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He dreads his first appointment of the day now that there has been a breach in personal space. He briefly considers breaking the little man's fat eager neck, but a referral would be easier and cleaner. Franklin Froideveaux, irritating as he is, is not important enough to risk exposure.
They sit opposite each other in blessed but uncomfortable silence. His thinks about the previous night, when he was taking off Wil's dress and the sweet burning of her heated brain was thick in his nose. She looked pale and succulent as he reached into her dress and discovered her little secret. She tasted thicker, saltier, richer than normal. She reacted more intensely: pulling on his hair until his scalp bled, nearly breaking the skin on his shoulders with her nails. Signs of an oncoming period, he thinks. He wonders if she would let him lap at her when she’s bleeding. He feels himself getting hard and decides to start the conversation.
“Would you like to discuss our chance encounter?”
Franklin looks relieved--inability to broach uncomfortable topics, he should make a note of that--and leans forward in his chair. “It...wasn’t altogether by chance.”
And that rakes the coals of his ire. He had been warned by the last psychiatrist that this may happen. That this clinging thing would latch on like a leach. The near-disaster of the previous night had started with this buffoon and now he’s stuck with the professional equivalent of an unwanted pet.
“It just occurred to me,” Franklin continues in his stammering way, “that maybe would like it too.”
“Indeed I do,” he agrees.
“Yeah, I mean, I didn’t know you were there with your girlfriend. If, if I had...” Franklin shrugs as if his reference to Wil was unimportant. There is a beat of silence before he blunders on. “I tried to get your attention--”
“I was aware.”
“I knew that you were aware. Even though you were pretending that you weren’t.”
“It would be unethical to approach a patient,” he explains. And normally, he does not say, the patient is too embarrassed or ashamed to approach the therapist with the expectation of having a conversation. “Or,” he does say, “to acknowledge our relationship outside this room unless the patient gives consent.”
“But I don’t really know you outside of this room.” He gestures vaguely at Hannibal. “Like--like your girlfriend! I really wouldn’t have expected someone so plain--”
“I am your psychiatrist,” Hannibal explains like it is the end of the discussion. He thinks that if Franklin weren’t so besotted with him, weren’t likely to brag about him as his psychiatrist, he would end him for making such casual remarks about Wil. It’s tantamount to insult for him to even think about her, let alone disregard the treasure of opportunity that lurks inside of her. But maybe expecting such a simple mind to understand Wil’s complexity, the beauty he is firing out of her, was a fault on his end. The world turns on the shallow judgments of little people. The rest must make of them as they must.
Franklin continues to plead to him with misplaced intimacies. He continues to rebuff them with cold, ethical logic. He cannot be his friend. He cannot be anything but his psychiatrist. And none of the persistent claims to the merits of his friendship will be enough to stir Hannibal from his position.
Though the conversation does, unexpectedly, trigger a line of thinking regarding Wil. He tries to avoid hypocrisy whenever and wherever possible. As he tells one patient he can not form more intimate bonds, he is simultaneously thinking about the patient he is sleeping with, unofficial though she may be. This delicate balance of theirs is going to, in time, tip in their disfavor. Besides, he is building more intimacy as a romantic partner than as her psychiatrist. He wonders if it would be best to cement their relationship as entirely romantic. She was seeking to clarify this exact issue and he refused to give her a satisfying answer, as much for his own amusement as for his benefit. Posturing himself as unsure but passionate allows for flexibility. It would not be unexpected if he were to explain his change of mind as the result of personal reflection.
There is an attraction to the idea that he can call her his. His lover. His girlfriend. He likes that connotation--that she is his to touch and claim, to navigate and protect, to corrupt and enlighten.
He discusses it with Bedelia later that day.
“I have the opportunity for romance,” he says.
“Is she part of your veil?” Bedelia asks.
“No. She is...different,” he says.
“Describe her.”
He does. She is a unique woman, plain and uncared for and uncouth, but with an active imagination and a natural gift for understanding. She is stronger than she lets others see, fortified with impeccable integrity and stubborn nobility. She is beyond ordinary. Beyond his curiosity, even. They have nothing in common. No shared interests beyond the macabre and even that is something she is repulsed by, forced into because of her job. Nevertheless, he has entered a realm of ferocious and near-uninhibited desire for and he finds himself, for the first time, unsure.
“What are you unsure of?”
“How to proceed,” he says after a moment. "I have never thought about someone this much." He's never felt this incessant tug on his chest; a guide, he is sure, back to her.
She considers him for a moment. Considers the man she thinks she can see. “Emotions can be powerful things, Hannibal. When we encounter new ones, we are often left disoriented.” She checks her watch. “In situations like yours, I would suggest following your instincts. What do they tell you to do?”
He looks at the corner of her sitting room. “I want to tell someone. I want to let the world know.”
“And how could you go about doing that?”
He imagines his dining room table lined with ten or so of his most influential acquaintances. Down the center of the table are his best recipes, taken from the best pigs. To his right is Wil, stunning in red, with her hair pulled back and her eyes focused on him. He may even serve a special dish to her: the tongue of a hog who had sniffed too closely and who had chased her away with his trying squeals.
Yes. He will throw a feast. He will have Wil there. As the guest of honor. His lover. His partner. His girlfriend. His.
He is as drunk on the idea of a public announcement as he is on wine. He can't find the energy to be ashamed when Wil arrives later for her appointment and points out the glass of wine and half-drunk bottle.
“I have an unconventional psychiatrist,” he admits. Wil appears a little uncomfortable by the admission and tries to make a light joke before sitting across from him.
“Am I your psychiatrist or are we having conversations?” he asks. It’s important for him to know what she defines them as before he can redefine them. Does she think they are friends who have agreed, as adults, to enjoy each other; or, does she think they are a doctor and a patient who have crossed a significant boundary of trust? Her answer, a simple and drawn out “yes”, suggests a combination of the two. This gives him hope.
He gets up and fetches a wine glass for her. She remains seated and asks, “How long have you been seeing a psychiatrist?”
“Since I became a psychiatrist,” he answers. He doesn’t reveal anything else as he pours her a glass of wine. He can feel her looking at him; inspecting him with suspicion, paranoia, and the slightest jealousy. The slow unveiling of intimate details will keep her interested in the life he lives outside of her.
They briefly discuss Freddie Lounds’ article. He tips her off course, though he trusts that soon enough she will be looking for a single intelligent psychopath again. The brief scramble will be fun to watch, when he considers what he’s planning. The image of Wil in a red dress he picked out for her, sighing indecently over food that he has made for her, returns to him. He licks his lips.
Wil is standing in front of the chaise lounge, sipping slowly, gazing at the far wall. He stands up and slowly approaches her. By the time she notices him, he is at her elbow, his thumb and index finger capturing her by her wiry arm.
“I have something I want to discuss with you,” he says. There is a flash of fear in her blue eyes. He wants to chase that blaze of neurons down and settle in its synapses. “Please, sit.”
He guides her down to the lounge behind them. His entire hand is curled softly around her arm. He tries to sustain eye contact, but her flickering eyes force him to try something else. His hands capture her free one and press together encouragingly. “I have decided to throw a dinner party,” he says.
Wil’s eyebrows fly up. “Oh. Well...that’s good. Your friends were saying you haven’t thrown one in a while.”
“I want you to be there,” he continues. He meets her gaze and, this time, he manages to capture her eyes. “As my girlfriend.”
Wil chuckles, smiles, and looks away. Puts her wine glass on the floor. “Um,” she hums just before a momentary pause that causes her smile to slip. “That’s... Last night, you didn’t want me think of myself as your friend. What changed?”
“A conversation with my psychiatrist,” he says. “She suggested that I follow my instincts.”
“And your instincts tell you to throw a dinner party?”
His instincts tell him to lock her in his bedroom and so that he can talk to her when he wants to, make love to her when he wants to, and keep her out of reach of anyone who might try to pull them apart. To scratch his name into the side of her face, rearrange it to reflect his image of her, mark her as his singular masterpiece. His fingertips tread lightly onto the underside of her wrist. Her pulse beats faster. “With you as my inspiration.”
She turns her head away. Reaches down to retrieve and drink her wine. “Have you decided who will be there?”
“Friends, colleagues,” he says. “Alana is--”
“Alana?” she repeats. “Alana Bloom?” She stands up and shakes her head. “No no no no no-- I’m not...I refuse if Alana is going to be there.”
“Why is that?”
“She...she knows about us, Hannibal. She knows how we met. If I turn up as your girlfriend, don’t you think it’s going to get back to Jack?”
That was, in part, his reason for inviting her. Jack needs someone to prune his ego. He needs to be humiliated for framing Gideon and stealing Wil away from him the other night. "You are worried what Jack will think?"
"Yes! He thinks I come here for therapy, not to fuck the therapist." She puts her glass down on the table next to Hannibal's chair.
"What do you think he'll do?" he asks. "If he knew. If Alana told him."
She shrugs. "He might make me see a different psychiatrist."
"What else?" Hannibal presses. "Why would seeking another unbiased opinion be so disagreeable?"
She crosses her arms and keeps her back turned towards him as she walks over to the table he keeps his sketches. "They could say I'm unfit for field work. Jack might actually listen to them."
"Would you miss it?" he asks. She doesn't answer. He watches her look over the sketches, put her hands in her pockets, walk away, towards his stag statue. He looks at his glass. "You are concerned that you lose yourself to the killers you are trying to catch. Would it be truly unfortunate if Jack were told that you were mentally unfit?"
"I do a lot of good, Hannibal," she says, quiet but sturdy. She reaches the statue and runs her fingers over its horns.
"And if you reach the point of no return? What good do you do if you are consumed by the monsters?" he asks.
She turns around and crosses her arms in front of her stomach. "I will think about the party. Your party. Your offer. And I will let you know soon.”
She collects her coat. He stands up and approaches. “Our hour has not ended.”
She avoids his face. “I know.”
“Would you like to join me for dinner?” he asks. “I have a leg of lamb prepared and ready to be roasted.”
She shakes her head as she puts on her coat. “I have an early lecture tomorrow.” She pulls at the cuffs of her sleeves. “Thank you, though. That’s very kind.”
He watches her and feels drawn. To reach out, to touch, to lay the pads of his fingers between her shoulder blades. She escapes him, barely, and leaves his office without another word.
Later, when he is arranging Andrew Caldwell’s body on the bus, he wonders if he insulted her. He runs their conversation over and over and he can’t think of anything he said or did that may have upset her. Was it his attitude towards her concerns? Or maybe it was the sudden change of mind? Perhaps she liked their arrangement, their potent blend of friendship, sex, and the forbidden. Perhaps she doesn't want change.
He steps away from his composition, but finds none of his customary accomplishment or satisfaction. Rather, he aches just below his diaphragm.
Over the next week, he doesn't speak to, hear from, or see Wil. She doesn't answer his customary mid-day calls, and after the second day he stops trying. Preparations consume his free time, though she occupies his mind almost every moment. He notices that the low ache inside of him persists and waxes with the time spent away. The thoughts themselves become more agitated, active. He thinks about showing up at her house, her job. Following her home from a crime scene. Breaking into her house and falling asleep next to her. He feels foolish, adolescent, uncontrolled, as if he’s careening through a dream that he cannot wake from. He asks about Wil when Alana comes over, but her response is disappointingly evasive. He thinks about telling her, here and now, that he and Wil are in the middle of an affair. Or, to be precise, they are in the middle of their first fight of their affair, if this silence can be called a fight. But he thinks about the shock on her face when he introduces Wil at the party and decides against it.
When the week cycles through and he faces down Franklin once again, the throb inside of him has grown into something breathtakingly painful. Something so strong and tedious that he considers a visit his physician. But Franklin, in his thoughtlessness, offers him a more likely affliction: loneliness. He is lonely; specifically, for Wil. He misses her.
It’s unsurprising. They have not spoken in a week. That is unusual. Even before they started sleeping together they spoke every other day; after, he would wake up to see her tightly-curled body knotted in his sheets and fall asleep tucked against his side. He has gotten used to her presence, her smell, the few smiles she gives him, all of them genuine. It's unsurprising, as well, that she doesn't show up for her appointment. She is acting as expected. He, though, feels the ache inside him crumble apart like an ancient, abandoned hive. Feels that dust tumble through his limbs, prompting his fingers to tap and touch and triple check the time, his ledger, urging his heels to bounce under his desk, carry him again and again to the door of his waiting room until, finally, he snatches his car keys and leaves.
He's been rejected, he thinks, as he pulls on to 695. He has killed for lesser crimes. In his flashes of anger, he can see his hands encircle and squeeze that pretty column of pale neck, but when he thinks of Wil, of what he'll do when he sees her, he doesn't see himself harming her. He sees his arms around her, gentle and comforting. He sees his lips moving around soundless words as he begs for her forgiveness, for her to return, falling still only when she puts an end to his self-debasing misery. He is sorry. He is never sorry. He will have her back. He will not let her leave.
He drives over an hour to Wil’s house, only to see that she is out. He ignores the barking mongrels she collects and heads back to his car. He finds her in her office at the Academy. The mere sight of her subsides the dusty buzzing that has replaced the constant, thrumming ache. She doesn't stir when he approaches, nor when he first calls out her name. She stares at nothing, with no expression and no visible signs of reaction. She must be asleep--experiencing a form of sleepwalking or pure exhaustion where she hasn't bothered to close her eyes. He wonders how deep her sleep is. Would she continue, oblivious, if he were to carry her out of here, back to his home? Where she belongs. He licks dry lips and says again, “Wil.”
She wakes, blinking and disoriented. She looks at him and he sees nonrecognition. He has pulled her out of a dream that still clings to the edges of her conscience. After a moment, she understands where she is, who he is, and shifts in her chair. “Hann--. What time is it?” she asks.
“Nearly nine o’clock.” He stops an arm’s length away from her. She is tired--probably hasn’t been sleeping, or she is still sleepwalking. He wonders where she goes when she thinks she’s asleep. In their nights together she had never climbed out of bed, though she did thrash about and sweat through his sheets. He envies the police officers who had found her, half-naked and half-frozen, and the dog that had followed her. He reflects for a moment on the depths that she drags him into: he is jealous of a dog.
She rubs her hands against her face and apologizes. He assures her that she need not apologize.
“I must have fallen asleep,” she mutters, words slurring over her heavy tongue. “Was I sleepwalking?”
He moves his hands to his hips. “Your eyes were open, but you were not present.”
She looks unnerved. Embarrassed. Scared. He wants to lift her to her feet and hold her, bury his nose into her neck, use his own warmth and life to comfort her into deep, dreamless sleep. She expresses a desire to stop sleeping altogether, and that is also quite tempting. Finding ways to keep her awake and witnessing firsthand that sure and speedy unwinding. But she is much more tempting in her slow burn, so he looks away, at her desk, and recognizes what he sees.
“Well, I can see why you have bad dreams,” he comments, flippant and dry.
She offers the pictures on her desk. Rises as she asks for his opinion.
“Displaying one’s enemy after death has appeared in different cultures,” he says.
“They aren’t the Ripper’s enemies, they’re pests he swatted,” she responds.
She is absentmindedly leaning close to him. Their arms are inches from touching. Their pinkies brush minutely against each other.
"He rewards them for their cruelty,” he says, pushing pictures around.
She laughs. “He has no problem with cruelty. The reward is for undignified behavior. These dissections are meant to disgrace them. Humiliate them. It’s-it’s a public shaming.”
He looks at her with feigned surprise. His brilliant, beautiful Wil was always going to understand him, his art, the gifts he gives her. She just refuses to acknowledge that it’s him. One day she will be as breathless by his side during a hunt as she is in his bed. Until then, to hear her speak those intimate words, tainted though they are with disgust, is better than Verdi.
“He takes their organs away because, in his mind, they don’t deserve them,” he says, hoping to impress, to hear more. He gazes at her, even and silent, and moves his hand to cover hers. She stares back at him, eyes wide and lashes long. She is flushed like a schoolgirl, breathless, but there is a dangerous glimmer of recognition in those endless blue eyes.
“Somethi--”
Her words slur and trail off as he stoops down and kisses her gently. She breathes out, hot and sticky, and it shakes him as the first winter winds shake the last leaf off the tree.
“I miss you,” he whispers. The words sluice down her pallid skin. He kisses her cheek and hopes that it burns into her as a permanent mark, a cross on her forehead.
“I don’t know what you want,” she admits softly.
“You,” he says. It rumbles like a big cat's purr. Pours out of him like the truth always does. He moves to handle her, position her so that she’s trapped between him and the desk. He wants to lift her up and push her down, crawl on top and bury deep inside of her. He wants her on top of the forensics photos, on top of his work, and show her that she didn’t catch the Chesapeake Ripper by understanding his mind but by breathing life into his deadened heart.
She pushes him away before he can trap her and backs away, shaking, desirous but afraid. He curls his fingers, anxiously touches his tie, but doesn’t look away from her.
“What--.” She licks her lips, starts again. “What happens if I don’t go to your party?”
He takes a deep breath. “The party will be held. I will be disappointed.”
She is panting, chest heaving painfully up and down. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“I am not easily lost.”
She swallows and looks away. “What if you wake up one morning and find that I’ve lead you astray? That you are...lost because of me.”
He holds out his hand. She stares at it hungrily. “I would prefer being lost with you than to be found and alone.”
She meets his gaze before taking his hand and throwing herself into his body. He wraps his arms around her ribs as he steps back to catch his fall. Her hands bury deep in his hair. She kisses him with her mouth open, her teeth sharp, and her nails tearing at the back of his skull. He uses his height and his weight and his hands to pull her to him, to push her force back onto her, to control the ripping kiss before she bites through his bottom lip. He takes a fistful of her hair and wrenches her away long enough to whisper a breathless command. "Slowly. I want you slowly." She responds with a slower, lippy kiss. He sighs into her and relaxes his hands. One runs up her back, smoothing the wrinkles in her shapeless blouse, crossing over the yoke of her shoulders, his arm curling around her, holding her still and close. The other cups the back of her head, curls slipping through his fingers as it pivots on her neck, searching for a better angle. Her fingers uncurl in his hair and slip down to his cheeks and jaw.
He is lost in her mouth, her warmth, her smell. She envelops him like a fire, warms him like water, consumes every ounce of him with soft lips and a deft tongue. He is hers. One day, she will be his. His partner. His wife. The mother of his children. She will look beautiful in red.
“Graham! Lecter!”
Wil startles and jumps. He doesn't let her go, though her arms are pressing against his chest. She hides her face in his collarbone and her hair.
Jack is enraged. He charges up to them, burning eyes directed at Hannibal. He wipes a dab of spittle from his mouth. Tries his best at a nervous smile, but it may come off as smug as the vein visibly throbbing in Jack's neck doubles in size. This was not how he'd planned for Jack to find out. There is a stunned woman loitering in the doorway. He has never seen her before, and doesn’t give her much thought once Jack starts yelling at him.
“What the hell are you two doing?”
Wil hesitates before offering a blunt, “Kissing,” as an answer.
“I can see that. What I want to know is what you two think you are doing?”
Hannibal lets go, finally, steps forward, his free hands raised. “Wil was scheduled to have a session with me today--”
“So is this what you two do during your meetings?” Jack asks. “This seems like a very unorthodox brand of treatment, Dr. Lecter. I’m not up-to-date with the latest methods, so maybe I’m wrong in thinking that this is a breach in your Hippocratic Oath so gaping that you may lose your license over it. Tell me, is this your specialty or is it unique to this one patient?”
He looks away while being chastised, lets humility shine through in the lines of his frown and the lowering of his eyes.
“Jack,” Wil says, neck curved but eyes firm. “You can yell at us later, but you came here for a reason.”
Jack’s nostrils flare as he tries to regain his calm. He doesn’t break his glare with Hannibal as he responds, “We have a break in the case. We found the murder van. It’s a private ambulance owned by a company that has a contract with Baltimore City. We need you to come with us.” Wil nods. Jack gives Hannibal one more sizing up before adding, “Dr. Lecter will come with us as well. I don’t need him seducing half the custodial staff as well.”
With that, Jack turns on his heel and heads for the door with the nameless young woman on his heels. Hannibal chances a relieved smile at Wil, but she grimly shakes her head and follows Jack and the other young woman.
Hannibal tags along, reveling in Jack’s barely-contained anger, Wil’s humiliation, and the young woman's--a forensics specialist, he later learns--awkward attempts to start a conversation, all while laughing silently to himself at the irony of their search. Jack is careful to keep them physically separated. Hannibal is relegated to the back seat while Wil sits up front in the car. He stands between them, keeps his eye on Hannibal when he's not talking to a witness. Hannibal finds no small amount of joy at having succeeded in undermining Jack once again. He thinks about the moment of revelation, when he is slicing open Jack’s throat, and the regret that will wash over him knowing that he unsuspectingly lead two of his finest, smartest young women to Hannibal’s open arms. One struck down and hopped in a barrel for two years, the other seduced and kilned under his gentle guiding hand.
He stays at the back of the group, two steps behind, until Jack calls him to assist in the rescue of Devon Silvestri’s victim. He does and enjoys the chance to work with the human body, to feel the warmth of seeping blood as he keeps the man from bleeding out. To have Wil as a firsthand witness to his talents for once.
When he passes his job onto the first responders, he is immediately shepherded away to Jack’s car. Silvestri is long gone. Now, all that’s left to do is sit through further chastisement in Virginia. They are silent for the entire hour and a half ride. He spends the time thinking of what Wil’s dress size might be and trying to coordinate the decoration of his dining room to make her stand out. She wears awful, baggy clothes and has a rather boyish figure for a full grown woman. And there is always the trouble of her breasts, which are sweet and full but almost comically large for the rest of her. He is going to have to spend quite some time at a boutique the next day just to find something decent for her.
They arrive at Quantico sooner than he expected. The forensics girl disappears almost immediately. Wil and Hannibal are instructed to follow Jack.
“Who is going to tell me,” Jack says slowly, “what drove two of the brightest people I know to act like a couple of seventeen year olds on prom night?”
They are silent, careful not to look at each other.
“You both understand,” Jack continues, exasperated and angry, “that this is a big deal. The psychiatrist I trusted with one of my best brains has been getting his rocks off with her while she has been exposing him to confidential case information that he has not been approved to view. This is beyond compromising. This could get us all fired.” There is another long moment of silence. “Is someone going to say something, or am I going to have to yell again?”
“Our affair is recent,” he explains. “My initial analysis and report, which proclaim Wil to have a sound and healthy mind, are free of compromise, manipulation, or bias.”
“I’m happy to hear that,” Jack says, “but that doesn’t account for the subsequent reports. Nor does it acquit Wil for showing sensitive evidence regarding a high-profile case.”
“How do you know that I was witness to any evidence?”
Jack gestures to the door. “You were making out in front of it!”
“Jack,” Wil says quietly. “It’s okay. The romance you witnessed took place after I fired Dr. Lecter as my psychiatrist.”
“When was this decision made?” Jack asks. Hannibal would like to ask the same question. He watches Wil intently as she crafts her story.
“A few minutes before you walked in on us.” She places her hands on her thighs. “Last week, when you called me from Dr. Lecter’s house to inspect Silvestri’s first victim, I made an inappropriate advance during dinner. Dr. Lecter and I discussed it the next day in my session with him and we both admitted to having mutual romantic feelings for each other. He was refused to pursue me and advised that we work past our feelings so that we could continue with our successful professional relationship.” She pushes a curl of hair behind her ear. “I was embarrassed, obviously, and I didn’t want to see him again. I wasn’t expecting him to turn up at nine o’clock at night to make sure I was okay.”
“So this was the first time you two were remotely intimate?” Jack asks purposefully.
“Yes,” they say in unison.
“And this was all after you fired him as your psychiatrist,” he asks Wil.
She nods. “Yes. I said I was not happy with our professional relationship and I didn’t want to see him as my psychiatrist again.”
He smiles fondly at her. “I asked if she would like to see me as her boyfriend.”
She smiles like she’s remembering something fondly. “I said I very much would.”
Jack instructs Wil to find another psychiatrist and lets them leave. She agrees and leads Hannibal to the car park.
“That didn’t go as badly as I thought,” Wil deadpans. “I still don’t want Alana to find out at your party.”
“That is your decision,” he says. Though he would miss the look of betrayed shock on Alana’s face, he decides that it’s better for Wil to let others know at her pace. It will help his long-term plans. “Now that you are no longer my patient, would you like dinner? I haven’t cooked for you in nearly a week.”
She tips her head away from him. She takes his sleeve and guides him to her car. There is a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “I have another idea.”
They go to her house, where she lets her mutts out, pushes him against the back of her door, and slides down to her knees. A little over an hour later, he is tying up an expired, but woefully intact, condom and throwing it blindly towards a wastebasket next to her bedside table. She is curled up under his arm, sighing into his rib cage, drifting sweetly into sleep.
"What made you stop being a surgeon?"
He feels her nobby vertebrae as he runs a hand down her back. "I killed someone."
She lifts herself onto her forearms and stares at him with a crinkled brow.
"More accurately," he revises, "I was unable to save someone." He runs a thumb down the side of her face. "It felt like killing him."
She resettles in the crook of his arm. "You worked in the ER. That was bound to happen, eventually."
He turns on his side. One arm was still tucked under her head. The other was idly stroking down her arm. "It happened one time too many," he says after a weighty pause. "I commuted my knowledge of the body to a passion for cooking and focused on healing the brain."
"Because there is no one you can't save as a psychiatrist," she says with a hint of bitterness.
He cups her face. "No one has yet died because of my therapy." He pauses, mouth stretching into a smile. "And it has brought you to me."
She smiles faintly before burying her face into his chest. "Wake me," she asks, "if I start to sleepwalk."
"I promise," he says. He watches her fall asleep, quickly and with the weight of a mountain, before falling asleep himself.
He dreams of Wil, lax and lean and smiling just for him, standing at the head of his dining room table. There is a nine-course meal spread in front of her, steaming and perfectly cooked. He slides a hand across the small of her back as she proudly announces, "I made you dinner."