Chapter Text
Once upon a time, a teenager snuck out of a house and went to a party. He drank some alcohol, he shuffle-danced awkwardly in the crowd, and he met a pretty fellow teenager. She smiled and crooked her finger, and he blushed and followed, and the rest of the night passed in a drunken blur that ended with clothes on the floor and two tired teenagers. In the morning, the girl was gone, and the boy dressed and snuck back into his house.
Ten months later, a Virginia orphanage found a beautiful baby girl on its doorstep. A note was tucked into her blanket, which had five simple written words on it: The father is William Graham. The orphanage matron took the note at its word and duly ensured the birth certificate was filled out.
The baby girl was adopted only days later, and her new father called her Abigail.
Beverly throws a cupcake at Will the second he sets foot into her office, which is really just a great example of today is going. He walked into a cloud of awkward applause when he entered his classroom, his office cubby is cluttered with confetti and serial killer stalker love notes, and now Beverly is grinning ear to ear as she follows up the cupcake with a fistful of balloons and more confetti.
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” she yells.
Will winces. This is why he hates the fact that his birthday is practically public record, thanks to Freddie Lounds.
“Do we have to let the whole world know?” Will hisses, kicking the door shut as fast as he can. Unfortunately, he can’t stay mad at Beverly for long and she knows it, so she just keeps on grinning.
“You’re hitting the big leagues now,” Beverly says solemnly. “The big three zero.”
“I thought the big league was when you hit twenty-one.”
“That’s the drinking big league. This is the true adult big league where you’re free to have a midlife crisis about your life.”
“Very funny,” Will tells her, but he takes the cupcake. Jack’s present had been more gruesome crime photos and he certainly has no intention of opening the serial killer gifts in his office cubby, so Beverly’s cupcake is likely going to be the only actual gift he gets this year. And since his original intention for tonight had been to sit on his floor and cuddle with his dogs and crack open a bottle, it’s kind of nice to consider adding a cupcake to the mix.
Well, as long as his dogs don’t get into the cupcake anyways.
Beverly points a finger at him. “You better actually eat that, mister. I will inspect the box for crumbs.”
“I just had lunch! I’ll eat it when I get home.”
“Says the guy who’s usually here until eight on a good day.”
“Jack’s deposed in court today.” It’s a beautiful thing when Jack is tied up in court. It means Will is going to have a nice, stress-free day – barring a dead body being found in a weird location. The usual FBI crews don’t tend to call him out unless Jack is there or the weirdness factor is too high. “After my class is done, I’m out of here.”
“Aw, did too many students make a pass at you?”
Now it’s Will’s turn to point a finger at her. “That only happened once, and we both know you were behind that.”
“I admit to nothing.”
Will does indeed make a break for it the second his afternoon class is over, and to his relief, Jack doesn’t appear in the parking lot like an angry ghost, so Will is home free as soon as he pulls out of the parking lot. With great relish, he puts his phone on silent and then heads for the grocery store to pick up the essentials for his dogs.
His pack, at least, doesn’t know it’s his birthday, but they greet him as enthusiastically as always. Even Winston, who’s only been with them for a couple weeks, wags his tail and licks all over Will’s face.
Sometimes, he thinks his dogs are the only beings that appreciate him exactly as is.
He makes a quick dinner, spreads out his pack’s meal, lets them out for a nice long run in the garden, and then he settles down in front of the fire with his dogs happily milling about.
One by one, he wrestles with the ones that are still energetic (Buster), pets the ones that are settling down for a nice long snooze (Zoe), and grabs a brush for the weekly grooming session that’s more like a battle (Winston). Unfortunately, they tend to think it’s a game and usually Will eventually ends up trapping them against a sofa, but today Will is full, he’s warm, and he didn’t need to deal with Jack or a dead body so he’s feeling pretty lenient. When Winston starts squirming a bit too much, he just laughs and gives up.
He falls asleep there, in front of the fire with his family around him, and he’s happy.
Of course, two hours later, his bladder is staging a mutiny, so Will stumbles to his feet and takes care of business. It’s on his way back that he spots the lone cupcake on the table, still waiting to be eaten.
It’s not a very exciting cupcake, just a plain vanilla one with frosting and sprinkles and a blue star candle on the top, but then again, that’s just how Will likes things: simple and uncomplicated. He’d take a single cupcake over a giant uncomfortable party every day, and thank god Beverly understands that and accepts it. Zeller and Price still turn green whenever they see confetti around the office, because it’s been ten months and pieces are still turning up in random places.
Will gets a match and lights the candle, because why the hell not. “Happy birthday to me,” he says, and blows it out.
A second later, there’s a furious pounding on his door.
His dogs begin to bark like mad, and Will has no idea why they didn’t bark beforehand – they usually all start running towards the door and barking if they hear someone coming up the driveway – but he grabs his phone and makes his way towards the door. Will’s neighbors are all pretty far away because all the land around here has farms with wide open stretches for grazing or crops, and they’d be more likely to call 911 than come pound on Will’s door. And it isn’t Jack either; he usually starts yelling at the top of his lungs after the first knock, on top of the million calls he places to Will.
The pounding takes on a rhythm, thud thud, thud thud, and Will realizes the person is literally banging on his door with both hands.
Will groans and goes to open the door.
For a second, he’s confused because there’s no one there – and then he looks down and realizes there is someone there, they’re just a little shorter than he expected. After all, he was looking at the level of an adult’s eye line, and instead the person at his door is a teenager at best, with wind-swept hair, cheeks brightened by the cold, thick scarf around her neck, sturdy boots, and a backpack slung neatly over shoulders. He’d almost think she was a hitchhiker, except Will is not a truck driver and the way her smile brightens when she sees him makes him suspicious.
“Hi!” she says.
“Um,” Will says, half-confused and half-focused on keeping his dogs from leaping at her.
She’s completely fine with that eloquent response apparently. “Are you Will Graham?”
God damn Freddie Lounds, Will thinks, and he sighs. “Listen, kid, I have no intention to giving you a soundbite or an interview or whatever you came all the way out here for, so please go home. It’s freezing.”
“But are you Will Graham?”
“I doubt you would have driven all the way out to Wolf Trap for nothing. Tell Lounds that tomorrow I’m making her take down my address.”
And then he goes to close the door, but she sticks her whole leg in it. Her face makes Will pause; there’s desperation there, but not the kind that screams blogger/journalist trying to hit jackpot. It looks a lot more like the kind that would have her camp out on his porch until he listens – or worse, pick his lock and park her butt in the kitchen.
“Seriously, whatever you want, just go home.”
“I can’t do that, because what I want is right here,” she says. She takes a deep breath. “My name is Abigail. I’m your daughter.”
The next ten minutes pass in a daze. Will has no idea what he does, but he must have let the girl in, because the next time he blinks, he’s sitting at his kitchen table staring at her as she rummages through his fridge and liberates a juice bottle. When Winston barks at her and she pets him, Will decides she must be a real actual person and not a hallucination.
Which is unfortunate. He’d been really hoping that this was a hallucination.
“You can’t be my daughter.”
The girl takes a big swig of juice and wipes her mouth. “My birth certificate says otherwise.”
“I never signed any birth certificate. I’m pretty sure I’d remember that.” Will takes another look at her, at her dark hair and bright eyes and mall of America face, and then he adds, “Besides, I am definitely and one hundred percent gay so – ”
“So you’ve never ever slept with a woman?”
“I – ” Will starts to say, and then he stops. There’s a beer on the table, right next to the girl’s juice and the cupcake, and the sight of it triggers some faint memories. Like the exact, if slightly blurry, reason Will knows without a doubt that he’s gay. “That was one night a very long time ago.”
The girl smiles triumphantly. “One night is all it takes.”
Normally, Will would at this point call the police and report a crazy teenager in his house, but Will can read every emotion in her face. She truly and fully believes in what she is saying to Will, but she wasn’t confident until Will paused and admitted his drunken one-night stand. She came here with a very specific purpose of meeting him even though he totally could have carried on not being open the slight possibility that the girl in front of him is indeed his daughter. This is what convinces Will that she isn’t here to trick him or get a soundbite or profess her undying love using dead bodies.
Serial killer admirers are weird.
Will scrubs a hand down his face. He hates to admit it, but she has a point. One night is is all it takes. And it’s not like he’d exchanged numbers with the woman, so she probably wouldn’t have been able to find him.
Hell, even if she had, Will was a poor teenager; he probably would have declined to play a role in his child’s life.
“What – what did you say your name was again?”
The girl silently zips open her backpack and extracts a folder. Carefully, as if handling a bomb, she pulls out a faintly glossy sheet of paper and slides it across the table, staring at his face as if he holds all of the answers to the universe.
ABIGAIL GRAHAM, the birth certificate announces. Born April 4, 1997 in Minnesota. Father being William Graham and mother being –
Will frowns. “How come there’s nothing about your mother?”
“I dunno. Records were sealed. This is all I have.”
Will looks up. “Kid, if you came after me to find out who your mother was, you’ve wasted your time. I was very drunk that night. And spoiler alert, but you typically don’t exchange numbers for a one night stand. Hell, I don’t even know how your mother apparently knew my name.”
“My dad could help you remember. He’s a psychiatrist.”
“Of course he is.” Then the words actually register, and Will sits bolt upright. In hindsight, it’s kind of obvious – Abigail is too young to have aged out of foster care or the tender guardianship of the state, but the scarf on her neck is well-loved and she wears it with pride and attachment, so someone picked it out for her specifically – but the reminder that Abigail has a life and a family outside of Will makes him suddenly wide awake. “Wait, you have a dad? Where is he?”
Abigail fingers the end of her scarf. “He knows I’m here.”
And wow, Will doesn’t even need empathy to know that that is a blatant lie. He slides the birth certificate back across to her and goes to grab his car keys and his hat. “Come on, kid. Get in the car. We’re heading back to Florida. You can give me more specific directions when we get there, or I can call the missing child phone line and learn from there.”
“How’d you – ”
“The envelope has a Florida address on it. Come on. I’m not getting arrested for child kidnapping.”
As Will gets his phone to make arrangements for his dogs, he could swear that a little smile appears on Abigail’s face as she turns to get her backpack. It’s a little . . . smug. Almost like she wanted him to go to Florida with her. Almost like she planned on it.
Which. Well. That’s kind of weird, especially if she actually has a family.
But Will is weird too, so maybe it’s genetic.
Will is both extremely tired and extremely grumpy when he finally pulls up in front of the biggest house he’s ever seen in his life. Abigail had been amused when he asked for directions in hour two, but by hour four she was desperate for a bathroom break, and by hour six she had finally cracked and given him the address for her father.
Apparently, her father owns a giant mansion with an expansive land, a pool, and the fanciest gates Will’s ever seen. In Florida.
No wonder Abigail had had the money to not only track him down but travel all the way to him.
Abigail is sleeping in the passenger seat, so Will decides to take the coward’s way out and goes up the long driveway alone to ring the doorbell. He’s betting that a place this fancy must have some kind of security system, and sure enough, only seconds pass before the door opens.
Will is pretty sure he deserves a special place in hell for wanting to climb into the pants of the guy who adopted the daughter he didn’t even know existed, but damn. Whoever Mr. 3 Lithuania Avenue is, he is hot, with a sharp three piece suit and carefully coiffed hair and long arms and angular cheekbones and piercing eyes. Will would totally tap that if there wasn’t a passed out teenager in his car.
“May I help you?”
Even the man’s voice is hot. Will can’t place the accent, but it’s European and beautiful.
Will jerks a finger over his shoulder. “Um, sorry to disturb you, but are you missing a kid? Sixteen years old, dark hair, blue eyes, says her name is Abigail?”
The man’s eyes go from Will to his car so fast it’s like whiplash. He immediately shoulders past Will and takes off down the walkway towards the car. He doesn’t run, exactly, so he maintains his cool edge, but Will can read the concern in how he walks just fast enough that his perfectly pressed suit starts to pull and wrinkle a little instead of strutting a nice slow walk that would ensure his clothes stayed perfect.
Will stays just a second, because damn does the back end rival the front for hotness, and then he follows.
Fortunately, this delay means that he’s out of earshot for most of the conversation when Mr. 3 Lithuania Avenue pulls Abigail out and hugs her, so he only hears the tail end of it. Unfortunately, that tail end is “I found my real dad!” and Abigail running up into the house.
Which leaves Mr. 3 Lithuania Avenue and Will staring awkwardly at each other.
After a long moment, the man clears his throat and straightens his tie. “My apologies, I’ve been rude. Thank you for returning my daughter. My name is Hannibal Lecter. Would you like to come inside?”
“Again, I apologize that Abigail has interrupted your life,” Mr. Lecter says as he hands Will a cup of tea in the fanciest china piece that Will’s laid eyes on, never mind touched. “I suppose the warning signs were there, but I had told her years ago that her adoption records were sealed, meaning that neither of the parents desired contact. I thought she had accepted this.”
Will shrugs, but only slightly. He doesn’t really want to spill tea anywhere, and the chair he’s sitting in is as fancy as the cup. “Teenagers are supposed to be independent, I guess.”
“You guess?” Mr. Lecter smiles slightly. “Are you saying you weren’t?”
“Fair point.”
“I can only assume she went to you because she wanted to know who her mother was. I’m unmarried, you see,” Mr. Lecter explains. “Even when she was a child, she was very sensitive about the fact that it was her father bringing her to dance lessons because she had no mother to sew her dresses or do her make-up.”
Will eyes the man’s perfectly matched tie and pocket square. “Something tells me the objection wasn’t due to lack of skill.”
“You surmise correctly. However, I do not blame her. Family is a large part of who we are.”
“I don’t either. I get it. I never knew my mother either.”
One eyebrow goes up, but only slightly. This man is a master of controlling his face; it must come in handy for his job as a shrink. It also explains where Abigail got her ability to control her face, because it sure as hell didn’t come from Will. “Indeed? So you are here to assist her in locating her mother?”
Will shifts uncomfortably. “Honestly, I only came here to bring her back to her home and her family,” he confesses. “This is a nice place, and you seem to care for her.”
“I love Abigail very much,” Mr. Lecter says quietly, “and I have given her everything I can, but some things remain out of reach. Pardon me, but you seem reluctant to divulge the identity of her mother. Surely you would understand why such information might put her at ease, so that she might have the opportunity you were denied as a child. As one father to another, I would ask why you seem to want to leave my house immediately and not assist Abigail?”
Definitely a shrink, Will thinks. He puts down his cup and takes a deep breath. Mr. Lecter is completely right, but he doesn’t have all the facts. “I’d love to help Abigail. But I was seriously drunk that night. I don’t know anything that might be of use.”
“Hmm. Perhaps I can help you. Abigail may have mentioned I am a psychiatrist.”
“Yeah, I don’t tend to get along with shrinks.”
“Is that why you’ve been avoiding meeting my eyes?”
“I have . . . let’s call it an inconvenient ability. Eyes are distracting, you know – you see too much, you don’t see enough. And – And it’s hard to focus when you’re thinking, um, ‘Oh, that shirt does not match those pants’ or ‘Is that a piece of dog hair?’”
Mr. Lecter inclines his head, acknowledging the barb, and leans back. “Pure empathy.”
“More like an active imagination.”
“I see. Still. It would be remiss of me not to attempt to try and convince you to let me help you. For Abigail’s sake.”
Will winces. Apparently he isn’t the only person in the room who can read details in minute facial expressions. And Will has only know his daughter for half a day, but still . . . The idea of giving her the closure he was denied as a child is so, so tempting. It might lead nowhere, but Abigail wouldn’t live forever in the land of maybe the way Will has. And aren’t parents supposed to ensure that their children have better lives than them?
Mr. Lecter smiles again. “I’m sorry, Mr. Graham. Observing is what I do. I can’t shut mine off any more than you can shut yours off. And I think Abigail might like to get to know you as well.”
“You hate the fact that I’m getting dog hair on your chair, but you want to get to know me? Dog hair kinda comes with the territory.”
“The chair can be cleaned.” Mr. Lecter leans forward, all sincerity and charm. “Please, Mr. Graham. For Abigail’s sake. And so that we can rest easily in our beds knowing that she isn’t running off halfway across the country to track down her mother on her own.”
Will thinks back to Abigail’s expression – confidence and determination and a burning desire to know – and knows without a doubt that he’s right.
He holds out his hand. “All right, Mr. Lecter. You’ve got a deal.”
“Call me Hannibal. It appears we’ll be spending some time together,” Hannibal says, clasping his hand.
“Then call me Will. Mr. Graham makes me feel old.”
Hannibal laughs. “Fair enough. But for now,” he says, standing up and setting his own cup of tea aside, “my duties as a host prevail. I have a spare bedroom upstairs, and I can reheat some food for you. I imagine the long drive has left you famished.”
Just in time, Will’s stomach rumbles, so he just nods meekly.
Hannibal is gone for approximately three minutes, and when he returns, he’s carrying a plate with a little steaming pie on it, and it smells like the most amazing thing Will’s ever been in the same room with. It’s probably just the fact that Will hasn’t eaten in hours, and the last thing he did eat was a cupcake hastily shoved in his mouth, but Will still feels his mouth water in anticipation as Hannibal neatly sets the plate down.
“Oh,” Hannibal says abruptly as Will picks up his fork, “forgive me, I forgot to ask. Are you a vegetarian? Because I must warn you, nothing on that plate is vegetarian.”
“Definitely not,” Will says.
“Then, by all means, bon appétit. I look forward to working with you.”