Author's Note: For the purposes of this fanfiction, I am following the general timeline of the TV show, but it is placed in a convenient growing season: spring. In the show, the first episode is early winter, but Maryann can't start a garden in the winter! The soil chemistry would be at a standstill, useless for growing. I am nothing if not realistic as a writer.

So bear with me, please. That's the only real change I plan to make.

Hannibal's patient followed the polite sweep of his arm out of the study where he had spent the last hour counseling her. "Thank you, Doctor Lector," she simpered, her too-red lips curving to a smile.

"Not at all, Mrs. Sands," he replied. "I will see you next week, at the same time, yes?"

"Yes," she agreed breathily, putting an umbrella from her bag as they adjourned to the little exiting foyer.

Hannibal suppressed a roll of his eyes. Mrs. Sands was narcissistic, to say the least, and could not seem to fathom that her ex-husband's turn to homosexuality was due in part to her own emotional and physical affairs during their fifteen-year, unhappy marriage. Vain as she was, she refused to let the sun touch her porcelain skin, using an umbrella to dissuade the harmful rays.

He had to wonder what part of her might taste best: her soft, sculpted cheeks or her lying tongue.

As he escorted her out of the patient exit door, and closed it behind her with a final farewell, Hannibal rolled his broad shoulders with a sigh. He had a two hour layover between Mrs. Sands and his next patient; enough time to eat an unhurried lunch (for no meal, ever, was to be rushed). It was the second day after his initial meeting with Miss Shule. Knowing the gardener's energy, and according to her promise, today would be the day he received the contract and final drawing of his future garden.

Hannibal prepared some of his 'mystery meat' stew. He sautéed the onions, celery, and carrots first, sweating the sweet and savory vegetables together before adding measured herbs and a few liquid dashes. While that continued to move towards nirvana, he went to work on the heart.

He loved the coppery, juicy impurity of the organ. His knife slipped into each of the four chambers lovingly, flicking them open with the razor of the blade. Having produced the most surface area the organ could muster, he thinly sliced it from the vena cava up towards the aortic termination. The heart was vascular, almost porous with health.

Such an abused little fist-sized body part, Hannibal mused, enjoying the stain of lingering pink plasma on the cutting board. Beating away, day after day, tireless, ceaseless. Yet, it acquires such harm. As though in point, he used the tip of his knife to gently scrape a tiny plaque deposit from the newest tissue. The previous owner had been under a lot of stress of late, and had been eating his way through it with no thought for his body, or the engine it ran on. Hannibal treated said engine like it deserved to be treated: bathed in vegetables, gently and consistently heated, softened to perfection, and consumed with worshipful, abandoning fervence.

He added the strips of heart to the pot, and some high quality soup stock of his own making. The chordae tendineae - the heartstrings - were discarded as too tough. They would be added to the opaque container in the freezer, and when the container was full after many months with the ends of veins, arteries, organ linings, and otherwise unpalatable bits, they would be reduced to a stock.

Nothing was wasted, not in his kitchen.

The marrow of the femur bone that had been in his freezer would make the soup rich and flavorful, and when combined with the succulence of the heart, would create a perfect, filling lunch. It took his sharpest cleaver and some leverage to crack the human body's strongest bone.

Stirring the pot, Hannibal lifted a ladle to his lips for a sumptuous taste, letting the raw flavors hint at what was to come. The marrow lay like heavy, slightly granular cream on his tongue. The heart's delectable iron taste reminded him of beef.

Except beef was not nearly so healthy in this day and age.

As decadent as using two such fine ingredients in a single dish was, he felt like it was merely fortuitous happenstance: the femur and heart were nearly out of freshness. One did not stay out of the FBI's crosshairs by succumbing to wanton decadence.

No, careful control housed in a casual mindset allowed his kills to be executed with elegant, anonymous precision.

Frowning suddenly, he tapped the ladle clean and laid it on the spoon rest beside the large gas range. Does this endeavor with Miss Shule qualify as wanton decadence? Hannibal wondered. Surely not, or I would never acquiesce to it.

But as he minded the gleaming copper pot, he had to contemplate if her exuberant charm had roped him in, at a moment he was susceptible.

He was an evolutionary step forward: a psychopath who could feel true emotion. He recalled being restless that day, after all. And when he got restless, he either found something to do, or he found someone to kill. The former had occurred in the form of Miss Shule's convincing proposition.

Hannibal shook his head to dispel the train of thought. He had acted, perhaps, out of momentary weakness, but the effect was advantageous. The FBI had been sniffing around the Minnesota Shrike case, and Hannibal has noticed a rather subdued, pensive Will Graham in the aftermath of shooting Garret Jacob Hobbs. With the Bureau's renewed investigation, it would not have been wise to throw fuel on the fire by seeking more of his favorite foodstuffs.

He'd already fed the blaze enough by his anonymous tip to Hobbs, and it had resulted in the murder of Mrs. Hobbs and the coma of Abigail Hobbs, the daughter of the Shrike.

Hannibal had to smile faintly, with creeping pride. He would show nothing more.

The soup came to an ideal simmer, and again, Hannibal tasted. A bit more spice, to no avail. He detected the carrots were... gamey. Wild. He brooded over the spoonful, crowned with a tiny orange disk. Truthfully, though, he was loathe to admit that he knew nothing else to expect from a carrot. He bought organic from the market, and used them within a few days, but some turned out sweet and others were poignant. He wondered what were the conditions that made for a gamey carrot.

Miss Shule would know, he thought, dumping the ladle again dispassionately.

The soup was passable, with the marrow creamy and the heart meat deliciously tender, but having even one ingredient not up to par made Hannibal occasionally scowl.

Having leisurely eaten his substandard soup, Hannibal settled into his personal study's chair to check his email. The scowl floated off his face when he saw an email from Bee All Gardening.

There was only one person that could be, and her name was on the pamphlet in his drawer. Clicking open the message, he began to read.

Dear Doctor Lector, ('Dear'? he mused, lips quirking. A bit informal...)

Thank you very much for agreeing to consider my work. As a reminder, my consultation is free, and should you chose to reject my contract and design with finality, you will owe me nothing.

I apologize for being unable to deliver these documents in person, but my schedule would not comply with a visit to deliver the actual drawing. Seeing as you have a bustling practice of your own, I thought it simpler to send them via email, anyway.

Enclosed is the contract (attachment one) and the drawing, comprised of four JPEG images for easy viewing (attachments two through five). I would suggest printing all four images and aligning the corresponding marks, for best results.

Hannibal couldn't hide his amusement. Miss Shule addressed her business correspondence like a letter, yet filled it with ceremonious words and eloquently structured sentences. Such a contradiction! He sensed a considerable amount of both formal training in the written word, and an intelligent mind implement it. An English major in college, perhaps?

In the interest of disclosure, please permit me to reiterate a few details from our conversation and the pamphlet I gave you, as well as preempt some key points from the contract.

1. For legal reasons, I must remain the only person to utilize equipment (hand tools, tillers, etc.) in the garden.

2. I am committed to growing everything organically, but at your request, I will apply pertinent pest-/herb-/fungicides to salvage the crop. If I do so, you will not be able to eat or use ANYTHING in the garden OR ENTER IT until I deem it safe. Please bear in mind a personal tolerance if you happen across a handful of bug-eaten beans.

Hannibal stroked his chin, finding her forceful language and sardonic humor somewhat... engaging. Like she was teasing him. Her virtual words could just as easily be construed as politely businesslike. Another contradiction. He ran a finger over his lips and continued to read.

3. This project covers all four seasons: spring (current), summer, fall, and winter. Our contract is exactly one year in length, which makes the timeliness of signing crucial to the schedule of planting, which in turn ensures prompt harvest.

Hannibal chuckled. In short, sign the contract and get out of the way.

4. In an effort to give you the best service possible, I will most likely require access to your property at odd hours, when you are not present, and/or without your knowledge. Please note section two, paragraph four dedicated to addressing this in the contract.

5. Should you terminate this contract before the end date, there is a penalty fee incurred to compensate me for degradation of tools, plants that I started in the greenhouse but cannot give you, and the loss of any potential work I might have done instead. Again, see contract section three, paragraph six.

6. Although I am trained and very experienced in growing food, I am a servant of the seasons and cannot perform miracles, such as watermelon in winter and lettuce in the dead of summer. Please understand the limits of myself and nature.

Hannibal could practically see her stern expression, hands on her hips.

I await your approval to either amend or begin the project as presented.

Respectfully Yours,

Maryann Shule
Bee All Gardening

Miss Shule sought to test his wit by inserting such tacit, almost imperceptible jests. It wasn't rude, but it was... enticing. Hannibal's psychiatrist inclinations kicked in, analyzing. Perhaps she did it as a ventilation of repressed flirtatious behavior. She had been quite unwilling to make eye contact during their meeting, and she had stayed pink in the cheeks. It also explained her constant, flitting movement so carefully masked in the plant-passionate demeanor.

She had been skilled at keeping her nerves and repression from his radar. Or he had been so taken that he had missed it. Either way, he took his hat off to her.

Hannibal's eyebrow twitched: a subtle uptaking of the game she had begun. As a test of sorts, he opened the contract. When he found it a locked read-only document, he had to smile. No slipping anything past you.

The cannibal leaned back in his chair, eyes twinkling. "Smart little woman," he murmured. "Covering yourself in every way. Have you had legal training, too?"

Maryann Shule was a mystery unfolding, like the rough green sepals covering a flower, just barely starting to curl open.

He wondered what color she would bloom.

With a few clicks, he had printed all eight pages of the (unalterable) contract, and the four that were the design. The drawing was too big to fit on his desk, so he arranged them on the floor, aligning the 'a' with the 'a', the 'b' with the 'b', and so forth.

In two dimensions on his Persian rug, his culinarily salacious dreams came to life.

The garden was not the simple rowed style he'd been expecting: Miss Shule had gotten creative beyond what they'd discussed, and Hannibal hungrily drank in the changes. The square plot belied the quaintly patchwork quality about it. Four quadrants with four main paths stretched across the paper, and the paths joined in the center of the plot with a circle marked 'birdbath' and a serifed rectangle marked 'bench'.

One quadrant, labeled 'SUMMER' was drawn with stylish, star-like symbols that the legend at the bottom of the drawing said were corn. The stars covered a fourth of the quadrant closest to the outside, followed by the promised tomatoes, squash, potatoes, and - to the doctor's delight - melons. He counted nine types of melons: three watermelon, two cantaloupe, two honeydew, and two galia.

Another quadrant, labeled 'FALL', was full of artful swirls of pencil that implied vines. The legend called them winter squash, and he picked out butternut, acorn, and spaghetti types. There were beets in orderly rows, leeks, and a few pumpkins.

The quadrant closest to the driveway was labeled 'WINTER', but it was anything but barren. He recalled Miss Shule explaining the concept of low tunnels: simple, neat PVC pipe structures covered with plastic, enabling plants to grow outside of season, albeit slower. Winter seemed the season conducive to a mix of spring and fall crops, like an encore of a delightful performance.

The final quadrant, closest to the front door, was labeled 'SPRING' and composed of triple-rowed beds of lettuces, Asian greens, and some root vegetables. There was a trellis set up along the outside edge that was denoted as 'sugar snap peas'. He remembered her mentioning that the peas were edible, from shoots to pods. Hannibal's mouth watered, even so soon after lunch, at the thought of crisp, juicy peas.

In the inmost rows closest to the birdbath and bench, there were twenty types of herbs, and three types of cut flowers. There was more detail to this drawing than even his keen eyes had time for in the fifteen minutes he had left. With every movement of his gaze, he found some new crop, some tucked away treasure. Radicchio, kohlrabi, endive... sunflowers, summer savory, chervil...

Sitting back on his heels, Hannibal balanced his elbow on his knee, his chin in his hand. She'd thought of everything. She'd heard his requests, and anticipated his needs months before he could even formulate them. She might as well have dumped his recipe box into a pencil and made this.

Hannibal Lector was sold.

He read the contract thoroughly, but it was more a matter of principle than necessity.

Dialing the number on the title page, he listened through two rings.

"Hello, this is Maryann," came the friendly, curious answer.

"A birdbath, hmm?" he queried in an unhurried tone, a masked tease.

She paused, placing him by his distinctive accent (like she'd ever forget it). "I apologize, Doctor," she said, on the fence between contrition and harmless defiance. "But some things just draw themselves."

"Fortunately," he continued, eyes alight. "I agree with the birdbath. But I have a question."

"Shoot."

"What made you put in a bench?"

Another pause. She was plumbing his tone for clues, but finding only an honest question (at least, as honest as he ever was). "You're a reveler," she said finally. "You like to be in the middle of a swirl of activity, taking it all in, watching, directing. A bench seemed appropriate, because a garden is the most active place in the world."

Hannibal was momentarily stunned by her astute reading. In a mere handful of hours, in a first meeting, this gardener had detected one of his most inherent qualities. As he came out of it, he found his hand reaching for a pen from the cup on his desk. A practiced scrawl later, he said, "I've signed the contract. When do we begin?"

He could hear her broad smile. "I'll start tomorrow. I'll sign the contract too, and you can pay the first month."

"Excellent," he mused.

"I look forward to a very fruitful relationship, Doctor Lector," she said, somehow combining shyness with the pun.

"As do I, Miss Shule," murmured Hannibal.

He put down the receiver and regarded the drawing on the floor, fingers steepled, and brain buzzing pleasantly with recipes.

Maryann hung up her cellphone with a smile, carefully wiping the crumbs of wet dough off the keypad. Doctor Hannibal Lector had sounded pleased, so much so that he dropped his neutral psychiatrist manners enough to actually joke with her.

At least, she had guessed it to be a joke correctly. His tone had been a multi-faceted, multi-lingual puzzle that tingled along her synapses like static. He'd sounded vaguely... seductive, somehow. Like her minor recalcitrance had piqued him, amused him. Maryann wasn't sure that was altogether a good idea, or really, what possessed her to do it in the first place.

"So I changed the design a hair," she muttered, kneading her bread dough faster. "Wasn't my intention to pique him. Big deal. He approved and signed."

But she could hear his stunned quiet over the line when she labeled him a reveler. "It takes one to know one," she told the dough, folding it. Her own voyeuristic tendencies when it came to nature and life made her love bees, art, and interesting people.

She paused, fingers buried, and stared unseeing out her kitchen window. Was that why she'd been so attracted to him? Why his voice had chased echoes through her unmemorable dreams for two nights?

Maryann frowned, wrapping her head around the thought, rolling the dough to a rough rectangle. By the time she'd pinched the wheat loaf into shape, she had accepted the fact that he was attractive to her, yes. Handsome, check. Accent, check. Scintillating personality with hidden bits of darkness under paper-thin skin? Check.

She slid the loaf into the unheated oven to rise, setting the timer with a series of beeps. These were dangerous waters to enter. She would have to keep a tight hold on her professionalism if she wanted to maintain dignity.

He wasn't a good idea for her to get wrapped up in. The last time she'd gotten too close to a client...

"I could still back out," she told Jinx, who sunned in the light of the backdoor. "I could apologize profusely, tear up the contract, and only be out a few hours' work."

The cat reared his sleek head to regard her with squinted eyes, as though to say, Yeah, and I could stop eating small birds. It ain't gonna happen.

Maryann sighed, putting away her ingredients with the carelessness of internal conflict. She needed the money, frankly. That was as good a reason as any. Even someone as frugal and resourceful as she needed steady income. To find someone willing to shell out what she asked for was rarer than she'd like.

But besides that, she always had gravitated to interesting people. The ones with still waters that ran deep (dangerous), with hairpin nuances that turned their whole beings askew into fascinating chaos and alien beauty. One twist of a personality that made their souls like the surface of the moon.

She only hoped that Doctor Lector's brand of 'interesting' could be held at a safe bay.

"One year," she assured herself. "One year of occasional contact. I can keep my crap together for that long."

The sunning cat's tail flicked like a mockery.

Author's Note: I know, I know. A bit more boring than I would have liked. I hope you guys still like it.

Thanks for the reviews: TemporalBONES, YinYangSisters, 42believer, .5, Guest, Holly L. Jensen, AsherahRiddle, The Onceler's Unless, Maya95, DancingNancy, paigeafterpaige, Mockingtale Bright, watergoddesskasey, Sures1109, Breathewithme, Jasper Blood, Ghost in the Computer, Avis11 , and Lunar Nightshade.

Thanks to Maya95, for help with the flashbacks!