Archive of Our Own ^beta

There were two ways to approach Professor Graham's forensics course. One could encounter his grouchy, unsociable teaching style with outrage and the unsettled feeling that the man was literally impossible to please, or one could play quirky professor bingo in between vigorous note-taking.

Maya found the latter to be a much more fulfilling experience.

"I got diagonal, left to right, finished at 10:35 AM," Maya announced to the small huddle outside the lecture hall, holding up a very disrespectful bingo card.

"Let's hear it." Her roommate Rebecca looked like she could kill a man with a nasty look, but her smile was playful as she crossed her arms and leaned back against the wall.

"Illegal imagination exercise at 9:52; 'murder as art' photo at 9:04; wrinkled shirt free space; mentioned Chesapeake Ripper at 10:35; leading question without an answer at 10:20."

"Damn, that checks out," Rebecca conceded, holding up a hand for a high five. "Anyone else?"

"Nope. The Ripper was in the wrong corner for me," Marcus lamented with a groan, folding his hands against the close-cropped hair on the back of his head.

"Tsk. That slippery Ripper." Maya shook her head. "Maybe next time."

"Almost definitely next time," Marcus said firmly. "I swear Professor Graham has a brain crush. It was barely even relevant today."

"Thank you, Chesapeake Ripper, for your providence," Maya said, bringing her hands together in prayer as sniggers rippled around the huddle. "Alright, I'm off to grab a snack before Fundamentals of Law. Catch you guys later."

"Fun, fun, fundamentals," Rebecca said with a flat grin.

"Still meeting up tonight, right? I'll take cheese fries as my prize this time, thanks," she added with a wink, disappearing into the crowd to a chorus of sighs.

If someone were to ask Maya if Professor Graham was the type of person to have friends, she would wager he wasn't the type to want them. He had gruff loner energy, and trying to picture him talking about anything other than serial killers made her brain short circuit. Honestly, a broad, refined man with the sexy European accent didn't seem offbeat enough to mesh with Professor Graham.

"Who do you think he was?" Rebecca asked, flopping down on her bed, paying no mind to the pile of hopefully clean clothes she had dumped there earlier. Rebecca had been there when Maya had spotted him go into the lecture hall after class.

"He didn't have an FBI badge. I guess he could be another professor, though I've never seen him before."

"Seemed a bit friendly for a professorly chat. He was making eyes," Rebecca said, grinning when Maya snorted.

"Weirdo. They were just standing there."

"Looking like…" Rebecca propped up, French girl style, smoldering.

The snort bubbled into a full-blown laugh. "You're an incurable romantic. That's probably just his face."

"He's European, so this is probably just his face?" Rebecca smoldered again, hooding her eyes a bit more dramatically.

"Professor Graham will kick you out of his class if he catches you gossiping about him," Maya sniggered as she sat on her bed, smoothing out a wrinkle before pulling her legs up, criss-cross. "Or worse—make some eerily accurate but nonetheless cutting observation about you that you didn't ask for."

"Don't tattle, then." Rebecca pulled a pillow under her head.

"I have to admit, I thought he had a thing for Dr. Bloom. They seem to talk a lot, just from seeing them around the building."

"She's pretty gorgeous, can't blame him if he does." Rebecca nodded sagely. "Maybe he just has very, uh, refined taste."

"The gas station coffee suggests otherwise."

"Opposites attract and all that."

"Okay, enough inappropriate professor talk." Maya said, scooting down to the head of her bed. "I have a paper to write."

"Happy murder-magining."

"Holy hell! That's Professor Graham."

Maya lifted her eyes to the television, nearly choking on a mouthful of beer when she saw their professor's face filling most of the screen, an accusatory caption scrolling below: FBI Profiler Apprehended for Copycat Killings. Nothing ambiguous about that. Shit.

"Damn, that's scary." Her roommate Rebecca was still staring up at the screen, tugging at a tendril of hair when Maya downed another swig. "Do you think he did it?"

"You gotta admit, he's creepy as hell sometimes." Marcus reached over from two stools down to steal one of Maya's cheese fries, but she barely noticed until he was already pulling his hand back. "Remember that time he asked us how we would kill someone?"

"It's a class about identifying criminal motives," Maya said, though even as she said it, she couldn't begrudge Marcus his flat expression.

"Creepy. As. Hell."

"Doesn't the FBI screen for that sort of thing?" Maya asked, nibbling on a fry and watching as the news anchor went on about the story. Professor Graham's picture was still in the corner, just smaller. She couldn't actually tell if it was a mugshot or a work photo—he sort of always looked like that—but in context, the unkempt vibe did look a bit like what a serial killer would look like.

"What, being a murderer?" Rebecca swallowed a shot and flagged the bartender for another.

"I figured he was just a bit weird, you know?" Maya wrinkled her nose. "Like the introverted kind of antisocial, not the criminal kind of antisocial. It's still a big leap from 'way too interested in criminal psychology' to 'serial killer who mutilates bodies like macabre art pieces,' right?"

"Apparently not a big enough leap." Marcus shrugged, and this time when he reached for her fries, she was ready to bat him away. "If they are talking this definitively for the public, they have to be pretty sure."

"I guess…" Frowning, Maya took another drink and fought off a shiver as the news flicked over to a story about a kidnapped girl reuniting with her family.

At least the world wasn't all dreary weather and murderous professors, today.

The 20 weeks of FBI training were in the past, and even if Maya knew she should probably stop looking at her own badge, it really was a sight to be seen.

Word of Will Graham's mistrial and subsequent release from the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane had spread as quickly and passionately as his arrest had not so long ago, but the flames were fanned even higher when he was brought back to the FBI as if they hadn't just been vehemently calling him a serial killer. Maya couldn't claim to understand the minds of the top brass, but apparently the Guru, Jack Crawford, was on board because she'd heard Professor Graham (not a professor anymore) had been in his office for a while that morning. Probably some reorientation or something.

Dr. Hannibal Lecter had become a familiar name, once Maya had become an agent. He was a psychiatric consultant on one of the first cases she'd been included in, and it had been very, very difficult not to get distracted with an intrusive barrage of 'it's the sexy European' thoughts, which were incredibly unprofessional. Fortunately, he had been polite and dignified enough to dispel her own awkward fumbles before too long.

Rebecca had been pissed she wasn't on the case too, but as it turned out, 'not being FBI' didn't stop Dr. Lecter from continuing to pop up on multiple occasions.

Professor Graham and Dr. Lecter were talking over some case file or another—she could see them through the break room window—and although she knew it was rude and nosy to watch people talking, their body language was just so weird… tense, but not uncomfortable. When she tried to verbalize as much to Rebecca, her friend snorted.

“Sexual tension is what that is. I would know,” Rebecca said with so little reverence that Maya couldn’t stop herself from glancing around to make sure the Guru hadn’t crept up behind them while they were distracted. The break room was still empty, except for them. “They are standing so close. Do you see Professor Graham’s shirt? It’s ironed, Maya. If this had happened during training, we would have had to change our bingo free space.”

“An absolute crisis.”

“And that artful little curl? Look at him, Maya. He looks like a real person instead of one of those nuts standing on a corner itching to tell you about the end times. Love transformed him into a prince.”

“Or prison did. The timing’s a bit fuzzy.”

“You’re dead inside.”

“And you’re weirdly fixated.”

“Hush, I’m projecting.” Rebecca batted a hand at Maya without looking. “I want to exchange a life of teaching disrespectful trainees for a hot European paramour. Do you think Dr. Lecter has a daughter? A niece? Hell, even a sister?”

Maya snorted a laugh and tugged on her friend’s sleeve with one hand and picked her coffee cup back up with the other. “Come on, break’s over. You can’t keep up on this gossipy saga if you get fired.”

“The most compelling argument you’ve made all day.”

The gossipy saga of Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter had not, in fact, been confined to the walls of Quantico. As a trainee, it had been so easy to make light of the Chesapeake Ripper in some grasp for levity to balance out the heavy press of his gruesome murders, but the blow of learning the Ripper had been wandering their halls the whole time sent a chill down her spine every time. She had preferred the theory that it was Dr. Chilton from the BSHCI, but better to know the truth than lock up the wrong man and leave a murderer running free, however unsettling that truth might be.

Hannibal the Cannibal. She still couldn’t look at his mugshot without getting the creeps; somehow, the pleasant expression was worse than a scowl.

“According to Freddie Lounds, you might have been right about them,” Maya said with a grim, humorless smile as she held up her phone, the most recent TattleCrime article filling the screen. Murder Husbands, off to Europe together. It didn’t sound truthful, but it sure sounded like a story.

“A hollow victory,” Rebecca said with a flat smile of her own.

“Lounds is probably pulling stuff out of her ass, as always, but she has ‘incendiary’ down to an absolute art,” Maya said, turning off the screen and setting her phone back on the table next to her still untouched sandwich. “I heard a rumor that Agent Crawford wants to bring him back to consult on the Tooth Fairy case. He wouldn’t do that if Graham was a murderer too, right?”

“After rooting out a serial killer from within our consulting ranks, I wouldn’t think so.” Rebecca breathed out a puff of air. “Really glad Hannibal the Cannibal didn’t have a daughter.”

“Or a niece,” Maya said with a sad smile, and Rebecca stole one of her potato chips.

“Or a sister.”

“I heard they got the swan dive on tape.”

Maya looked over to see Rebecca striding up. Her arms were full of files for the burgeoning case she’d seen Agent Crawford assign to her earlier. They’d barely had a chance to celebrate the end of the Red Dragon’s reign of terror before more problems piled onto their plate. In a way, the momentum helped keep the 'excessive dwelling on very real horrors' temptation under control.

"Two serial killers at once. It's sad that Professor Graham went over too, but at least he took them down with him." Maya frowned, clicking her pen a few times, and when she tried to swivel her chair to relieve some of the uncomfortable energy, it caught on her desk with a soft clack. "That operation could have botched pretty badly."

"Can you imagine if Lecter had really escaped?" Rebecca let out a low whistle. "I dropped by forensics earlier for another case and asked if they’d recovered the bodies yet, but they are being weirdly tight-lipped about the cliff situation. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I almost got the feeling Zeller down there isn't convinced they're dead."

"After diving off a cliff?" Maya lifted a skeptical eyebrow.

"That's what I thought." Rebecca shrugged. "Crazy, right? Broken bones, staying conscious enough not to drown or freeze to death in the middle of winter… I tried to ask him to elaborate, but he got shushed. Made it sound like some big conspiracy." She tried to wiggle her fingers around the stack of files in her arms.

"I can't imagine it'll be so hush hush if they actually start to think it's true. That'd be really dangerous, not knowing whether or not to watch out for Lecter." Or if true crime gossip journalist Freddie Lounds had anything to say about it (she literally always did), knowing to look out for both of them. A terrifying thought, really, and even more unnerving than it had been to learn Hannibal Lecter was a killer. Maya shook her head with a little huff, clicking her pen again in thought. "Never a dull moment. At least it's over." A pause. "You know, probably…"