Summary: Will hasn't eaten meat since his dad died when he was a kid-hasn't been able to stomach it. It's not moral, it's just unappealing. Too bad his dad never gave him the name of his butcher.
He doesn't mind Hannibal's cooking, though, and if he could only remember to ask him who his butcher is...
Hannibal is simply curious how deeply Will's nature is buried. He'd almost missed seeing it himself.
If anyone can think of an alternative title for this fic, let me know. I have mixed feelings for this. I was tempted to just call this 'wendigo' and leave it at that :P
Enjoy!
The Vegetarian Option
Chapter 2 – Amuse-Bouche
Pounding on a flimsy door, a great beast stomping forward, the sound of a great, stuttering heartbeat loud in his ears…
The sound through his earmuffs turn the crack of each shot into a new aspect of one nightmare.
Will practices at the shooting range because no matter how it's covered up, the noise of it doesn't try to fool you; the holes that appear on the target don't pretend to be harmless; the kickback fights the very notion of gentility.
(Another shot, and then again, and then again, and again, again, again—)
And… he needed to work on his aim.
Will shook his head, and flipped the switch to bring his target forwar—
Hobbs was coming, he was there, and Will changed the clip working on automatic, fired, fired again, but he was still coming, he was getting closer, again, again, again he shoots, eight shots and more (more?) but Hobbs keeps getting closer, staring with milky dead eyes—
He wasn't lying when he said his thoughts weren't 'tasty'.
It was a wonder Will ate anything at all. Ever.
.
Chippewa National Forest is beautiful, the cabin Jack brings him to is quaint, and Will can easily imagine bringing his dogs out here, thought they'd enjoy the new smells—
The wood of the interior is clean, and well kept, and the thick smell of blood feels heavy in his throat. The thick smell of meat.
It isn't the horror story laid out that you'd expect—there's a taxidermy stag, the equipment for the work, furs, animal skulls…
The antler room was something else.
He felt like his brain was beating itself against the walls, he the heart in a ribcage of sharp, twisted bone.
There, Elise Nichols hung, and likely 7 girls before her.
"It could be a permanent installation in your 'evil minds' museum," he says to Jack, his flashlight turning the room into a study of shadows.
Jack doesn't rise to the bait.
The thought brings to mind that hair, skin, viscera, just about any bit of the body could be used for bait, be used as lures, and Will wonders how far down in the water Jack is that he can't see—
Ah, but there is a shinier piece attracting his eye.
A vision of Abigail, pipes and tubing and bandages 'round her neck like a noose, and Jack is reaching for the other end.
Will has to take a deep breath.
The curling strand of hair catches his eye, red-orange like blood stain under the glare of his flashlight, and it is a welcome distraction to Jack's scapegoat theory.
Abigail does not need this.
Will does not need this, either, but if he does not…
He sighs.
When he next enters his classroom, he pauses in the doorway. There is one point in the room where, unless you're standing front and center, there is a block of space you can stand and not be seen. Will can hear the rustling of a full classroom, and the doorway is clogged with the still-too-much cologne and perfume of the young, of dozens of students.
The room, he knows, will be full.
It always is.
He sighs, and adjusts his glasses.
The standing ovation is just as uncomfortable as he remembers, before, as if he'd stepped into the flesh-suit of Garrett Jacob Hobbs for the accolades, as if he'd wanted to—to—to—
He pulls up Hobbs' resignation letter.
"Does anyone see the clue?"
A smattering of hands, like he knew there would be, and he finds focus on the glare off his glasses to avoid—everything.
He should have called in a sick day.
He makes the mistake of looking back at the picture of Hobbs.
(—the cut is smooth and clean under his palm, but shallow. A cut made against a struggling—)
Some students linger at the edge of his periphery at the end of his lecture, questions no doubt bubbling beneath their skin, but he doesn't look at any of them. Focuses on organizing and reorganizing his papers, collecting them from the sprawl he'd put them in at the beginning of class, and eventually they are gone. The few who linger will probably tell the others that a woman came to his class and he willingly exchanged pleasantries—Will doesn't look forward to his next class.
This would be a repeat of last year, where Alana's appearance and his comparative friendliness would prompt half-dozen trainees to try at some sort of relationship.
Will appreciated her company, and her warning of Jack's ambush, but not what would follow.
The review board wanted to give him a commendation.
Will thinks it's almost as inappropriate as the trainee's applause.
Jack wanted him in the field.
Alana didn't.
Jack wanted him back in the field… pending a psych evaluation.
The psych eval wouldn't be with Alana.
It would be with Dr. Lecter.
Watching them talk, side by side, on the same subject, is a study in control. Where Jack defends, Alana defies, and then they switch. Where Will wavers, they oppose each other.
Where Will is certain—like he is certain he doesn't want to talk with Dr. Lecter—they are a united front.
"Wait, so the psych eval. isn't a formality?"
"No, it's so I can get some sleep at night. I asked you to get close to the Hobbs case, I need to know that you didn't get too close."
Indignation clawed somewhere between his lungs and his stomach at the hypocrisy. It was Jack who had verbally assaulted Will in the men's bathroom for not cozying himself up in the Minnesota Shrike's headspace, and now, after he's caught, Jack realizes that's a bad thing?
"Therapy doesn't work on me."
And for good reason. He knows all the tricks, all the things to look for—he'd tried therapy, once. Once. He'd gone through his courses, and knew what it would entail, and thought he'd give it a try to see if it would help him any.
Instead, Will ended up picking Mr. Summers apart. For every soft inquiry the man had, Will's blunt honesty developed a sharper and sharper edge.
For every one of Will's returns, Mr. Summers grew agitated, his questions turned more pointed, more concerned with gaining back some level of control than with the session itself.
Will did not return, after that.
He didn't think Mr. Summers did, either.
"Come on Will, I need my beauty sleep!"
He didn't turn.
Dr. Lecter rubber stamps Will, and he cannot figure out why.
As someone who makes a living getting into other people's heads—and teaching others how to do it, too, it's… different.
They toss words to each other catching and returning in an easy flow as Will explores the upper level of Dr. Lecter's office. He finds it soothing, in a way, the repartee, even talking about Jack's upsetting theory on Abigail's involvement. It's a relief that someone as… settled, mentally and emotionally, as Dr. Lecter is feeling similar feelings, thinking mirrored thoughts. Makes him feel a bit less like he's carried over the neurons and synapses of Hobbs' paternal instincts into his own skin.
Considering the man tried to slit Abigail's throat, it's a relief.
Conversation flows like swirls of water, soothes and erodes bits of truth with every pass, carries those bots with it with the tide, and it's strange.
Weird. Odd.
Will doesn't do conversation, not really, and yet Dr. Lecter seems to be enjoying Will's snarky attitude, his snide commentary. Will can pick up that much from him.
When it is time to leave, his stomach decides to speak up.
His insides had been wound up into enough knots that he hadn't eaten much beyond coffee and toast from that morning, but any embarrassment over such noises seemed entirely overlooked by Dr. Lecter.
"Missed lunch?"
"Something like that." Will shifted, turning towards the door to make his escape, when Dr. Lecter held up one hand. He didn't touch him, but the one gesture brought him up short.
"Ah, well, if you would wait here for one moment," Lecter went through one of the doors in his office, and returned shortly with a Tupperware in hand. Will shook his head before Lecter could say anything.
"No, really, I don't…"
"I must insist. I'm afraid I made up more lamb for myself last night than I could finish, not a usual situation I find myself in, and you would be doing me a great service."
Will found the round glass Tupperware pressed into his hands.
"I…"
"Will."
Dr. Lecter held eye contact—Will didn't know when it had started.
"I'll… return the Tupperware. Later. Thanks."
It wasn't until he was nearly home that he realized that he'd decided to make another appointment with Dr. Lecter.
He doesn't know how he feels about that.
The leftovers, however, are delicious.
Beverly Katz is blunt and uncomfortable to be around
("… are you unstable?")
but seems to view Will's own blunt manner as some wry sense of humour. It's not. She thinks he's bragging when he says he's been stabbed. He's not.
He is very, very uncomfortable with her hands on him, adjusting his stance in front of the target, but the next five shots hit within the target. Where he was aiming, just about.
"You come all the way down here just to teach me how to shoot?"
"No," she says with a smile, oddly like they're friends (or at least friendly), "Jack sent me down here to find out what you know about gardening."
Elk Neck State Forest is beautiful, but in a different way to Chippewa National Forest. The underbrush is thick, and the canopy is alive with birdsong, and unlike Hobbs' Cabin, the bodies are laid out in neat rows.
The smell of decomposition is rotten-sweet in his lungs, a rich compost doused in sugar-water, and Hobbs is there, staring at nothing, grabbing—
He finds himself back at Dr. Lecter's offices, returning the rubber-stamped evaluation instead of the Tupperware.
"This may have been premature."
"…What did you see? Out in the field."
There is no comparison. Mr. Summers was a childs' cross-stitch pattern to 's tapestry. He sees so much more, knows what to say—
"Hobbs."
"An association?" He doesn't assume, only requests clarification.
Will makes it clear.
He tries—in a way he hasn't before—to make it so, so clear.
It might have been too much.
"Is it harder imagining the thrill somebody else feels killing, now that you have done it yourself?"
Will has no words.
He… does…n't? Maybe? Was it harder?
His mind had slipped into the scene, smooth like butter; a fish released back to water—
But not the right body.
The wrong body of water.
This pond was not his home, though he could swim it easily.
He found himself nodding, jerkily, because 'yes' was the correct answer, 'yes' it was harder to imagine.
Dr. Lecter looks down after a moment, and somehow Will imagines that he understands what Will isn't saying, what Will isn't thinking, and—blessedly, he changes course.
"The arms, why did he leave them exposed? To hold their hands?" he almost laughs, "To feel the life leaving their bodies?" He almost laughs at that, too, and Will's mind is set to running.
The conversation works back and forth as it did earlier—not a fluke—and the shape of the ball changes shape, becomes sharper and infinitely more comfortable.
Lecter assumes 'crops', and Will doesn't ask, and Will throws back 'fertilizer', and 'fungus', and Lecter doesn't ask, instead throws 'connections', and it's a hook.
He laughs at Dr. Lecter's assumption to Will's ability to connect, because it's too close and too far equally, and then the solution is there, voiced in an accent Will couldn't quite place but coming from Will's own mind, too, and then he's gone. Gone, with a half-promise, half-apology about the Tupperware, and somehow leaves with more leftovers, and…
Doesn't know how to feel about that.
Conversation didn't usually just flow like that, not with him.
At home, his dogs are as confused as ever that he's got meat for himself, that what they smell isn't a promise of a treat, but he can't bring himself to share.
Instead he throws them beef knuckles and pig ears, and lets the beef saturate his tastebuds.
Dr. Lecter had given the dish a name, one Will couldn't bring to mouth even if he could remember the French curve of it, but all it needed to be known as was delicious.
He didn't think he could handle thinking the flavors were earthy, but there was a smokiness to it that curled around his palate pleasantly.
He realizes this is the second time he'd forgotten—entirely—to ask Lecter where he got his meat.
.
It's their conversation in his mind when he says the victims were diabetics, but it was Zeller's words
"Friends helping friends,"
that brings it to the forefront.
And then it is so, so simple.
Obvious.
He's reeling, enough that Katz's immediate belief and Zellers' scramble for proof (and the lack-thereof) doesn't register, doesn't matter, because they'd be confusing anyway and he has to focus.
Stammets is easy to find, after that.
At least on paper.
He's gone when they get to his workstation, his coworkers blank and confused, and he wonders at what their expressions would be like if they saw the girl buried in fungus fertilizer in his trunk.
The smell is horrendous, but apparently not enough to kill the girl.
She'll need therapy, he thinks, and hopes she finds herself a Lecter rather than a Summers.
Katz's reluctance to be the voice to Freddie Lounds' words is nice, in an odd way, but he's heard worse. Lounds' ability to hurt with her words is impressive, but Will had been the odd new kid all over Louisiana, and several states besides.
Her words don't hurt him, but he can see, suddenly and vividly, how someone with a need to connect would see her article.
He doesn't know when, though.
He mutters what he thinks, doesn't know or care if Jack heard him, because if a deranged mind found Lounds after her article, he wouldn't be the deranged mind to ensure a protective detail on her.
The stag is new.
Its slow, even steps remind him of the shooting range—a monster over the floorboards, a pounding at the door—but it doesn't look like any stag Will has seen.
The antlers are right, and it's got the right shape, but it's…
The edges are feathery—not like his dogs, but like a bird, and it turns the corner without paying him any mind.
He wonders what it would take for it to turn and look at him.
That he is dreaming is… not disappointing?
Conversation isn't tossed back and forth between he and Alana as easily as with Dr. Lecter—less of a toss, more awkwardly rolling the ball between them with their feet.
There is an undercurrent there, a subtext that clearly says 'we are friends but one of us is a therapist and one of us has mental problems' and it's not far from either of their thoughts. They know who they are, and it makes things stilted as they figure out where they can push, and where they need to pull back.
He isn't surprised that Stammets finds Lounds.
He is surprised that it's himself that Stammets is interested in.
He is… surprised isn't the right word, for what he feels about what Stammets was planning on doing, what he was planning on doing to Abigail.
He rages, and panics, and there is too much going on in his head for him to feel surprised about that.
He is tempted to shoot him in more than just the arm, but…
Abigail is behind him, and watches Stammets as police head their way. Watches as his eye lids twitch and his face twitches, only partly from the raze of a bullet wound as hi mind convinces himself that this is the only way he knows how to connect.
It's all about connections.
Jack looks at Will, at Stammets, and the single shot, and is content and convinced this means Will is alright.
Will doesn't know if he's allowing Jack to believe a lie.
Talking with Dr. Lecter relaxes something in him, lets something loose that he doesn't know if he should be afraid of.
He doesn't know if he should be pleased that Stammets didn't evoke the same feelings in him as Hobbs did.
But then, he didn't kill Stammets, Lecter points out.
"Did you really feel so bad because killing him felt so good?"
His voice is shaky and hushed when he says he liked killing Hobbs, the truth of his jumbled mind voiced in this unerringly neat room. He waits for it to drift, to knock things loose and create the mess his secret truths always did when he voiced them, but Dr. Lecter seemed to absorb it into his very being.
"Killing," he says, "must feel good to God. He does it all the time. And are we not created in his image?" it is not a question but it shakes Will up inside, shakes loose words, and he is waiting on baited breath, on what feels like his last breath, for what is said next.
"God is terrific. He dropped a church roof on 34 of his worshippers last Wednesday night in Texas, while they sang a hymn."
"Did God feel good about that?" Will wonders what he would see if he were there, to see the destroyed roof, what he would see and hear and understand. Wondered if he'd feel the warm burn in his sternum, the fluttering in his stomach, the fluttering lower, lower, if shivers would race up his spine and into his hair like delicate fingers of a comb
Dr. Lecter's slight tilt to his head allows that possibility, and offers another.
"He felt powerful."
Next chapter is Hanni's pov guys. I have no clue how I feel about that.
Though soon Hannibal will find out about Will's apparent vegetarianism, and no one will have an idea what that's about except for Hanni.
Thanks to everyone for the unanimous enthusiasm for this story, and the sick and twisted suggestions sent to me via PM or other. I love it :D
*insert grabby hands here*
Thanks you all so much for the support!
~Doodled93~