"You can't keep drugging me."
"Actually, you'll find that I can, and that I also will." Hannibal said cheerfully in morning greeting. Will had woken up to find Hannibal watching him sleep. It didn't bother him as much as it probably should.
Will wasn't sure how to feel about the events of last night. He had gotten wine drunk on a nearly empty stomach, and after getting into it with Jack, was dead set on driving home drunk to Wolf Trap, a mere two hours away. When that didn't pan out, he'd actually tried to physically fight Hannibal, the fucking Chesapeake Ripper himself. Whose fetish seemed to be carrying Will around when he was unconscious. That also didn't bother him as much as it probably should have.
Will had to admit to himself that it had not been one of his finest moments in decision making. Getting put to bed was decidedly better than getting a DUI, or being made into sausage. Although another part of himself was really worried that Will was trying to rationalize being drugged by a serial killer as a good thing. That said something about him, but he wasn't sure what.
"What the hell? Do you carry that shit around with you, or do you have loaded syringes hidden all over the house?"
"Yes." Hannibal smiled.
"I despise you." Will sighed, shoving his head under the pillows so he wouldn't have to look at the grinning psychopath. Will was fished out from the depths of the soft bedding to be held. Apparently, it was his turn to be the little spoon.
"Can you refrain from that long enough to have breakfast with me?" Hannibal said as he delicately nibbled on the shell of Will's ear. It made Will wondered if the cannibal had ever eaten one before.
"Is Jack here?"
"No. Do you want him to be?" Hannibal asked to receive an over-the-shoulder withering look. "There will be coffee though, and I'm thinking crepes. Unless, you have a request?"
"You're going to make me fat." Will grumbled, "Crepes are fine."
"Hardly. You're eating for two with the amount of anxiety you carry around with you." Hannibal said between kisses to the back of Will's neck, taking his time getting out of bed. Will turned over to tempt him into staying. So, of course, both their cells rang, the two men already knew who was calling them at this early hour.
Will realized that Hannibal must have smelled his temper being summoned because he let go of Will long enough to put their phones on silent. Will wondered what its scent was like, Hannibal resuming his role of big spoon to nose at his neck.
"Tell me, why are you so angry?" Hannibal asked, "You've had this underlying anger this entire case. It makes you smell spicy, peppery even."
Well, now he knew, Will mused with a sigh. "I'm angry about those boys. I'm angry because I know when I find them, I can't help them. I can't, I can't give them back what they threw away."
"Families."
"Seemed fitting to call them the Lost Boys."
"Abigail's lost too." Hannibal pointed out, causing Will to groan. He had been really enjoying himself up to this point. Will turned so that they were laying on their sides, facing each other now.
"You have orphan in common with her."
"I think you'll find we all have a lot in common with one another." Hannibal said, "And perhaps it's our responsibility, yours and mine, to help her find her way."
"I'm not the one who made her an orphan. That responsibility is all yours, and yours alone." Will sighed, unable to decipher Hannibal's end game for her. It was like he wanted them to form a family, which made no sense when you're a lone wolf, sadistic psychopath. "Something so foreign about family...like an ill-fitting suit. I never connected to the concept. I followed my father from the boatyards of Biloxi and Greenville to, uh, the lake boats of Erie."
"Always the new boy at school. Always the stranger." Hannibal reached out run his fingers through Will's curls, his hand coming to rest on Will's cheek. "Alone."
"Always." Will said as he leaned in to kiss Hannibal like it was the most natural thing in the world. Could monsters care about each other? Was this love, or capture bonding?
Will's eyes flew open as he broke off the kiss. He tried not to think about how he felt as disappointed as Hannibal looked. Will also didn't want dwell on how to got there. "Get dressed. We gotta go. I've figured it out."
Despite epiphanies, high standards were maintained, coffee and crepes taking precedence first. Will called Alana Bloom while those were being created. He wanted her input, her specialty family trauma.
"Bangour, Maine. Stamford, Connecticut. Most recently, Reston, Virginia." Jack said in greeting.
"Bangour, Maine? Why there as a starting point?" Will asked.
"Bullets we pulled were a match to a shooting there. C.J. Lincoln shot his mother, and then disappeared."
"Is he milk carton material?" Will asked.
"He was last scene at a gas station with an unidentified woman." Jack verified as he handed the report over to the profiler.
"Our Wendy and Peter Pan." Hannibal said.
"That being said, this places each of the murders approximately 500 miles from the one before it." Price said.
"You're trying to establish a geographical pattern when the murders were weeks apart." Zeller didn't sound like he was invested.
"Patterns over patterns. Our shooters are minors, middle children from traditional, affluent families. There's a pattern. Less to do with geography than psychology." Will said.
"We know they're moving south, so that means we wanna cover the border of North Carolina and Georgia. We need to get files on every missing boy within 200 miles of North Carolina." Jack ignored the skepticism.
"Already done." Alana said as she joined them.
"Doctor Bloom, what an unexpected surprise. That was very proactive of you." Jack said, looking impressed
"I can't take the credit. Proactive of Will actually." Alana corrected. Will almost wished she hadn't as Jack turned to him.
"You got something? A profile?" Jack asked, sharp and intense. "What kind of kid does this?"
"And what kind of kid follows a kid who does this?" Will pushed back.
"There's no indications that these kids came from abusive families." Jack wasn't buying what Will was selling yet.
"No, no, no. Capture bonding. It's a passive psychological response to a new master. It's been an essential survival tactic for a million years. You bond with your captors you survive. You don't...you're breakfast." Oh, and Hannibal enjoyed that, Will making fleeting eye contact with the Ripper.
"Without the interference of a leader, these kids would never consider violent actions." Alana explained.
"I called Alana in to help us weed through the files." Will said. "Our missing kid's a boy. He'll be small for his age, and underweight. A paradox in the midst of a normal family. He's an outsider who doesn't look like one. He'd have a vocation, something inventive, or mechanical."
They made it in time, but just barely. It went as well as it could. The Wendy got shot by Beverly as the deranged woman took aim at Will who was unarmed at the time. To say Hannibal was not pleased when he heard about that would be a severe understatement.
Will was allowed to go back to Wolf Trap which meant someone, somewhere was going to get gone with extreme prejudice by the Ripper. Some poor unlucky bastard was about to earn a spot at the dinner table, and not in the usual way.
The case of the Lost Boys was over, but something still nagged at Will, enough so that he used the FBI resources to seek out a translator. Will might have not recognized the language, but he did have an eidetic memory.
"Mr. Graham, are you absolutely sure that you heard this correctly? This is what you heard?" The translator asked, sounding concerned and more than a little worried.
"Yes." Will just knew he wasn't going to like the next part. He remembered Hannibal bawling like a child in his sleep. What kind of wickedness was out there that could reduce a monster of his caliber to tears? "Why do you ask?"
"Because it translates to 'There are baby teeth in my bowl. Where is my sister? Where is Mischa?'"