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Monday 9:45 A.M.
Will turns and listens to the whispers. He can't quite make out what his students are saying; they're too far away. But he's perceptive enough to know that it's about him.
He turns around, with the screen behind him, and looks very serious at the future generation of the FBI, which, well, leaves a lot to be desired. It's not like Will usually pays them much attention; he's here to deliver the material and see if he can make them a bit smarter, not to be a high school teacher watching for love notes being passed around.
He despises socializing, even though he gets paid for it. Will puts on a no-nonsense face and turns back to finish the class. There are only 15 minutes of this horror left, and he can go to his office, check notes, and then head to his beloved home, away from the world, and hopefully with zero social contact.
Obviously, as this whispering and lingering gazes have been going on since he entered the classroom, when his hour finally ends, at least five students are putting the typical faces of someone that want to approach him for questions (if they paid attention, they wouldn't need to). So, being the smart guy he is, Will quickly turns off the projector, grabs his briefcase containing his papers, and walks briskly towards the door, pretending that, of course, nobody wanted a few minutes of his attention.
If they require it so much, they can book an appointment; it's not like that would save their semester.
Will walks down the hallway without looking at anyone but feeling fixed gazes on his back. He tries not to get paranoid, and when he reaches his office, he closes the door firmly, sits in his ergonomic chair (a gift from Dr. Lecter, very thoughtful), and takes out his mobile phone to check his reflection on the camera: he's well-groomed, his dark circles are barely noticeable, and his tie, quite elegant in his opinion, is perfectly in place. There's nothing in his appearance to warrant such intense staring; it's downright rude.
It's not the only strange thing since returning from Boston after spending five days among lawyers, prosecutors, and jurors, talking against his will because, yes, Will, you're the one who can best explain the case, I, Jack Crawford, couldn't abandon my important work to go talk to a bunch of idiots.
The other thing he's unsure about is that he believes that Dr. Lecter, Hannibal, as he's asked Will to call him, is avoiding him.
He rescheduled their appointment for next week, even though they had agreed to meet today after Will's return. He also didn't answer the call Will made on Saturday, only sending a brief email saying he had a full schedule and could attend to him in a few days.
Well, Will has grown accustomed to Dr. Lecter's company, the attention he receives, and, well, their conversations. He doesn't like the idea that, to him, it's just medical care, and he can postpone it like any other patient.
Uff.
He knows it sounds highly unethical, but come on, he's so in need of affection that it was inevitable he would find an outlet in the presence of the good doctor (not to mention that he feels stupidly attracted, knowing he's well below the doctor's league, even in his best attire). That's right, another terrible decision in the long list of bad decisions that 34-year-old Will Graham has made.
He takes his briefcase to get the class materials, placing it on his desk, and three little notes fall out. I really am teaching kids, he thinks, annoyed, picking one up and realizing that the love notes are for him.
What the fuck.
Seven days before
Monday 11:40 A.M.
If there's one horrible thing about adulthood, Beverly thinks, it's having to take care of your own health. Something like deciding for herself that yes, Bev, you have to go to the dentist at least once a year.
So here she is, in the office of a certain Alistair Rochester, recommended by Jimmy (who had more contacts than anyone). Sitting in the waiting room, she plays Tetris on her phone, very bored. But it's not until she gets frustrated because she was really about to beat her highest score when the bar fell wrong (yes, it fell, it's not her fault), that she decides to leave the technology behind and check the magazines on the coffee table.
A middle-aged woman in front of her is devouring a Cosmopolitan with none other than Princess Stéphanie of Monaco on the cover. Ugh, this Rochester guy must be a nineties relic.
She takes out three Cosmopolitan issues, one with a very sensual Angelina Jolie from her "Girl, Interrupted" days (oh my God, it was the moment Bev realized bisexuality existed), another with the beautiful Julia Roberts posing, and a third with an actress she doesn't recognize, whose career probably died in that decade.
She starts flipping through that magazine from February 2002 when her eyes widen, and a loud exclamation of "what the fuck" escapes her.
Holy Jack Crawford! Her jaw seems stuck on the stupid 'O' that her mouth can't stop making.
Because the person there, looking sultrily into the camera, with pouty lips and a flirty gaze, is her friend, her hermit-with-seven-dogs: the grumpy Will Graham.
What the hell.
She looks at the lady, who returns her gaze as if she's not used to hearing attractive women shout while reading a magazine, and checks the page again. Will, in his twenties, is dressed in a tight suit, a clean-shaven face, and curls falling beautifully all over his face.
Well, Will is extremely handsome. At some point in their friendship she tried to flirt with him, but Will passed it off without being a jerk, more like a puppy that just wants to be left alone. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
But of course, in the magazine, he looks like he stepped out of a movie. No, a runway. Oh, she doesn't know how to explain it. She takes it and tucks it into her briefcase, getting up because clearly, she has more important things to do than to have her teeth checked.
Bev has a mission: to uncover Will Graham's sordid past as a model.
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Tuesday 9:20 A.M.
In just one day, Jimmy and Brian join the quest.
It turns out that Will is not in Washington but in Boston doing court work, the most boring part of his job after Jack roped him into it, and he won't be back for five days, so the group consists only of them.
Both had interesting reactions: Jimmy just exclaimed, "Oh, my lord," almost crossing himself despite being an atheist, while Brian rolled his eyes and muttered, "It's not fair," looking at the photo with a lot of seriousness, as if he could summon that young Will to stand by his side.
"Come on, guys, it's not material for self-pleasure," she says seriously, holding back laughter at Brian's indignant face, which turns red to the ears. "It's evidence, EVIDENCE," she repeats more sternly.
"His face is still so lovely," Jimmy comments with very wise features. "It was obvious that he would be even when he was young. Woe is me, to be 20 again."
"Well, well, some people are blessed," Brian says in a tone of resigned acceptance.
Beverly crosses her arms, ready to lead this task. "These are from Burberry cologne ads. A quick search yielded a huge number of photos." She takes out her phone to show her colleagues the collection she found.
Brian puts on the face he always has when he's near Will, wanting to both fuck him and kill himself. "It's too unfair," he murmurs.
"Okay, I'm paying you to share cats photos, or to work and have the lab results for me," Jack Crawford's loud voice startles them, and they immediately put on guilty expressions.
Jack looks at them suspiciously, walking over to Beverly and snatching the phone from her in one swift motion. If Jimmy and Brian's faces are memorable, Jack's is worth recording. What a missed opportunity not to have it!
His eyes widen like saucers, and his expressions go through a whole range: disbelief, horror, curiosity, skepticism, and finally, exhaustion.
"What is this" he states without using a question mark as he looks at them as if they were truly to blame for Will Graham's sordid modeling past.
Beverly replies to him exactly like that and tells him they are investigating it. "Because, Jack, sir, this is truly a goldmine."
Jack looks at her, then at his two co-conspirators, and then at the ceiling. "I don't want to know anything about it! Nothing!" he repeats, waving his finger in a clear sign of an angry teacher.
All three nod in agreement, Beverly puts away the phone that Jack returns to her, and they get to work to have the test results as soon as possible because they need to resume the search for Will's sordid modeling past.
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Wednesday 2:30 P.M.
On the third day, Alana Bloom joins the group with the information. Her face is frozen in a giant blush, mouth nearly agape, her eyes fixed on Beverly's phone.
"Good heavens," is all she says when her mind has recovered from the shock of seeing Will Graham sensually posing with an open shirt and a pout on his face.
Beverly nods with empathy, knowing the feeling. "Years of this, years and years," she explains.
Alana touches her chin, "Somehow, he must have had the money to buy his house and support his canine family. With what they paid in the police, I doubt he could have done it."
"Exactly," says Jimmy, once again in a wise tone, while looking at his own phone with more photos of Will, in a pool, on a bed, in the street, and in various suits.
Alana continues with an impressed expression, "It's one thing to know that Will is well," her words get cut off, "good..."
"That he's delicious," Jimmy chimes in again, raising his eyes from his own phone.
Alana seems like she wants to disagree but eventually shrugs, "Well, yes, that. But much more in the sense of a tortured and misanthropic soul. Not in this kind of image," she lifts Beverly's phone, where Will is stretching his arms, showing defined abs, with his pants unbuttoned, "It's like it's from a parallel reality."
She shakes her head and looks at them with seriousness and concern. "You're not going to bother him with this, right?" she asks them in a grandmotherly tone, "because clearly, just the fact that we're looking at these photos seems like a violation of his privacy."
"It's the internet, and they're everywhere," Brian answers, a defender of liberties.
"That's not the point, and you know it," says Alana, with a gentle furrow of her brows.
Beverly raises her arms, "Of course, I don't want to annoy Will any further. If that happened, I think he would turn into salt, he's already full of bitterness as it is. Just getting past this curiosity. It's not every day you find out that the grumpiest person you know used to be a supermodel."
Alana thinks about it for a few seconds, looks at the screen again, and, well, she has no choice but to nod.
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Thursday 11:50 A.M.
On the fourth day, Dr. Lecter learns about Will Graham's sordid modeling past.
He's with Jack, doing the profiling tasks that Will usually handles, as Will hasn't returned yet. Brian lets out a comment about the SEARCH. Jack obviously scolds him, telling him to leave his stalking hobbies for after work. But Beverly senses curiosity in Dr. Lecter's face (difficult to say; perhaps in Lithuania they are accustomed to not showing facial expressions).
It's not until Jack has left that Lecter approaches them, saying, "I may be able to assist you in your investigation."
Brian eyes him suspiciously, saying, "I don't think it's necessary."
But Beverly has some ideas, and these days she has been so bored. So she replies, "Did you know that our Will, before becoming a dog enthusiast, used to sell perfumes?"
The doctor reveals nothing, only a ‘Oh, I see’ kind of gesture on his face. "I couldn't imagine it, but selling perfumes is not a strange job."
As she speaks, Beverly scrolls through her photos (and yes, once the novelty wears off, she'll delete them, of course), selecting one where Will is covering one eye with a sunflower. "Here, I never said he was a salesman, just that he worked in promoting perfumes."
Lecter takes the phone, his eyes fixed on the screen, and with an elegant finger, he starts changing the images.
Jack is no longer the best impression. The doctor, without moving a single muscle on his face, seems to be having a stroke. Beverly takes the phone out of his hands, Dr. Lecter looking at it with a lost gaze on the horizon, as if he had seen something divine.
Seconds seem to last the most awkward hour of their lives until Lecter says, "My apologies, I need to return to my consultation."
And like a man with no purpose, he walks toward the door.
Brian and Jimmy exchange looks of pity. "It was bound to happen," Jimmy says, sounding like a know-it-all.
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Friday 5:30 P.M.
Beverly will swear to her grave that she didn't viralize some photos at Quantico or on campus. Someone must have overheard them in the hallway, but now they even set one of the photos as the background on one of the computers in the lab.
Jack will kill them, and then Will, when he arrives, will take care of dismembering them while making those creepy comments that characterize him.
"We're going to die," Brian agrees, sitting with a look of not wanting to lose his life so young. Jimmy pats his hand sympathetically.
Beverly is about to agree when the boss of all bosses storms in like a hurricane.
"I told you to leave this for your free time!" Jack says in that tone of voice that makes Will tremble like a Chihuahua, his face red with pure anger.
If Beverly didn't have such a strong character, she would be shivering like her colleagues. "It wasn't us," she explains.
Jack shakes his head, now in a clear posture of a disappointed father. "Each agent's past is their own story. Nobody has the right to come and question it. I want all the evidence erased from this place, from this state, from this country, before Will returns. Understood?"
The three nod and, with great reluctance, they start deleting the images. Brian is in charge of posting on the intranet, which thankfully Will ignores (like everything), that the next person to upload photos, comment on them, print any of them, or anything related will be subject to a conversation with Jack Crawford and Human Resources.
It's a strong enough threat, and by evening, no one at the FBI mentions the incident about Will Graham's sordid modeling past.
Monday 3:30 P.M.
Okay, it's clear that something is going on, Will thinks. No one comes to visit him in his office; everyone knows it's best to avoid it. But two professors, Charles Erickson from Psychology and Emma Petersen from Criminology, have come to invite him for coffee, with their faces making those gestures as if they want more than just caffeine. As if Will were even willing to be in the cafeteria, where they will probably scrutinize him even more.
Of course not.
He leaves his office still feeling paranoid and heads to the lab. He went straight to his class in the morning, so he hasn't seen Jack and the others yet. Will also didn't receive any unusual comments while he was out of town, so he hasn't been able to figure out the mystery.
When he enters, the scientific group is concentrated on examining the body of a man whose lungs are in his stomach (ah, Baltimore, how much he missed it). He greets them curtly, and three pairs of eyes stare at him as if Will had walked in doing the Macarena.
Brian, if possible, has red ears and avoids his gaze, Jimmy looks at him with some concentration, and Beverly, oh, Beverly has that look of having done something wrong. Will can smell the guilt in the air.
"What the hell did you do?" he asks bluntly, crossing his arms. Of course, it had to be these three idiots responsible for his strange day full of stalkers.
Beverly opens her mouth and starts to give some poorly made excuse when Jack enters and also stares at him strangely.
"Will, you're back," he says, approaching and patting him on the shoulder as if Will hadn't called him yesterday to give him a summary of his stay in Boston. Jack acts as if there wasn't a huge amount of tension in the area and as if Will wasn't about to kill them all to find out what the fuck he missed.
Behind Jack, Alana enters, who is an even worse actress. "Will!" she exclaims in a very loud voice, looking him up and down and blushing as if Will were dressed for any other occasion.
"Can someone explain to me what the hell is going on? I have three student confessions, two tasteless drawings, two coffee invitations, and the entire building is spying on me!"
Beverly is the one who answers, putting on a serious and innocent face. "Well, Will, it's just that your career selling perfumes has become well-known."
Ohhhhh.
Fuck.
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Jack gave him the afternoon off. Sometimes he acts like a very decent human being, and seeing Will's deathly expression, a mortified Alana, and the three idiots he has as scientists crumbling with their defenses, there was no other option.
Will arrives home, sits among his dogs, and can only curse his life. Always, always something else adds to his wretched existence. It's not that he's ashamed of his ‘sordid modeling past,’ as Beverly kept exclaiming, which paid well for his college education and his house, but it's not something he'd want to be known. He already has to deal with psychiatrists obsessed with studying his psyche, people staring at him like a bug, and students applauding him for doing his job.
Now he has to accept those romantic and lascivious glances and comments that he detests so much and thought he had overcome when he moved to Virginia. An adolescence of awkward situations and his twenties of shallow and inconsistent relationships because while Will knows that he does, in fact, seem quite attractive, his personality leaves much to be desired.
This is atrocious, he thinks, sinking into the couch while Winston and Buster try to climb on top of him. It's while thinking that he'll let them sit next to him that he remembers Hannibal.
Of course! He found out too, and that's why he's avoiding him.
Will groans like a damn dog and puts his hands to his face, cursing his life once again. Everything was going so well, really. He thought that maybe in a few more months he could go to the doctor's house, bring good wine, and see where things were headed. He believes that Hannibal might also be attracted to him, perhaps; they just needed to overcome the doctor-patient relationship and make Will less annoying.
Now, of course, Hannibal is probably mortified by his photogenic past. Maybe he even wants to cancel their appointments, pass him to another doctor, and stop seeing him.
Will sinks even further into the couch, thinking that those damn campaigns for that awful cologne were not worth it when the engine of the only Bentley he knows sounds outside the window. He stays still, just in case he's hallucinating, until the knock on the door.
Will gets up and shakes off the hair his dogs left him, takes a deep breath, and walks to the front door. Hannibal is there, looking at him as if nothing had happened.
"Will, I apologize for the unexpected visit. I imagine you'd like to rest after your trip," the doctor admits, while he heads to the living room, and Will regrets not having tried to tidy up a bit when he sees the beds of his pets scattered around with the engine he's working on.
"It's no trouble," he responds, and because he's tired and wants to avoid future discomfort, he gets ahead of the situation. "I thought you were avoiding me."
Hannibal, who has taken off his jacket, reveals his brown shirt, black tie, and equally dark vest. He looks at Will with surprise. Much better acted, much better than Alana and Jack, at least. "Why would you think that?"
Will sighs aloud and rolls his eyes. "Because my old photos from when I modeled for Burberry go viral?"
If he didn't know Hannibal, so implacable and imposing, he would think he's nervous. "Those photos," the doctor replies.
Will nods, scratching his neck. "Yes. Let's say I've had an extremely uncomfortable day."
Now Hannibal watches him with a psychiatrist's demeanor. "What's the reason for that?"
Will returns to his couch, where he sinks into the spot he left. "All those looks and thoughts. I've never liked being like this," he says, looking at himself. "I imagine it's a waste," he laughs with bitterness.
And, although the couch is covered in dog's hair and has seen better days, Hannibal sits next to him, resting his elbows on his knees and folding his hands until his knuckles are white. He's silent for a few seconds and responds, "I find them artistic," he comments, looking ahead. "The photos. There are certain tones and angles that are quite satisfying."
Oh.
Oh.
Will straightens up and turns to the doctor, feeling, for the first time since he found out about this, a blush cover his face. "You liked them? Is that why you were avoiding me?"
He immediately regrets what he said because it sounds very pathetic and needy, talking like this with his psychiatrist, while the doctor is just trying to comfort him. Of course, the fact that Hannibal turns toward him, looks at him in an extremely intense way, and plants a kiss on his mouth, removes any doubt that yes, Will Graham is the most perceptive man in the world.
Between kisses, with Hannibal on top, touching him with more hands than he has, Will hears him confess with a marked accent, "I spent the entire weekend buying those magazines on eBay, downloading collections from image banks." Hannibal kisses his neck and smells him with strength, which shouldn't be sexy, but it is.
Will allows it, nodding, and moaning when Hannibal tears his shirt while trying to take it off. "I have others that never saw the light of day," he answers with a sassy voice, helping him take off his own clothes.
Hannibal growls like a beast, which Will takes as a resounding, ‘Please, I want to see them,’ as they continue kissing like that, as if life depended on it.
Blessed Burberry, is the last coherent thought Will has.
Afterward, after they're both lying in his bed, the strong fire in his powerful fireplace, and Hannibal's face looking at him with devotion, almost admiration, his hands touching his mouth and cheekbones, and talking to him about Dante and other sappy things (which he now likes), Will thinks that perhaps changing the status of their relationship isn't that difficult.
The only thing left is to clarify what to do with the Ripper because Will has no intention of sending either of them to jail. And there are always Gideon and Chilton to take care of the problem, after all.