Archive of Our Own

Contains peanuts, reads the note on top of the tin. 

Well how very thoughtful, thinks Frederick Chilton. 

It is festive in spite of this ominous warning - ominous to one of the wardens or nurses, not to Frederick who is allergic to nothing, save the inescapable requirement that he be here in order to be paid, but ominous from the standpoint of being responsible to get said night nurse to the appropriate medical care in the event that they are stupid enough to eat the contents of said tin. It’s rough being in charge. 

There is a smattering of holly leaves and berries printed across it. Snowflakes chase each other along its sides, with old timey sleighs and Victorian silhouettes skating across pastoral wintery scenes. The cookies inside smell of ginger and citrus and candied fruit, and while half of them are crumbled from the investigations of some sort of neanderthal who can’t just make up their mind and eat one, they do remind Frederick of home. His parents make spritz cookies for Christmas. He supposes it’s not so unusual that people elsewhere do too. 

(It surprises you sometimes to relate and remember that the people around you are real thinking beings. Sometimes you just wonder if you project your own memories onto everything around you, and you are still the only real thing.)  

They’re not really meant for him, in the center of the first floor staff break room table or not. Frederick is not ‘part of the team’ as it were, and he’s cognizant of that and at times proud of it. But at this moment in time, no one’s in the room to call him on it. He nibbles a corner of one cookie in covered in cheery green and red sprinkles, and spits it out when he finds a shred of lemon peel between bites. 

Unpleasant. Acrid. Not like his family makes. 

No matter, he sighs, wiping his mouth with a paper napkin - shaped like a wreath, and cheap. He’s not supposed to have it anyway. 

— 

Financial freedom is what he’s promised when the college recruiters make their rounds, with opportunities all around to improve himself and the world. The pamphlets show happy attractive young people, well dressed and too well rested to possibly be real. But maybe that’s what life after university should look like - a glossy huddle of improved adults, who by merit of their education have gone from straw to gold. 

What Frederick Chilton at the tender age of eighteen would like to improve is his experience of the world. Frederick himself is perfectly fine. As a child of an average middle class white family with an average budget and the average and often spiceless meals that come from the marriage of those two things, the best part of becoming an established adult with a salary becomes the food. 

Bless his mother, of course. There’s something to be said about a good hotdish covered liberally in tater tots or fried onions depending on the day’s particular brand of suburban whimsy, but it is no Michelin rated meal, and the collective efforts of every restaurant in the greater Racine area at the time of his youth is probably half a rosette at best, and never thought to approach a star. 

Ontario is life-changing by comparison as a university student, but with nothing but his parents’ good financial planning to thank for his admission, despite his many extracurriculars and excellent grades , he is not in a position to pay for many of those kinds of dinners. Those are saved for visiting researchers that he is fortunate to serve as guide to on the rare night away from his studies and rotations. They become the highlight of his life there, with no politics to take the joy of a good foie gras with a glass of Bergerac away from him. 

“Fred will show you the city,” says the principal investigator of his lab while Frederick winces at the nickname, relieved of his obligations to entertain, and in turn Frederick. “Fred’s really into that kind of thing.” 

(You are not popular. You never have been. You probably never will be. You are not talented, or particularly clever, and you are not much better with handling people beyond flattery and book-learned assignations of illness, which makes you an excellent host to those needing their egos stroked and nothing of a loss to your colleagues and lab mates in psychiatry. You are reconciled to that, so long as you have some kind of power to not be forgotten. The world is crawling with the average, and you can see clear enough that even idiots find places to prosper beyond their station if they play the game right.) 

(Fake it ‘til you make it, you tell yourself in good suits between plates of good food.) 

When the time comes and the ink is dry on his medical doctorate, Frederick’s only thought is to make waves as expediently as possible. Ten years of academia with a sprinkling of practical patient interaction does not make for very deep pockets, or very long curriculum vitae when one struggles to make first author, or second author, or third author. A little prestige would be preferable - perhaps a visiting scholar position of his own, with little lab techs to ferry him from dining room to dining room in hopes that he will stay at their facility. He has experience with that. He’s always thought it would be wise to live abroad in Europe while still a young buck, so why not in Amsterdam or Berlin? 

Six months into a return to Racine, after many hotdishes at his childhood home served, and several attempts to co-author research and clinicals in what feels like every established school from Tromso to Catania, Frederick re-evaluates. Prestige takes the backseat to retirement plans and stable income. “Government work,” his father suggests with a sneer, and Frederick takes that to heart. He’s qualified on paper for most of it. He might even be overqualified as long as he steers clear of the NIH and the grant dependent positions. 

Good fortune brings him to the Baltimore Institute for the Criminally Insane, who is really shelling out that year for someone to take the director’s position following an unfortunate accident that befalls the previous one. Twenty one vacation days, they tell him, and an excellent private health care plan with no copays and very little red tape. 

“You’ll like Baltimore,” they say. “Old city. Lots of history here. Growing food scene in Fells Point and Charles Village, and a quick ride on the metro to DC if you’d like to rub shoulders with the real money.”   

Baltimore comes with a big office with wainscotting and a building fit to be a medieval castle. Baltimore is where Johns Hopkins is. Baltimore is not the finished basement of a tri-level house in a city that considers a barn selling burger baskets to be a cultural tradition and right of passage. Frederick accepts quickly, but not before suggesting he has another offer to review. This nets him an additional moving expense budget out of desperation, written as a lump sum check, proving that truly there is no oversight in budgeting for a man to fly with a few boxes of clothes because federal and state pay scales only account for the mid to high average, and not the low end of the spectrum. 

For a time, things are good. 

Until the health care perks turned out to be obligatory.  

---

The nutritionist’s conversation with him following the reparative surgery of his abdomen is almost as grim as a Wisconsin winter. No red meats. No fried potatoes. No wine in quantities greater than a tasting pour on very special occasions, and avoid high proof alcohol entirely. Consume nothing that an animal’s fat might have accidentally brushed against, and avoid anything that could be remotely enjoyed from any subsegment of the flavor wheel, because it’s likely that there’s something in there that is unfriendly to the pancreas and the remaining kidney on his right side, but also try to eat lots of small meals as though there’s anything left to want to eat.

“It’s all about mindfulness,” she says, nodding vigorously. “You as a doctor try to build good habits in your patients - now it’s time for you to turn that care on yourself.”

“Wel what can I have?” Frederick asks, sitting in a slouch to not put pressure on the stitches. The impression it leaves is not unlike the sulking of a teenager. Frederick does not consider himself above it, after the hand he’s been dealt. 

Legumes. Egg whites. Steel cut oats. All things best suited to a person in their seventies and unabashedly diabetic, and not a professional with an appetite for the prix fixe menu that the chef will make no changes to, and the pinotage of an intense South African red. 

It’s dreadful. If it were not miserable enough being the sole wit in the damp halls of the mental hospital, the periodic disdain of the local medical community, and the perpetual struggle to get a single paper published when so many interesting inmates have waltzed into his halls this year, Frederick would consider the contents and consequences of Abel Gideon’s gift basket the final nail in the coffin of his mood. Abel Gideon’s further insistence today on not knowing anything of Will Graham’s story about the seizure in Hannibal Lecter’s dining room, after insisting just hours earlier that he was an eyewitness to, is just insult to injury next to that. 

Frederick glares at the front door of the self-same Hannibal Lecter’s house, his party invitation sitting cream white and heavy in his coat pocket. He notes there is no wreath, and there are no Christmas lights, and that there’s probably not a speck of evidence of the monster that lives beyond the threshold of the door. 

“Don’t you just love the holidays?” a lady in the foyer asks when their coats are being taken and she coos over a display of sugared fruits, red ribbon, and what is probably the antler shed of half a dozen whitetail deer. 

Frederick’s eyes widen with a polite smile. He must move the entirety of his face to do so, so great is his disinterest and disagreement with that statement. 

“The statistical high for suicide in the United States year over year,” he says in a cheery drawl, and strolls in. 

But no, the honor of being the last straw to break the camel’s back gets saved for the chicken foot on a bed of pate and focaccia, served to him in the living room of Lecter’s house. Not because it isn’t right down his alley as an appreciator of food, with all the self-important whimsy of using such a macabre display, or that the chances of it being made of human organs is higher than it’s ever been, but for the sheer reason that he can’t eat it, and freshly harvested liver is still too high in iron for a pancreatically conscious diet.

Moral superiority comes in to save the day, as it so often does at the hospital. He tries his best to not lean into his cane, and hands the gastonomical horror off.

“Prosciutto roses. Heart tartare. Beef roulade,” he says, spotting Agent Jack Crawford. (And whatever the hell the chicken foot thing is - creative, but completely nonsensical. You’d say as much, but you think the chef might actually kill you if you did.) Agent Crawford will understand his hesitance as a man of scruples and taste. “Needless to say, I won't be eating the food.”

“Doctor Chilton,” says Agent Crawford with a raise of his brows. 

Frederick always appreciates that Crawford calls him by his title, where Alana Bloom and Lecter often go for the friendly approach. Friendly, like they are friends, and they have not been baiting him into admitting to a little therapeutic fiddling around in Abel Gideon’s mind. Frederick sees that for the deceit it is now - even an eideteker as adept as Will Graham gets caught up in that kind of flattery, and look where he is now. 

(Privately you think it cruel that Hannibal goes for Will Graham’s greatest vulnerability - his struggle to seek help, or connect, and how deeply he did connect with him when he thought he could. You sympathize with that as the intellect in the room with no one to talk to. But everything will work out as it ought to - he has you to connect with now, and you privately delight that nothing has irritated Hannibal Lecter more than that, and perhaps nothing could ever be more effective.) 

“Hannibal the Cannibal. That's what they'll call him, you know,” he says, and reminds himself that the canapes are off limits, as are the glasses of champagne, and cheeky little pours of aperitifs and sauternes. The former he can live without, but the latter alcohols he has a hard time imagining working the human body into without compromising the character of each. A cannibal as fixated on flavor as Lecter is would surely never.

Jack seems to not find that name quite as inspired as Frederick does. “Not according to Abel Gideon,” he says. 

Frederick’s mood sours further. “Gideon's caused me enough trouble today. The fact that he lied to you makes me even more certain he was telling Will Graham the truth.” What strange company to keep - the ill-fated disbelief of Graham’s skill of prophecy, and Frederick the only person to believe it. 

(But you’re used to being alone in the room. You’re brave enough to face it, even in Hannibal Lecter’s house, watching Lecter feed half the psychiatric professional industry cheeky holiday hor d'oeuvres that he’d love to make out of you.)

He watches the gathering crowded around the roast of a boar’s head, glazed and steaming, and sees it for the frivolity it is. Perhaps Lecter looks forward to meals with visiting colleagues too - just not with the same intention as Frederick does, escaping an otherwise mundane life. Tonight Lecter does it with tinsel and shining glass, the proud arches of the brownstone house filled with boughs of fragrant cedar and pine. Tomorrow maybe he will fill another parking lot with city council members he disagrees with. They can make a tree lighting ceremony of it, accompanied by tapas and effervescent Txakoli and Basque whites in rented glasses.  

Frederick finds he has no appetite for it, renal concerns or otherwise. Today, with no one to stand with, he finds he misses the casseroles and the scalloped potatoes and the muffled steps of his parents overhead.

—

Having his coat taken was easy. Finding his coat to take back is not, especially when still dependent on a walking aid. The hired help for the evening leaves their post in the front to assist with some other task when all the guests have arrived already, which leaves Frederick in the unenviable position of looking for a black wool coat in a sea of a hundred others. 

(Your community’s uniform. Three piece suit, labeled at the jacket pocket. French cuffs. Lambskin gloves. Burberry, Hermes, a litany of wool scarves with initial embroidered onto their edges. There’s not a man here tonight that doesn’t wish he was the host, and it shows in how they dress.)

He shuffles between them, turning collars over, looking for the familiar shine of the gold chain hung at the hook ring. The tip of the cane clicks in the foyer louder than he would like, and privately thinks it is this that signals his departure instead of the morose looks he casts over the spread of food. 

“Surely you’re not going already, Frederick,” he hears from the hallway.

He freezes. It’s one of the instinctual responses to fear, he reminds himself, and forces himself to look down the foyer to the purple-wine color of Hannibal Lecter’s blazer for the night. Sacramental, Frederick thinks, dark and hiding its peculiar metallic flavor. What a pompous bastard, he thinks without a single trace of irony. 

“Responsibilities to the hospital,” he says in reply. There’s no way to explain that the chicken claws are amateur in their desire to shock, and the pig head is a little on the nose even for the suspected pun artist and murderer that Lecter likely is. “And not much of a palate for heavy party snacks these days, but you already know that.” 

And deliberately neglected to feed anyone anything vaguely vegetarian, Frederick mentally adds, and wonders if that’s a jab at him or a jab at the world of people who don’t swish blood in their mouths and call it delicious. 

Lecter smiles, holding his glass in a precious grip - still sore, weak fingered, and recovering from Matthew Brown’s attack. Not my fault, Frederick reminds himself. Probably your own, for feeding the wildlife. 

“Cold nights call for hearty foods,” Lecter says with a sip of his drink. “What better way is there to show the winter that man has a fear of it, and hide together from its hunger with one of our own?”

“I was under the impression this was a Christmas party rather than a vigil,” Frederick says absently, turning more collars, fumbling for his own. He has half a mind to leave without it to not receive any more vaguely threatening displays for the evening, but alas, it is a cold night, and he will need to scrape ice from the windshield, and the nagging of habit tells him it’s a cold one- better bundle up real quick. 

“But perhaps you have a profoundly more insidious idea of how communion is taken, or this is one of those old world things,” he adds with the same nerves that rob him of his tact.  

The flash of gold chain comes to his hand, but also, the flash of a white grin from too close by from Lecter’s mouth. My what big teeth you have, he hears in the timbre and sour mouthed twist of the man that calls the bottom level of the hospital home. 

“I wouldn’t know,” he adds nervously. “I was raised Methodist,” like that explains everything. 

“Ah Frederick,” Lecter huffs, like it did just that. He claps him on the shoulder with a hand that is too close for comfort. Frederick knows it is full of exceptional violence behind the velvet hiding his arms, because a sad but absurdly sharp man told him so, and tenses against the tight grip.

“Please never lose your deliberate obstinance,” Lecter continues. “I’ll have to rethink our entire acquaintance if I find that you are anything other.” 

(Smug. Self-important in the way you can be, but the kind that looks down on you and your mid-tier pea coat like old professors and department heads, and assumes you don’t know how to recognize it when you’re so capable of it yourself, and assumes you don't know exactly what he wants. ) 

( You have something he can’t have though, that exact thing. That you don’t have to fake. ) 

“I’ll be sure to share that insight with Will Graham tonight,” Frederick says, and slides out from under the hand and into the safety of his coat. His keys jingle between his fingers, a bell to ward off the fear he feels alone with Lecter, or maybe to just let people know he’s here. “Maybe we’ll talk one American Protestant to another, and maybe he’ll know what you mean.”

He risks a glance, and is rewarded with the blank stare of someone doing their best to be blank, sliver of smile as cold as outside. 

“And maybe he won’t,” he adds, and thrills against a gnawing stomach that says it’s dangerous to pull the tails of animals anymore than Lecte rhas himself, and the thrill of getting the last laugh this time. 

“Good night, Frederick,” Lecter says after an uncomfortable pause, eyes never cutting away until someone calls for him back the other way. He goes so far as to open the front door for him, where the wreathless expanse of it guides him out. “Happy holidays - thank you for coming, and please - send Will my regards.” 

Frederick doesn’t quite run to the car, but only because habit and the memory of being nagged a thousand times as a child says you shouldn’t run on an icy walkway. 

— 

Comfort food, by definition should comfort. After a harrowing conversation and the unpleasantness of being at a party that no one actually cared if he attended, it’s pretty much the only thing that Frederick can think of - the warm hug of a greasy french fry, or perhaps the cinnamon and butter kiss of an apple kringle. 

It is most unfortunate that Frederick’s comfort foods, and anything that could be vaguely construed as belonging to the category, cause him gastric distress.  

However, the mere act of purchasing them and just smelling them gets him halfway there. He’s a grown adult male with the money to do so, and the emotional maturity (or lack thereof ) to throw it away if he wants to. It’s too short notice to ask his mother to send him butter biscuits and cranberry bread when he’s already told her not to, never mind the impracticality of having it overnighted even on his salary, but a good old boy’s fast food stand with custard shakes and deep fried everything will fit the bill. Racine may not be a culinary capital, but at least he can replicate elements of it when the moment calls for it, he thinks and hands his credit card over without an ounce of hesitation.  

“That’ll be twenty-eight fifty,” the speaker crackles from next to the menu sign. Cheaper than a couple cocktails. A bargain next to the meals of his days before the dietician and the lisinopril prescription. No doctorates or social connections required. 

“Happy holidays,” he says in response to the girl who hands him the brown bag because she said it first.

From the inside of his red roadster, warm and fragrant with the smell of onion rings and double cheeseburgers that are sold in open-faced brown paper boxes and white wrappers here in Maryland, instead of the familiar red plastic baskets of home, he can pretend that he is not by himself, fleeing from a Christmas party. It would be justifiable to do so, considering the host and cuisine, but seeing as it is at least partially on account of his old familiar friend, unhappiness, Frederick doesn’t find this to be the consolation it ought to be.     

If he only eats a little, there’s nothing wrong with that. Everything in moderation. God knows man’s spirit cannot survive on lentils and wild rice alone, and it’s not thriving on poultry talons either. 

(Cannibalism aside, you can see how partial hanging and exsanguination might addle someone enough to start seeing memento mori as some sort of security blanket after surviving, but you will not be eating the memento mori regardless, and neither will Lecter's schoolboy crush as long as you control his diet as much as you do yours.) 

The first bite is hesitant - not bad, though it is certainly the exact mediocre grease trap that he is accustomed to. He takes another bite, and instead chooses to relish the brief flare of salt and crisp batter. By the fourth and fifth bites, his stomach begins to turn on itself in warning. On the sixth, Frederick has to concede he’s not going to be able to eat this anymore than Faustian devil’s bargains on overpriced holiday china. 

It feels silly now, looking at the passenger side and seeing the dearth of food he’s ordered with no real capacity to enjoy it beyond the emotional equivalent of walking through a state fair and not having the chance to stop and order anything. The only thing missing is cheese curds. It’s almost as depressing as the reason he’s here in this parking lot at all. 

It’s still too late to call home, so he’ll have to go to the other one he has. 

There’s at least one man as miserable as he is tonight, who might be able to do something productive with all this excess. Besides, he promised to have a conversation, and who wants to be by themselves on a Saturday night before Christmas?   

—

Will Graham’s pastimes in prison are few, and skillfully completed day after day when the other inmates and law enforcement don’t come by to poke him between the cage bars, and they are to sit in unconsolable stillness, and to sleep in similar fashion. 

He doesn’t pace. He doesn’t talk to himself. He doesn’t engage the staff anymore following Matthew Brown’s arrest and subsequent firing, and prior to discovering Brown was an aspiring guest for the asylum, Frederick would have chalked Graham’s willingness to talk to him out of a general desperation to just not have someone ask him about murder. Seeing as that is all Brown wants to talk about either, clearly Graham decides to go ahead and throw caution to the wind and get it over with. 

It generates a frightful amount of paperwork and interviews, but Frederick gets over his resentment quickly. The huge amount of sodium amytal Graham had in the days leading up probably hadn’t helped his decision making, and he definitely doesn't want to explain that in detail either.  

(You second guess yourself more about this now without a fully functioning digestive track. How much is too much? How much is too little? Exceptional minds require exceptional doses, with Will Graham being the cleverest one you’ve had to overpower with modern medicine, but even prize race horses die with too much furosemide, unable to retain what they need to function.)

(His eyes aren’t so different from a mad horse’s that way, you think. Shiny, rolling. Red and wide with the indignity of his corrupted purpose. Resentful of a bridle and saddle, and unwilling to concede defeat to get anything he wants. Like horses, you think it is beautiful, if to be watched from the other side of the paddock. You aren’t an adept enough handler to stop a tantrum otherwise. You’ve always been afraid of horses when you’re honest.)   

Greasy bags in hand, and heels clicking on the limestone of the bottom detention level as he winds his way down to the last cell in the block, Frederick is unsurprised to see Graham in his one of two usual states - lying down, facing the wall, curly hair pressed against the pillow on one side, and waving around the shell of his ear on the other. 

“Good evening, Frederick,” he says quietly, pointed. He is never respectful really, but Frederick thinks most spirited animals aren’t until they are broken. It’s good that he is not - there is still a bigger animal to consider. 

Frederick watches from the outside of the bars for a moment, feeling stupid. There are two orders of cheese sticks that probably aren’t even warm anymore, and who really wants that. There is a cheeseburger that is beginning to make a wet spot that promises to rip the bag under its own weight, and that’s probably ruining all the rest. Jalapeno poppers. Tater tots, inferior in that they aren’t cooked into a pyrex dish and floating atop cheese and canned soup products, but there are few bold enough to cook casseroles time tested by the Chiltons of Racine. 

Will Graham doesn’t want this. Will Graham might even like that frivolous poultry whatever-it-is. 

Graham clears his throat. 

“Has Hannibal taken to serving fried foods?” he asks, inconspicuously sniffing the air. Seeing as Frederick has carried the contents of a carnival food court with him, Frederick has to allow that it's a fair question. “Since you were going to the dinner party and all. Must be hard to tell the difference between human liver and a normal sausage wrap if you just drench it in oil.” 

“There was a literal hog covered in candied fruit and late-season icewines in decorative crystal glasses,” Frederick replies. “Does that sound like a man with much respect for the finest contribution America has made to the culinary canon of the world?” 

“Sounds like I missed out,” Graham snorts, and sits up from his cross-armed rest. “I didn’t think you felt religiously about burgers, or at least not enough to go buy them. I also feel strangely compelled to defend bourbon for that title.” 

“I didn’t until I discovered I couldn’t eat them anymore,” Frederick replies, turning the bag a bit in his hand. Graham watches this and it with a curious expression, brows puzzling through the smell and the contents of the brown paper from his position on the mattress before a softness overtakes his face. 

“We get nostalgic,” Graham nods, and looks at him - actually looks at him. The greasy bag is a surprise to him, Frederick thinks with a sort of distant recognition. Graham thinks that he thinks this is below him, and now that it’s not, Graham is redrawing a portrait of him. Frederick Chilton has finally surprised Graham after months together, and Frederick is embarrassingly proud to finally do so. 

Frederick looks down the hall, afraid to look happy for something so small. “Can’t have bourbon either, but I wouldn’t put it past our mutual acquaintance in common to be too good for that either,” he continues, switching the grip between cane and bag. “I’m a fan of more thoughtful plates, but sometimes processed cheese is what you’re looking for in the face of the futile slough of life.”  

Graham laughs. Frederick observes that it’s not the bitter one that he has become accustomed to hearing in biting repartees and sessions, but pleasant and secretive, like he didn’t mean to. His face is more handsome when he’s not sneering, the sparse hairs of his beard rounding out the edges of a tired face. 

(Even the mean dog that made you shy of pets down the block from your home liked to lay out in the sun and play for the right company. What’s to say you can’t figure out what makes Graham smile? You have the education to understand it, so why do you think this is beyond you?)

(Fake it ‘til you make it, you say again, and smell the hand pies and onion rings in your hands.)  

“Smells good,” Graham says with the startling insight that Frederick often feels naked in front of, as though he reached inside him and saw his thoughts.

“I bought it for that exact reason,” he replies imperiously. “Smell and taste share an airway, but fortunately not a sensitive digestive tract. Gideon may have taken my kidney, but he didn’t take my access to the literally thousands of low-quality oil fryers that the great state of Maryland boils crab cakes and french fries in daily.”

“Sticking it to him, even from his new bed in the hospital,” Graham nods. “I appreciate your spite. We might find a few more orderlies with aspirations of murder for you too, Frederick. The ones you sent this time only aspired to maim.”

This irritates Frederick. He’d nearly forgotten Gideon’s absence from the hospital, save the satisfaction of getting to walk by his cell without having the instinct to cringe away from it, and the irritation that Gideon is a liar a hundred times over when face to face with Jack Crawford. “I came to give you hamburgers and company, and you’re thanking me with accusations of institutional corruption,” he says, flat and temporarily thrown from his emotional high.

Per usual, alas. 

This again prompts the strange searching look. “That seems inadvisable,” says Graham, almost suspicious now. “You’re the one that’s not allowed me to have anything other than the state approved jumpsuit and food, all tidy in their little squares, and I’m terrible company. Said so yourself in court.”    

“If you’ve discovered a way to kill me with a shiv made of burger wrappers, please do it quickly,” Frederick snorts. “Even I can appreciate the irony of the past catching up to me, or something in that thread.” 

“Think I want to kill you, Frederick?” asks Graham, mouth turning upwards and crooked with amusement. 

“More like irritably shit on my relevance to whatever game you’re playing, but since I grew up in a Christian home that mandates charity during the days surrounding the birth of Christ, I thought you’d like to eat something that didn’t come straight from a pre-sealed tray, or from the abdominal cavity of the rudest person your man-eating ex-physician met this week.” 

He shuffles his cane again, where the grip has gone sweaty in his hand. “You do know it’s almost Christmas right?” Frederick asks.

“I know,” Graham says quietly.

“Then a very early Merry Christmas, Will Graham. Have the singular joy of eating all the cheese and potatoes you want in front of a man who can’t. My gift to you.” 

They stare at each other from between the bars. Frederick wonders if the food will even be somewhat warm by the time anyone eats it, and if that matters. He got what he wanted out of it. He even technically got the talk he waved over Lecter’s head like a love letter the other man isn’t allowed to read. He could stick it in the break room fridge and it would be gone by this time tomorrow. Whoever took it wouldn’t be any more grateful than Graham, but at least they wouldn’t go out of their way to reject it either. 

“I don’t want your pity,” Graham adds, turning to stare at the sink. “I certainly don’t want your charity.”

Now there’s an emotion Frederick can relate to. There’s the self-denial that Frederick tosses aside for the cushy state mental hospital position, and the relief to be able to be briefly content that Will Graham still is not to the point of giving up his ambition for. He’s made of different things that way. 

But that’s not what Frederick’s here for - the Christian charity, or frank discussions of whether or not Hannibal Lecter has a warped idea of holiday merriment alike.

(You’ve humbled yourself a few times in the past. You hate it, because if you don’t take yourself seriously that no one will, but you can do it again now for that rare moment of kinship. Lord knows you could do it for nothing and justify it to yourself later, and to not feel lonely right now? Certainly for that.) 

Frederick sighs, and pulls a carton of cheese sticks from the bag to stick into the passthrough. 

“Then eat it because nothing would frustrate Hannibal Lecter more than knowing you ate fast food with me instead of celebrating his stupid feast of decapitated animal parts on crostinis and bone china,” he says, and tries not to wince when one stick goes rolling across the concrete floor, and Graham does nothing but watch it with a mystified gaze. 

Graham looks up. Is that all, his eyes seem to say. 

Frederick slumps against the bars a little, trying for casual, but coming up awkward instead. A burger package crinkles in his hand.

“...And because it would satisfy me if someone took some kind of satisfaction of out of all this garbage I ordered,” he says like a secret. “Consider it culinary voyeurism - probably the only thing Lecter and I have in common beyond the profession and you for a patient. I’d probably trade an arm or a leg for the kidney back if it meant I could eat out like a normal person again, but I’ll settle for watching you do it as a favor to me instead.”

Graham still watches for a moment, but stands, looking at the cheese sticks like they might bite, or that Frederick might pull them away. Frederick supposes the last bit sounds a little kinky if viewed through the wrong lens, but he also supposes Graham doesn’t often view through that lens by merit of being so dour and melancholic all the time.

(And the utter absence of any and all masturbatory practices while incarcerated, but you’re not likely to get him to eat the fast food if you mention that.)     

He pushes the burger next to sit companionably by the cheese sticks. 

“I’d promise there’s no human ingredients, but it was made by teenagers, and knowing my luck this year, there’s probably a hair in it,” Frederick snorts. 

Another pause, but afterwards Graham breaks into laughter again, and eats a room temperature cheese stick like it’s the funniest thing he’ll do all month. Hilarious, more so than the pot shots he takes at Frederick’s understanding of the absurd reality of Graham’s life this year. A grand irony, like being accused of homicide and mayhem while the actual perpetrator perpetrates travesties of possibly literal finger foods on the rest of the Baltimore elite. 

“Merry Christmas then,” Will says between bites. “God bless us, everyone.” 

---

Will Graham diligently eats a cheeseburger, half a container of french fries, and all the cheese sticks. He declines the onion rings on account of “disliking the texture”, and opines on one occasion that he wishes he had a milkshake. 

“Or egg nog, if that’s more seasonally appropriate,” he adds, chewing idly from the floor, leaning against the bars. “Something with trees or Santa on it. No deer though,” he adds darkly. “Completely over all deer motifs from this year forward until death.” 

From the other side, Frederick sits on the ground as well, holding the onion rings which have gone stale and dull - there’s not much of an aroma left to enjoy, save for something that reminds him of his car through most of high school and the time right after college and his doctoral studies were completed.

(“You have to eat,” your mother tells you on either side of those years, unbothered by if you wear ratty t-shirts or a nice gentleman’s outfit, and sneaks crisp twenties from her billfold where your father can’t see her doing it.)  

“I’m sure I can steal some from the staff refrigerator,” he says blithely. “At this hour I can’t imagine anyone will see me do it, but maybe they’ll find a new way to disappoint me and not have any.” 

“No security in the break room?” asks Graham. 

“None that they need to know about,” Frederick says imperiously, and checks the cuffs of his shirt. He’s feeling stale too at this point. He could do with a shower and a long night in bed. He’d say a glass of wine, but he’s supposed to be building good habits, and while making it to bed should  count as a special occasion, in practice it isn’t.  

Graham doesn’t say anything to that, other than to shrug a shoulder, and take a sip of water from a styrofoam cup that Frederick pushes through the bars. It seems unlikely that Graham would swallow the remnants in some suicidal fit, and Frederick thinks he might actually pay for the opportunity to see someone try and make a weapon out of a dixie cup. 

So maybe being a mental hospital administrator is in his blood after all. 

“This was for you,” Graham says, not at all afraid to make them both uncomfortable. “One upping Hannibal. The greasy midnight snacks…getting to have some sort of reward I would want to dangle between us.” 

“It was,” Frederick replies. “But is that bad if it’s also good for you?”

Graham thinks about that for a long time, Frederick suspects, maybe even longer than the time they sit on the floor before the pressure on his gut becomes too much, and the night nurses change shifts and comment on how weird this little conversation is. Therapy, he’ll bill it as. They won’t ask if it really was, of course, because he’s not really a part of their clique anymore than he is the others, but it bothers Frederick anyway that they might talk about it like he’s done something weird or disrespectful. 

He stumbles upwards to stand, and Will Graham pushes waxed wrappers back to him respectfully without making a single sharp object or comment to cut him with. 

They’re not friends, so no one wishes anyone a good night, or asks after the others plans. Frederick doesn’t think there would be anything that either of them could say of interest anyway - Graham will be in his cell. Frederick will be in his office. They will repeat this until something more substantial changes than what Frederick can eat, or what Graham can tolerate. 

“Too early for an actual Merry Christmas,” Will comments before Frederick leaves.

"You said it without a fuss an hour ago," Frederick prods. "Or has all your holiday cheer disappeared with the fries?"

Will smiles. “You're right," he says. "Then a very early Merry Christmas anyway.” 

“Merry Christmas,” Fredericks says out of habit because it’s what you do when someone says it. “If things work out as designed, maybe it really will be merry.” 

—

Abel Gideon is kidnapped from the hospital, which pretty much ensures that Frederick’s Christmas is anything but merry. 

He takes the calls because he must, as he must also for Abel Gideon’s initial escape months ago, and Matthew Brown’s little swim club adventure in the recent weeks before now, but he does so with the staunchest of frowns and the severest of headaches with nothing but water and sparingly applied ibuprofen to comfort him, because he cannot have a nice scotch to mellow himself out, or more than half the recommended dosage of most pain killers lest he wear out his liver on top of everything else. 

There is no evidence to suggest it, but Frederick knows it is Hannibal Lecter that causes this nuisance. He knows it because what better return fire to taking something Lecter wanted than to give him heaps of annoyance in return? 

“Ah, Frederick ,” he hears Lecter say in his head. “I’m so glad you were able to enjoy your night with Will commiserating over religious holdups under a veil of holiday merrymaking. Did you decide if I was being weird and European, or if you just wished you had said everything I did first? Maybe take a rare opportunity to have what I was wanting before I could?”

(Yes, is the answer to both in some way.)

When the call comes that evidence suggests Graham is innocent of all that he stands accused of a day later, Frederick supposes he understands the play. He gets Will Graham for Christmas, and Hannibal Lecter potentially gets him for New Years Day. 

Happy holidays, thank you for coming indeed.

Frederick orders a nicoise salad for lunch with no fingerling potatoes and tells them to hold the capers, and allows himself two glasses of piquette. Half the alcohol of a normal glass of wine means he’s allowed twice as much, he reasons. One must cope somehow, and volume is more important than potency. He's getting good at compromising these days. 

His parents send him a tin of butter cookies, which his mother explains on a small recipe card has no actual butter and is made with pumpkin puree - the recipe is scribbled on the back, just in case he wants to try it with his new diet. They are absolutely terrible, and he eats every last one of them because they are just for him.

Will Graham, once he is free to roam once more instead of an animal in his stall, sends him something too - a small cooler full of chilled river trout, and a note of his own. 

Good with olive oil and just a touch of lemon and salt.  

 It is. Better still with maybe an oaked chardonnay and an abundance of charred greens with pork belly and winter berries, but the baked turnips and radishes will do with a pinch of thyme and sage.