Author's Note: BTW, in my mind, Hannibal's psychiatric practice is run out of his home. Like, the study he meets in with Will is where he sees clients. I dunno why I got that impression over the first season, but there ya go.
You asked for more Will/Mary interaction. I hear and obey!
Will felt like he was consumed in cold fire: iced into a volcano like Antarctic gold, bathed by the manic laughter of the aurora borealis, which retains the slashed, torn shape of LeBeau's grotesque Glasgow smile. When he stumbles out of Beth Lebeau's bedroom, covered in her coagulated and secondhand blood, he felt like a hive of insects had taken up residence in his shaking body; was using his veins as pathways and his brain as their nest. Sweet, sharp stings resounded inside his skull, and his eyes blossomed with dream-like visages and their ghostly after-images.
He loses time again. If it didn't feel like he'd forgotten something of dire importance, he might venture to call it respite. Certainly, it is more peaceful to blackout than to sleep, nowadays.
He wakes up feeling like a hollow, wafer-thin ice sculpture, gasping, fracturing and splintering himself apart into razor shards.
Driving up to find Maryann working in Hannibal's garden was, in a word, disconcerting. Will found himself watching her rocking motion with a queer wheelbarrow/hoe device as he tried to sort his thoughts. The blades of the tool were slicing just below the surface on either side of a row of greens. The same greens that had been little more than infantile when he was last here.
He had to admit a certain longing to smell the dirt she stirred; to be washed by her gentle demeanor and ignorance of his conditions and his peculiarities. Everyone in his professional life knew what he was: too close to the psycho end of the range to qualify for the FBI, chronically unstable, a socially bitter pill.
Maryann knew none of that, save what was inherent. But she did not act like he was hard to swallow.
Will glanced at the clock on his dash. He had a few minutes.
"Hullo!" greeted the gardener, a hand shooting up to wave with glorious lack of inhibition.
Will had to grin at her enthusiasm, approaching with his hands in his jeans pockets, minding the paths marked by her booted heels. "Looks great. Where's the Miracle Grow?" he teased.
Maryann psshed in a negative, giving him an ireless stink eye. "Please. Who needs liquid nitrogen when I have feather meal?"
He chuckled throatily, feasting his eyes on the plethora of nature's abundance. "It's changed so much."
"Got time for a short tour?" Maryann queried, dropping a kickstand on the wheel-hoe and unstraddling the bed. A sparkle in her eye indicated she understood his desire, because she lived in its thralls every day.
In all honesty, it was what he'd been hoping for. "Sure."
With a grand sweep of her hands, mirth in her eyes, and a dance-like backstep, she began to sing, "I can show you my world..."
"Oh no, not Disney," groaned the special investigator, following her up the aisle. "Anything but Disney."
She relented with a peal of true laughter, and the sound was morphine chasing the dregs of psychosis from Will's troubled mind. "Here's the onions, they've got a while yet. I'll start picking through them for the biggest ones in about a month and a half. Here are the peas, planted on St. Patty's day like tradition states, and they're gonna be blooming in two weeks, tops. Over here are the potatoes starting to crest the ground, finally, the sluggish bastards..."
Will let her excitement wash over him like a bubbly, foaming ocean ripple, popping against his skin like carbonation. Content to let her do the talking, he trailed her as she showed off the beets ("Best stand I've had for Lutz in years!"), Asian greens ("Son, I can make a stir-fry with these that would have a Thai mother crying."), and various other brow-wrinkling and/or tasty-looking things.
Will had to wonder, "What would they be like paired with fish?" He indicated the bundles of tight bleached stems crowned with dark leafy paddles that were bok choy.
"What, the Asian greens?" she queried, contemplatively grasping her own elbows. "I'd soup them, put the fish in last so as not to break it up. Why fish in particular?"
The special agent quirked a smile. "I'm something of a fly fisherman."
The gardener lit up with interest, but favored teasing him. "'Something' of a fly fisherman? What entails the 'something'?"
Will's grin deepened. "Fine, fine. I am a fly fisherman. Born into a family of fly fishermen, raised to eat, sleep, and breathe fly fishing. Better?"
"Much," Maryann sniffed with mocking haughtiness, but her dimples flashed. "I grew up throwing a line into most every body of water as a part of the culture, up to and including a bathtub."
"So you were a redneck," he surmised.
"Bite your tongue, heathen," she replied mildly. "We prefer the term camouflage-American."
As he chuckled, Will realized he was surprising himself with his capacity for response to humor. Oh, he'd needed this. The darkness and 'seeing' for Jack took so much out of him, lately. It felt so blessedly, keenly wonderful to talk about something other than death and insanity. He found solace in Maryann's friendship, in a way not dissimilar to the comfort he found in Alana. Maryann seemed to enjoy his company, too, and they fed on each other's good natures.
Away from crime scenes and gore, Will liked to think he was a nice guy to be around. It had been a long time since he'd seen evidence proving that, though.
"I've only ever seen fly fishing in movies, but it looks complicated." Maryann imitated the action of the rods, and it wound up looking like a strike with a samurai sword.
"Nah," replied Will. "The casting is the easy part. Making a fly that a fish will be attracted to, that's the real challenge."
She snickered. "Hehe, 'reel.'"
"Disney and bad puns? It's official: you owe me a fish."
"What are you, a seal at the circus?"
Will had to admit, waddling onto a platform with a tulle collar around his neck and tooting horns at the behest of the FBI was a rather complete metaphor for his employment, maybe even his life. "Maybe," he murmured, more to himself than anything. Shaking his curly head, he continued audibly, "Why don't you come out to my place soon? Spring spawning is here, there's plenty of action in the riverbed."
"'Action' in the 'bed'? Phrasing, Will. People will talk."
"You're just full of those. Think you'll be so punny when I out-fish you?" he challenged.
Maryann flung her hands up to shoulder height with a attitude-filled bob. "Excuse me, Mr. Outdoor Life. But seriously? I would actually love to go fishing with you, Will. It's been... phew, it's been a few years. But spring is upon us, and I'm always looking for new adventures." She shrugged. "Plus, I've been working a lot lately. I'm sure you can relate."
"Yes, I can," the special agent sighed. "Good. I look forward to it."
She handed him a business card, leaving a dirt fingerprint on the surface. "Holler at me on a day you're free. I'm self-employed. My schedule is probably much freer than yours."
Your mind and spirit, too, Will thought with a hint of jealousy. But then, lives aren't in the balance of your job. "I'll do that," he promised.
Maryann picked two leaves of tatsoi and handed one to Will, sealing the deal with a shared munch. "As for recipe inspiration, you could make Asian greens into a salad, but that is hardly optimizing their full potential."
"Speaking of salads, that arugula was delicious," Will said, meaning it. "Hannibal's bragged about the lettuces he's been getting."
Maryann sucked her inner cheek bashfully, pinking at the praise. "Remind me to send you home with a few of those. Hannibal won't mind."
Her tone of voice niggled at Will's introspection. "So he's Hannibal to you now?" he asked before he could stop himself.
Maryann looked up at him, studying his face for a moment before confirming Will's suspicions, "Yeah, he is." In an attempt to alleviate the strange and sudden heaviness between them, she joked, "There was duress, a car battery, a bucket of water, and a Justin Beiber CD involved."
The half-sane investigator had to chuckle at the imagery, despite the slight pang of his heart at seeing Maryann take another step towards Hannibal and away from him. But was he just feeling around in the ever-growing darkness of his life for something to cling to? Wasn't that what Alana Bloom was to him? Well... less so, now that she'd concisely rejected him romantically.
Was he looking for a soft place to land?
"But mostly duress," murmured Will, countenance darkening. He took a step closer. "How do you feel? After the Budge ordeal, you were pretty shaken up."
Maryann shrugged like Atlas, uncaring for her own burden. "M'fine, Will, really," she replied, ensuring he read it in her posture with all the intention of a farce. "I've dealt with worse, and likely will, still." Sensing she'd revealed too much, she crouched at his feet and started to pinch rough weed mustard from the ground.
Will studied her hunched back for a moment, then bent to join in her task. The touch of the granular soil was cool and moist, but not wet. Being ever-capable of imagining himself as something (or someone) else, Will surmised that, were he a plant, he would very much like to live in this soil. To be tenderly cared for by such loving hands that plucked out what strangled his roots, to be watered by gentle rains, and fed with unerring skill and completion until, one day, a swift and easy blade ended his growth and he -
"If there's anything I can do, tell me," Will replied with soft intensity, causing her to look up at him contemplatively.
"Hannibal's helping me... sort out some stuff," Maryann muttered, shifting her knees against her clavicles to stretch for a weed.
There it was. That wall. Unbroachable with the weapons he was employing, impregnable. But after the botched kiss with Alana Bloom, Will ought not have counted on his losing streak breaking so soon. People - especially women, it seemed! - were reluctant to let him in.
"Speak of the devil," Will said, voice pitched so that the approaching, lean doctor could hear. He managed to keep the uncharacteristic snideness from coloring his tone.
"Hello, Will," said Hannibal refinedly, standing on the grass outside the garden's perimeter, his immaculate and fascinatingly patterned suit looking shockingly comfortable in the spring warmth. "I saw you wandering with Maryann and thought I'd join."
"No, I was just coming inside," Will responded, hands in his pockets once more. When he saw the fleeting, furtive, but definitely looking gaze of Maryann flutter over the imposing figure of his unofficial psychiatrist, Will entertained curiosity. Just what was Hannibal helping Maryann sort out? Was it Budge? Or was it something more...?
"I trust our dinner plans are still on for two nights from now?" Hannibal asked Maryann.
Will could sense the woman's pleased fluster, though he commended her for keeping it under wraps despite the doctor's charms. "Definitely," she replied, a hint of challenge in her tone tempered with... trepidation?
Hannibal's eyes flickered to Will as the plaid-shirted man came beside him. In the depths of those maroon eyes, Will saw a specter of primality from days of fire and stone. An understanding passed in a microsecond, and order was established. Maryann was Hannibal's to pursue, not Will's.
Will broke the gaze of the doctor with ascent in his posture and face. Internally, he snorted at himself. Hannibal was his friend. Maryann was fast becoming his friend.
As the two men left the gardener to her passion, Will noted the lack of tension between them. Either Hannibal was assured of his stance with Maryann and didn't view Will as a threat to it, or he was better at hiding his feelings than the empathically cursed investigator could discern. In fact, there seemed to be more tension between Hannibal and Maryann than between he and Hannibal. Will had to wonder why, as he could fathom it wasn't exclusively sexual tension. Perhaps the Budge debacle had brought them closer. Evidently, close enough for dinner.
"Dinner, huh?" Will mused, taking liberty to nudge the doctor with his elbow. "She got to you, didn't she?"
Hannibal was stoic as ever, but did roll his eyes over to Will as they entered his study. "I suppose she did. Though not the same way she got to you."
Will tipped his head in ascent. "She's a nice girl," he said simply. "Our world is short of people like her."
"Indeed," the psychiatrist replied softly, seating himself customarily. "But we aren't here to talk about Maryann. We're here to talk about you, Will."
The all-too-familiar darkness seemed to haunt the corners of the room, the edges of Will's vision. The brightness of Maryann faded as his reality set in once more. Half-crazy, tainted, and disturbed, Will took his own seat across from the doctor.
After Dr. Sutcliff pandered to Hannibal's will, allowing Will's diagnosed condition of encephalitis to continue unchecked, Hannibal killed the man and framed Georgia Madchen for it. Cotard's Syndrome, and the rest of the crazed cocktail stewing in Georgia's body, was a siren's song to the cannibal's manipulative side.
With unerring talent, he obliged his beast.
Georgia watches him scissor Sutcliff's face to shreds with a detached expression, clearly unable to comprehend or see. Hannibal approaches he with the wonder he reserves for works of fine art. In his mind, that is what she is: the ideal and cosmically beautiful mixing of the mentally perforated and the biologically inclined. Nature wrote a cruelly lovely sonnet in the girl's blood and sloughing skin.
With his clear plastic suit shifting, Hannibal carefully presses Georgia's fingers around the bloodstained scissors and begins to write a sonnet of his own.
Hannibal put one of Vivaldi's concertos for flute, violin, and harpsichord on repeat while he set about cooking for he and Maryann's dinner date. It was playful and contemplative, resonant and unimposing.
Only quality dishes made their way out of Hannibal's kitchen. He took a special pride in taking proteins from undeserving people and turning them into something remarkable. He made their inadequacies his own fame.
Every knifestroke through the meal's preparation was almost as carefully considered as the meal itself. He'd turned his nose up at the brick-hard, underripe melons in the grocery store, simply because he could hear Maryann's displeasure at eating out of season. That, in essence, had given him a benchmark theme that he knew the gardener would see and appreciate: in-season, and as local as he could get.
As he was a creative devil, it was hardly a problem.
Tiny spinach-herb tortes in thin, crispy pastry would be the appetizer. He deigned to get his shoes dirty and selected the spinach from the garden leaf by critiqued leaf. Similarly, the adolescent herbs were trimmed with excessive light-handedness, as he knew Maryann held a soft spot for the scented plants. It was the singular dish without any of his special stolen ingredients.
Sweet potato gnocchi dredged his countertop in soft white flour, and he rolled each one down the tines of a fork for optimal sauce adherence. He tossed them in rendered human fat seasoned with sage leaves.
Remembering Maryann's so-called "pesto fetish", he blended his finest Spanish olive oil with pine nuts, Genovese basil, Parmesan Reggiano, and the milder elephant garlic. For reasons that made him smirk, he used less garlic than normally called for, and wove parsley into the next course to boot. If the evening went as he designed, garlic breath had no place.
He made a colorful baby carrot and parsley slaw with ginger dressing, sprinkled with bacon (human brains for fattiness and calf muscle for sinew).
The salad was, obligatorily, the best he had made. A gardener who actually grew the ingredients she would be eating would know the difference between excellence and the norm. Hannibal balanced the crimson and green, the leaf and the head, and the romaine, bib, and frisse varieties until, with quickening plunge of violins, the transparent and artfully folded slices of prosciutto (human forearm, seasoned and aged to perfection) made the plate sublime.
He had made the human liver into pâté on the day of Maryann's acceptance, knowing the flavors of the ground meat and lymphatic organ would be fully married by the time he pulled it from the refrigerator. Still, he tasted it on the tip of a spoon to be doubly certain.
The pièce de résistance, however, took less rote knife skill and more expertise. He scored a human loin deep enough to hold slices of tart apple and licorice-sweet fennel bulb, then wrapped the whole thing in bacon (deviating from the previous substitution, marbled thigh strips), then again in puff pastry. It was a recipe that required care in the assembly and watchful baking, as an incongruent combination thereof would render the dish beyond his scope of quality.
He had enough time to safely don his best hosting suit: a charcoal and burnished bronze checkered pattern with a vibrant blue shirt and a color-echoing tie and pocket kerchief. Taking a moment to admire himself in the mirror, he found he could objectively deem the attire attractive.
His little gardener deserved only the best. But then, so did he.
As he pulled the roast from the oven and noted its perfection and set the wine to chill in a bucket of ice, the doorbell rang. Ah, the main course. Licking his lips, Hannibal made his way to the door.