Hannibal's house (not that Jono cares), Saturday evening

[sharp_as_knives]

These weeks on the island did not, for the most part, affect Hannibal the same as everybody else; sex was an enjoyable pastime, but one he could largely forego in the face of other...enjoyments. Which didn't mean he hadn't been somewhat restless and wanting this week. He'd sharpened his knives, filled his pantry, and been very artistic in doing so. But even with a multiverse of rude people to choose from, it seemed wasteful to do too much of that.


[OOC: For the one mentioned, specifics NFB. Warnings for blood, sex, and...just...general Jono and Hannibalness.]

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[furnaceface]

Well, then. Did Hannibal know that there was such a thing as big, sad, lustful eyes? Jono hadn't realized that they were something he could even pull off until pretty much that very moment, though he obediently kept his hands over his head, at least somewhat distracted in turn by the way his raised arms pulled at the cuts on his torso. Ah, okay, there were definitely worse positions to be left in, he had to admit.

//Not moving,// he reported, as though that was something that needed narrating. //If that's what you want.//

This was less a complaint, and more an affirmation that he was still on board with being submissive. While still pouting, playfully, as best as he was able without benefit of a mouth to pout with.

[sharp_as_knives]

Hannibal smiled and stood, setting the knife down low on Jono's belly. He unbuttoned his own shirt slowly, slipping out of it and setting it down. He watched the light of Jono's flames play over the walls and his skin as he undressed, watched how it glinted in the lines he'd left on Jono.

He finished undressing and stood there, watching for a moment more, enjoying the light-play and the anticipation, the scent of Jono's flames and the tang of his blood in his nostrils and on his tongue.

[furnaceface]

Jono was, in turn, drinking in his own view. The flames twisting around him remained red, creating a sort of wild, feral glow around the both of them, which served to deepen Jono's own desire for the man standing before him.

To be able to grab on to him and kiss him silly...

//Absolutely worth staying still for,// he purred. //I love watching you looking like that.//

Naked. Hungry. Fierce. Whatever completed that thought the best.

[sharp_as_knives]

All of the above?

Hannibal smiled down at him, definitely all three of those, before moving to pick up the knife again. He knelt over Jono, letting the flames lick up around him, and caressed his face.

[furnaceface]

Jono leaned his face into that caress, closing his eyes, pausing for a moment to revel in that one gentle gesture, as well. For as much as he liked the biting pain and the feral play that was going on between them, this... this was good, too. This reminded him that he was wanted in that other way, as more than just prey. That Hannibal valued him as something precious, to be treasured.

The scars, he could keep, could look at, could remember these pauses in between, where he was cherished every bit as much as he was... savoured, perhaps, was the word for it. Especially given the way Hannibal was very literally drinking him in.

//You're right,// he shared, softly. //Your hands are a treasure, too.//

[sharp_as_knives]

Hannibal grinned at that. "I do my best." He always did. Like right now, when he was leaning in further to slice Jono's side, crossing the earlier line and moving up what was left of Jono's chest. A narrow cut, digging the tip just under the skin at an angle, stinging and drawing as much blood as possible.

[furnaceface]

And here was Jono, unable to so much as whimper. Hell, his arms were still up above his head, and now he was determined to keep them there until Hannibal gave him permission to do otherwise. But there was that sting, that biting feeling in what was left of a chest that so often felt cold, if anything at all, and Jono was writhing again, little shifts of his weight and tilts of his head and clenchings of his fists as he processed that pain, embraced it, drank it all in.

Hannibal hadn't pinned his legs down yet. Jono was going to wrap one of them around one of Hannibal's. If it was twitching, like much of the rest of him, it was really just testimony to just how thorough a reaction Hannibal's attention was getting from him.

[sharp_as_knives]

Every move made the blood ooze in a different direction, and Hannibal watched it before reaching out with one hand to a small pool gathering in a dip of Jono's muscles. He trailed it out over the nearby skin, humming as he jotted musical notes up over Jono's ribs.

[furnaceface]

Jono glanced down at that, wondering what it was that Hannibal was painting across his skin.

He would have chuckled, if only he had been able.

//Composing, are you?//

[sharp_as_knives]

"Always." Hannibal wove the notes into one, adding vines and details to connect them. He flicked the knife across the nearest cut to get more blood as he needed it, letting the image grow up and around each slice. Each cut welled up and sprouted leaves and buds, all of them together growing into a forest of knife cuts and delicate finger painting.

[furnaceface]

Jono watched in silence, fascinated in equal measures by the sensations (and the focus it took to properly appreciate them) and the art that Hannibal was creating on him, from him.

It was definitely going to leave some interesting scars behind later.

//And what kind of music is that, then?//

The sort that was woven together out of vines and blood.

[sharp_as_knives]

"You tell me." Another slice, more vines growing up Jono's side. "What music are you making for me?"

[furnaceface]

//Something raw,// Jono replied, after a moment to think on the question. //Something visceral and untamed and just for the two of us. The sort of music that'll leave a throat raw and fingertips bleeding and anybody listening gasping and wanting more. For you, I'd make our song, the sort of music nobody else could ever understand.//

Flames sparked upwards again at that, shifting to blue now, in spite of Hannibal's request to see red. Why blue? Because it made the blood on his skin stand out in a deeper, darker shade, almost black against that otherwise pale cream of his flesh.

He couldn't sing, but there was a suggestion of music in his voice all the same, made of emotion and colour and need.

He was composing forever, using their common ground and a promise.

[sharp_as_knives]

In answer, Hannibal hummed again, taking that suggestion and making it fact. His knife and his fingers coaxed more blood from Jono's skin, and droplets flicked out to meet the flames, painting Jono and the blankets he lay on and dotting Hannibal's chest and arms.

This was their song, this blood and music, ferocity and acceptance. And they were composing it together.

[furnaceface]

It was breathtaking music, wasn't it? Not the sort that Jono had really spent much time thinking about, once upon a time. It was funny how these days, he thirsted for it. And maybe it wasn't music that they played often, but that made moments like this all the more intense for it. It was funny, looking back, to think how much of their relationship had been built on a shared love of music. And here, all this time, trying to find something they could agree on, they had found this.

Jono was almost shivering now, full of sensation and anticipation, pain and need and so help him, if he couldn't reach for Hannibal soon he was going to bloody well explode. As it stood, he was murmuring wordless praises, begging and appreciating and wrapping around him with fire if not with his hands, and if that fire carried a note of something very much like an L-word that neither of them often said, what of it?

Hannibal was his, and he was Hannibal's, and it had been a long, long time since he was as whole a person as he was with him.

[sharp_as_knives]

In answer, Hannibal leaned forward, lacing his fingers with Jono's again, stretching out over him so the flames surrounded them both and the blood on Jono's skin smeared onto his own. He returned to the mark he'd made on Jono's cheek and bit down, drawing blood at the edges to match his work below, and then sucking it from him, his tongue playing over the wounds.

[furnaceface]

That... that was... Wow.

Once upon a time, Jonothon had loathed himself a little, the way he was now, because among so many other things he couldn't do, kissing was up there on the list. But this, Hannibal's mouth, his teeth and tongue moving against where fire met flesh, was so much more intimate than kissing. He shuddered again, closed his eyes tight and found himself wishing that he at the very least had lips or a functional lower jaw so that he could give some sort of teasing nibble back.

Instead, he writhed upwards a little, pressed as much of his body as he was able against Hannibal, held him in place with the leg he'd twined around Hannibal's own and sent Hannibal another burst of approval and want, peppered with flickers of thoughts that went a few steps beyond absolutely filthy.

[sharp_as_knives]

For all the things Hannibal had possessed over the years, there were a few things he had seldom had the pleasure of. High on that very short list was being close to a person, someone who knew and accepted him. And with Jono, he could get closer than any other. He wasn't going anywhere.

He snaked his tongue into Jono's flames, exploring his wounded palate and the back of his teeth, and let more of his weight settle, the curves of his chest muscles fitting in the gap of Jono's, skin to skin to flame.

[furnaceface]

That, what was possibly the world's most morbid French kiss, might have elicited a gasp out of Jonothon. Or maybe a sob. Some sort of reaction that properly demonstrated just how the way Hannibal was pressed up against, up inside of him was affecting him. A peck on the cheek was one thing, something he'd been rather resigned to settling for for the rest of his life. A hand in his flames, that was something else, something that pushed a limit, that skirted the line from bold straight on into fearless, and it was possible that the person who would've been most afraid was Jono.

This was both. This was that fearlessness, an embrace, a kiss that explored an intimacy that Jono never dreamed he'd be able to share with somebody else. Hannibal explored the remains of the wreck of his upper jaw the same way any lover would kiss their partner. Like it was his to discover, his to caress and savour, without fear or disgust or pity. Like he was something beautiful.

Moments like this, wrapped around Hannibal physically and psionically, he could almost forget that he believed so thoroughly that he wasn't.

Jono remembered Hannibal's order to put his hands above his head, but right then, with Hannibal's tongue exploring what once was his mouth and Hannibal's heart beating practically inside his own chest and bringing the steady rhythm of his breathing along with it, he could hardly help but move them. Hannibal was right there, and he had to grab on to his shoulders, hold him close, pull him closer, feel him breathe and live and exist as somebody separate and the same and not in the least afraid.

As somebody who could make the monstrous into something beautiful.

[sharp_as_knives]

It was one of Hannibal's specialties, after all. Too many people thought the monstrous and the beautiful were mutually exclusive; Hannibal had no such difficulty. And if Jono wanted to share that ability, leach a bit of appreciation from him, he was welcome to it. It was there, prominent among the hunger and possessiveness and more of that seldom-spoken L word that all fueled his own pleasure.

He breathed slow and deep, moving all along Jono's body, pressing them together with delicious friction, and not all the sparks were Jono's fire. He coaxed Jono with thoughts, too, offering up his own mind for the same overlap as their bodies.

[furnaceface]

It was an offer that Jonothon was almost desperate to accept, at this point. He opened his own mind, managed to scrape together enough focus to create a shared space between them. A place where they could be separate, but folded into one another, a perfect embrace of wants and emotions, bleeding freely into one another. They could still remain themselves, of course - their thoughts were still their own, their personalities and their ideas - but anything they wanted to share, or, for that matter, anything they wanted to take, was fair game.

Jono, for one, was going to start by appreciating those deep breaths. And, perhaps, by offering Hannibal a first-hand account of exactly how much that fearlessness had managed to move him.

[sharp_as_knives]

Hannibal took that, gathered it into a careful bundle in his own mind, and returned it with his own appreciation - of Jono's mind, his acceptance and courage and kindness and monstrousness, and of his body, flesh and flame both, aesthetic and unique.

He went hunting, skimming through Jono's experiences, and found one, strong and bright among the others. Its intensity called out, and he caught at it, diving in: the memory of Jono, whole, and then burning pressure turning to pain, and then tearing and burning and -

[furnaceface]

- fire. Fire, burning, ripping, screaming until there was nothing left to scream with. Gayle laying hurt somewhere, the last thing from his mind, the world a shattered inferno around him and the sound of screams ringing in his ears and ripping through his mind, too loud to block out. Too much pain, too much cold to even be able to focus enough to guess at how.

That much fire shouldn't have been so cold.

They were screaming at him. Screaming at him and he wanted to reach for them, to beg them for help, but the fear he was feeling... it wasn't even entirely his own.

He was still alive.

He was still awake.

And there was no way in the world he could possibly be either, and it didn't matter how much he begged, pleaded for somebody to help him, or to do anything it took to just make the pain stop, nobody dared come anywhere near -

//... Hannibal?//

If Jono had been occasionally twitching before, he was trembling now, not pulling away or even blocking off that part of his mind, but definitely wondering why that was suddenly the memory that had been pulled to the fore.

[sharp_as_knives]

Hannibal sent a wave of soothing warmth in answer, along with the memory of why he'd caught at it - it was intense and important, and he had been curious. He breathed deep, as Jono hadn't been able to, processing the experience, and shared once more that breath, and his appreciation, and the marvel that Jono was alive.

He couldn't - and wouldn't - change those old memories, but he could and would mitigate their recollection. If none of that had ever happened, Jono would not be here now, would not be his, would be a much more dull person.

But it had happened. And now it was in the past. Jono wasn't alone, he had no need for fear, and the only pain here was what he had asked for.

[furnaceface]

Jono nodded, both in their shared mindspace and out, hands clutching a little more desperately to Hannibal's shoulders. There was an ache left behind from that memory, too; a sort of phantom pain in the wreck that used to be his chest.

He threw himself a little more desperately into the sensation of Hannibal's breathing, hoping to escape that memory for a while and retreat into more comfortable headspace.

It was true enough, life had been anything but boring since his powers had manifested. And where they'd ultimately led him to... this? This, he couldn't complain about, no matter how he felt about some of the stepping stones along the way.