Circle 2: Lust
The carnal malefactors were condemned who reason subjugate to appetite…
A window was cracked open somewhere in the house. There was a building noise which came and went; the wind snaking inside an unseen rift whistled hoarsely. The walls of the structure groaned and creaked, but held. Outside, a crane chanting its lays, throttled in the disavowing air. Trees leaning, held fast to their roots but lost a branch or two in the night.
Inside, Starling sits with her feet tucked underneath her, her hand in Hannibal Lecter's, waiting. In time, he bent his head and kissed where her fingers met at the knuckle. His eyes drew up to hers. Standing up straight he took a step back and indicated she too, should stand. She unfurled her legs and looked down at her knees where they met and back up at him. She didn't know if she could stand.
Clarice Starling could withstand an attack and endless ridicule. She could withstand ingratitude and boredom. She was not afraid of pain. She could even withstand that which she did fear, which was by and large, the threat of failure. But this—this was freakish. She had no way to prepare for something like this, she had no training or morsels of wisdom. Her thoughts spilled into her feelings, overflowing. Her feelings spilled into her body, overflowing. Her body wept without tears, her knees trembled. She watched Dr. Lecter let go of her hand and bend forward. An arm went around her shoulders, another beneath her unstable knees, and he picked her up.
He stood like that for longer than necessary, perhaps to give the moment time to infuse the night. Starling was both grateful and disgraced. She was not a child. She didn't like the idea of him thinking of her as one, knowing at once he did not. It didn't change the associations she had with the imagery of a bridal carry. It was terrifically uncomfortable and nearly pornographic in its connotations.
She expected him to carry her to the bed, but instead, he pivoted and claimed her seat. She found that being curled up in his lap was much worse. For an instant, she cursed him from the depths of her soul. Hit me, pull me off into some dark corner by the hair, she demanded. Strangle me, bite me. Not this. Could she have dreamed up a more wildly inappropriate image or experience than sitting in Hannibal Lecter's lap? No, she decided. She could not.
When she looked at him then, she understood his intentions, at once. He was going to make it uncomfortable. That was going to be a part of it. He was going to accentuate every delusion represented in sexuality between man and woman, and their personal history and relationship would be no exception. He was going to make it painful. Yes…he would do that.
He draped a hand over her bare knee and took some reading in her eyes. Another hand smoothed her hair, tucked a few strands behind her ear. In addition to making her terribly uncomfortable and therefore painfully aware of her own perceptions regarding sexuality, he felt it was important to proceed slowly where touch and intimacy were concerned. The following hours would serve to be both sadistic and merciful. Her hands held one another in her lap. It was time to put that to an end to that. No more concealing; no protection, here. Not anymore, not for tonight.
"Move your hands to your sides."
Her eyebrows wrinkled, but she did so, slowly.
"For the remainder of the night, you will not cover yourself. Not even after you have been disrobed."
She felt faint in the minutes following his commands, and she said nothing. At length:
"Do you understand?"
She nodded.
"Tell me."
"Yes."
"Yes, what?"
She could not look at him. She would not look at him. In that moment, she despised him.
"Yes, Dr. Lecter."
"You forgot, I thought you might. I am not a doctor, tonight. "
She managed to look at him, to be sure she understood.
"Yes, Hannibal," she said, feeling as though she'd just blasphemed in a church. His expression did not change when she called him by his first name, but his next inhale was sharper. Then he went on:
"Answer this question with perfect honesty: Does the traditional dynamic between man and woman, that is to say, the dynamic in which a woman is submissive to a man, disturb you? Does it disturb you deeply?"
"It would bother me more if was not so obsolete."
"But it does bother you. Even conceptually..?"
"Yes, Hannibal."
"I thought as much. Would you call that a delusion? Or an illusion?"
"My distaste for it or the dynamic itself?"
"The answer will be the same for both."
"I would say it more closely resembles a delusion. Illusion can be termed to be external, whereas delusion can be called internal. Delusion is a fixed belief, which can be either false or fanciful. Illusion is only a distortion of the senses. While illusion is a physical phenomenon, delusion pertains to the mental aspect."
"What do I like to destroy, Clarice?"
"Delusions."
"Are delusions easily destroyed?"
"Not usually."
"Will it be painful?"
"Yes, Hannibal."
"Can you better understand how such a thing could serve as a fitting substitute for my other pastime?"
"Yes. Hannibal."
"There are many delusions I have at my mercy. This one will be an ongoing one, I think. Even with only seven sessions spread across seven years, I think I can make some good headway."
"Headway in what regard?" Starling asked, perplexed and on the verge of being irritable.
"The idea of compliance bothers you when represented in sexuality, and you necessarily attach the idea to social constructs surrounding femininity. That niggling does nothing to assist your ascent in this world. Anything which has the power to upset you is mental dross. If I could have it my way, Clarice, I would rid you of every petty sadness and loathing. I would trim you like a wild evergreen until you took the shape of someone who can never be bothered, never circumvented, and never, ever hurt."
They sat for awhile, their breathing very quiet. When Starling would find the courage to look at him, he would look at her with his head to the side. He stroked her legs slowly with a flat palm as the minutes passed. And then:
"Tell me what you're feeling."
"Apprehension. Anger," she paused, summoning more courage to be honest. When he took the time to drag the truth out of her, it was always more painful. "…and arousal."
"Are you more angry that you're in this position, or more angry that this position has caused arousal?"
"I think they're at a stalemate."
He laughed quietly, and gave her knee an affectionate pat. "You manage yourself better than most. I have faith in you. There's nothing wrong with how you feel, you know. You should not hate yourself or worry about for feeling attraction to me. The body does not reason. Your body doesn't weigh my masculinity against my deeds. It only reacts."
He did not mention the little room that cried out to him, the Clarice Starling not given a voice that longed for him on both a mental and emotional level. How does the mind navigate to a place the higher brain will not go? Convincing the body is one way. The other was to use the beliefs of the higher brain against it. He couldn't have done a better job, himself. It would not be the only thing he chose not to mention, during the course of the night. He went on:
"It is interesting though, to note now, that you're earlier assessment of lacking progress in life was due to a sense of being unresponsive. A meaningful parallel, Clarice?"
"I don't know that I'd say a bodily response to your maleness is the antithetical of feeling listless in life. My body is responsive. It's my mind, even my heart that is quiet. Such a vast quiet," she murmured the last words, focusing on a freckle above her knee.
"Metaphysicists believe that change of the mind often begins with the body. They're not wrong. The body is a good place to start; it's easier to change than the mind."
"But it's already responsive," she argued. " When I'm hungry, I eat. When I'm tired, I sleep. When I'm aroused, I…" she finished the insinuation with a gesture of her hand.
"Yes," he said with a kindly smile," but do you indulge? You meet the basic requirements, Clarice. There's so much more."
She looked at him, looked into his eyes, glanced at his mouth. He had nice lips, she noted. She looked at his chin, his nose, his ears. The shape of his eyebrows, the slope of his cupid's bow. He was very close now, very real. She could see the delicate veins beneath his skin around his eyelids. He did not quite have stubble, having likely shaved that morning. His skin was smooth and light. His lips curved into a grin while she was looking at them, and a thumb stroked the underside of her knee. She looked at his eyes, and he said:
"I have so many things to show you."
Ardelia Mapp, connoisseur of coupons, returned to her car in the grocery store parking lot mid-afternoon on Sunday. She cursed under her breath when her phone went off with her hands full. When she was in the privacy of her car, she answered.
"Mapp." The phone was wedged between her shoulder and cheek while she finished arranging the bags in the passenger's seat.
"Hey, it's me," came the answer.
"Winston. What's up?"
"We spotted Conway."
"No, shit. Where are you?"
"We're on him, now. Get this; he's driving Leo's car."
Ardelia took the phone in her hand and started the car. "Leo, the head cook? Leo who was just murdered?"
"Yep. Wanna get your ass down here? We're in Southern Heights-"
"-Oh, goddamn Southern heights."
He chuckled. "Listen, I've got damn groceries in my car and it's hot out. I'll come out if you feel like you need me, but-"
"No, no. Get your frozen peas in the freezer, Mapp. "
"I'll come and talk to him once he's in custody. I think he'll talk to me. I don't think he'll fight you, either."
"You don't have to do it, today. You'll have plenty of time before his initial court appearance."
"I doubt he killed Leo, to be honest. But I guess we'll find out."
"I guess so. Hey, take it easy."
"Call me back after the arrest. You sure you don't want me? You're worth more than peas, you know."
"That's sweet. Really, I just wanted to keep you in the loop."
"Thanks. Talk soon."
"Bye."
A few minutes later, she was on her street. "Well, well, well," she said under her breath, seeing Starling's Pinto out front. She found Starling on Mapp's side of the duplex, nursing a bottle of water. She looked up when she came in.
"Hey," Starling said. "Need a hand?" Before Mapp could answer, she was on her feet.
"Thanks. Where'd you go?"
"Stayed in a rented house up on the Chesapeake."
"Sounds nice."
When they were finished putting the groceries away, Starling slunk into one of the ladder back chairs, and rolled her neck.
"Did you not sleep good, or something?" Mapp wondered. "Bed too squishy?"
"No, no. I slept fine. I slept late."
"Clarice Starling? Slept late?"
"Well, I don't think I actually fell asleep until early morning. Five, maybe."
Mapp wasn't a psychological profiler, but she could see something was different. Not wrong, but definitely different. "Who was he?"
"Someone…" Starling said, evasively. She found one corner of her mouth drawing up, and tried to lean her cheek onto her hand, to cover it.
"Well, now! About damn time! Was he pretty?"
"He made me feel good."
"Ummm-hmmm!"
"Stop it. Really. How was your weekend?"
Mapp shrugged. "Not as good as yours, I can tell you. Winston just called me, though. They found Conway."
"Well, that's good. Not that I'm surprised."
"Yeah, well. It's a start. We'll question him. I think he'll cooperate."
"Think he'll flop?"
"Probably."
"You hungry?"
Ardelia stretched and yawned, nodding.
"I know you just got groceries, but do you maybe want to go out? I don't want to be still."
Mapp shrugged. "Where'd you have in mind?"
"I don't know…I just don't think I want to be sitting around here, all evening."
"Well, look at you. What did I say? What'd I say, Starling?"
"I'm not gonna say it."
"Say it, girl."
"Nuh-uh."
Mapp laughed. "Say it, and we'll go wherever you want, and I'll pay."
"I needed to get laid."
"Hell yes. Yes, you did. And now I'm going to change. You should too, Raggedy Ann."
Starling let some of the water from her bottle trickle into her hand and flicked it at Mapp.
"Oooh. Oh, she's angry Raggedy Ann, look out!"
At dinner, Starling was surprised at how normal it all felt. And, she could not deny that some feral thing inside her liked it; liked the ache inside, knowing she'd been torn by him, and liked that no one knew. She did her best to not over-analyze that. Much later, it became more difficult. But it was a long night for the two women, longer than they'd spent together since training. When, after dinner, Starling had glanced at Mapp and said, "Wanna get a night cap?" Mapp was both surprised and delighted. She did not question it. Sometimes a good ride did that to you. It depended on where you were coming from, she reflected. If you were running around a mile a minute, it slowed you down. If you were in a slump, it could wake you up. It was like a drug, that way.
At the bar, Mapp was all the more surprised, when she found Starling chatting it up with someone. It was a relief, in a way. A lot of the time, Mapp would find someone interesting to 'talk to', and she always felt a little like she was abandoning her friend. Starling never made her feel that way, but this was both unprecedented and alleviating. She wasn't surprised when Starling didn't take the poor guy home. Neither of them found anybody interesting enough for that, so when they arrived home alone, they found themselves in the kitchen, as always. Starling was rooting around in the cabinet while Mapp was stripping off her clothes across the hallway in the laundry room. They were tipsy.
"What're you lookin' for, girl?"
"Elixir!" she called back.
"What?" Mapp came back into the kitchen wearing her shorts and FBI t-shirt. Feeling the floor tiles against her bare feet, Mapp decided it must be cleaned in the near future.
"Ah! Found it."
"What'd you find, Raggedy Ann?"
"Hey. Raggedy Ann wore fucking kitten heels, tonight. Give her a break." She was holding a bottle of Añejo Tequila.
"Oh, okay. I see how it's gonna be. Lucky for you, I went to the store."
"Then you won't mind slicing the limes."
By eleven, Night Time is the Right Time was blasting from the stereo, and they were singing into utensils and dancing around the kitchen table. By midnight, they were sitting at the kitchen table, telling jokes. It was half past when the real talking started.
"But really," Starling was saying," what guy do you know has this problem. I've just gotten back from New York, it had been dicey, you know? I was still edgy. And that fucking jerk Paul Krendler calls, asks me out. Said he could be here in half an hour."
"What? He's married!"
"No kidding. I think he was drunk. He's my boss, Ardelia. He's our boss. He's my boss, and I was put in a position where I had to tell my boss to go home to his wife."
"Jesus."
"And at the same time, if I say anything, am I complaining? Do I have any right to complain? I mean…hell, Ardelia. At least I'm here. It's hard to know who you are when you come from poor-white background. When you don't consider what they had to start off with, that they made do with the damn 40 acres and a muddy mule. Nobody tells you that, you just have to find a way to see it."
"No different. You more than made do. We both did. Listen, you do what you can do. And somebody like Paul has to live with himself; he's responsible for him, not you. Not you."
"But here's the thing, Ardelia. What does it make me if I can't play nice with somebody like him? Does it make me a prideful chit, or does it make me righteous? When do we care? When do we not care? When do we be still?"
"I don't know. And you know what? That's okay, sometimes. You do what you can do, Starling. Right now, what we both need to do, is go the fuck to sleep."
"You're right. Raggedy Ann has to be up in the morning at six."
Mapp laughed. "Well, I'll be right there with you." Mapp looked at her in the eyes. "I mean it."
Starling smiled. When she lay down in bed that night, she only tortured herself for an hour before drifting away. She couldn't remember her dreams in the morning, but woke up as edgy as the wintery night that Paul Krendler called her.
She didn't talk to Crawford much. He'd become more and more anemic in both an emotional and bodily sense. When she did see him, he'd give the cursory nod, and she would always reciprocate. Once, she'd gone to his office briefly, and he'd had something wet hanging from his nose. He offered her an Alka-Seltzer. The pity she felt for Crawford frightened her more than anything ever had. She never pushed or prodded him about Behavioral Science. The niggling in the back of her mind that told her she was never getting into Behavioral Science was ignored in favor of faith. There had been times before that she had felt like Crawford had forgotten about her, but then he hadn't, after all.
Since being sworn in, Starling had been a tech Agent. Near the end of summer, she had started on an ongoing case. She had been given a specific job, and it had taken her over a week just to get caught up, which involved hours upon hours of going through voluminous chat logs on an informant's computer. It started out as grueling work, but there had been amusing moments. "Script kiddie"—no hacker wants to hear the term used to describe them. Anyone with modest computer skills can cause modest havoc using other people's code fragments, scanners, and infiltration tools, but this is little more than knowing how to point a gun in the right direction and pull the trigger. It lacks art. True hacking requires a deep knowledge of computer and network security, an ability to navigate around obstacles, and the willingness to be careful enough to always hide one's tracks. The script kiddies might be easy targets for the feds, but the true hackers? Shadows are their home. The Anon-affiliated hackers who broke into a private intelligence company to release e-mails and steal credit cards certainly didn't think they were script kiddies. In an Internet Relay Chat, just after the June hack, one of the Statfor hackers, going by the alias sup_g, spoke to an unidentified chat room member about the accomplishment. It was a muggy Tuesday night, and there was no moon outside for either participant.
CW-1: but this stratfor shit was bigger shit than old shits
CW-1: at least it deserves no critics
sup_g: oh yes
sup_g: notice no one is throwing around script kiddie comments...
CW-1: this time was classy
CW-1: and thats perfect
CW-1: we produced a cool video
CW-1: we announced luzxmas
CW-1: we hacked big shit
CW-1: we donated by 1000000...
CW-1: and we destroyed a big serious intel corp
CW-1: actually just a lil bunch of ppl thinks shit on this
CW-1: like 3
sup_g: they are just mad because of the sheer amount of
high profile people in this
A few months later, not long after Halloween, sup_g talked to the same unidentified member about some 30,000 credit card numbers that had been taken from the company. His interlocutor, CW-1, engaged in a bit of gallows humor about what might happen should they all get caught.
CW-1: hows the news looking?
sup_g: I been going hard all night
CW-1: I heard we're all over the news papers
CW-1: you mother fuckers are going to get me raded
CW-1: HAHAHAAHA
sup_g: we put out 30k cards, the stratfor dump, and another statement
sup_g: dude it's big..
CW-1: if I get raided anarchaos your job is to cause havok in my honor
CW-1: 3
sup_g: it shall be so
Starling sat back in the swivel chair, a small smile on one side of her mouth. The raid had, in fact, already happened. CW-1 was "Sibu," a top Anon hacker who was, in real life, an unemployed 28-year old living in D.C. public housing. His sixth-floor apartment had been visited by the FBI in June, and Sibu had been arrested and turned. For months, he had been an FBI informant, watched 24 hours a day by an agent using a government issued laptop that logged everything he did. That agent was Clarice Starling. She found it grimly humorous to tease sup_g with threats of arrest, but they were also using Sibu's chat for a more serious purpose—correlating the many names of sup_g.
When Starling wasn't intentionally misspelling words, inciting sup_g to brag and blunder, or playing with him when she got bored, she was buried under a mountain of paperwork. When she got home that night she crashed onto the couch, rolling onto her side.
She had stopped trying to not think about Hannibal Lecter. She traced a pinky along the suede, made a happy face, gave it a nose, and wiped it away. She made a little strawberry and felt a jolt go through her. Somehow, amongst all of the things that had transpired in the course of that surreal night, the most disturbing parts were what happened in between.
There were the parts where he touched her, made sounds come out of her she didn't recognize. Sometimes, she'd remember those sounds and turn red all alone in her bedroom. Knowing he'd heard them too, knowing he remembered and could think of it any time he liked. Those things were hard. But the other things. . .
They had stayed up nearly as long as it took for the sun to rise. He'd touched her, he'd tasted her…but they needed breaks, let's have a break, he'd say. And they'd wander around the house, maybe—end up in some dark room, safe inside from the raging storm. Or they'd stay where they were and they'd talk, but they hadn't just talked. They'd smiled, they'd laughed. He'd made her laugh. She thought of their second 'break', when they were both sitting on top of the dining room table, facing one another with a bowl of strawberries between them. Starling sat cross-legged, and Dr. Lecter had an elbow propped up on his knee. Starling was red from laughing. She had said:
"One more. One more!" It was as though the madness of what they were doing had lost its effect and she was desensitized. She felt easy now, occupying this intimate space with him, talking to him and even laughing.
"Alright," he said, taking a sip of his drink. Dr. Lecter had been telling her stories from his time as a surgeon, choosing the ones he seldom had the chance to tell, the ones he knew she'd like. "One more. I had performed surgery on a very elegant, middle aged woman. Very cut class accent. There was an anesthetic that we used which sometimes induced some hallucinations and either going under or coming out of anesthesia, I heard some amusing things. "This woman was in recovery just coming out of the anesthetic. The team was around waiting for her to wake up and gag a little on the tube in her throat, so that we knew it was time to remove it. She gagged, we removed the tube, and then she smacked her lips and said loudly, in her incredible accent:
'That's the best bit of cock I have had in years!'"
Starling nearly lost it. Some distant part of her watched, watched her laughing, unsure of whether it was okay, unsure of a growing number of things. He'd made her laugh until her face was red, she'd even choked on her drink. Some of it came out of her nose, and he'd gone to get a tea towel. Afterwards, another…session…had started. Her legs over the side of the table, his head between them, his dark head…
They'd talked briefly about Dr. Chilton. Talked about his little trains and his single ticket to Holiday on Ice. She'd told him about piercing him with her knowledge of his sad little life, how she'd used it to get around him. That's when he'd said, "Come here," and took her in his arms, and (God!) how she had wanted him to. They stood in loosely tied robes at the bottom of the stairs, the whistling wind low and hoarse, their eyes reflecting light from the candelabra flickering on the foyer table. "Do you want some strawberries, little doxy?" he'd asked her, with his fingertips beneath her chin as they looked at one another, looked deep.
It wasn't until she reflected upon these dreamy memories that she'd realized that throughout all of his fondling and penetrating that he had never kissed her mouth. She hadn't thought of it, at the time. Now, she wondered about it, if it hadn't occurred to him either, or if it was calculated, in some way. A part of her didn't care, a part of her was hurt, and a part of her was relieved.
It felt like a dream of a dream. And that was how she treated it. When she thought of it, when she began to feel sick with guilt, she would shake it off and say to herself, it was a dream, a dream, a dream…
A part of her did not want it to be a dream.
When Mapp got home, they washed vegetables and made dinner. Starling had brought wine, and they each had a glass, when reconvening in the living room wearing pajamas. Starling was wearing the same pair she'd worn with Lecter. The terrible combination of sick guilt and perverse pleasure somehow got her through each day. She mused, sitting with her bare feet up on the coffee table, that at least now she was responsive. At least now she was feeling something.
"How are things going with Conway?" she asked. Mapp was holding her glass of cheap wine up to the light, sardonically twirling it with a look of mock contempt. She shrugged.
"Good, actually. Very well."
"So he flipped?"
"Like a hot cake. He's not bad, really. Just didn't know another way to be. Eight years old and living in streets, cars, empty buildings. The lifestyle gradually led up to it. From this place, to another place, through institutions." "Could have been me." "Hell, could have been me," shrugged Mapp. "All he'd known was the drug world and institutions. It was his normal. I think he's just now beginning to see the true horror and abandonment of it all, now that he got away from it. " "It doesn't always work," Starling murmured. "Hmm?" "The system. Institutions, the rules. They've worked for me, they've worked so far. But what if you can't count on them? What then?" "When there's nothing left, what's left?" Mapp wondered. "Me," said Starling, looking at Mapp with her level prairie gaze. "Damn straight."
Notes:
The part about Stratfor hackers is based on a true story, as the Waco siege of the first Chapter (which I forgot to mention).
Dr. Lecter's surgical story is also a true story (not mine).
I realize that compared to the last couple of chapters, this may have been boring, but I promise that in between their little trysts, I will provide tasty morsels, via their memories. Also, I have an X-rated version of this story. I am considering publishing it on AO3, in case anyone is interested in that aspect of the story. If you're on board with that idea, don't hesitate to let me know, because the only reason I haven't is laziness. Prompts get me off my ass. Either way, I wish to keep this relatively clean on this platform. Honestly, I'd prefer to either write full-on, nasty smut or just slightly suggestive. I don't like playing around in between those two things, it feels like work. Anyway, the next chapter will be coming very shortly (as in this weekend).
One more thing: I just wanted to thank everyone who comments, and a special shout out to anonymous guests, because I cannot PM you. Whoever you are, thank you so much for your support and wonderful comments. Please don't hesitate to let me know what you think, good or bad. I really appreciate the feedback, and I love that one of you said you've refreshed the page looking for an update, because I have SO done that! Very flattering. Thank you, thank you.