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thelonelylakespine. hannibal tv, abigail/marissa + abigail~freddie. shrike!abigail adjusting to her new normal, ft domestic butchery, cannibalism, and memoirs. 1.7k words, rated m. for the a softer ficathon prompt 'abigail + home is where the heart is, until we get a chance to bury it (out back is where the toes are)'.
"The dining room table, Abigail, really?"
Abigail doesn't need to look up from her work to see the way Marissa's nose is crinkled with distaste, or the way the affection in her eyes makes it impossible for Abigail to actually feel bad. "I put down a tarp," she says, and then she ducks her head and smiles in the way Marissa likes, gesturing wide and slow with the knife so the blood doesn't splatter. "See?"
Marissa's eyeroll is as audible as the clink of her keys in the bowl by the door, her footsteps heading towards the back bedroom. "Aren't you having that journalist over tonight? With the hair?" Her voice goes distant, slightly echoey. Muffled, like maybe she's taking her shirt off, and Abigail inhales the rich scent of the meat in front of her and imagines the map of veins running under Marissa's pale skin.
She blinks, shakes the thoughts away. She's my friend. She could be me. "Yeah," she calls back. "Freddie and I are gonna work on some stuff over dinner. Getting ready for the book launch."
Maybe, she doesn't say, maybe tonight Freddie will figure it out. Maybe she's already figured it out, and tonight will be the night she tells Abigail all about it.
She has enough time to finish disarticulating the limbs and slice one of the thighs for the freezer before Marissa sweeps back in, oversized flannel drooping down to hang at her elbows and nicer pair of jeans fitting to her ass so delectably they make Abigail want to bite, even through all the fabric. Her teeth aren't sharp enough for denim, though, so she accepts the kiss Marissa places on the back of her neck and the heat that the touch sets blooming through her chest settles her nerves.
"Hi," she murmurs, and feels Marissa's smile against the wisps of hair at the back of her neck: the curve of her lip, the press of her upper incisors. She's hungry too. "Help me wrap him up?"
"Mm, no. I don't like it when they look at me." But she slouches off to the kitchen anyway to fetch one of the good glass tupperwares, the one that's been chilling in the fridge with its pre-made layers of roasted onions and thin-sliced potatoes. Flicks the radio on on her way back, sways in time to the music as she places the thigh meat in overlapping rows like waves.
Abigail can't help glancing over at her, again and again as she carefully arranges the rest of the pieces, four segments of arms, three remaining of legs, the trunk at the very end so it can provide a base for the limbs when she rolls the tarp. She cocks her head, considering the face. Marissa's right, sort of: it's disconcerting to see a man looking back at her, rather than a mimicry of her own face.
But she needs to stay away from other girls at least until the first book is out, and they were both so hungry, and she'd thought someone like this might be easier for Marissa, and, and, the excuses continue. Dizziness sweeps over her then, the man's face softening, smoothing into Marissa's, and in the back of her mind she hears Freddie's question again, why did he never take—
Marissa snaps the tupperware lid back on, and the face resolves to the hunter's. "I'll help carry it out to the shed after you wrap it up," she offers, and Abigail pulls her in for a one-armed hug, presses a kiss to her temple. She has her. She has her. This is enough.
"I've got it, thanks," she says. Marissa doesn't need to see the shed. She doesn't need to see Marissa in the shed, kneeling to pry up the floorboards, bending her neck for the hammer, falling—
Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe this won't work out.
Abigail rolls the carcass, and then has to unroll it to make sure she'd separated out the hands into their own baggies, because the scent of meat is mingling with Marissa's perfume and it's getting to her head, it must be. Her hands are steady as she ties it all together with butcher's twine, though, and when she hauls the tarp over her shoulder — lighter than a buck — and maneuvers it through the kitchen and out the utility room door, avoiding Marissa at the stove, it feels normal.
Outside the air is crisp and clean, a perfect November night, and Abigail inhales, drawing the cold into her lungs and willing herself to focus. Everything's fine. Marissa's adjusting. They'll be fine.
The shed lights are dim, but Abigail has never needed more than moonlight to work, here or in a deer blind. The steel toe of her boot serves to nudge aside the floorboard — she'll have to lock it properly when she leaves — and the carcass drops easily into the concealed icebox, nestling next to last month's boar. It makes a surprisingly small sound for something that had once been a large man, and Abigail winces, realising that probably means it landed on the salmon.
She strips her gloves off and takes the time to clean her knife thoroughly before re-sheathing it and hanging it back on the pegboard, along with her leather apron. She can feel Elise's gaze on her, the weight of the deer's eyes heavy from across the room.
"No," she says aloud. "You can't have him, sorry." When she turns around, there's something almost reproachful about the look, which is silly, because she placed the eyes herself. November's like that sometimes, she thinks, but can't bring herself to say it aloud. "He'll cause too many questions. But soon."
Maybe in a few weeks, during the archery season. She'll take Freddie, dress her in an orange that would clash horribly with her hair. Bring her up into one of the treetop blinds where they might be the only two people in the world, the two of them and Marissa running down below, dark hair flashing through the gaps between trees, her eyes—
"No," she says, more insistently this time, and Elise's eyes seem to blink in the electric lights. Marissa would be at home, studying her classmates, looking for the best places to start laying down Abigail's new pattern. "You can't have her, either of them. They're mine."
Elise's taxidermied face is impassive, but Abigail stares until she hears Freddie's car in the drive anyway. She locks the icebox and then the shed behind her, pushing up her sleeves when she gets close enough to the house that the backyard floodlights are brighter than the shed was. There's no stray blood, just a thin layer of gooseflesh rising in the chill.
Abigail shuts the door to the mud room with more force than strictly necessary. She can hear Freddie already talking to Marissa, maybe in the dining room with her coat hung up by the door like it belongs there. It should, she thinks, and kicks off her boots before she can go any further down that path, the one Freddie and Marissa are already walking with her, their eyes half-open.
"—wonderful, the life you girls have made for yourself," Freddie's saying when Abigail rounds the corner to see her in the dining room, Marissa hovering in the doorway facing her with her back to Abigail. Abigail watches the moment Freddie notices her, and lifts a finger to her lips with an exaggerated silly smile as she creeps forwards.
Freddie's face doesn't change. "I'm trying to get Abigail to lean into that a little more in the memoir, you know — you're her first love, but she has to feel something about the woods, about coming home to—"
Abigail pounces, wrapping her arms around Marissa's waist and pulling her flush against her body until she can kiss her cheek with just a hint of teeth. Marissa's shriek of surprise devolves into laughter almost immediately, and then Freddie's laughing too and Abigail joins in, giddy in a way that feels so much better than earlier. This is what she's been missing.
Marissa spins around in Abigail's grasp to give her a proper kiss which Abigail returns greedily, until something hot lands on her back.
"Ow, what—" she starts, and then Marissa pulls back and Abigail notices, for the first time, that she'd been holding a marinara-covered serving spoon. "I just washed up," she complains.
Marissa's unabashed oops, sorry and Freddie's that's why you deserved it overlap and Abigail sighs, fetching a napkin from the counter. Thankfully the sauce has landed mostly on her skin — she doesn't want to figure out if the blood in the sauce means it'll stain worse than usual. "It's got anchovies," she says apologetically to Freddie, "But there's pesto somewhere, with a spoon that hasn't been defiled."
"You thought of everything, hm?"
Marissa's sliding between them with the serving bowl of pasta so Abigail misses the look in her eyes when she says it, but there's no mistaking the hunger in her gaze when Abigail does meet it. She puts on the shyest version of her smile and says, "Marissa thinks of some of it. It's okay that she's joining us, right?"
"Of course." Freddie's still smiling, but it's not enough to distract Abigail from the faint tremors running through her fingers, like she's trying too hard not to reach for a pen. "Like I was just saying, we should consider expanding her role across the new book. She could be a real throughline there, a lifeline even, the girl you saved from the Shrike ... somehow."
And, there, the flicker: she knows.
Abigail breathes out, and it feels like breathing out for the first time, like something wild and safe. "You're absolutely right," she says, reaching out to run the tips of her fingers over the back of Freddie's hands, dipping under her wrist to press her nails against the tendons there as she draws Freddie ever so gently towards the dining room table. She feels the tremor again, and knows this time it has nothing to do with the story. "We should write about Marissa and the Shrike."
Marissa is lighting candles on the table that bears no visible sign of the carcass Abigail had spent so long working over. Freddie is pulling out a notebook while murmuring vague pleasantries about how good the salad looks. The organs from the Shrike's last kill are rolled neatly into the pork meatballs sitting between Marissa and Abigail's plates.
Abigail pours them all vegan wine, and thinks that it is, actually, really nice to be home.
"The dining room table, Abigail, really?"
Abigail doesn't need to look up from her work to see the way Marissa's nose is crinkled with distaste, or the way the affection in her eyes makes it impossible for Abigail to actually feel bad. "I put down a tarp," she says, and then she ducks her head and smiles in the way Marissa likes, gesturing wide and slow with the knife so the blood doesn't splatter. "See?"
Marissa's eyeroll is as audible as the clink of her keys in the bowl by the door, her footsteps heading towards the back bedroom. "Aren't you having that journalist over tonight? With the hair?" Her voice goes distant, slightly echoey. Muffled, like maybe she's taking her shirt off, and Abigail inhales the rich scent of the meat in front of her and imagines the map of veins running under Marissa's pale skin.
She blinks, shakes the thoughts away. She's my friend. She could be me. "Yeah," she calls back. "Freddie and I are gonna work on some stuff over dinner. Getting ready for the book launch."
Maybe, she doesn't say, maybe tonight Freddie will figure it out. Maybe she's already figured it out, and tonight will be the night she tells Abigail all about it.
She has enough time to finish disarticulating the limbs and slice one of the thighs for the freezer before Marissa sweeps back in, oversized flannel drooping down to hang at her elbows and nicer pair of jeans fitting to her ass so delectably they make Abigail want to bite, even through all the fabric. Her teeth aren't sharp enough for denim, though, so she accepts the kiss Marissa places on the back of her neck and the heat that the touch sets blooming through her chest settles her nerves.
"Hi," she murmurs, and feels Marissa's smile against the wisps of hair at the back of her neck: the curve of her lip, the press of her upper incisors. She's hungry too. "Help me wrap him up?"
"Mm, no. I don't like it when they look at me." But she slouches off to the kitchen anyway to fetch one of the good glass tupperwares, the one that's been chilling in the fridge with its pre-made layers of roasted onions and thin-sliced potatoes. Flicks the radio on on her way back, sways in time to the music as she places the thigh meat in overlapping rows like waves.
Abigail can't help glancing over at her, again and again as she carefully arranges the rest of the pieces, four segments of arms, three remaining of legs, the trunk at the very end so it can provide a base for the limbs when she rolls the tarp. She cocks her head, considering the face. Marissa's right, sort of: it's disconcerting to see a man looking back at her, rather than a mimicry of her own face.
But she needs to stay away from other girls at least until the first book is out, and they were both so hungry, and she'd thought someone like this might be easier for Marissa, and, and, the excuses continue. Dizziness sweeps over her then, the man's face softening, smoothing into Marissa's, and in the back of her mind she hears Freddie's question again, why did he never take—
Marissa snaps the tupperware lid back on, and the face resolves to the hunter's. "I'll help carry it out to the shed after you wrap it up," she offers, and Abigail pulls her in for a one-armed hug, presses a kiss to her temple. She has her. She has her. This is enough.
"I've got it, thanks," she says. Marissa doesn't need to see the shed. She doesn't need to see Marissa in the shed, kneeling to pry up the floorboards, bending her neck for the hammer, falling—
Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe this won't work out.
Abigail rolls the carcass, and then has to unroll it to make sure she'd separated out the hands into their own baggies, because the scent of meat is mingling with Marissa's perfume and it's getting to her head, it must be. Her hands are steady as she ties it all together with butcher's twine, though, and when she hauls the tarp over her shoulder — lighter than a buck — and maneuvers it through the kitchen and out the utility room door, avoiding Marissa at the stove, it feels normal.
Outside the air is crisp and clean, a perfect November night, and Abigail inhales, drawing the cold into her lungs and willing herself to focus. Everything's fine. Marissa's adjusting. They'll be fine.
The shed lights are dim, but Abigail has never needed more than moonlight to work, here or in a deer blind. The steel toe of her boot serves to nudge aside the floorboard — she'll have to lock it properly when she leaves — and the carcass drops easily into the concealed icebox, nestling next to last month's boar. It makes a surprisingly small sound for something that had once been a large man, and Abigail winces, realising that probably means it landed on the salmon.
She strips her gloves off and takes the time to clean her knife thoroughly before re-sheathing it and hanging it back on the pegboard, along with her leather apron. She can feel Elise's gaze on her, the weight of the deer's eyes heavy from across the room.
"No," she says aloud. "You can't have him, sorry." When she turns around, there's something almost reproachful about the look, which is silly, because she placed the eyes herself. November's like that sometimes, she thinks, but can't bring herself to say it aloud. "He'll cause too many questions. But soon."
Maybe in a few weeks, during the archery season. She'll take Freddie, dress her in an orange that would clash horribly with her hair. Bring her up into one of the treetop blinds where they might be the only two people in the world, the two of them and Marissa running down below, dark hair flashing through the gaps between trees, her eyes—
"No," she says, more insistently this time, and Elise's eyes seem to blink in the electric lights. Marissa would be at home, studying her classmates, looking for the best places to start laying down Abigail's new pattern. "You can't have her, either of them. They're mine."
Elise's taxidermied face is impassive, but Abigail stares until she hears Freddie's car in the drive anyway. She locks the icebox and then the shed behind her, pushing up her sleeves when she gets close enough to the house that the backyard floodlights are brighter than the shed was. There's no stray blood, just a thin layer of gooseflesh rising in the chill.
Abigail shuts the door to the mud room with more force than strictly necessary. She can hear Freddie already talking to Marissa, maybe in the dining room with her coat hung up by the door like it belongs there. It should, she thinks, and kicks off her boots before she can go any further down that path, the one Freddie and Marissa are already walking with her, their eyes half-open.
"—wonderful, the life you girls have made for yourself," Freddie's saying when Abigail rounds the corner to see her in the dining room, Marissa hovering in the doorway facing her with her back to Abigail. Abigail watches the moment Freddie notices her, and lifts a finger to her lips with an exaggerated silly smile as she creeps forwards.
Freddie's face doesn't change. "I'm trying to get Abigail to lean into that a little more in the memoir, you know — you're her first love, but she has to feel something about the woods, about coming home to—"
Abigail pounces, wrapping her arms around Marissa's waist and pulling her flush against her body until she can kiss her cheek with just a hint of teeth. Marissa's shriek of surprise devolves into laughter almost immediately, and then Freddie's laughing too and Abigail joins in, giddy in a way that feels so much better than earlier. This is what she's been missing.
Marissa spins around in Abigail's grasp to give her a proper kiss which Abigail returns greedily, until something hot lands on her back.
"Ow, what—" she starts, and then Marissa pulls back and Abigail notices, for the first time, that she'd been holding a marinara-covered serving spoon. "I just washed up," she complains.
Marissa's unabashed oops, sorry and Freddie's that's why you deserved it overlap and Abigail sighs, fetching a napkin from the counter. Thankfully the sauce has landed mostly on her skin — she doesn't want to figure out if the blood in the sauce means it'll stain worse than usual. "It's got anchovies," she says apologetically to Freddie, "But there's pesto somewhere, with a spoon that hasn't been defiled."
"You thought of everything, hm?"
Marissa's sliding between them with the serving bowl of pasta so Abigail misses the look in her eyes when she says it, but there's no mistaking the hunger in her gaze when Abigail does meet it. She puts on the shyest version of her smile and says, "Marissa thinks of some of it. It's okay that she's joining us, right?"
"Of course." Freddie's still smiling, but it's not enough to distract Abigail from the faint tremors running through her fingers, like she's trying too hard not to reach for a pen. "Like I was just saying, we should consider expanding her role across the new book. She could be a real throughline there, a lifeline even, the girl you saved from the Shrike ... somehow."
And, there, the flicker: she knows.
Abigail breathes out, and it feels like breathing out for the first time, like something wild and safe. "You're absolutely right," she says, reaching out to run the tips of her fingers over the back of Freddie's hands, dipping under her wrist to press her nails against the tendons there as she draws Freddie ever so gently towards the dining room table. She feels the tremor again, and knows this time it has nothing to do with the story. "We should write about Marissa and the Shrike."
Marissa is lighting candles on the table that bears no visible sign of the carcass Abigail had spent so long working over. Freddie is pulling out a notebook while murmuring vague pleasantries about how good the salad looks. The organs from the Shrike's last kill are rolled neatly into the pork meatballs sitting between Marissa and Abigail's plates.
Abigail pours them all vegan wine, and thinks that it is, actually, really nice to be home.
