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The bizarre gay couple moves in next door on a cold November Friday. Meg meets them in the hallway as she's leaving for school, her duffle coat buttoned all the way up to the chin. Seventeen years old and about to miss her bus, she doesn't want to take much notice of them, but one coughs and (in a peculiar European accent) asks her to help him carry some bags up the building stairs.
Fuck it. English literature is boring anyway.
They're both handsome men. The European one has sharp cheekbones and an even sharper outfit, mainly consisting of dress trousers, a fleece and a blazer. His hair is greying and his eyes are pinpoint precise, surveying Meg in a way that could be decently uncomfortable if the situation was hostile - luckily it’s not. He drags a humongous suitcase, one that clunks up the building’s stairs like it contains bricks. To the man’s credit, he handles it like he routinely carries heavy objects, something you wouldn’t expect from the unscuffed leather of his shoes. At one point he hands a much smaller bag to Meg and she nearly buckles under the weight.
As they carry the bags, he introduces himself as Harris. He’s a psychiatrist, originally Lithuanian although he met his partner in Maryland, and they’ve just returned from a several month long stint holidaying in Florence.
Harris’s partner is called Thomas. He’s almost as tall as Harris, also a psychiatrist, but he lacks the refined edge of his husband. His hair is longer and curled. His shirt, although just as expensive looking as Harris’s, is untucked. Meg makes the mistake of looking him in the eye and Thomas skittishly darts his gaze away. Like a deer about to bolt from a hunter, his eyes are wild.
They waste about twenty minutes exchanging pleasantries. Harris invites Meg and her mother round for some Italian dish she can’t understand the name of at least twice. In response, Meg warns him about Mrs O’Rielly’s Chihuahua that likes to escape and shit on the carpet. Thomas stays mostly silent, traversing the stairs several extra times to fetch bags as Harris and Meg talk.
As he gets the last one, Harris looks down the hall and sighs quietly. "Ah, there was a lift here this whole time?"
"Yeah, but it never works. You'd think it would, considering how expensive it is to live here."
"It's a nice building."
Meg shrugs. "Yeah, it is. Not my mom and I's usual crowd, but hey, she won the divorce. Money had to go somewhere."
"Not college?"
"Nah, the apartment is nicer. Although," Meg tilts her head to the side, "my mom did describe it as the type of place billionaire serial killers go to lay low."
Miraculously, this prompts an almost smile and a muted chuckle from Thomas.
Fairly proud of herself for not scaring off the new neighbours, Meg heads downstairs with her head held high.
…And promptly misses the next bus.
—
The next time that Meg interacts with part of the bizarre gay couple from next door, she gets home from school and Harris is sitting in her kitchen, sipping from a glass of blood red wine. Her mom has an even bigger glass in her hand, and she’s curling a ringlet of black hair around her finger like a lovestruck teenager. Their dog, Marcus, watches the scene with tired eyes.
Meg wants to shoot something.
In the past months since the ‘divorce’ it hasn’t been unusual to see her mother invite a wide selection of young to middle aged men back to their swanky apartment in the guise of ‘moving on’. Usually, Meg doesn’t really mind. She’s got better things to do than watch her mom flirt, so she just hides in her room and shoves the music up.
Unfortunately, Meg has to live next to these guys for the foreseeable future. She bites the bullet and steps into the kitchen. “Hey, Mom. Harris.”
“Meg, sweetie, how was school?”
“Good, yeah.”
“Good, good. I was just talking to Harris, from next door? He’s so charming, isn’t he?” The smile that she shoots him is full of cringe inducing lunacy. Meg and her mother share the same bright blue eyes and plume of curly black hair, although Meg’s inherited paler skin and a flat face from her dad. She doesn’t think that romance in any capacity is her thing, but if it is, she hopes the similarities between her and her mother don’t extend to the same horrendous ‘flirting’ face.
Meg nods politely. “Yeah, I met him and his husband the other day when I was late to school.”
Meg’s mom chokes on a gulp of wine and her smile falters for a second. If Harris notices, or even cares, he does not register it.
"It was good to meet you." Harris smiles cordially. He looks to her mother. "Heather, your daughter is wonderfully engaging in conversation. She certainly brightened up Thomas and I's morning when we first moved in."
Harris speaks nicely, his words eloquent and his tone smooth. He seems completely relaxed, like he’s in total control of every single person in the room, including the dog. Meg reckons that if Harris had a bad bone somewhere in his finely dressed body, that would be really fucking frightening.
"She certainly likes to chat." Her mom laughs. "I think she gets it from me."
Meg crosses her arms, hoping to radiate as much teenage angst as possible. She certainly used to like to chat, before everything went down. "I think I'd really like to go and listen to music, actually. I'll see you round. Tell Thomas I say hi, I guess."
Harris smiles, slowly, and nods. "Certainly. One day we must have you and your mother round for dinner."
—
The thing they don't tell you about rich people on TV, Meg thinks, sitting in the centre of the cafeteria with her friends, is that they're really fucking weird. You see the weird kids in movies and they're always the middle class kids with flannels and thick rimmed glasses who are obsessed with the 80s, whilst the rich ones all care about wine and suntans and screwing each other's boyfriends. And yeah, that's definitely the case: the uniform code is strict and the social norms are stricter at her private school, but that means the weird kids have to be weirder to act out.
Case in point, one of Meg's only two friends at her bourgeois hellscape of a school, Jake, leans across the table as the trio eat their lunches, trying to angle his touch screen MacBook so everyone can see it. His hair flops across his face as he animatedly shoves his finger at the images.
"And this is Freddie Lounds, she's literally the best true crime writer in the world. You know why? Because she's been part of the crimes!" He hisses the word crimes, his face lighting up in a manic grin and his fingers wiggling.
"I think the better descriptor there is that she has trauma." Sasha fires back, thin eyebrows raised. She mockingly repeats Jake’s finger wiggles.
“Eh, same thing. Either way, it's an indisputable fact that nobody has been able to get into the head of the Chesapeake Ripper like Lounds!”
Meg picks at her mash potato. It’s fucking good mashed potato. “The cheesecake who, now?”
“The Chesapeake Ripper. He was a prolific serial killer that the FBI were able to identify, but never actually caught until he handed himself in. He operated in Baltimore, like, six years ago.”
“Huh. My new neighbours come from Baltimore.”
Jake’s face scrunches and he lifts his hands up. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Dunno. It’s Baltimore, isn’t it?”
“Well I doubt your neighbours are the Chesapeake Ripper and his infamous accomplice boyfriend. Look, let me show you a picture-”
A smooth hand comes out of nowhere and slams the top of the laptop down. Jake and Meg swing their heads round to look at Sasha, who is shaking hers with clear distaste. She looks especially disappointed at Jake. “I think you’re both missing the real point of this conversation, which is that Jake is an absolute morbid freak for being obsessed with serial killers.”
“Bold words from the homestuck stan.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“You literally have one of those little grey fuckers set as your home screen.”
“Homestuck was a cultural icon during its prime.”
“And the Chesapeake Ripper was in the actual news! True Crime is a real world issue!”
“And that makes it not creepy, how?”
“Because it’s a serious topic. The way people react to crime is fun - it can tell you a lot about their mental state and society as a whole.”
“You realise you just said serious and fun in the same sentence? Can you even hear yourself?”
To settle the argument, both heads snap round to Meg, who’s currently shovelling food in her mouth. Sasha scowls. Jake yanks his head at Sasha like he’s in pain.
“Tell her I'm right.”
Meg puts her fork down. The stare she levels at her friends bleeds with complete apathy. When she speaks, her tone is so flat it’s almost sharp. “You two are as bad as each other. Homestuck’s fucking dead. And there’s nothing fun about true crime. Crime isn’t funny. It just ruins lives.”
She receives blank stares in reply. The awkward silence is almost painful, so Meg pulls her lips into a smile and puts on her best joking tone. “And I say that fully aware that Christi’s dad is probably part of the mafia.”
The other two relax into laughs again at the comment. Meg misses the concerned look that Sasha and Jake shoot each other when she’s not looking.
—
The worst thing about living in the centre of New York, apart from the pigeons and the people and the absolutely insane drivers, is that there’s nowhere convenient to walk the dog. There’s very little greenery, so if she wants to take Marcus out for a walk she has to trek for quarter of an hour through the tourists to central park, where she then has to trek through even more tourists just to let the fat, brown labrador have a piss.
She loves the beast to bits, don’t get her wrong. She just misses the expansive, soft winded fields and parks of her home. New York feels cramped: not like everybody is looking at her, like you might think, but like everybody is purposely looking just past her and not looking at her at all. Which, she supposes, is the point of living there in the first place.
That is how she feels, however, until one day she looks up and meets the intense gaze of two dark eyes. She freezes, like an animal caught in a trap, then finally breaks the exchange at the same time the person who’s watching her does. She reaches down and puts Marcus on lead, then chances another look at her viewer. She realises that it’s Thomas, the other half of the bizarre gay couple from next door.
It’s awkward. He’s pretending not to have noticed her like every other person in this park, but they both know that he recognised her and she ultimately recognised him back. She edges over at a slow pace, letting Marcus take the lead, and when Thomas finally seems to accept that she’s not going to just wander away and acknowledges them, she chances a wave. He shyly waves back.
“Hi. Fancy seeing you here.” Meg says, because she feels like that’s something people say to each other.
“Yeah, hi. Weird, I know. It’s almost like we both live fifteen minutes away.” He replies like he’s having the same exact thought process. The tension that buzzed in the air like static electricity dissipates a little at that, and he looks down at Marcus. “Who’s this?”
“This is Marcus, our dog. He’s pretty friendly, you can say hello.”
Thomas reaches out to Marcus and the dog shoves his head into the palm of Thomas’s hand. The man smiles so broadly and so naturally that Meg sort of forgets that it’s the same guy who awkwardly ferried bags up and down the stairs for Harris. Thomas pets Marcus like a natural, scratching the dog’s flabby brown cheeks and under his chin so well that Marcus’s eyes unfocus and his tongue lolls out of his mouth.
“Marcus is a funny name for a dog.” He says as Marcus lays down to have Thomas rub his belly.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Figured he was more of a ‘Buddy’, or a ‘Cuddles’.”
“Cuddles? Absolutely not.” Meg sits on the wall where Thomas was perched and realises, weirdly, that Thomas has nothing on him. No newspaper, no book, not even a bag. It seems he was sitting in Central Park and just watching people, which is… probably a red flag, or it would be if Thomas wasn’t petting her dog like a man who’d been reunited with an old friend. “I’ll let you in on a secret, though. Marcus is not actually his real name.”
Thomas smiles. “Oh, I see. A man of mystery.”
“Yeah, I’ll let you in on another secret. He’s not actually a labrador.”
Thomas scoffs good naturedly. “That one I don’t quite believe.”
“Why else do you think his skin is so flabby? So he can take it off. He’s a whippet underneath all of that.” Meg’s words take a downturn into the morbid, and as they do so does Thomas. It’s not especially visible, but his shoulders round slightly and he slows down his pets on Marcus, almost hesitant. His face flashes with melancholia.
It’s a jarring sight, seeing Thomas veer from skittish to awkward to effortlessly charming and then to sadness. He seems utterly at home in every single one of these roles, even if they seemed to be pulled on and off of him like a jumper. Meg isn’t sure which is the real one, or if all of them are.
“I used to have dogs.”
“Cool.”
Good fucking job, Meg.
“Do you - uh - do you still have one?”
“Nope. Harris and I travel a lot, it would be unfair to take them around with us.” He pushes away from Marcus and sits up on the wall with Meg, looking out into the park. He focuses his eyes on mothers and sons playing with kites, dog walkers, students day drinking and people reading books by themselves. “I miss them though. I used to take in strays all the time and we all lived together in a farmhouse.”
“Oh, cool. Lots of space, then.”
“Yeah. It went on for miles. It was peaceful. And, well, also isolating. When I was living there it was like I was… losing my mind. Because I kind of was. But I wouldn’t be who I was now without it, and now I’m happy. So it must have been nice, right?”
Thomas’s eyes go wide, like a puppy as he remembers. She knows her mother gets that same look when she thinks too hard about the past: a sort of hazy, bittersweet longing for what has been, even if it was not a good time. Meg reckons she gets it sometimes herself and, for once, doesn’t feel quite so alone in the towering haze of concrete blocks that make up New York.
“Right.” She shrugs. “I’m not sure any expert would agree with you, but I get it. So it’s obviously correct.”
Thomas laughs. They make small talk and walk back to the apartment together, lingering slightly at their respective entrances.
Everyday after that, when she needs to take the dog out, Meg knocks on Thomas and Harris’s front door. Thomas will meet her, boots already on, and they’ll walk in mostly silence to Central Park. It might not be convenient to walk the dog in New York, but Meg stops seeing it as so much of a chore.
—
Sometimes, Meg hears weird things through the walls.
Classical music. Shouts. Machinery. Kissing. Tender talking. Knocking. Arguing. Dead silence. Laughing. Screams.
The noises come from Harris and Thomas’s apartment. Sometimes they aren’t made by either of the inhabitants.
Meg doesn’t have a lot to say about the weird things she hears, mainly because she doesn’t fucking care.
—
Harris finally gets Meg and her mother round for dinner on a warm Tuesday night, three months after they move in. Meg and her mother stand awkwardly on the doorstep, refusing to look at each other (Meg’s mother put on her smartest dinner party dress; she found it absolutely abhorrent when Meg came out of her room, a minute before they were due to be round, wearing ripped jeans).
“You’re being impolite.” Heather snips, clearly hoping that the door will swing open and she’ll get the last word.
The door stays shut. “Thomas literally lived in the middle of nowhere for years with like eight dogs. I assure you he gives zero shits if I’m wearing jeans.”
“Meghan, don’t talk like that! And the whole point of living in a place like this is that we fit in. You look like you’re one of those druggy art students and not a respectable, young, upper-east side woman. What happened to that duffle coat I brought you?”
Annoyed, Meg’s face twitches. “We’re literally not going outs-”
The door finally swings open, cutting Meg off and revealing Harris, dressed in a tweed suit with his hair slicked back. His mouth stretches into a welcoming smile. “Heather! Meg! It is wonderful to finally have you over.” He looks both women up and down. “You both look wonderful.”
At ‘both’, Meg shoots a look at her mother behind her back. Harris sees, but keeps quiet, winking at Meg. “Now, come on in. Thomas is just inside.”
Harris's apartment is chic as hell. The walls are painted a tasteful grey, adorned with what looks to be priceless classical artwork, not that Meg can recognise what that artwork is. The carpet is spotless, as is the furniture, and the furniture is precisely tucked in and equally spaced.
It’s impossible to miss the kitchen, the clear focal point of the apartment. Considering how short of a time Thomas and Harris have spent in the building it is impressive to see how lavish they’ve made the kitchen. The fridge is bigger than a coffin, with a sleek, black, polished front. Counter space stretches down the length of the kitchen, sophisticated marble countertop shining against the grey tiles of the floor. The stove is huge: a victorian style monstrosity with actual fire and chunky metal burners. On them is a selection of pots and pans simmering away. The aroma of something rich and juicy (and definitely containing wine) billows through the room. Meg wasn’t so hungry before she left, but, surrounded by all of this excess and the allure of the food, she’s ravenous.
Thomas lingers in the living room, politely greeting Heather and smiling at Meg. He’s placed himself in front of an ornate fireplace, carved from white stone, above which a well polished set of antlers is displayed. The antlers are huge, larger than Meg’s wingspan, wicked sharp and painted a void-like black. It draws her eyes - it draws everyone’s eyes - a striking centrepiece in amongst the classical artwork and tasteful finery.
“My wonderful husband chose that one.” Harris smiles, briefly placing his arm around Thomas’s waist, who looks lovingly at him. “I’ll let him explain as I continue on with dinner. Please, forgive my absence.”
Heather beams at Harris, because he is nothing but polite.
Meg’s stomach grumbles, and Thomas chuckles when he hears. Meg, despite how out of depth she feels in this lavish labyrinth, feels a smile spark on her face.
Thomas gestures to the antlers. “They’re a stag’s, clearly. I picked them out because they’re a reminder of Harris and I’s relationship. It’s not typical. It can scare some. It is painful and beautiful and it’s changed both of us. But nonetheless striking, and worth it.”
Meg’s mother is quiet at that one. She doesn’t speak about Meg’s dad anymore, because he’s a fucking dick, but Meg knows she sometimes wants to. Before he was quite so awful, Heather might have described their relationship like that: a beautiful storm. Then the antler’s ends were blunted, and Meg’s father got worse, and it stopped being a beautiful storm and started just being cold and wet and so they left. They’ve been happier since, despite the new city and new names and new neighbours and the frequent arguments.
It’s probably why Heather mumbles in response to Harris’s explanation. “Did you kill it yourself?”
“We found the stag on the side of the road, near death. I put it out of its misery and used it for this. I like to think it lives on.”
“Meg used to hunt, sometimes. With her father.”
Thomas’s eyes darken.
If either of the women were listening, they might hear Harris pause his chopping ever so briefly.
“Yeah.” Meg says. “He wished I was a boy. Tried hunting, fishing, going to sports games, poker nights, the whole lot. Didn’t like most of them, but I didn’t mind the hunting. I liked hiding in the woods we had near our house.”
Thomas doesn’t say a word. Neither does Heather. Both of them are seemingly lost in thought, leaving the mouthwatering air slightly cold and awkward. Meg looks at Heather, who has her fists clenched, presumably thinking about Meg’s dad and the time he spent not getting a respectable job or being a good husband or father. Meg looks at Thomas, who also has his fists clenched, and is staring at the set of antlers above the fireplace. It seems however much he and Harris’s relationship is striking, its sharp edges are especially clear to some.
Meg clears her throat. “Can I have some wine or something?”
Three voices chime back. “No.”
The tension breaks a little, then. Thomas spends his time asking about Heather’s job and Meg’s school. They discuss an opera Thomas and Harris went to see a few weeks ago, and a holiday to Florence, and their meeting as two FBI advisors. It’s a pleasant, passable conversation, like they’re reading from a script.
Meg doesn’t always miss how Thomas’s eyes will anxiously flick to the kitchen.
After about twenty minutes Harris calls them to the dining room and they sit around the table, about to eat some dish that Meg can’t pronounce the name of. Thomas sits to her left, Harris at the head of the table, and her mother across from her.
The meal looks and smells like perfection. The vegetables are chopped uniformly and shine with a vibrant colour, delicately cooked so they don’t appear mushy, or raw. The plate is clean and well organised, with thinly cut slabs of meat taking centre stage. It looks red, juicy, broiled in a pan with a rich gravy. Meg can imagine how the flavours will exquisitely explode on her tongue.
Excited, she’s about to pick up her fork when Thomas coughs.
“Harris.” He says, like his throat is blocked. “Did you check the dates on the meat?”
“Of course.” Harris grins. “Please, dig in.”
“No.” Thomas snaps. “I don’t think Meg will like it.”
“It looks nice.” She says.
“She and her father used to hunt.” Thomas says, looking directly at Meg as though someone else is in her seat. His voice is firm. Flat. Angry. Guilty? She can never tell with him, and it drives her mad. “I got the meat from the butchers on 4th. It’s awful. Don’t eat it, Meg.”
Harris’s eyes narrow. He seems more nonchalant. “Please, Thomas. I’m sure she will find it more than satisfactory.”
Meg pipes up. “Surely I should get to decide-”
“No.” He says. “I’m feeling ill, actually. And I coughed when I was carrying out her plate and I got germs on it. I don’t want to infect her. Heather can eat whatever, I don’t care, but Meg shouldn’t eat it.”
Sharply, he stands up. He takes his and Meg’s plates and carries them out of sight; the sound of the drainage disposal can be heard from the kitchen.
He returns with his coat. He yanks his head at her. “Come on, Meg. I’ll get you something else to eat to make up for it.”
Harris’s eyes narrow. Meg wasn’t sure he could make any sort of emotion that was displeased, but it pulls the sharp edges of his face in a way that’s quiet and intense. “Fine.” He says. “I hope you have a good time.”
Heather looks baffled.
Meg awkwardly gets to her feet, because what are you supposed to do in that situation? “Thanks for the meal, Harris. See you later, Mom.”
—
Thomas drags her around New York for about half an hour, in complete silence, until he finds what he was looking for: a McDonalds. He very politely asks her what she wants (chicken nuggets and fries), orders himself a big mac, and baffles the server when he won't look her in the eye but spots her tag and uses her full name (Katie). Meg shrugs from behind him. Her feet hurt. She doesn’t have the patience to try and excuse Thomas’s weirdness.
They sit in the artificial yellow lights. Meg, both already hungry and slightly pissed off, inhales her chicken nuggets. However much she might be hungry Thomas eclipses her, eating his burgers like a man starved, licking the juices off his fingers. When Meg raises her eyebrows, he shrugs. “Sometimes I miss eating like a slob. Harris is an exceptional cook, but he doesn't believe in grease.”
She scowls. “I don't understand you.”
Thomas responds like she’s making a joke, because that’s what a polite person would do in that situation. “I don't understand me a lot of the time either. You're not special.”
Meg’s reply is flat. “You don't make any sense, at all. You act like such a polite guy and also a fucking freak at the same time. You’re, like, super emotional but you never say anything about how you’re feeling. I hear the weirdest fucking noises from your apartment at night and you never look bothered. You walk the dog with me every single day. But the one day I step into your life and try to go round for dinner, you stop me eating it and take me to a fucking Maccys. I don’t get it. I thought you liked me.”
“I do like you.”
“Doesn’t feel like it tonight.” Resolute, Meg leans back in her chair and crosses her arms. She gives Thomas the stink eye, hoping to communicate that she’s going to stay in a strop until he explains himself. It’s a technique she’s used many times, staring one of her parents down from across the table. It’s a futile attempt at leveraging some power in the conversation: she can feel spiteful anger at Thomas’s weird behaviour sparking in her stomach, ready to ignite at the wrong words.
Thomas says the wrong words.
“Well you’re not a prime example of simplicity yourself. What’s a girl who used to hunt with her dad in the midwest doing in one of the richest neighbourhoods in New York? You won the divorce, yes, but no settlement is big enough to pay for that apartment. You’re blunt, pretending to be a grown up, but you act up like a child when you want attention. Suggests trauma, likely dad related by the way you’ve latched onto Harris and I. The fact that you want to talk about it suggests that your mom doesn’t, and that it infuriates you. You’re trying to be happy like she wants, but all you feel is angry, or numb, and it makes you angrier to admit that.”
Of course, Thomas is right. For once he’s looking at her in the eye.
The spark lights. Rage surges through her veins.
“The fuck is wrong with you?!”
“I used to profile criminals for the FBI. I am a psychologist. You want to talk, we can talk, but don't expect to have the upper hand in this conversation.” His tone is slow, empathetic, understanding, and it makes her mad.
She pushes her box of chicken nuggets towards him. She wants to flip the table, but it’s bolted to the floor so this is the next best thing. “I just want answers! That’s the problem with you adults! You’re always doing stuff that you want to do and then you never talk about it and it fucks up the way I’m feeling and I don’t understand.”
“If there’s one thing Harris has taught me is that sometimes answers don’t help. Sometimes talking doesn’t help. Sometimes the only way to understand your feelings is just to feel them.”
There are sharp tears stinging in her eyes at Thomas’s words, although, again, he’s probably not wrong. Meg growls. She lets three years of anger take her. She gets to her feet. “Alright then. Fuck you.”
“Meg.”
“No. You are like my dad, and that’s pretty fucked up considering he’s a convicted fucking criminal. Trying to control my life and shit. Deciding what I can't eat?! Telling me how I feel instead of treating me like an equal-”
Thomas pales. “You don’t want me as an equal.”
“Don’t tell me what I want! I just want things to make sense!” She snatches her chicken nuggets off the table, but makes sure to spill her lemonade. The artificial, clear liquid runs and bubbles across the table until it pools around Thomas’s burger box, turning the corner to mulch. He continues to look at her with that withering emotional intensity. “Thanks for the chicken nuggets, asshole.”
Thomas’s eyes go rounder, as do his shoulders. The man relents, as if the air had been let out of him a little. It’s not one of his full emotional shifts, but it’s enough to stall Meg from retreating into the lonely night air. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m not going to tell you why I acted the way I did tonight, but I do value you enough to apologise. And I’ll ask something of you I bet your father never did. I would like you to trust me. And it’s not for my sake - it’s for your own. I promise to not act so weird in front of you if you promise me something in return.”
“What?”
“Never eat any cooking Harris gives you. Not a single bite.”
The look he gives her is sincere, painfully so. It’s so achingly sincere she almost forgets to be angry.
Almost.
With a withering look she turns on her heel and storms out of the McDonalds. She thinks she hears him shouting after her retreating form: a few frustrated “Meg!”’s, and one softer, pained cry.
She thinks he says “Abigail!”
Then she tells herself she doesn’t care enough to find out and goes home.
—
Meg and Thomas don’t walk Marcus together anymore. For the first few days Marcus lulls against his lead to get to Thomas’s front door, but Meg pulls him on. It hurts a little to do so, but Thomas told her to feel her feelings. She’s fucking mad at the world so she continues to be so.
Now that she’s mentioned it to Thomas, she stops hearing the weird noises from his and Harris’s apartment - aside from the occasional dinner her mom has round there (delicious, apparently). Meg stops being invited, which she’s fine about.
She tells her friends as much. She tells them about the whole experience (excluding the specifics about her life) because it’s fucking weird.
Sasha picks at her nails. “You’re right. That is fucking weird.”
“Don’t hate me for this.” Jake says. “But genuinely, are you sure they’re not serial killers?”
It’s weird, but it’s not that weird.
—
Meg’s mother has, inspired by Harris, decided to become a Michelin star chef. Not literally, because that’s a lot of effort and Heather works a swanky office job that takes up most of her days, but apparently their normal standard of cooking (oven chips and boiled veg) is no longer suitable. It starts small: a fancy side of mash potato with cream, a more expensive cut of meat from the store. It grows when she starts making homemade lasagne sauce and sourdough bread. Chocolates end up only having worth if the cocoa beans are 99% pure or some shit. Dinnertime becomes an event, and Meg doesn't mind because the food is better.
She does mind that now she has to get the ingredients.
One Saturday afternoon she's sent to the fancy grocery store ten minutes away to get organic vegetables her mom can sauté. It's one that Harris recommends, with long aisles filled with a rainbow of nicely branded food. None of the packaging is vibrant, but it's classy. The free range meat is in shrunk clear plastic and rich black soil dusts the vegetables. They don't sell plastic bags to carry the food, just a beige, well sewn tote that costs an extra five dollars.
Meg is inspecting the difference between two carrots when her phone rings. She expects it to be Heather, asking her to pick up some extra vinegar, so she doesn't even look at the screen when she answers.
When a tired sounding Government official answers, asking if he's speaking to ‘Miss Morgan,’ she's so surprised she almost drops her phone.
She doesn't want to think about what is said on the call. Even if she did, it passes in a blur of bad news and fear that blemishes the words like water on ink.
She doesn't realise she's frozen. She doesn't realise that she's shaking. She only realises the pit in her stomach is growing and that there's a bead of sweat rolling down her neck. It feels like a bug crawling across her skin.
She thinks she can hear her dad, walking towards her with his heavy footsteps and heavy hands. One of those hands plants itself on her shoulder and she doesn't flinch, and-
And it's not her dad. It's Harris, looking down at her with concern.
“Meg, are you okay?”
She nods. “Yeah.”
“Forgive me if I am not entirely convinced. You have been hovering here for the last minute and a half. I had no idea you were such a carrot connoisseur.”
The half joke breaks the tension. Meg chuckles, joined politely by Harris, who picks up a carrot and takes her basket. Because he's gentle, and because her brain is still a little fogged over, she lets him.
He chats idly to Meg, letting her pick up the rest of her shopping alongside his own. They talk about Harris: his favourite pieces of art, some dude called William Blake and his ‘Red Dragon.’ Meg doesn’t quite get it, but she manages to shake herself out of her stressed stupor enough to respond with a comment about How To Train Your Dragon. It's a nice, inoffensive conversation - the type Harris excels at - nice enough that it ends with Harris paying for the entirety of her shop with minimal complaint from Meg.
“Thank you so much.” Meg tells him, plugging herself into the front seat of Harris’s car. It’s unsurprisingly swanky, with dustless leather seats and one of those TV screen dashboards. “For buying this. And for making sure that I don’t have to walk.”
“It is no problem, really.” Harris reassures, pulling out of the parking lot and onto the busy streets. Someone instantly tries to rear end him - Harris eases the break on gently, his eyes not even widening. Lunatic drivers aren’t unusual for the city, but that doesn’t make dealing with them any less nerve wracking. Unless you’re Harris, apparently, who goes into first and edges around the bad driver. He’s either very good at controlling his concern, or has no concept of safety, or both. He carries on talking. “I fear it is my fault you have to walk in the first place - judging from the smells from your apartment, I may have inspired your mother into cooking.”
“Just a little bit. I don’t mind so much. You are a good cook, after all. Allegedly.”
Harris twitches. “I am sorry for the way Thomas acted at the dinner party. I haven’t invited you back since in the belief that both of you would find it more pleasant, but that doesn’t mean I do not want you there. You seem like a good person, Meg. A good daughter.”
There’s a wistful lilt to Harris’s words; there’s a wistful tug at Meg’s heart as she hears them.
She decides she wouldn’t mind having Harris as her dad. He’s tall, nice. She could see him helping her with her homework, cooking her dinner, buying her something flashy but thoughtful for her birthday or Christmas. She can imagine him pouring encouraging words into her ear. His smooth voice always seems to know what to say.
She wonders if his own father was like her’s: messy, rough, rude. She doesn’t think anyone like Harris would emerge from any other avenue. He seems like the construction of perfection, but also like he sees that construction as boring, so aligns himself with Thomas and his wild undertones.
Meg must go silent for a while. Harris coughs. “Meghan, are you quite alright?”
“Yeah. Whilst I - uh - was in the shop, I got a call. Turns out my dad is unexpectedly out of prison. Something about a new psych evaluation which got him off.”
“Oh.” Harris says. (If Meg was smarter, she’d hear the tinge of knowing amusement in his tone). “I’m very sorry to hear that.”
“It’s alright. That’s why we’re here, in New York, anyway. So he can’t find us. So it should be fine.”
Harris cocks his head to the side. “You make it sound like you’re in witness protection.”
“Hahahahahahaha. I’m not!” She grins. She’s a bad liar.
“You’re a bad liar.” Harris confirms, although his tone is lacking any judgement. (Again, if Meg were smarter, she may realise that as well as empathetic, Harris sounds thoroughly unsurprised). “May I ask what he was in prison for?”
The teenager crosses her arms uncomfortably. “Criminal shit. I don’t really know what, but it was bad. Enough to give him a thirty year sentence… Or so I thought.”
“And how does his getting out of prison make you feel?”
The question is disarming. It must be the psychologist in Harris, because despite the randomness of it, Meg considers for a second and answers anyway. “Angry.”
“Understandably so.”
“Not as far as my mom is concerned. She wants us to move on.”
“In my professional opinion, you should let yourself be angry. As far as I’m concerned, hiding the way that you are feeling, even to yourself, is the slowest way to move on.” He indicates to the left and turns. They’re nearly home now, the towering apartment block visible at the end of the street. “Now, tell me. What is this ‘How To Train Your Dragon?”
Meg tries to recap the first two movies to Harris as they make the journey from their building’s garage to the floor where they live. The conversation calms the building storm in her chest, knowing that when she gets past her front door she has to tell Heather about the phone call.
Harris hears the growing catches in Meg’s words as she climbs each step, so when they get to his front door he hands Meg’s shopping over, but lingers with the door open. “Would you and your mother like to come over for dinner? Thomas is working late, and I am making sausage casserole. It means you do not have to cook, considering the news.”
Meg considers it. She really does. The casserole sounds alluring, as does Harris’s burning fireplace and the promise of stressless conversation.
But she also remembers Thomas’s painful earnestness as he last spoke to her.
“Never eat any cooking Harris gives you. Not a single bite.”
And because Meg is just smart enough, she smiles politely, thanks Harris for buying her shopping, and says,
“Maybe another night.”
—
Meg’s luck runs out on a warm Tuesday evening in June. Heather is working late at the office, so Meg puts a pizza (meat feast) in the oven and watches three episodes of Dexter (three more than she should, considering she’s got a history project due at the end of the week). She’s home alone, and homework doesn’t count if there’s no one to make you do it, right?
She hears him first. Big, heavy steps. He’s always walked slowly, but unevenly. Meg would recognise that pace anywhere, and she does. He’s coming down the outside hallway, stumbling a little as he goes, probably drunk.
Meg freezes. Marcus perks his head up at her change in demeanour. She should go and turn the light off so it looks like she’s not in, but her bones feel like concrete. Her phone is in the other room, on charge. It feels like a 100 miles away, and despite the apartment between them, her father feels like he's breathing down her neck.
He knocks heavily on the door. “Meghan!” He slurs. He's definitely drunk. “Let me in, Meghan, I know you're in there!”
Reluctantly, Meg gets to her feet. She should go to her bedroom and get her phone. She knows it.
Instead, her feet blindly carry her to the kitchenette, where her body confidently lifts a knife off of the magnetic blade block. With every step she takes her feelings slowly reveal themselves to her, like fire stoking itself into a blaze. She started off a deer in the headlights - frozen in fear, panic, anger, apathy. Well the anger eclipses all of that, and by the time she’s reached the front door all she feels is rage.
She holds the knife behind her back. Her hands don’t shake.
A part of her thinks Harris and Thomas, who have told her to feel her feelings, would be very proud at her irrationality. She thinks maybe her mum would be pissed off.
“Fuck off!” She shouts. Raising her voice feels good, powerful, especially as her father is silent for a second, clearly shocked.
“...What?” He murmurs. “My, uh, my Meghan doesn’t tell me to… to shut up. Open the door, Meggy.”
“LEAVE ME ALONE!” Is the politest response he gets.
There’s a thump. He’s leaning one hand against the door. “C’mon, kiddo. I just want to talk. We’re just gonna talk. About your mother and how that bitch put me in prison. All nice and chill. We’ll be a, happy, happy family.”
“We are happy!” She bites. “Happier than we ever fucking were with you.”
Her father seems to sober up a little at that. His voice, once loopily drunk, goes flat like a knife edge. “Meghan, don’t you dare talk to me like that unless you are prepared to-”
Meg remembers how her dad got whilst drunk. Mean, mainly. Rough. Mostly, he was unbalanced and more stupid than usual.
With nimble fingers Meg flicks the lock off of the door and, grunting like an animal and with more strength than she knew she possesses, shoves. The wood makes a satisfying clunk against her father’s thick, empty head and he lurches backwards, tripping over his own feet and splattering onto the floor.
There’s blood rushing in her ears. If there wasn’t, she’d be able to hear Thomas in angry stage whispers through the wall, and Harris responding in a more excited tone. Well, excited for him. She misses the sound of them getting to their feet.
Instead, she lets the door swing open the rest of the way and stands above her father. She can see him properly now: his broad shoulders are hunched, and his red face is redder than usual. There are shocked tears welling in his slightly vacant eyes. He looks small.
She brandishes the knife. “You’re gonna leave us alone, you understand?!”
“Y- Yes.” He squeaks.
To show him she means business, she kicks his vodka bottle, lolling loosely in his hand, into the wall. It shatters into an explosion of satisfying shards, twinkly in the hallway’s artificial lights and against the wine red carpet.
Thomas and Harris’s door swings open. Thomas spills out, panicked, followed by Harris, who looks like the cat who got the cream. He nods at her with a smile.
“Meg.” Thomas says. Just her name.
Yet again his face is unreadable, a pastiche of emotions screaming to get to the surface. He’s scared, definitely. His hands shake, although his tone is calm and his feet are glued to the floor, an admission of heavy dread. His eyes are bright - maybe adrenaline - maybe excitement. One would see him from a distance and think he was warning Meg, and she thinks he is, but upon closer look you would see something else. Hunger. Hunger to see what happened next, especially if that were blood.
She looks down at her father. He’s scrambling his feet, trying to get traction to stand. He’s too drunk and his muddy boots scrape lines through the carpet. He’s a sitting duck. The vein on his neck is throbbing and red. It would be very easy to bend down and slice it, to feel the hot red blood spurt like a geyser, hot against the cool blue of her eyes and the brown freckles they both share and -
“Meg.” Thomas says again. “No.”
She drops the knife.
She doesn’t know why she does it. She never will. She has a few ideas: the fact that she’s only seventeen, and murdering someone is objectively an insane thing to do. The sound of her mother’s scream when she discovers the scene. The image of Marcus licking up the blood. Thomas’s pleading eyes. Harris’s satisfied smirk. The idea that she would be a criminal, like her dad. The suggestion that she doesn’t really know if she wants to kill him or not.
The knife clatters against the floor. The next thing she knows, Thomas is taking her hand, leading her down the hallway. The adrenaline has faded so she lets him, feeling like radio static.
Harris walks up to her father, who is burbling apologies at Meg from where he’s sitting. Halfway through one he stops, gulps, and vomits onto Harris’s shoes. Real hatred flashes in Harris’s eyes, yellow like a predator’s. Her heart thumps, hard. It’s scary as shit.
They reach the elevator, which is finally working. Thomas presses the button. She overhears Harris speaking calmly. “That was extremely rude, sir. Come into my apartment and we can settle this like gentlemen, yes?”
“Uh, fucking sure?” Meg’s dad offers, and accepts Harris’s hand up.
The elevator dings. Meg steps in. Thomas hesitates, staring at Harris with something in his eyes. He smiles at him, honest, and Harris smiles back.
The doors close.
—
Meg next feels like a human being sitting in the passenger seat of Thomas’s car, sipping a vanilla McDonald’s milkshake. She’s been holding it for too long and the straw has gone limp, but the cold sugar sometimes hits her tongue and God, is it good.
“Did you say it was a left here?”
“What?”
Thomas gestures to their location, some fancy pants neighbourhood that eclipses even her swanky apartment in terms of aristocracy. Even the grass, which can barely be seen in the moonlight, looks like it's been finely combed. “You were giving me directions to your friend’s? You said it would be a safe space to stay tonight.”
“Right, yeah. Left then.” She has a vague recollection of that. She directs him the rest of the ways to Jake’s, watching the houses roll past her window. It’s easier to look outside then to look at Thomas and wonder what the fuck just happened?
Jake’s house is tall, with a sloped, gated driveway. His parents are away, as they always are, but there’s a light on on an upper floor so he must be awake. She tells Thomas to hammer the buzzer anyway, and he does so with an appropriate amount of glee until Jake agrees to come down and let Meg in.
It’s a cliche, but as they wait, the silence between Thomas and Meg is unnervingly loud. It makes Meg’s skin itch, as does every anxious drum of Thomas’s fingers against the steering wheel.
“Am I gonna see you again?” Meg asks, and she hates how her voice is suspiciously fragile as she does so.
“Probably not.” Thomas says, with the gall to sound genuinely sad. “Well, unless they catch us.”
“What?”
He chuckles to himself. “That will make sense.”
“I don’t think it will.”
“Heh. That’s the one bit that will.” He turns fully to Meg now, and looks her directly in the eye. He is unwavering, intense, confident, honest. He seems like a different beast, not an anxious caged animal at all. “You told me that you just wanted things to make sense. They never will. When you stop holding onto that fantasy and admit that you’re part of the chaos, things will get easier. They’ll get harder too, but at least you’ll be free.”
Eyes creased, Meg tilts her head. “Are you saying I should have killed my dad?”
“I’m saying that whatever you need to do, you should do it. But it needs to be your choice.”
She prods at the wisdom in his words. “Why do you say that?”
“Her name was Abigail. She was my daughter. She liked to hunt with her father.”
His gaze snaps to the trees blowing in the wind, squinting like he can see something in the distance. “I love Hannibal. He’s changed my life in more ways than I can ever express and I treasure him for that… I will never forget what he did to her. Never.”
Yet again, she doesn’t understand what all of his words mean. For the first time, she’s okay with that.
She grins at him. “Thank you.”
He grins back. “Thank you.”
Jake appears on the other side of the gate and busies himself with the finicky controls until it swings open. He steps through as Meg gets out of the car, then rushes to her as he sees how pale and dishevelled Meg is, the hand clutching the milkshake trembling just a little.
“Meg, shit, what happened? You alright?!”
“Yeah.” She looks at the car. “No. I don’t know.”
Jake follows her gaze and his jaw drops. He continues to stare. His hand fumbles for a mobile phone left in the house.
The two of them watch as Thomas reverses out of the driveway into the road. His black car seeps into the darkness of the night until all that’s left of Thomas is a shadow, and then not even that.
Jake slowly pivots. He stares at Meg with the utmost seriousness.
“WAS THAT WILL FUCKING GRAHAM?”
—
When Heather gets home from work that night, Harris explains that Meg is staying with a friend, and offers her pork chop with a mustard sauce. He insists they eat it round hers. It tastes remarkably fresh.
She hears weird noises through the walls all night. By the time she wakes up the next morning, Thomas and Harris have moved out of the building, all traces gone.
They never find Meg’s dad’s body. They find his legs in the East River, an ear on the road out of town, and that’s it.
Two weeks afterwards, whilst Meg and her mum are playing Carcassonne, a man called Jack Crawford knocks on the door. He is desperate, and Meg eyes a bulging knife scar on his neck.
Jack explains that he is an FBI Agent. He explains that Thomas and Harris were Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter, and he recounts the entire bonfire that encapsulated their relationship. He implores Meg to tell him if there’s been any contact: a single note, a glance on the sidewalk, a gift in the mail.
There hasn’t been.
Even if there had, Meg isn’t sure she’d say.