Will can barely pay attention enough to anything outside of him to avoid tripping over the empty carpet, so he doesn't catch the way Rust averts his eyes. He doesn't see anything until Rust starts talking. The sound of another human being offering insight into what's happened is enough to drag Will back out of his own head, pulled by another tide - not into Rust's mind, but just back into reality, into the present moment.
Will still feels unmoored, like he's at risk any second of drowning, but there's a light in the distance that must be a shore. He tries to point himself in its direction.
His face falls into an open expression of surprise, of resignation, both startled and relieved that Rust hit on it so quickly. "Yes. I did. He rolled up his sleeve today and showed me his Mark." His eyes scrunch closed, one hand panning across his forehead and dragging damp hair back away from his face. "It's exactly the same as the one I've been watching darken on my skin. It's in the same place." His mouth is unscrewing back into its lopsided smile, pained shivering rolling up and down his arms. Will gives an aborted grab at the spot where he knows his Mark is - right on the very bottom edge of his right bicep. Right where you can reach down and feel for a pulse, feel what makes him tick.
The planned cruelty of the placement makes him taste bile.
'So what, then?'
Will stops moving. He turns and really looks at Rust, sees the way shadows hang in the crevices under his cheek bone and in the hollows where his eyes sit. "So." Will's arms swing, ending up catching on his hips. "I just had to spend the last month and a half convincing everyone I personally know, and many more people I'd never met, that I wasn't a serial killer." He snorts. "And I wasn't really that successful. I only got let out because Hannibal must have-- I can only assume he realized he was bored without me around to play with, so he let the 'copycat killer' take another victim so that I would have to be released, because the real killer was clearly still out there."
His lower lip gets pulled between his teeth. "There were times I wasn't that fucking sure either, though. I spend so much time--" His hands are up, gesturing at chest-level like he's pulling invisible forces towards himself. "--soaking up all that, all that anger and manipulation and all the possible reasons people have for killing other people. I was dreaming about it, I could feel their blood on my hands and the way heart tendons caught on my teeth.
"And now that it should finally be over, I can't-- I can't just pretend I don't have that possibility sitting in me all the time. Because some fucking force in the universe apparently thinks I am a soul match for Hannibal Lecter."
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Will still feels unmoored, like he's at risk any second of drowning, but there's a light in the distance that must be a shore. He tries to point himself in its direction.
His face falls into an open expression of surprise, of resignation, both startled and relieved that Rust hit on it so quickly. "Yes. I did. He rolled up his sleeve today and showed me his Mark." His eyes scrunch closed, one hand panning across his forehead and dragging damp hair back away from his face. "It's exactly the same as the one I've been watching darken on my skin. It's in the same place." His mouth is unscrewing back into its lopsided smile, pained shivering rolling up and down his arms. Will gives an aborted grab at the spot where he knows his Mark is - right on the very bottom edge of his right bicep. Right where you can reach down and feel for a pulse, feel what makes him tick.
The planned cruelty of the placement makes him taste bile.
'So what, then?'
Will stops moving. He turns and really looks at Rust, sees the way shadows hang in the crevices under his cheek bone and in the hollows where his eyes sit. "So." Will's arms swing, ending up catching on his hips. "I just had to spend the last month and a half convincing everyone I personally know, and many more people I'd never met, that I wasn't a serial killer." He snorts. "And I wasn't really that successful. I only got let out because Hannibal must have-- I can only assume he realized he was bored without me around to play with, so he let the 'copycat killer' take another victim so that I would have to be released, because the real killer was clearly still out there."
His lower lip gets pulled between his teeth. "There were times I wasn't that fucking sure either, though. I spend so much time--" His hands are up, gesturing at chest-level like he's pulling invisible forces towards himself. "--soaking up all that, all that anger and manipulation and all the possible reasons people have for killing other people. I was dreaming about it, I could feel their blood on my hands and the way heart tendons caught on my teeth.
"And now that it should finally be over, I can't-- I can't just pretend I don't have that possibility sitting in me all the time. Because some fucking force in the universe apparently thinks I am a soul match for Hannibal Lecter."