Chapter Text
Will closed the window. To his immediate right he heard a disappointed grunt. Maybe his seat mate was hoping to watch Dulles Airport get smaller and smaller as the morning flight finally took off after 50 minutes of waiting on the tarmac for the paperwork. Will refused to look over at the other people in his row. He had been annoyed to be assigned a window seat at check-in but he supposed that’s what he got for booking his tickets so late. Every seat on the first leg of his journey was full. There was no more room in the overhead compartments and his legs were uncomfortably cramped in front of him.
Will tried to keep time at the airport to an absolute minimum, which meant he frequently showed up at his gate toward the end of boarding. Normally, he would only be traveling with a small carrier bag for a weekend conference like this, but he was packing more clothes and toiletries than usual because, well, he was hoping that this wouldn’t be a typical weekend conference. While he wasn’t letting his conscious mind dwell on it for fear of disappointment, the rollaway luggage under his seat and the clothes inside (new, slightly more fitted, and nicely folded) belied his calm insistence to himself that this would be just another collection of boring conference talks interrupted by even more boring social events.
When he first started consulting for the FBI, travel had been his favorite part of the job. He’d been young then and had never been much of anywhere outside of Louisiana or Metro DC. More than that, he’d loved staying in hotels. The rooms were empty and sterile. They had crisp, clean, white sheets with no messy trappings of humanity finding their way in. The home he’d grown up in had been filthy all the time. There was something serenely uncomplicated about a hotel. He would order Eggs Benedict from room service in the morning – even the FBI’s measly per diem could usually cover that – and eat it in bed. He felt rich and successful and a million miles from home.
Over time, most of that had faded away as his work began to take a toll on him. After the Hobbs case, he had started stopping off at a liquor store on his way back from a scene and would mostly just stare, unseeing at a television and drink by himself for hours.
That was about the started feel panicked on planes, too. His work-mandated therapist had told him that late onset fear of flying was “textbook Panic Disorder” and had prescribed him anxiety medicine. It didn’t make his night terrors go away, and it didn’t stop the deep pit of dread from developing in his stomach on takeoff. He stopped being able to look out of the window while on an airplane. Seeing the world below look so tiny filled him with horror. “I’m not supposed to be up here,” his brain would shout. “We’ll fall out of the sky at any moment.” The entire world was starting to feel less certain, more fragile.
His hands gripped the armrests, knuckles white as the plane took off.
“Do you mind, buddy?” came the voice next to him. It was a man in his mid to late forties – broad around the chest and shoulders. He looked like someone who had played football in high school. Will moved his right hand from the armrest and the man let his arm fall completely over the armrest, elbow hanging over into Will’s space.
“My house rules are – ok sure the guy next to the window can decide to close it even if I’d rather look outside, but the guy in the middle gets both armrests,” the man laughed, bringing his right arm up to tap his chest.
“It isn’t right to put three grown men in a row like this,” he continued. “They need to figure that out with their computers- their algorithms or whatever – we tell them our age and gender and how much we weigh, our measurements, and they spit out assignments that even out the load. You guys would probably much prefer to have a slim, young woman here instead of me. And I’d love to be flanked by a couple of ladies on either end.” After some more thought he added in an exaggerated whisper: “Maybe Asian, you know, they are such small things.”
Will flinched but said nothing to this, and neither did the man in the aisle seat, though Will could tell from the general direction of their man’s legs that he was trying not to engage or encourage more conversation in any way. Thank God for small miracles.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for flying United and an extra special welcome to those of you headed to the, uh, forensic psychology conference in beautiful Kona, Hawaii. Though we took off 30 minutes behind schedule, our captain assures us we can make that time up in the sky, landing in Los Angeles with plenty of time for you all to make your transfer. We’ve now reached altitude. You may use your electronic devices on airplane mode and we’ll start beverage service momentarily.”
Well, that was good news at least. He could still fly the second leg with Alana. He was angry at himself, noting that his flying companion was not entirely wrong: it would be nice to sit next to a slim woman for his second 6-hour flight of the day – especially that particular slim young woman. He hoped he wouldn’t look to obviously anxious.
The beverage cart came around and the man next to Will ordered two beers and a jack and coke. “I know it’s early,” he told the flight attendant (and it was, in fact, only 10am) “But we’re living under Sky Law now!” Will was surprised that the flight attendant – a pretty blonde woman in her 40s wearing a navy-blue dress and practical shoes - complied with the request. He would have thought that whoever wrote Sky Law would recognize that giving a jerk 3 drinks in hour 1 of a 6-hour flight would almost certainly lead to trouble later. He also felt a little jealous, because the truth was that he could use a drink himself.
Will had more or less stopped drinking since he was briefly institutionalized last year. Jack had found him in his hotel room in the black hills of South Dakota, unconscious, filled to the brim with cheap whiskey, and running a temperature of 106 degrees. He’d been taken to the local emergency room – the same one the bodies he’d inspected the previous day had been raced to in their last agonizing moments. He was treated by one of the doctors he’d interviewed. She’d more or less told Jack that he was a suicidal drunk, that his fever was a result of alcohol poisoning, and that if Jack didn’t intervene now, Will would drink himself to death within the year. Jack had mandated that he receive psychiatric care immediately upon return to Virginia if he wanted to keep his job. It was only a few days into his institutionalization that they realized that the root cause of his illness, and indeed most of his instability since the Hobbs case could be explained by encephalitis.
The doctors told him it was not uncommon to try to self-medicate this sort of thing with alcohol or other recreational drugs, and that it was likely he wasn’t clinically an alcoholic. “So I can abandon the higher power and go back to the bottle,” he’d joked. His nurse had looked at him gravely. “No, Mr. Graham. I don’t recommend you start drinking again any time soon.” That graveness was shared by Jack and the rest of his colleagues, including Alana.
“But I was vindicated,” Will said. “I’m not an alcoholic. I had a disease that was beyond my control.”
“That’s what alcoholism is,” Alana had said, missing the point and making Will feel ashamed and lonely.
Since all of that, Will never drank with his colleagues. In fact, they never drank around him. None of them wanted to enable his “illness”. And Will never drank alone because he was worried that doing so would make him seem like an alcoholic. When he reasoned that no one needed to know, he rebutted that secretly drinking alone was an even more alcoholic thing to do. And this was his entire life now. He felt like he was living performatively – trying to convince everyone around him that he was normal, that his brain was normal, that he wasn’t on the edge of his sanity. And most of all, trying to convince himself.
It wasn’t easy – not while he was imagining how he might murder this man, and leave his limp, deflated arms resting on top of armrests made of his humorous and radius. That was not a sane thought. That was the thought of someone who had murderers swimming in his head. He gripped the left arm rest with his left hand, and with his right hand, he just made a fist and let it rest on his tray table.
By his sixth drink, the man in the middle seat was feeling talkative, and was no longer dissuaded by the cold response his questions got from his seat companions.
“Are you headed to LA for business or pleasure,” he asked.
Will was relieved to see that the man’s shoulders were pointed toward the aisle seat. After perhaps a second too long, the man in the aisle said “neither” in a neutral, clipped way. And Will detected an accent somewhere in the word – the r was much softer than an American might say it. “I am not going to LA at all, merely transferring planes.”
“Are you headed to Hawaii for that CSI conference then?”
“CSI…” the man replied, confused but with no real curiosity behind the prompt.
“Well the stewardess said something about a forensics conference.”
“Ah yes,” came the velvety voice, “forensic psychology. Yes, I am attending that conference.”
“So what is that then, forensic psychology?”
“It’s the study of humans – why they do what they do.” The man paused for a moment, then added, somewhat pointedly: “Specifically, why they kill.”
The man in the middle seat sucked in air through his breath approvingly and with an attempt at understanding as if to say “I know how that goes” though Will was sure he did not.
“What do you do for work,” asked the man in the aisle. Will was surprised he wanted to continue the conversation.
“Oh, I’m in landscaping. I own a landscaping company in Virginia. Going out to LA on vacation. My wife flew out here first to visit her sister, and we’re going to drive down to San Diego for the weekend. I could use some sun after the winter we’ve had in Virginia!”
“Indeed,” said the man on the aisle noncommittally. Then, as if a sudden thought has come to him, “do you happen to have a card? I have need for landscaping services from time to time.”
“Well sure thing,” said the man in the middle seat. “My name is Ryan by the way.” He knocked Will’s water over as he reached into his pocket. “Sorry about that, little guy,” he said. Then he handed the card to the man on the right, who did not offer his name, but took the card with a nod.
Ryan chugged the last of his latest jack and coke and stood up. He stretched, saying in a loud half yawn “I gotta go, man, too many beers. Time to break the seal.”
The man on the aisle stood up to let him through. It was at this point that Will got his first look at him. He was the complete opposite of Ryan. He was tall, certainly, but not big – his body seemed to fit perfectly within its frame, nothing bulging out or spilling over. He was elegant, and managed to look dignified and at ease even while letting Ryan pass out of the row, usually such an awkward dance, and the only benefit of sitting in the window seat and being perpetually dehydrated.
He didn’t look into the man’s eyes, but his face was architected around two pronounced cheekbones and a straight nose. His hair was sandy with some hints of gray, putting his age somewhere above Will’s, probably somewhere between 5 and 10 years. He noticed this stranger appraising him as well, and felt some amount of flattery that, to Will’s mind, the stranger seemed to like what he saw.
Will couldn’t really trust his instincts lately, though. At the institution they had put him on a high dose of anti-anxiety medication. He’d dutifully taken it for about six months and watched as his body got flabby and as he lost even the desire to jerk off – much less date. A few months ago, he’d run out of his prescription and just decided not to refill it. It had been difficult at first, but Will found he was more lucid without it, and could work longer hours, which had been necessary of late with the Chesapeake Ripper’s latest sounder. He’d also started running and lifting weights again.
And then his sex drive came back, urgent and on a hair trigger. It was like he was a teenager again, hiding boners behind a notebook. He found that even flirtatious conversations could make him rock hard – if they were even flirtatious. Lately, he’d felt like everybody had been flirting with him. The reason he was going to what he knew would be an especially hideous conference is that Alana had taken him to dinner and asked him to come with her and share a suite.
“They’re offering suites in the good building by the pool if you board up with someone else,” she’d said, raising her eyebrows.
“Can we get room service,” Will had asked, thinking about his Eggs Benedict and feeling for a second like the young man he had been a decade ago.
Alana had laughed and promised they could have room service delivered every morning, which they could eat in fluffy resort robes. It seemed they had come a long way from not being able to be alone in a room together.
Later reflection though, had made him question if the exchange was as meaningful and innuendo laden as he’d thought, or if going off of his medication was making him mistake his own lust with his empathetic reading of Alana’s intentions. He was both hotter and hornier than he had been in the last 20 years, and he’d been building this weekend up as a weekend to remember. That’s why he’d bought a new pair of swim trunks, much shorter than he’d every worn before. That’s why he’d gotten his hair cut. That’s why as this stranger’s eyes roamed over his body, he found himself feeling slightly aroused, and forgetting for a moment how terrified he was of being in the air, and how much he had hated his seat mates up until this moment.
“I’m going to Hawaii too,” Will found himself saying. The man reseated himself and stretched to occupy more space in the absence of Ryan the landscape architect.
“Are you,” said the man, raising his eyebrows and looking somewhere to the left of Will’s head.
“Yes. I’m also, uh, going to the conference…too,” Will continued.
“Are you,” said the man, again, with no question in his voice.
“I’m Will Graham.”
The man’s eyes snapped to his, making direct contact for the first time. They were unlike any eyes he had seen before: amber bordered by maroon, like blood on sand.
“Are you,” he said again, this time giving his full attention to Will. “How long have you been afraid of flying, Will Graham?”
“Not long. Maybe a year.” Will’s answer was automatic. He found himself strangely compelled to answer the question.
“As a result of a traumatic experience?” he asked non-judgmentally, almost clinically.
“I forgot I was talking to a forensic psychologist,” Will said.
“You are deflecting. I will assume the answer is yes. If it were no, you would not have found the question too probing, merely dismissed it.”
“Yes. As a result of a traumatic experience.”
“Perhaps a glass of wine,” said the man, gesturing at the approaching beverage cart.
“I don’t really drink,” said Will.
“Of course,” said the man, accepting Will’s answer.
“I do though. Or I like to. If I had someone to. Yes, perhaps a glass of wine.”
“Of course,” said the man, identically. “I have to tell you that the wine on this airplane is undrinkable. It would just be for medicinal purposes. I would not be able to join you.”
“Oh,” said Will, disappointed. “Well, that’s no fun.”
The beverage cart stopped in front of their seats. The man seemed to ponder something.
“Maybe just orange juice then,” he said finally. He turned to the flight attendant. “I will have a” he grimaced “can of orange juice,” he said.
“Nothing for me,” Will sighed.
“Two glasses if you will,” he said to the flight attendant.
“With ice?” she asked cheerily.
“Certainly not,” he said, and was obliged.
“I don’t really—” started Will.
“I believe that it isn’t strictly permitted,” said the man, leaning in conspiratorially as he reached into his attaché case, “for passengers to consume their own alcohol on a flight. I hope you are not in law enforcement.”
“I’m an FBI special agent,” said Will.
“How unfortunate,” said the man, pulling out a demi bottle of champagne. “It was a gift for a friend at the conference, but I think we may need it more, with the flight we have had.” He opened the champagne, masking the sound of the cork’s pop with his jacket, and poured some into both glasses. He poured some orange juice into Will’s glass as well, but not into his own. “I hope you will not pursue charges.” He passed Will his glass and held his up in a toast. Will did the same.
“What was your traumatic experience,” the man asked.
Will took a sip of his champagne. It had been so long since he’d had any, and he typically only drank champagne when served at celebrations. It lifted his mood tremendously.
“I killed someone,” he answered, and watched the man’s face. It didn’t reveal any reaction.
"I see," said the man. And Will thought maybe he really did. Maybe he could see the way that Will could see. His strange and beautiful eyes seemed to see so much. “Who?”
“Someone bad. A murderer.”
“Oh yes. Die he or justice must…The rigid satisfaction, death for death,” he said, smiling.
“Milton,” said Will. “Paradise Lost.”
“I’ve been re-reading it.”
Their seatmate returned then, unsteadily with a new drink in hand.
“That was a line like you could not believe,” said Ryan, falling back hard into the middle seat and nearly knocking over Will’s mimosa. “The little granny in front of me took the foulest dump. Ha! It’s always the ones you least suspect.”
Will continued to sip his rather large glass of champagne and orange juice for the rest of the flight, and felt so much calmer, he barely remembered to dread landing.
When they did land, Ryan spent about 5 minutes putting back on his shoes and socks, so that Will could only helplessly watch as his other seatmate darted out of the plane much more quickly than one would have thought possible for a somewhat substantial man. Will could have kicked himself for never getting around to asking for his name, but he couldn’t quite feel despondent. The conference would be big, but it wouldn’t be impossible to find a guest if you were determined to do so. That is if he even wanted to see more of this man. His mind turned then to his original plans for the conference as he deplaned and made a beeline for the Terminal 3 Burger King, where he had arranged to meet Alana before walking together to their gate.