a girl needs a gun these days (hannibal | freddie/miriam)

[fiachairecht]

a girl needs a gun these days. hannibal tv, freddie/miriam. a night passes in minutes. 1.2k words, rated m. for aphrodite_mine in femslashex 2020.

8:42 at night, and Freddie's at her door again, a shadowed mass of curls. The thing in her hand — camera, phone, recorder, Miriam's long since stopped trying to guess - blinks a single green light like an eye.

Steady. Alive.

"Don't remember inviting you," Miriam says, her voice rough as she reaches over to switch on the lamp. She's still getting used to the passage of time, but the LEDs on the digital clock in the corner spill sharp and red into the room whether she likes it or not. Past time for visitors, they say, but that's a simple word for whatever Freddie is.

"Never was one to wait for an invitation," Freddie drawls. Her hip is cocked against the doorframe, eyes bright as a passing car throws the silhouette of the trees outside across her face. Despite her words she hovers there in the doorway, whatever desire that drove her to pick the locks on the front door not enough to let her take the last step over the threshold into the bedroom. "But then, I think that's something that the two of us have in common."

It should sting — had stung, the first few times Freddie had tried it. But then somewhere along the way she realised that Freddie hadn't been blaming her for what happened to her — that there was, in fact, an understated sense of appreciation clinging to her words, as if she wanted to say, I would have done the same thing, or maybe, I think you're very brave.

Freddie Lounds doesn't say those things, though, not even to Miriam. Miriam's learning to appreciate it, though: the sense of not being coddled, of respect for what she had done rather than what she had survived. It sustains her through the long dark nights, or, at least, it makes it easier to close her eyes for them.

She can call them nights, now.

Freddie's still waiting in the doorway, eyes gleaming. Miriam lies back against her pillows and imagines her licking her lips, tapping her fingers against her recorder. Waiting. Time was neither of them were good at waiting, but the Ripper has changed that too.

"What do you want, Freddie?"

"A Pulitzer?" Miriam doesn't need the light to see the wry twist of Freddie's lips. "An interview with the woman who shot the Ripper, carrying out the final rescue of her own self after the FBI pulled her from the ground?"

Miriam looks down at the steady light in Freddie's hand. "Are you recording me right now?"

Freddie laughs, a surprisingly genuine sound. "That would be rude, Miss Lass."

"I thought we'd already established that you were rude."

"Mm," Freddie hums in something that isn't quite agreement. "We've established that I may, possibly, have entered your house without an explicit invitation." Miriam lets the words hang there between them, long enough that Freddie adds, "Multiple times."

"Not so far from rude," Miriam says, but there's no venom behind the words.

She's used to this, now, the one constant in her suddenly frighteningly long days. Freddie isn't safe by any objective measure, she knows this, but there's an odd sort of comfort in this sort sparring. Right about the time she realised Freddie respected her she'd also realised that Freddie didn't want to hurt her in any meaningful way, at least for the moment.

And she's trying to get better about living in moments, now, those sharply defined periods of time that begin and end with the presence and absence of other people, with the rising and setting of the sun and moon. It doesn't make being at the centre of Freddie Lounds' attention any less terrifying, but Miriam isn't sure she remembers how to be terrified anymore.

Or, at the very least, she's forgotten how to let it stop her.

Freddie's still just watching her, the same silence that feels like a gun pointed at her when it's wielded by one of the FBI psychiatrists turned into something breathless and expectant in Freddie's hands. In Freddie's eyes, mouth.

"You might as well come all the way in," Miriam says. "Not to rob you of another opportunity to be rude, or anything."

"I thought you'd never ask," Freddie says with a smirk. She crosses the threshold and sets her bag down with a gentleness that has to be for Miriam's benefit, and as she steps into the light, her smile might actually be real.

8:47 at night, and Freddie settles herself in Miriam's lap, knees denting the already-crumpled duvet. Her hands are cold on either side of Miriam's face, and undemanding as Miriam's one moving hand curls against her hip.

This is another thing she's getting used to: being touched again, being seen not only by other people but by someone like Freddie, who has eyes that could cut bones and lips that feel like they ought to find a better home against the barrel of a gun.

(Maybe that's what Miriam is, a gun. If she hadn't known what she was when Jack pointed her at the Ripper, well, that was on her, but now, when Freddie holds her, she still isn't sure. She feels like she could be if she wanted to. She feels possibility, breaking in her chest and radiating down the stump of her arm.

She could like being a gun, she thinks, if she was in Freddie's hands.)

Freddie kisses sharp, teeth in Miriam's lips and fingers against the edge of her prosthetic. She kisses like she's looking for secrets that Miriam's already decided to give her, kisses like Miriam might be a person after all, and with the weight of Freddie in her lap, Miriam thinks she just might want to be one. After all.

Freddie's hands are swift and sure, tangling in Miriam's hair and edging up under her shirt. Miriam lets her eyes fall shut as Freddie touches her — it's too much, being at the centre of her attention like this. It's too real, feeling her body respond, arching and sighing as if it were entirely out of her control. As if she was standing to the side, watching this new Miriam who was steady and real and had captured the attention of the prettiest, most dangerous woman in the city.

8:49 at night, and Freddie's fingers tease over her nipples, glide over her cunt. She presses her cheek to Miriam's, just the corner of her mouth against Miriam's skin, and maybe her eyes are closed too. Maybe she's listening to all that blood Miriam still has under her skin, all the blood she's kept, and she's thinking: I have all my stories right here.

If she doesn't tell them, Freddie will just make up her own stories. It might be better that way, for both of them.

In the meantime she breathes, ragged, and it's a story all on its own.

9:05 at night, and Freddie gets up. She doesn't say if she was disappointed Miriam didn't watch, but, one day, Miriam thinks, one day I will do that for you.

"Don't open your eyes til I'm gone," Freddie says. Because she knows Miriam doesn't like watching people go? Because she wants the satisfaction of knowing Miriam will obey her?

9:08 at night, and Miriam opens her eyes. There's a pistol on her desk, and a note.

Would you like to kill the Ripper again?

10:37 at night, and Miriam can't sleep.

For the first time, she wishes Freddie hadn't left.