He pours coffee into a glass. It reminds me of drinking Moroccan tea, poured from an arm's length up to finish it with a perfect sea-green foam. I take it, grateful, and I smile as evidently as I can to Dr. Lecter, before I proceed to burn my tongue on it.
"If you'd like sugar or cream, it's available for your use," he reminds me as I make a face, and I nod dismally, resisting the urge to conceal the taste of it with milk and sweetness. Coffee was an adult rite of passage for me, and I feel like I ought to appreciate the bitterness and the somewhat savory aftertaste, even if I don't. He's got a keen palate, I've heard, and I want to impress him with my sense of culinary sophistication. I want to impress him in general, I want him to look at me and pay attention to me and say things while thinking about me. God's great eye burning in the heavens roves down and singes me, specifically: I'm obsessed with the sensation, so iconic in my mind.
I'm going with Dr. Bloom to visit Will Graham later today: it's not on official business, actually, and I doubt Crawford would want me tagging along with her. I'm supposed to avoid him, physically and mentally, to never overlap, and to fear the possibility of our personalities becoming a venn diagram. However, I've been invited to coffee with the man that haunts my thoughts like some freakish eel lurking under the sand of the ocean floor, and I cannot decline. I stare at him, I think about how strange he looks, about how strange he sounds, about how much I hate the pattern of his tie, but I cannot deny anything. He even made me breakfast, I think, and I puncture the membrane of the fried egg to let the vitreous innards flow onto my plate. I feel like I snapped an animal's neck and its lymph is gushing over my hands: I'm vegetarian my default, not by morals. I want to force a turtle onto its back and carve open its stomach. I want to feel powerful, but the idea of deriving power from the expense of another is worrying.
"You should have informed me of your dietary restrictions, Ameya," he comments, voice amiable and soft, "I would have prepared you more food."
And it's true. There's nothing for me to eat here. He quickly made me eggs and toast when I rejected his offer of bacon, sausage, meat. "I didn't want you to go out of your way, it's fine—I can hardly believe you'd do any of this for me at all, in the first place. This kinda service is the sort of thing I see in James Bond movies," I compliment, and he nods, a somewhat controlled movement of his jaw that I have to interpret as a smile crossing over his face as he sips his coffee.
"That's much appreciated. I thought it was the least I can do: you must forgive Jack, he has incredible intentions and is a brilliant man, but I fear that his hesitance to accept you fully is only due to a reluctance of emotional attachment." I stay silent, and I slice through the flesh of a honeydew with my yolk-smeared knife. Ripe and stagnant. Humid. I feel like a melon left to rot on a stem, soft and disgusting. He takes my silence as an indication to continue talking, soft words, high-brow jargon, perfect manners. "He's lost two former agents, one physically, one mentally. He carries their deaths like Atlas' burden, weighing down on his shoulders, nearly impossible to bear alone. It would be a terrible tragedy if you were to ever face either of their fates," he admonishes, and I stare at the flowers that he's arranged in the middle of his table. Tulips with engorged stems, waxy petals—I feel like I'm going crazy. I'm under a microscope, I need to smash this petri dish and get out of here. I fall silent because I don't want to leave, because I want to finish my breakfast and listen to him sympathize with me more. He can't even feel bad for a dead musician with a promising future who had his life stolen from him but he takes the time to make me eggs because I'm a little blue about my new job.
I look at him, and my lips part as I feel my fingers twitch in response to his curling around his spoon to stir his coffee. I wish I had a fan or a handkerchief, I'd drop it on the floor with precision and grace and lift my fingers to cover my lips as he gallantly picks it up for me and hands it back only so I can cover half of my face and obscure my emotion and leave him tantalized and wanting more. I also kind of want to choke him, just to be sure that he has the ability to change expressions from neutral to bemused to annoyed. I want the power that he possesses, the radiant aura that so beautifully curls around his facial features. He is so human, but he radiates God, like a rotting piece of nuclear scum is trapped inside his skull. He fascinates me. I hope I fascinate him. This is attraction, lacking sexuality, lacking quixotic idealism: this is the most animalistic sensation I have ever experienced. He is terrifying, but whether because he is terrific or because he instills terror is unknown.
I swallow pensively as he drinks his coffee.
My fingers yearn to do something that isn't nervously tap the table, twist into my shirt or fumble with my silverware. I've known him for three weeks, now, and nothing makes sense. I want him to dissect me and vivisect my abdomen just so I'll be certain he's paying attention to the details that I know are within me.
His eyes meet mine, an indifferent look of companionable silence, and I stare at my plate with such hate and confusion that I feel like a teenager again. Infatuated. I'm hopeless. He is everything I aspire to be, and it terrifies me that perfection is this close.
"Are you feeling all right?" he asks, paternal concern echoing through his tone like an organ's pulsing chords, and I take a shaky breath. His fingers trace across the table, I want to stab a fork through his skin and rip his tendons, but the palm of his hand—dry, cold, lined—lifts to sweep across my forehead.
It feels so sterile. I wish he'd linger, trace a finger across my brow, draw his thumb down my nose. He stands up, takes his hand back, and returns after a few moments with some ice water.
"You have a fever."
I am sweating.
"Perhaps you should cancel your appointment later today to accompany Dr. Bloom."
My eyes fail to focus. "I'm fine," I lie through my teeth, and he smiles.
I'm stuck with him. We live in the same town and we're working on the same case. I will eat as many eggs in his house as I can until he links his fingers with mine and tells me the secrets to his otherworldly piety and sacrosanct aura, how he met with God and had a chat beside his fireplace before God imparted His wisdom onto him which (by proxy) will now be given to me.
Eagle Knights of Tenochtitlan would eat the flesh of their captured enemies in the Flower Wars to ensure their strength was transferred to them as their rite. He is my rite. God's answer is here, and my next goal has been established: I cannot falter. I do not falter.