glad you find it funny."
This was three mornings after the one in which Frederick had slit his left wrist with a carbon steel cooking knife. Three mornings after Frederick's thick venous blood, bright by comparison, joined the drying crust of Randall Tier's blood on the floor of Will Graham's infrequently-used dining room. Three mornings after Will had charged Frederick and wrestled the knife from his grip, ruining his clothes as thoroughly as Frederick had ruined his only a little earlier.
Three mornings after both men, panting and frightened on the sticky floorboards, watched the deep slash in Frederick's arm stop bleeding and knit itself closed with questing tendrils of flesh embracing over the wound. Not even a scar was left.
Frederick could have sworn Will's eyes had been as ready to pop out of his head as any snuffling pug dog's. (And there he had been, thinking in canine terms again. There was literally no escape.)
On this particular morning, it had also been two nights since Frederick had gone wolf, something unprecedented in his time at Will's home. The less disturbed his sleep had been, the more disturbed he became.
"I, personally, am concerned that this has shot our little plan full of holes," Frederick told Will. "What if I can't…?"
"Get it up anymore?" Will asked, hiding his grin once again behind the coffee cup.
"As much as I dislike the metaphor, yes."
Will set his mug down. "I don't think you can just stop being a werewolf."
Frederick huffed. The problem was, of course, that there were no set parameters on his condition, other than the empirically established fact that he had been bitten.
"Well, I don't know," Will said. "Maybe it...clears up on its own after a while."
"Can we please stop with the venereal comparisons? I would think you'd be taking this more seriously."
"I am. As a matter of fact, I have a theory on your condition."
"Oh?" asked Frederick, thumbing a drop of coffee from his lower lip. "Do tell."
They were in the kitchen as the dining room floor had been torn up. Thankfully, neither Frederick's blood nor Tier's copious contribution had leached through to stain the concrete below. Of course, the little house often smelled of boiling blood as they fed pieces of the boards one by one into the wood-burning stove downstairs. The little furnace was raging nearly twenty-four-seven.
Frederick? Not so much.
Will leaned in over the table. "I think it's because you're not afraid anymore."
"Ha! I'm plenty afraid. Afraid of getting caught, afraid of what I might do if I turn again."
"Bullshit," Will said, causing Frederick to startle. "You're afraid you won't turn again."
"See?" Frederick said. "Fear."
Will shook his head, pausing to take a sip of the cooling coffee. "It's not enough. You're not scared of getting hurt. Now that you know you can heal. It's interfering with your ability to transform because you do so based on strong emotion."
"It won't help us if every time I need to go wolf I have to sit down in front of 'Sense and Sensibility' first."
"I never would have pegged you as the type to get misty over Jane Austen."
Frederick blushed violently. "It was a joke."
Will cocked an eyebrow.
"Oh, bite me," Frederick said. It was an uncharacteristic sentiment, something he never would have said in a million years before finding himself in his current situation. Will's easy vernacular was obviously rubbing off on him.
When Will laughed, it bounced off the linoleum, ringing loud in the kitchen. "As long as you don't do the same to me," he said.
Frederick went to bed early that night with the conscious intention of forcing his brain to make his body obey. He woke from a dreamless sleep ten hours later to the sound of Will getting ready to leave the house.
"Morning, Frederick," he said, pulling on his snow boots.
"Where are you going?"
"Jack's got another case for me. I do have to work to put steak on the table."
"We don't eat steak."
"No, but you're consuming my semi-burned burgers like they're about to be rationed. If anything, that's a good sign."
"I tried again last night," said Frederick.
"No luck." It was a statement rather than a question.
"Obviously."
"Try again today," Will said, zipping his jacket. "Get outside. Out into the wild a little."
"The last thing I need is to leave my clothes somewhere out in the snow."
"That's the attitude," Will said. "I'll see you tonight."
Frederick nodded, his mind already drifting. Maybe getting out, remembering what it was like to smell the snow and the heavy, leaden day, would remind his id—as Will would say—of its former unconstrained romps.
Yet, as the day dragged on, he found himself reluctant to get up out of the wing chair, to put on his down coat and flail hopelessly about in the snow, waiting for a change he wasn't even sure would come again. And yes, Will had been right: he was absolutely bereft without the presence of the wolf. Not even for the sake of taking down Hannibal anymore, but for the simple fact that it was his only hint of freedom.
Frederick's foul mood made an abrupt reversal while he was eating cold chili from a can, staring out the kitchen window. A blot of blackness marred the snowscape; it moved, it resolved. The wolf that had bitten him had come back to the house for the first time since his realization. Almost at once he was ecstatic. After dropping the can of chili on the floor, fork and all, he dashed toward the front door and threw on his coat, eschewing snow boots for Will's galoshes in his haste.
When he ran back into the kitchen the wolf was still outside the window, doing its familiar paw-hopping dance, its red tongue lolling.
"You bastard," Frederick whispered. The back door whispered as well, shoving up a pile of snow with its half-swing outward. He squeezed through, out into the snow. If anything, the wolf's dance became more insistent. It crouched down then sprang up again, chuffing small, white clouds into the chill air.
Frederick closed his eyes, balled his fists, and willed the change to occur. When he opened his very human eyes again, the wolf had trotted to the crest of the nearest hill. It ran in a tight circle down the hillside and back up again, taunting. Daring Frederick to follow.
Under the cover of heavy clouds, surrounded by white nothingness, Frederick ran again.
The gray wolf stayed ahead, but never out of sight, guiding Frederick away until the house was a mere pixel on the clear horizon. When it dashed into a copse of trees, Frederick followed, leaving the house to recede into oblivion altogether. Snow had begun to fall.
Reality flickered like an old silent movie as the wolf darted between bare tree trunks, hiding then pausing, but never staying still.
Frederick expected to be out of breath, but he took in great lungfuls of frigid air. If anything, the run had left him invigorated and possessed of a singular purpose. He wanted to get close to the wolf again. No sooner had he thought it, though, than the thing disappeared. Kicking up spirals of snow, Frederick turned one way then the other, and back again, searching for a streak of moving gray among the ash-colored tree trunks.
He nearly fell over when he heard a soft whuff behind him. He whirled and stumbled backward. The wolf only cocked its head in a very dog-like fashion. Unlike during their first encounter in the snowy woods, it wasn't growling. Still, Frederick's heart slammed in his chest when the wolf opened its mouth. The panting maw looked a little like a smile.
"Hello?" Frederick said.
The wolf hopped once with its forepaws, a low jump so as not to frighten Frederick. Or so it seemed. It cocked its head in the other direction, ears swiveled forward, condensation leaking from between its jaws and disappearing in swirls on the still air.
Hesitant, Frederick put out his hand. If he was going to be mauled, at least he could heal. The wolf craned its neck, its moist nose nearly at Frederick's knuckles. He heard it snuffling. Then a warm tongue flicked out across his fingers. The stickiness, slowly going cold, reminded him of Randall Tier's blood drying on his skin. But at the same time the present sensation comforted him, whereas the memory did not.
"Who are you?" Frederick asked, feeling slightly less the fool for talking to a wolf in light of this little communion.
In response, the wolf backed away, something in its eyes almost reproving. Then it turned and dashed away from the trees, leaving Frederick alone in the cold and confusion.
It took only a few moments for the experience to take on a sort of surreality, allowing tendrils of fact back into Frederick's mind. He was stranded out in the snow and had lost sight of the house. "Damn."
His feet were beginning to go stiff inside the uninsulated rain boots. He scanned the horizon, seeing nothing but snowy hillside. Circling the stand of trees did no good; the slow but insistent snowfall had made it impossible to see his tracks or those of the wolf. Suddenly chilled, and with no other options, he set out in the direction he believed he had come.
Nothing seemed to advance and nothing seemed to recede as Frederick walked. He would look ahead and see the line between land and sky blurred by the steady snow. Spindly trees rose and shivered in his peripheral vision. Were they the same trees as the ones he had left behind? There was no way to tell, and the day was getting darker.
The snow refused to let up. Frederick's hair had caught the flakes, which melted with his body heat and re-froze in dangerous spikes. Wrapping his arms around himself for warmth did no good at all, and the wind cut through even the down layer of his jacket, insinuating itself through the seams.
Please, he thought. If I don't change, I'll die out here.
And still nothing happened. No vertiginous shiver of transformation. Just the throbbing cold and his thoughts, turning increasingly to desperation.
Frederick's feet were numb; he felt like he was stumping along on two wooden pegs. Those frozen stumps betrayed him at last, and he pitched into the snow, inhaling soft powder and doubling up with the resulting cough.
The cough continued, ringing in his ears, until he realized that what he heard was barking. Shoving away all caution, he shouted as loud as he could, "Hey! I'm here!"
The snowbank nearest him shivered and collapsed, and out came Buster, his nub of a tail swatting the powder.
"Frederick!"
"Will! I'm here!"
Will's long shadow reached him before the man himself did.
"Oh, thank god," Frederick breathed.
"What the hell are you doing?"
Frederick reached out his hand, feeling pitiful but too overwhelmed with relief to care. "You told me to get outside a little."
Will took his hand and hauled him up. "You idiot. You could have gotten yourself killed. I came home and the house was empty."
Frederick winced and tottered as he got back on his frozen feet. "The wolf," he said. "The one that bit me. I think. It was out there. I touched it. It's like it knew."
"Knew what?"
"I still couldn't do it," Frederick told him, his teeth knocking together. "Couldn't change."
"Can you walk?"
Frederick could do nothing but nod. As he rose, he saw through the screen of snow that he had been no more than a thousand feet from the house. He clung to Will's arm as he was led in silence back to the porch. When inside, Will turned on him and Frederick flinched back, expecting a lecture, a blow.
What he got instead was a hug.
"Don't do that again," Will said, holding Frederick's shoulders firmly. "Please."
Frederick was too stunned to say anything. He couldn't remember the last time he had been physically touched with any sort of affection or concern. Not like that.
He continued to stand, puzzled, near the doorway while Will went into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. Outside the house, the silent snow continued to fall.
The exhilaration of peril gave way to despair quicker than Frederick would have expected. Even faced with the loss of his own life in the snow, he hadn't been able to force the wolf to reappear. After a quiet cup of coffee with Will he had gone straight to bed, but only ended up staring at the ceiling, indulging in some patented Frederick Chilton self-loathing that far too easily bubbled to the surface when given an opportunity.
He did not dream, but he knew he had been asleep because he woke to the sound of a thrumming truck engine. Feet that still hurt from having been at the bleeding edge of a case of frostbite hit the cold boards and Frederick was out of bed at once. The engine cut and Frederick heard Will's voice.
"Thanks for coming."
"I can't believe you drive in this mess every day." The voice was low, gruff, but followed by a short chuckle.
Jack Crawford.
There was a part of Frederick that was ecstatic even as the terror slammed down, because Crawford's form wavered as it emerged from the car and, at last, he knew the wolf was returning. He shut his eyes through the nauseating shift in perspective, then opened them again on a black-and-white world that nonetheless throbbed with color input from his other senses. Frederick could smell his own fear on the clothes that the man had worn. With disdain, he shook himself out of the henley and flannel pants.
He almost left the room before remembering to take each of the man-smelling items of clothing in his strong jaws and drag them one by one into the closet so as not to raise suspicion should Crawford come to the bedroom.
Long toenails ticking on the hardwood, wolf-Frederick walked to the bathroom and, rearing up, put his forepaws on the edge of the sink. He could just barely see his own feral-looking face staring back at him from its mask of dark fur. Man-Frederick would have smiled, but wolf-Frederick didn't want to look predatory. He wanted to be as unassuming as possible when he went down the hall to meet the man who wanted to bring him to trial for capital murder.
With only a moment's hesitation to figure out mechanics, he set his long tail wagging and trotted down the hallway to the living room, where the other dogs were greeting Crawford while he stamped snow from his boots.
"Whuff," Frederick said, softly, just to catch Will's attention.
Both men near the door looked up.
"Good boy," Will said, a smile tugging at the furthest corners of his mouth.
"Good Lord," Crawford said. "I don't think I've ever seen a dog that big. Is he new?"
"Yeah," Will said, looking very aw-shucks with his hands in his pockets and feet shuffling. "Found him out in the snow. He might belong to someone; he's got very good manners."
"Hard to put up posters around here," Crawford said. "You may end up keeping him."
"We'll see."
Frederick tried to stand still while Crawford approached him, one gloved hand outstretched. Even past the kidskin of the glove Frederick could smell the salsa and eggs Crawford had eaten for breakfast as well as a hint of intestinal trouble on the brew.
This must be what it feels like to be Hannibal Lecter. Sniffing out motives people didn't even know they themselves had. Hiding in a perfectly tailored disguise. The surge of empowerment Frederick felt impelled him toward Crawford, who scratched behind his ears. Now wasn't that an unexpectedly pleasant sensation?
"Hey, buddy," Crawford said. "What do you call him?" he asked Will.
"His name's F—" He paused.
Crawford looked up.
"Flapjack," Will finished.
Flapjack?
"Flapjack?" Crawford asked, chuckling.
"Flapjack."
"I hope that's nothing personal," said Crawford.
"Not at all," Will said. "Sit, Flapjack," he told Frederick.
Wolf-Frederick did his dead-level best to narrow his canine eyes at Will, but he lowered his hindquarters down to the floor nonetheless.
"Coffee?" Will asked.
Both Frederick and Crawford looked up.
"Sure," said Crawford. "Sorry, buddy," he said to Frederick. "Not for dogs."
"Let's talk in the kitchen," Will told him. "I'm doing some, uh, remodeling in the dining room."
Crawford said not a word as he walked by the torn-up floor in the adjacent room.
Such a luxury, Frederick thought, to be unequivocally believed.
Will poured Hannibal's gift of gourmet coffee into his limping old Mr. Coffee, which was soon hissing and bubbling.
Frederick was glad his wolf-self didn't find the smell as appealing as his man-self would have.
"It seems a little, well, elementary for the Ripper," Will said, apropos of nothing.
Crawford seemed to know exactly what he was referencing, though, because his eyes went wide. "'Elementary?' He took off a man's face and put it on the skull of a sabre-toothed cat."
It took only a second for Frederick to realize they were talking about Randall Tier's fate. He was glad wolves couldn't grimace.
"I'm only going on what I've seen thus far," Will said. "He tends to use the whole body. It's a figure study, part of the work of art."
"Not the whole body," Crawford said.
As he poured out two cups of the steaming coffee he arched an eyebrow. "No. Not the part that he eats."
"Should we expect to find the rest of the body somewhere else?"
"I don't think so," said Will. "The Ripper is...disappointed. Tier got himself killed before he could complete his metamorphosis. He doesn't deserve to be glorified, to be made transcendent. Not completely."
Crawford shook his head, but it wasn't in disbelief. He was eating it up. So to speak. "I don't understand how you do it, Will. But for our sake, I'm glad you do."
"Don't be too grateful yet. We haven't caught the Ripper."
"Whuff," Frederick said.
"Sit, Flapjack," said Crawford. He seemed amused when Frederick remained standing, resolute.
"I think he still only trusts me," Will said.
Goddamn right, Frederick thought.
"However," Crawford said, "I'm not sure how this insight was so important that I had to drive all the way out here."
Frederick had to lay down, the linoleum cold on his belly. This wasn't just a routine call by Crawford. Will had asked him out here, but not to tell him his theories on Randall Tier's demise. It was to see how Frederick would react. Whether he could make him turn by dangling the ultimate threat—exposure—over his head.
It had worked like the proverbial charm, but it didn't mean Frederick couldn't feel a bit sore about it. He had half a mind to growl at Will. Or both of them. Instead, he put his chin on his paws and flicked his gaze back and forth between the two men.
"Maybe I was just craving a little human contact," Will said with a short laugh.
"Have to turn on the TV to hear people talking every once in a while."
"I don't have a TV," Will said. After a short, uncomfortable silence, he continued, gesturing to the dogs and to Frederick. "These guys say more than you'd think."
Crawford took a swallow of his coffee. "I don't think I've ever told you this, but when I was growing up, we had a Boxer named Ralph…"
Frederick rolled his canine eyes at the banter about Crawford's childhood dog, but the truth was it hurt a little bit to see that kind of easy connection. He felt comfortable around Will, but had they ever spoken of families? Upbringings? Perhaps it was for the best in the end. Frederick's childhood had been…austere. Not wanting for physical comforts, but sparing in the expression of affection by any party or parties.
Will and Crawford talked for half an hour, not in the largest part about the Chesapeake Ripper or about Randall Tier. It was a relief for Frederick when Crawford stood to leave.
Frederick made his way to the bedroom on cautious paws and watched the truck until it disappeared over the white horizon. There was no one in the doorway of the bedroom when, at last, he shivered back to his human form.
Will was cleaning up in the kitchen. He turned when Frederick walked in.
"Listen, I'm sorry about 'Flapjack.' It was the first thing that came to my mind."
Frederick said nothing.
"I had to," Will said. "I knew you could."
"Thank you," said Frederick, finally. And, earning a surprised grunt from Will, he hugged the man right back.
