Also forgot to say before, the last chapter had my best interpretation of that scene: img-fotki"dot"yandex"dot"ru/get/4013/nat14508925.16/0_22a13_e10f2635_ %20 Couldn't quite get Will in a skirt, sorry :P

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Doctor Du Maurier's office is all contrast, pristine white carpet against the dark mahogany desk and blood-red couches against strategically-placed perfect green ferns. Hannibal takes his seat on one such couch and crosses his legs, then uncrosses them again when he realises whose pose he'd unconsciously mimicked. Bedelia greets him with warmth, but not friendliness, and crosses her own legs under her beige skirt.

"This is only a wrap-up," she begins, tone as level as it always is, "so I don't have very many questions. How have you been sleeping lately?"

"Fine," Hannibal replies, truthfully.

"Any dreams?"

"Not bad ones."

"Any anxiety?"

"Not more than the usual from the job."

"If you were to describe your current mental state in your own words, what would they be?"

Hannibal takes a few seconds, flicking his eyes over to framed picture on the wall of a generic black-and-white cityscape. "I would say, I am dealing. And moving on."

"Yes you are." Bedelia's face is as blankly professional as ever, though she cocks her head to one side. "You're doing very well, in fact, better than most officers after their first accidental shooting."

"Well, that is good?"

"I suppose." She parts her lips a little. "I must admit, I'm not entirely sure I've gotten though to you. You're a good officer, Detective Lecter, though even in all our sessions I never really felt I came to knowing you as a person."

"But that is who I am," Hannibal replies, words as flat as his interlocutor's. "I am a good officer. It's what I hope to be."

"Hmm." Bedelia stands, and walks back over to her desk. "At any rate, as long as you are effective in your work and not a danger to your colleagues, I will recommend that you be fully cleared. This shall be our last session." She opens the file already laid out on her desk, and begins to write.

"Thank you, Doctor," Hannibal says, and receives no answer. He raises himself on his own, smoothing down his simple suit and leaving Bedelia's office quietly. The door shuts with a knock of wood and a dull metal snick. He notices idly that the name plaque has a slight smudge of something light but congealing on it, perhaps sauce from a careless person's finger.

He's barely turned away when he hears his name called, and sees the department's other psychologist loping up towards him. He schools his features into a polite smile.

"Detective Lecter."

"Doctor Chilton."

Chilton stops before him, skidding a little in his too-shiny shoes. "Hello, uh, not to hold you up," he blusters, "but I heard you were looking at Will Graham on the Lounds case."

"Yes," Hannibal replies, then, "why?"

"Oh," Chilton peeps, almost as if surprised to be asked. "Nothing, really, just good on you for nailing the bastard."

Hannibal frowns, taking a small step backwards. "You are familiar with Will Graham?"

"Oh yes." Chilton clears his throat. "Well his books, of course, but also I worked down in Louisiana for a bit once, before I was here," he says, and Hannibal resits the urge to add, 'obviously'. "Well, this Graham tried to apply for the force when I there, but I dis-recommended it and he didn't pass. Just as well, the guy's a psycho."

"Really." Hannibal angles himself to properly face Chilton front-on, finally turning his whole ear to listen. "What makes you say that?"

"Well for a start, he's got some kind of disorder, I might even say clinical. It's not autism, though it said on his file that it was suspected when he was young. No, I think it's something on the other end." Chilton, in his earnestness, makes an odd kind of face. "He sees people, you know? He has this way of getting in your head, and—and messing around with you. It's actually sort of interesting what he does, maybe even fascinating, but he gave me the creeps every time he looked at me." Chilton shifts from one foot to the other then leans in as if sharing something conspiratorial. "I think he's your man."

Hannibal thinks of Will's comment the previous day about his mind, and notes the new information with concentrated interest. However, it having come from Frederick Chilton, his only reaction is to step back again and look over at the so-called doctor down his nose. "Well," he says, "thank you for the background." He takes two steps around the psychologist and continues on towards his desk. "But I didn't need you to tell me that."

The station isn't quite bustling, but it's full enough. He takes his desk in peace and spends a little while filling out paperwork from yesterday's questioning, stopping once to buy a cup of surprisingly decent coffee from the machine by the centre. He goes over the transcript twice afterwards, once to write up a summary and another just to read, not that he needs it with every word still ringing bright between his ears.

Lunch is a sandwich brought from home in a bulk-bought brown paper bag—salami, lettuce, and homemade red pepper salsa on baguette. A couple of the other officers around him call his food choices pretentious, but he enjoys enough both the preparation and the convenient piquant meal to pass the comments over. He's crumpling the bag and dropping it into the bin beneath his desk when Alana makes her way over with a cream-coloured file.

"How did your session go this morning?" she asks, and he smiles back.

"Well, thank you. I'm being recommended for full clearance."

"That's good." She hesitates, and purses her lips. "I've seen others after shootings it's—I know it's tough."

Hannibal nods, gaze drifting away, and counts a beat before asking, "Have you done the background check?"

She nods, and hands him the folder which flips open to a inflated driver license picture. "No priors," she recites, "but a few mentions. Born in New Orleans, currently thirty-one years old. His father died of a heart attack when he was seventeen, his mother abandoned them less than a year after he was born. He tracked her down again when he was nineteen, only for her to overdose on a bottle of pills three months later. He was questioned, but the death was ruled as suicide. Then he enrolled in college and got half-way through a degree in criminal psychology before he dropped out, and tried to join the police but was disallowed for some reason."

Hannibal shuffles through the files and hums before looking back up. "Mental instability," he fills in, "Doctor Chilton just informed me. He himself was working in Louisiana at the time."

"Hm. Small world." Alana brushes a lock of hair from her face and Hannibal finds his eyes tracing the pale arch of her throat, then catches himself and turns his focus back to the papers. "Anyway," she goes on, "he published his first book a year later, to moderate success. He's gotten five others out since, nothing to make him rich but enough to get him by pretty well. His work apparently isn't mainstream enough to get really popular but critics have praised him for his style and 'commitment', whatever that means."

Hannibal snaps the file shut again with a clap of cardboard. "I think we can prove exactly what that means."

Alana sighs in response, and chews on her bottom lip. "Hannibal, what you said to him was right, there's a lot of circumstantial evidence but that's all. We've got no motive, nothing to actually tie him to the crime, and sure he's been playing tricky but he hasn't said anything close to incriminating yet." Frustration creases her forehead, but it's coupled with the determined set of her jaw.

"Then let me talk to him again."

"Again, already? On what grounds?"

Hannibal casts his eyes away. "Not bring him in, I'll go over. By myself."

Alana raises one brow, slowly. She opens her mouth a few moments before the words come out. "Are you sure that's a good idea?"

Hannibal presses his lips together into a grim line. He holds the file back out to Alana and takes a breath in through his nose of her floral perfume as she reaches to take it hesitantly. "I think our Will likes to dance," he says, already turning away, "so let us show him how bright the spotlights really are."

There's both no answer at the door and an empty beach chair that day. The side gardens are well-groomed from what Hannibal can see as he makes his way around the side of the house, carefully avoiding two beds of flowers and another of herbs until he spots a shed further behind. It's only just moving out of noon and the sun is stronge, but the sea spray provides a comforting coolness in the air.

Will doesn't look up when the door is opened. He's bent over a work table, dressed in a grease-stained shirt and baggy jeans which Hannibal has to look over twice. The shed itself, meanwhile, is littered with mechanical odds and ends, various tools hanging on the walls and natural light streaming through from two opposing cut-out windows. Hannibal makes it three steps in before he feels something crunch and lifts his shoe to see he'd trodden on a small metal clip.

"Be a darling," is all Will greets, still unmoving from his hunched form, "and pass me the screw-driver on the far left, will you?"

It takes Hannibal a bit to respond, caught a little off his guard by the change from the previous atmosphere. A quick glance reveals the screw-drivers on a rack on the right wall, and he reaches out to pluck off the left-most. It's a skinny long Phillips head, and he only hesitates a fraction longer when he takes in the red plastic handle. Identical to the murder weapon.

"Thank you," Will says as the tool is handed over, taking it nimbly in his fingers and angling it to tweak a few things in the mass of machinery before him that are utterly lost to Hannibal. He puts it down several twists later and sighs in satisfaction, finally looking up. "Are we going for a ride again?"

Hannibal shakes his head. "No, I just thought I'd drop by."

A teasing smile tugs at Will's lips. "Oh? Did you happen to be in the area?"

"Maybe," Hannibal replies. "What else is in the area?"

Will laughs, tossing back his head. "Careful, I'm really starting to like you." Then he gestures down at the table. "It's almost done. I was going to go back in about now anyway. Would you like a drink?"

Hannibal ignores the question and asks instead, "Is this a hobby of yours?"

"Just a little. Bit of an amateur mechanic on the side, fix a few things up for people around. This one's a boat motor," he says, and smiles that toothy smile of his again.

"A boat," Hannibal repeats, and doesn't move.

Will pushes back his stool and stands, not turning to the door but stepping forward. He slips only a fraction into the other man's personal space as he asks with a fabricated lightness, "Last session go well?"

Hannibal refuses to let himself stiffen. "Fine," he pushes out, and manages to keep his voice flat.

"Well that's good." Will wipes his greasy hands sloppily on his shirt without looking down. "It's got to be hard, killing that guy. You miss him?"

"Not personally, I didn't know Inspector Budge particularly well. He was just another colleague."

"A colleague with whom you had repeated hostile altercations with before his death, that frequently bordered on violence?"

Hannibal swallows, and brings his teeth together inside his mouth with a dull click. "It was an accident," he says slowly, and tightly. "He was in the line of fire. These things happen in the field."

"So I've heard." Will moves close still, feet making no sound on the rough concrete floor. "Just like they happened with James Gray In Essex before your last transfer, and Donald Sutcliffe and Marissa Schurr in Minneapolis." Hannibal inhales sharply, and a moment later feels the warm puff of Will's breath now close enough to reach his face. "Oh. Doesn't Crawford know about the others?"

Silence. The tension is electric, bouncing in the small space between scraps of rust-bitten metal and sharply-gleaming tools, jumping up over both men's skins. Slowly, Will lifts a hand, moving as if to cup Hannibal's cheek but then missing to gently stroke behind his ear and down his neck. And Hannibal lets it happen.

At his vantage point, he can see a small dark smudge above Will's eyebrow, and imagines the man reaching up to brush away an idle curl with the same hand that's now come to a rest on his own collarbone. There's most definitely a glint in Will's eyes, but it isn't the same kind of crazy that Hannibal is used to seeing. He knows, though, that it makes Will that much more dangerous. He's a little puzzle, an unmarked box that just so compels to be opened. Of all the perfectly carved panes that Hannibal has crafted in his mind over his years among others, one thing he never quite managed to let go of was that childish urge of curiosity to poke and see what happens.

"Tell me about your mother."

If he'd been expecting Will to be caught off guard, he'd have completely missed the mark. Will simply regards him for a moment, then a moment too long, before saying in lieu of replying, "Why don't you tell me about your sister?"

That one, unbidden, makes Hannibal freeze.

"Just rotten luck, isn't it?" Will continues in that breathy lilt of his. "Parents killed in a hit-and-run, little daughter holds on for long enough to flatline over a life-support malfunction. You know, Hannibal, if I were you, I wouldn't just take that. I'd be angry. Angry at the world for stealing them, angry at everyone who lived while they didn't."

His voice rises, finally, on the last words, and something cracks a little in Hannibal's mind. Something cold, consuming, emotions he'd long pushed down and impulses he'd kept so carefully reigned. In a flash he catches Will's wrist in a death-grip, forcing his arm behind his back and pulling their chests flush together, almost nose to nose. He's breathing heavily, himself, but Will is positively panting.

Even in their short acquaintance, stalemate has already become a familiar stance. And yet that old flavour isn't quite what's in the air when Hannibal finally lets go with a jerk and a step back. Instead, there's a distinct bite of success that can't entirely be ignored.

"Always a pleasure!" Will calls as Hannibal walks out and away, two steps faster than normal, to no reply.

The drive over to Alana's is spent ruminating, and breathing. It's been some time since Hannibal's painstakingly erected exterior has broken like that, since he's had to bring himself under control in such a way. His partner finishes early on Mondays, he knows, she'd be home by now. He finds the way from Will's place with single-minded focus.

She answers the door with a greeting that dies when she sees the way he stands. He speaks before she has a chance to.

"He knows about me."

She steps aside to let him in, an invitation which he takes without pause.

"He knew I was seeing Doctor Du Maurier," he continues, walking in without removing his shoes, and not sitting. "He knew about Budge, and about—" he catches his tongue before he says more, then changes, "and about my family."

"Hannibal." She says his name, just that, once. Firmly. And he turns. "Hannibal, you're letting him get to you."

"He already got to me." He doesn't raise his voice now, but his accent sits a little heavier than usual. "How did he know, Alana?"

"I don't know," she replies lightly, finally bringing his gaze to meet hers properly instead of darting about her homely apartment. "But," she continues slowly, "none of that is technically private. It's all findable, even if not easily." She shuts the door and walks closer to him, cautiously, as if approaching an animal who might pounce. "Graham's good," she says, and it's that soft earnestness that Hannibal has come for. "But getting into you, he's showing more of himself. And we'll find him there."

She smiles a little, encouragingly, and after a moment Hannibal returns it. But with something less sanguine, and more resolved. "Yes," he replies. "I'll find him."

He isn't entirely sure what he's doing when he returns to Will's house that afternoon, what he expects to see. But his very skin seem to itch, urging him to act, and so he goes.

He'd stayed at a Alana's for just under an hour, accepting her offer of a drink and taking a cool bottle of good beer. She'd tried to make some small talk but it hadn't taken, and in the end she simply opened her laptop to get on with her own things while leaving him on her couch to contemplate. He hadn't even done that much thinking, his mind strangely jumpy, moving from his attempted examination of the facts to the way Will walked with that pointed swing of his hips, to the fire in his gaze in that yellow-lit shed. It wasn't until he was leaving that Alana pointed to his neck and frowned as she said idly, "I think you've got something there." It was grease. He accepted a tissue wordlessly.

He'd made a stop back at the station on the way and selected another one of the unmarked vehicles, with dark tinted windows and which Will wouldn't recognise. The empty stretch of beach that constitutes the man's neighbourhood doesn't provide much cover, but thankfully there is a council car park not too far down the road. Hannibal brings the car to a perfect stop between two parallel lines and sits in for a wait. Will's car is parked in his driveway, same as it was earlier that day and the days before it, a moderately-priced but older brand. Hannibal imagines the motor must be self-kept.

The day dims slowly into evening, an occasional car whizzing past. But it seems that Hannibal is getting lucky that night, when Will's front door open barely an hour later to reveal the man dressed in what appears from the distance to be a thin dark coat. Hannibal does up his seatbelt as a faint chirp sounds of the remote unlock, and turns the key as Will pulls out and turns left down the road. He waits thirty seconds before following.

They drive for about twenty minutes through light traffic, Hannibal switching lanes and changing speed several times to hide his tailing. The journey ends at a street lined with inexpensive and student-popular apartments, with Will parking out front and heading to ring one buzzer. Hannibal rolls to a stop slowly himself and watches the building carefully. Several second later, a foyer light turns on in the left-hand window of the third storey.

He stops five buildings down once Will disappears inside, and makes his way up the street and across the lawn. The numbers of the buzzers indicate two apartments on each storey, and a peak through the window by the door shows 101 on the left and 102 on the right. The name plaque beside 301 reads, Abigail Hobbs. Satisfied, Hannibal allows himself a quirk of his lips, and turns away.

He doesn't have very high hopes that Will will be leaving that apartment that night, and he ignores the slight stirring in his stomach which that thought brings. Instead, he returns to the car, starts it, and sets off away. The two words of tomorrow's work roll over in his mind.

The name sounds vaguely familiar.