[ There's no further unnecessary communication after that.
At a minute to six, Krouse is on Hannibal's doorstep. He's been there for eleven jittery exposed minutes, his back to the door and the hood of his brand new black hoodie pulled up, for all the good it does to make him less conspicuous.
At precisely six, the clock in his HUD display ticking over, he knocks on Hannibal's door.
The young man Hannibal will find waiting there looks worse off than he did in the labyrinth. His face is sharpened to hollow angles, the dark circles under his eyes pronounced. On the right, a semi-circular bruise has bled into the discoloration under one of them, emphasizing the burst blood vessels in the white above. He's wearing his backpack, which might be predictable, and a rough sling fashioned out of a wide black scarf tied around his shoulders that holds strips of camouflage fabric, which may be less so. He straightens up when the door opens, shoulders snapping into a formal line as he tries to level his expression into something less obviously nervous. ]
Hello, Dr. Lecter. [ He says, politeness at odds with the tightness of his voice. ] Thank you for fitting me in on such short notice.
[ He smells like blood and open wounds. Most of it is his. Some of it is mammalian, but not human. From the sling nestled against his chest comes a wholly different odour, a sickly-sweet haze of feverish flesh not readily identifiable as anything but the clotted gore at the bottom of a butcher's drain. ]
cw: body horror, blood
[ There's no further unnecessary communication after that.
At a minute to six, Krouse is on Hannibal's doorstep. He's been there for eleven jittery exposed minutes, his back to the door and the hood of his brand new black hoodie pulled up, for all the good it does to make him less conspicuous.
At precisely six, the clock in his HUD display ticking over, he knocks on Hannibal's door.
The young man Hannibal will find waiting there looks worse off than he did in the labyrinth. His face is sharpened to hollow angles, the dark circles under his eyes pronounced. On the right, a semi-circular bruise has bled into the discoloration under one of them, emphasizing the burst blood vessels in the white above. He's wearing his backpack, which might be predictable, and a rough sling fashioned out of a wide black scarf tied around his shoulders that holds strips of camouflage fabric, which may be less so. He straightens up when the door opens, shoulders snapping into a formal line as he tries to level his expression into something less obviously nervous. ]
Hello, Dr. Lecter. [ He says, politeness at odds with the tightness of his voice. ] Thank you for fitting me in on such short notice.
[ He smells like blood and open wounds. Most of it is his. Some of it is mammalian, but not human. From the sling nestled against his chest comes a wholly different odour, a sickly-sweet haze of feverish flesh not readily identifiable as anything but the clotted gore at the bottom of a butcher's drain. ]