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Part 11 of Hannibal/Addams Family AU
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Published:
2017-09-02
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2,109
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1/1
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Foes and Foils

Summary:

However, Freddie did have to deal with the fact that Will Graham was one of the heads of this household, and in effect, her boss.
Will. Graham.
With his huge mansion, his nine-carat black diamond ring, his stupidly adoring husband, and precocious daughter.
She’d admit to bitterness, but not jealousy. She was not, and would never be, jealous of Will Graham.

Notes:

So Freddie and Will being bitchy to each other are some of my favorite parts of the actual show, so I wanted to write some of it myself. This takes place after Help Wanted! in this series.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

Will and Freddie had never gotten along, when they were acquaintances in boarding school. She thought that both him and his sister were weird, and Will had always thought she walked with her nose up with an air of absolute annoyance about her. She was a walking migraine, which hadn’t helped his chronic ones. So after graduation, with Freddie going home to California to pursue a writing career and Will staying back in Wolf Trap, they were both secure and content with the knowledge that their paths wouldn’t cross ever again.

Well.

Things don’t always go the way one plans.

The writing career wasn’t taking off, certainly not enough to make a living. Freddie wrote about strange crimes and things she found interesting, which didn’t exactly sell well. And eventually, her parents decided to stop funding her, and so, she was completely cut off. So, in trying to scrape by, she got a job from a family that knew her family as a tutor/caretaker of their snotty little kids, but then the snotty little kids grew up, and she was on her way again. This pattern continued at least two more times, going across the country, until she found herself ringing the doorbell of the Lecter house. She got the job, and it came with a...well, a lot more money than she’d ever been paid before, and her own room in the one sunny part of the house.

However, Freddie did have to deal with the fact that Will Graham was one of the heads of this household, and in effect, her boss.

Will. Graham.

With his huge mansion, his nine-carat black diamond ring, his stupidly adoring husband, and precocious daughter.

She’d admit to bitterness, but not jealousy. She was not, and would never be, jealous of Will Graham.

She shook these thoughts from her mind and turned her attention back to poor Catherine Howard the doll, and her head currently still in the little basket of the tiny guillotine with a real blade. Now, she wasn’t going to try to tell anyone how to parent their kid. She wasn’t paid to do that. But, well…

“Abigail!” Freddie said suddenly, getting up and immediately prying the very sharp scalpel out of her small hand. “Um, okay, let’s - let’s not play with this, alright?”

“But I need it to play autopsy,” Abigail insisted, crossing her arms. “How am I going to know how my doll died without cutting her open?”

That’s - that’s a question Freddie will address later. In the meantime, “How about we go downstairs to your fathers and return this to them, okay?”

Abigail sighed, jumping down from her chair and taking Freddie’s free hand as they went down to the living room. Freddie had to grit her teeth as she walked in front of Will, who was tying an intricate knot into his fishing lure and lounging in the loveseat, Buster laying at his feet. He lifted his gaze from his work to smile at Abigail, but the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes when he looked expectantly at Freddie. “Is there a problem?”

She handed him the scalpel and returned the look. “Abigail was trying to play with this, I though you should know.”

Will raised an eyebrow at Abigail as he took the scalpel from Freddie and placed it on the coffee table, and his expression softened as he looked back at his daughter, setting the lure down in his lap so as to give her his full attention.

“Darling,” he said gently, leaning forward so they were at each other’s level. “You know you’re not allowed to use your father’s scalpels.”

“I know,” she mumbled, pouting, scraping her feet on the floor. “But I wanted to play autopsy, and you can’t perform one with a pocketknife.”

Will smiled, reaching over to the table and handing her a much larger knife than a scalpel, a kukri knife, to be exact. “There you go, this one’s much sharper, and maybe your father will go through his knives soon and find an old scalpel just for you.”

Instantly, Abigail started beaming, hugging him quickly and making him laugh before she pulled back, grabbing Freddie’s hand with a startling amount of strength for a nine-year-old. “C’mon, Freddie, I need you to hold Catherine still while I make the incision.”

Freddie opened her mouth to comment but found herself choking on her words as she was dragged towards the stairs when suddenly, Abigail let go, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “I’m going to have a snack before dinner, I’ll be right back!”

“Uh, no thanks,” Freddie said, shaking out her hand to alleviate the sting of her grip. Abigail happily skipped down to the kitchen as Freddie made her way over to the mirror near the landing, trying to see if her hair was salvageable. After all, she’d spent all morning and a bit of the afternoon blowing up trains sets and all manner of things with Alana and Margot, their son Damian, and Abigail, and now her hair was so tangled and covered with soot from the blasts that it was almost black by now. As she attempted to pull on a knot, Miriam popped out of her box, offering a brush.

“Thank you,” she replied offhandedly, accepting the brush, but it wasn’t until Miriam disappeared back into her box that the reality of her situation really started to dawn on her, and she had to take a deep breath before attacking the mess of her prized, usually red curls.

“Freddie?” Will called over his shoulder, and she had to grit her teeth to not snap back just yet at the smug tone in his voice.

Well, she resisted for exactly three seconds.

“What can I do for you?” she asked, sarcasm dripping from her words. “If you’re going to ask me to fetch your paper, you’ve got dogs for that.”

Will laughs again, and Freddie has to again come to terms with the fact that the Will Graham she knew back then barely cracked so much as a smile. “Very funny, Freddie. I just wanted to let you know that we’re going out tonight and will be back late, so I’d like you to make sure that Abigail is in bed no later than two o’clock in the morning.”

“Sure thing,” she said. “And where will you be tonight?”

“Out,” he repeated, a smile on his face. “But Hannibal and I are planning to take Abigail along with us to Baneberry Marsh to find a water moccasin friend for Mina, so you’ll have that day off to do as you please. There’s some fountain pens in your desk if you haven’t seen them yet, and there’s probably some vellum in the library if you’d like a new canvas to write on.”

“How kind,” she answers back, trying to find a nerve to press on out of sheer instinct, only to be annoyed that Will’s relaxed enough that none of them are easily exposed anymore. And he knows it, too.

“So, is there anything you need to make your stay more comfortable?” Will asks, picking his lure back up and looping another piece of twine around it, appearing sincere, but he’s not. They know each other too well to believe that.

“I’m fine,” Freddie says, working her curls back into their usual shape as best as she could. “So, are you still working as a profiler for the police?”

Will’s lips twitches for a brief second before centering himself. “I’m still on sick leave.” For the past eleven years, he thinks to himself.

“Oh.”

“Migraines, you see.”

“Still?”

Will works his jaw to alleviate the tension brimming.

“Yes, in fact, I can feel one chatting away at my ear at this very moment.”

“Funny, Gr- Will,” Freddie snaps. She’s still not sure if he’s a Lecter now, Graham, or both. “You got a lot bitchier after high school.”

“Only to match up to your level,” Will responds easily, tyng a firm knot in the lure and looking up with a smile as Hannibal comes into the room, from where he had spent the morning cleaning out the basement in preparation for tonight's hunt, holding two fencing foils in one hand a knife in the other. He nods graciously to Freddie before turning his undivided attention to Will, and he smiles widely as he sets down the foils and extends the knife to Will, the bone handle pointing towards him as he clutches the blade side.

“This is the stag antler handle one, it had slipped behind the work table.”

“Oh, thank you darling, I’ve been looking for that one. I was worried we’d lost it on our last outing,” Will smiles as Hannibal takes a seat beside him and leans in close to kiss him on the lips, and Hannibal takes his time, his hand sliding to rest on the top of Will’s thigh, over his black dress pants that match his black silk shirt perfectly, as Hannibal tells him at least once a week. Freddie yanks on her curl to distract herself from this annoyance. Luckily, just as they pull away, Abigail comes bounding back into the room, a cookie in her mouth and another in her hand, and she offers it to Freddie.

“Freddie, are crickets vegetarian?”

“Um, n - no, sorry,” Freddie offers in apology, but Abigail's not too perturbed, popping it in her mouth and grabbing Freddie’s hand to pull her up the stairs. Will smiles to himself as Hannibal examines the fishing lure and smiles.

“It’s beautiful, Will,” Hannibal grins, letting his finger trace down the hook, deliberately pricking his finger on it so that a drop of blood oozes from the wound. “It does bring to my mind that I need to sharpen the foils for tomorrow, and if you’ll remind me, I’ll sharpen this knife for you as well.”

Will grins, deliberately malevolent in a way that heats Hannibal's blood. “Of course. You’re so thoughtful, mon amour.”

Hannibal lets out a snarl, and Will grins even wider as Hannibal snatches his hand up and starting to drop kisses across his knuckles. “Caro mio,” he murmurs, low in his throat, as he makes his way up Will’s arm and until he reaches his neck, nuzzling there and biting lightly. Will reaches a hand up to card his fingers through his hair.

“Darling,” he says, pretending to scold. “Control yourself.”

He can feel Hannibal’s grin against his neck, all teeth, as he breathes out, “Never.”

 

 

Freddie looks up at the pounding coming from the ceiling as she holds the Catherine Howard doll very still as Abigail sews her back up from the long incision down the middle.

“Cause of death?” she asks, eyes trained on that noise.

“Beheading,” is Abigail’s succinct reply, as another THUD is heard.

“Abigail,” Freddie asks hesitantly. “What’s that sound?”

“Oh!” Abigail says excitedly, jumping up and going over to the wall, knocking three times. “That’s just Beverly.”

“Is she - well, who is Beverly?”

“The ghost.” There’s three more knocks, coming from inside the walls. “She’s my closest friend.”

“Oh, that’s nice. Does she like to play with dolls, too?”

“Sometimes. She doesn’t like you, though.”

Freddie was rather taken aback by that. “W - why?”

“She thinks that I’m not going to be her friend anymore because I have you now, and she’s just a little jealous. But don’t worry! I told her she isn’t allowed to unscrew the chandelier in your room.”

Freddie makes a mental note to check the cord that holds up that chandelier. “That's very nice of you.”

“I know,” Abigail says, tidying up her little operating theater, with the little threads and knives and bits of fluff that stood in for guts. She looked up and fixed Freddie with a look that was very mature for a child, and she reached out and patted her wrist.

“Don’t be nervous,” she reassured. “You’ve already stayed a week, none of my other tutors stuck around for that long, and nobody here even liked them that much anyway. But Auntie Alana and Auntie Margot like you, so does Damian. Frederick likes you a lot, and you’re both vegetarians, which is a little weird, you know.”

“Yeah,” Freddie says, conceding with a nod and a smile. Abigail grinned rocking back and forth on her heels.

“But the important thing is that I like you, and that’s important for Father and Papa. So you’re safe.”

Freddie was nodding again before she registered what Abigail had said, when Abigail spoke up again, “Well, you know, for now. But I really do like you, you should be completely fine.”

Notes:

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