The moment he walks into her life, she's enamored by his complexity.

They say that physical attraction is the thing that must begin a relationship, but for Alana, Will Graham is a case that she desperately wants to crack. She wants to explore him so much that she has to hold her hands to the side of her body whenever she's around him to stop herself from reaching for her tape recorder. Physical attraction is important, and Will Graham isn't void of it, but at first, all she notices is how wrong he is for her. All she notices is the way he thinks and the way he talks to people and the way he exists. She wants to know how he functions in his day to day life, just Will and his dogs living a fascinating existence.

She's always been drawn to complexity- found it exciting. That's been the weight that has sunk each and every one of her relationships. It's also the propeller that forced her to pick psychology as a profession. But by the time she reaches Will, she's learned that falling in love with complexity isn't an option for her. She doesn't need that in her life- she needs things to be neat and orderly and put into boxes. Confusion is for work. Home is someone who will hold her in his simplicity and tell her he loves her with all of his said simplicity.

Still, she has to wonder if love so simple is nearly as satisfying as a love full of thorns. She has to wonder if a love from a plain man is as important as love from someone who is lost and she is the only way that he can find himself. As wrong as Alana knows it is, that's what she wants from love. She wants to be a lighthouse; she wants fire.

For years, she stays away from it. All of it. She ignores the longing to date, she ignores the pull towards men she knows are bad for her, and she even shuts herself down to desire. This works for a certain amount of time. But one night, she wakes up gasping and sweating and realizes that a dream version Will Graham has just made her feel something that she hasn't felt in years.

The next time Alana is around him, she feels a tug towards him in her stomach. A desperate, depraved desire to be close to him and to have him take her into his arms and satisfy her in a way that she hasn't been satisfied in years. And only he will be able to do that for her because he is the epitome of fucked up and she loves it.

But as she gets to know him more, she starts to love other parts of him, too. Not just how strange he is, or twisted, or how fun he would be to fix. She starts to love the way his hair curls at his neck, and the way he looks when he's wearing glasses. She loves his long eyelashes and the tenderness that he has for the strays that he picks up and the metaphor that the strays represent about the way that Will feels about himself.

When he kisses her, she can feel how broken he is within the kiss. She's kissed broken men before, but Will Graham surpasses all of them enormously, the way he touches her and kisses her so fervently. He needs her. She's his lighthouse. It arouses something more than simple attraction in her. In that moment, in that kiss, her entire body is longing for him. She doesn't want to fix him- he wants him harsh and dangerous and wanting her.

She wants it so much that she's scared.

Logically, Alana is aware of the fact that she and Will are utterly mismatched. Furthermore, she's totally aware of the fact that Will has kissed the part of her that he sees outwardly. He knows nothing about who she is on the inside, how messed up she is from all of the things and people she has experienced. How sometimes she can empathize with the killers and can weep for those who get capital punishment even though what they've done is so wrong. No, when Will wants Alana, he wants the part of her that wears the professional clothes and has the perfect hair and perfect makeup and wears a professional mask.

But then, maybe the part of him that stimulates her so much is the fact that he's never felt the need to wear a mask. When he's lost, he lost. When he's dangerous, it shows on his face. Everybody in their business is screwed up, but nobody has the guts to wear it so outwardly. She's not even sure if he's conscious of the fact that he does this, but that doesn't make it less beautiful. The fact that he's not able to mask the emotions he feels towards her is gorgeous.

She's not going to deny that she likes the power nearly as much as she likes him.

When she knocks on his door, her mind has already reminded her of how horrible an idea this is. The inky black sky, with no stars aiding it tonight, just remind her that she's walking into a very dark situation. Alana knows that she should be terrified, knocking on this door. But she also knows that she will do it anyways, and that he will be there to answer because as unstable as he is, he can be stable for her.

They're both adults. Mature, consenting adults. So when she pulls back from a bruising kiss and tells him to fuck her, he's not confused as to what she's asking of him. When she tells him to fuck her, he knows that she doesn't want to make love to him. He realizes that she needs something dark. Her skin responds to the tantalizing brushes of his lips just fine, but when he leaves a red mark on the pale white of her exposed flesh, that's when she really goes insane.

With all the violence in the world, having this type of control over this type of violence makes her feverish with desire.

She loves when his fingers tug at her curtain of dark hair. She loves when his hands shake hysterically as he touches her. She loves the noises he makes- gruff and loud and harsh. This isn't a fantasy romance, and Alana wouldn't want it to be.

The moans and screams claw their way up her throat and releasing them feels therapeutic. And maybe he can be her therapy. Maybe the pain and torture followed by floating liberation is exactly what she needs. Maybe she needs to scream.

The emotional connection, she can confess to him at another time, but right now? Right now she's got an itch that she needs to scratch.