[OOM] courtship

[collects_strays]

Everyone has thought about killing someone, one way or another.




Cleaning an animal needs to happen quickly. Wait too long and the meat spoils. Fish, left fresh, was a notoriously ephemeral dish. Catch what you need, and eat what you catch. It might not be up to the completism of Garret Jacob Hobbs, but Graham was also raised with a distaste for waste.

There wasn't a time before he knew this. It wasn't born into him, but he saw it, and he knew it – the way his wrists should move in the quick flick to snip off scales with a butter knife. The gentle pressure in slicing through the stomach, pressing his fingers into the gills to empty the organs, sliding his knife along the slender bones to scrape off the meat. He doesn't recall any beginnings to it. He sees the white plastic box holding a shallow pool of water, feels the cool splash over his hands that washed away spots of blood. The smell of it lingers on his fingertips.

But while catching and cleaning had soaked into him, cooking was something he learned. He could remember what was imparted to him, and what he'd created. The first time he could take on this work was a mark of separation. Sharing movements, scents, and sensations lessened the distance between him and his father, but cooking for himself, and for his father, let him come into his own.




Be it your own hand, or the hand of God.




Meat from a butcher rarely came across his table growing up. When it did, it usually marked a special occasion. It was never something he bought himself while he still shared a home, and it remained enough of a novelty that the measured excitement that came with it only faded out late in his adulthood. It's something he tries to emulate, with brown paper and white string. Excitement and fear sit so close that they've become indistinguishable from one another. Too much of them can be paralyzing, or make it hard to concentrate – but a measured amount could let him act without thinking.

He doesn't hesitate. Some acts, before they happen, seem impossible simply because their consequences are beyond our experience, or anything we could prepare for. But his perception has unhinged so dramatically that he can't feel the looming sense of vertigo that he might have before. It seems less like a plunge, and more like an awakening. Dulled senses that become sharper as his knife clicks against the plate.

When he speaks, every word he says is true. It's not a time when he can let himself lie. If he lies now, he'll step too far. It's not about stepping freely, but being coaxed.

Then you can't say I'm evil.
You're destructive. Same thing.

But it's not. Acts of God are by their definition destructive, when nothing else can be blamed. God as their source strips them of fault – no point in being mad at a storm for being a storm. The kind of occasions that merited butcher paper usually also coincided with acts of God, birthdays and half-followed holidays. Acts of creation, rather than destruction.

These also now seemed to sit very close.




Now think about killing




He doesn't return to the house after. He doesn't want to be around the dogs, doesn't know what they'll smell on him, or what he'll be like near them. Instead he goes back to the barn, and closes the door, sliding the lock into place behind him. It's a loud clack in the now still room. In the early evening, the sun has fallen low enough that the barn's painted wood panels are streaked with red and orange light. There are no light fixtures in the barn; he uses a flashlight or lantern if he needs to enter it at night. For the moment, he keeps his back to the door. Randall Tier's suit still hangs from the ceiling, casting long shadows over the plastic sheeting that sections off the barn. Through it, he can see the chest freezer, still unlocked.

Graham closes his eyes.

The pendulum swings once, twice, taking with it the musty scent of the barn, the cold air over his face, the red light on his eyelids. Everything goes dark, for a moment. And then she steps out, as though under a soft spotlight. Not as she had looked earlier, but like the first time he saw her, in Abigail Hobbs' hospital room. Dark elbow-length cloak and a leopard-print skirt, fur-cuffed gloves despite the mild weather, dangling gold earrings that shone under her ringlets of red hair. The calculated ostentation of someone unfamiliar with wealth, but who knew the value of appearing wealthy. For the hospital staff who should have kept her out, and for Abigail, who would yearn for any safety within reach. But she'd never wasted any of this glamor on him.

Freddie Lounds wouldn't stay still. She grins at him. "Looks like I'm getting my interview after all."

He takes a step toward her. "You shouldn't have interfered."

She doesn't step back, and her smile widens. "You can do better than that."

Graham keeps moving, his course shifting so that he starts to pace in a circle around her. "I told you Chilton was the Chesapeake Ripper."

"And I didn't believe you," she answers. "And you knew I wouldn't believe you."

"I gave you a way out."

"No." She doesn't move with him, keeps facing forward as he steps behind her. As she shakes her head, her hair glistens under the light. "You lured me in."

"Because I knew you'd never let it go."

"Because it's not very smart to piss off a guy who thinks about killing people for a living."

He's reached far enough to face her again. Her smile has faded somewhat, but it's still there, her eyes trailing him with patient expectation. But even this dims from her face as he takes one step toward her, and then another, just short of reaching the light that emanates from her.

"What do you think, Ms. Lounds?"

She stands her ground, but he can tell that she'd like to edge away from him. Freddie turns her head, looks down to the empty space, and as she does, a soft soil path bleeds from her shoes. She takes a step forward, and large, white mushrooms rupture up from the ground. Strands of mycelia that should run under the ground instead slip over it, clinging at her ankles like dense cobwebs.

"It's not random. You know who I am, and that matters."

"It always matters." Graham follows her. His steps are slow, but he never lets her get too far ahead. "I don't get to be impersonal."

"Which means you'll want me to know who you are. And what's going to happen."

"Well, you wanted to know that," he reminds her. "More than anything. You were going to sell every detail of it."

"And you find that vulgar."

"Do you still want to know what I am?"

Freddie stops long enough to glance back at him. She's not smiling now.

"No."

As she takes her next step, something shines with her light, like a thin wave passing over her. On the other side, her figure becomes blurrier, as though he were watching her through a fog. It gives her a soft, gold halo. He reaches out, and pushes aside the plastic sheeting, stepping through it behind her.

And again, they're in the observatory. It's not as he last saw it, with shafts of sunlight slicing through the round room. Instead, it's dark, and entirely empty, except for the persistent drip that echoes up into its domed ceiling. The only light in the room comes from Freddie, and it lends little more than the glow of a candle. He can barely see the concrete floor around her, the white paint on the walls, the curve of the telescope above them.

"So you know me, and I know you," she says, stopping near the center of the room. "Are you going to make sure everybody knows it."

"You are a reporter, Freddie. You're here to report." He stops short as he approaches her, instead shifting to move around her again. "You'll tell the truth now. About me."

"And your becoming." She doesn't watch him pass her, no longer follows him with her eyes. Instead, she's looking up, toward the closed-dome ceiling. "How will that make you feel?"

The dome opens, white light bursting in, with a loud, thunderous hum that resonates through them. A ghostly chord that lingers on, as the light entwines into a single circle, leaving a dark center. The observatory seeps away beneath its light, but the dripping remains, slow and steady as a ticking clock. Something shuffles in the dark center of the circle, but as though it were too far off, he can't make it out.

"Calm," he answers. "Harmonious. The shape of my reality finally congruous with the way I perceive it."

"You said you just interpret the evidence."

It's not her voice. Graham keeps watching the circle above them, the figure within it becoming clearer, bright light catching on the tips of wings.

"Do you pray, Freddie?"

"Mostly when I'm scared."

There's a soft, rustling flap, as the black-feathered bird swoops through the circle above, down toward them. He holds out a hand, ready –

"Then God must be in here now."

But the bird flutters instead to her, apparently attracted by her light. It perches on her upturned palm, shades of violet and green now visible along the edges of its black feathers. Her head tilts, and she looks back up to him.

"Why did you kill Randall Tier?"

"To survive."

"Is that why he tried to kill you?" She speaks a little faster now. "Tier didn't eat what he killed."

"It's what he believed. Tier was led to believe the most violent manifestation was the only way he could survive."

"Is that what you believe?" She looks down to her hands, and her glow seems to grow more intense. Graham turns and steps up in front of her. He waves his hand through the starling, and it fades in a wisp of black smoke.

"He doesn't want a pet, Freddie."

He can see it over her shoulder. Rising up, giving texture to the darkness, with twinned high, curved lines woven with firelight. Her light. She doesn't look back, doesn't see it; now she's transfixed on him, her eyes wide.

"No –"

He reaches out. His eyes sting, her fingernails dig into his hands, there's a buzzing ring of gunshots and shattered glass. He's holding fistfuls of her hair, hears her voice, but doesn't feel it. Beneath the chaotic chorus of sound and color is the same slow, steady beat.



When Graham opens his eyes, the barn is dark. He reaches to the shelf at his right, and picks up a flashlight.




Why did she deserve this.




He felt worst about the songbirds.

Maybe it was an ingrained resistance to indulgence. That seemed comforting, something to help him before he tried to sleep, or when he caught a glimpse of his reflection and felt irrationally afraid to look any closer. That made it seem like resistance – and at the same time, he couldn't really afford resistance.

But the bird had been small enough for him to hold in his hand, its bones cracked and crunched with such little effort. It didn't seem unfair so much as unworthy. Some may take comfort or assurance in knowing what they consume was entirely unlike them. But a hunter will often relate to her prey, like a farmer relates to his pigs. Unlike the farmer, she doesn't act to keep them calm and content and oblivious. She knew her prey, understood him. Fell back into his environment and moved with him. Learned his instincts, and how to overcome them, to burn bright enough to cast shadows over anything else.

Graham gives Jack Crawford little warning – it pushes Jack to the edge, but this works better messy than rehearsed. For Graham, as much as anyone, so that their voices are still tinged with spontaneity. It's not hard for him to imagine that there is no deceit. He can make memories flash in his mind as clear and visceral as any others, can concoct the narrative in his head as real as any he knows to be true. A case of psychology overriding neurology - what shapes his mind, changes the way he thinks need not be true if he chooses to believe that it is. As has always been the case, the greatest threat to what he perceives, what he believes, is the influence of others. So as they talk over the table, over the charred remains, he averts his eyes, and tries to lower their voices. For the most part. He's still careful with his glances, but there's only one voice he lets himself hear.

The only influence he can allow himself is Dr. Lecter's.




Tell me your design.




Some meat isn't so transient. Deer – after she stops being a deer, becomes venison, after the viscera are carefully cut out and the carcass cools, can be aged for as long as three weeks before frozen or served. It requires a cool, enclosed space – strong rafters or walls to hang hooks, no heating but not too cold. Hobbs had his cabin, every piece of what passed through it being cleaned away or put to use. No interest in performance.

After aging, the first cut usually taken are his psoas muscles, which hug the base of the spine. As with pork or beef, this is the most tender and flavorful piece. Ideal for steaks, or other dishes. Stripped whole from the bone, leaving as little as possible to waste.

On the table, it's called tenderloin.




Tell me who you are.







[ooc: Some dialogue lifted from Chapter 20 of Red Dragon.]