Yearn | Hannigram

frenzy

"I'm glad you could come see me, Will."

"I'm sorry I've missed my past few appointments." Despite the apology, it was clear sincerity was void in Will's words. His eyes were unfocused, flicking back and forth over his surroundings. The depth of the dark room, tracing the edges of the books that line Hannibal's massive collection. The small details-a hair out of place on the rug beneath their feet, three perfectly alined pens on Hannibal's desk towards the back of the room, the subtle smell of balsam and cedar, possibly from a previously burnt candle. As always, Will is avoiding Hannibal's gaze. While the doctor's is ever transfixed on the man in front of him.

"It's quite alright, you have a lot on your plate," Dr.Lecter responded.

Hannibal sees Will's lips quirk into a smile at his choice of words but it is gone as soon as it came. A flash of intimacy, a gaze through the veil of Will's feelings. Their friendliness is forever an uncomfortable concept for Will, Hannibal understands this well. The man feels guilty for the part of him that understands that dark part of nature, the same part that understands all of the killers. Will feels ashamed of every ounce of him that akin to Hannibal in the slightest; despite the fact that shadows bleed from his veins. He doesn't realize that there isn't a part of him that has been charred with darkness; that it was merely the entirety of his soul leaking tar from the fake layers from trying to see the light.

       "You could say that," Will laughed dryly, warmth in his eyes. There were fires behind the icy blue eyes, flames that could burn entire cities in their paths. Hannibal could lose himself in the bloody inferno trailing Will's every step.

        "How is your latest case?"

        Will's face changed at that, a nearly unreadable emotion spreading across it. "I don't know what to think. Randall is..." Will sighed. Tier's kills bled wolves, teeth clawing at the back of Will's eyelids. Gnawing and gnashing its fangs into pale flesh. "I don't know what he is. His kills were rabid and frenzied but untouched with sexual drive. They were primal and he is absolved with the beast he believes himself to be. I can't get him out of my head."

       Hannibal let that sit for a second. Analyzed the way Will's hands shook and his frantic gaze flickering everywhere but Hannibal's eyes. "You can't get him out of your head because you can understand him too well, because you were the one to absorb the power of his kills. You finished the Randall Tier story by giving him what he always wanted. By solidifying his delusion, you lost yourself to it."

       "So do you believe that I am...becoming him?" Will felt the room spinning and he felt that he could still smell the stench of rot coming off Randall, followed by the lavender soap from Hannibal's bathroom after washing his hands over and over, trying to relieve the stain of death on them. He thought to the tender way Doctor Lecter had tended to his battered knuckles, soaked them til the dried blood ran and wrapped them in gauze like he was twisting paper around a priceless antique. 

       Hannibal shifted in his seat slightly, crossing his leg to mirror the position Will was in across from him. "I believe you are becoming yourself. And, by that, the part of you that understood him- that transformed him."

       "You did too." Though Will snapped Randall's neck, felt he bones crack beneath his hands, he dropped it on Hannibal's door like a pet bringing its owner a kill. Hannibal taunted the dark parts within Will to fall helplessly into the mind of a beast. To let himself run naked in the pitch of night, to punch the trees with every wave of desire to kill. His head clouded in sounds of howling wolves and deep growls. Vision red and heart beating rapid with adrenaline. Old scars from antlers resurfacing to line his spine.

       "We are alike, Will. We share the death of many. We understand in each other what we lack in ourselves."

       "What do you lack, Dr.Lecter?"