Hannibal's house (where Jono's in "trouble"), Monday afternoon

[sharp_as_knives]

Hannibal had gotten up early that morning and skipped his morning run in favor of heading directly to the Boards. He still wasn't entirely convinced that the cleanup should be his job, but he did have the expertise for it, and he wanted Jono happy, so he'd been willing to make the compromise. Today was the last of it.

Which didn't mean he actually enjoyed it all. He'd already swept up bits of vases and ribbons, candles and dead flowers, and set the broken chairs to one side; today he had left for cleaning up the blood stains from the floor and the side of the stage. By the time he'd finished enough to call and schedule the carpenter and contractor for the rest, he was sweaty, slightly sore, and more than a little annoyed.

A shower took care of some of that. The rest, he fully intended to take out on Jono.



[OOC: For the one mentioned, expected to go NSFW, and standard warnings for what these guys do not really being remotely safe or sane for anybody but them. (But it is completely consensual.)]

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[sharp_as_knives]

Hannibal brushed his lips over Jono's. "I have no intention of damaging any part of you. You are far too precious to me."

[furnaceface]

Jono nodded, closing his eyes and leaning in to nuzzle up against Hannibal.

"I believe you," he said, softly. "What would you do with me?"

The sky was more or less the limit in here, after all.

[sharp_as_knives]

"Mmm." Hannibal thought about that as he ran his hands up and down Jono's sides. "I would lay you out in the air, nude, and touch you everywhere. Kiss you everywhere. I would make myself your world."

[furnaceface]

Well, that definitely got a reaction out of Jono in the form of a little shiver, one that had his appearance shifting rapidly, different incarnations of his mind all bleeding into one another as his hands tightened on Hannibal's hips. He gasped softly, pressed himself up against Hannibal all the more closely.

"So, are you going to start by undressing me with your mind, then?"

Look, it was right there. He had to.

[sharp_as_knives]

Hannibal's lips quirked in acknowledgement of the joke, but he shook his head. "No." He took Jono's hands and stepped back, spreading them to look at him better. "You're going to. Show me yourself. Bare yourself to me."

[furnaceface]

Jono paused at that. Hesitated. Frowned thoughtfully. And then he pulled in a breath.

"If that's what you want," he murmured.

And then the man standing in front of Hannibal shifted. His clothing vanished, yes, but that was hardly what left him feeling naked as he stood there. He was fire. Fire and flesh occupying the same space, multiple bodies all merged into one, each bringing their own wealth of scars to the final result. He stared at Hannibal quietly with eyes that were and weren't there at the same time, a head swallowed in flame over lips both human and mutant. There was a tattoo over his chest, framing a metallic device that was meant to keep his powers in check, for all the good it did, since there was no chest there at all.

And there were stitches. Seams. Pieces that had been cut away and replaced with something new. Things that were just... gone. Holes in him that were still bleeding. That would always bleed.

'Naked,' in the mind, meant more than 'without clothes.'

He stood there with his arms spread, and lifted his chin, and met Hannibal's gaze, hell-bent on not looking away.

[sharp_as_knives]

Hannibal smiled. He took one of Jono's hands in his and lifted it, kissing the palm and each finger, slowly. Pale and blue, flesh and flame, all of them were Jono, and he surrounded them with his own hands and mouth, wrapping them in his thoughts and feelings as well as the projection of his body. Thoughts that said, mine and beautiful, and feelings that were fierce joy and more of that feral possessiveness.

[furnaceface]

It was funny how Jono could almost believe the 'beautiful' part when Hannibal looked at him this way, when he touched him without fear. When he claimed him for his own so thoroughly.

He shivered, and his flames shifted to blue, danced over his skin, reflected from the blood that seemed to constantly be pouring out to nowhere at all from the broken fragments of his mind.

Yours, he agreed. I'm yours.

[sharp_as_knives]

Hannibal smoothed his hands up Jono's arm to the elbow, kissing a slow line after them. He grazed his teeth along the muscle and circled his wrist with small licks of his tongue, claiming every inch of Jono's skin as he went.

[furnaceface]

Jono let him keep that arm, tilted his head and watched quietly while Hannibal made his way up the length of it, his own teeth biting down on his bottom lip, his other arm reaching to run strong, deft, bloody fingers across Hannibal's cheek.

He wasn't a spiritual man by any means, but this... this seemed as close to prayer as anything he'd seen. He felt almost blasphemous standing there and being the recipient of that attention.

And there was something about that fact alone that made it all the more exciting, that sparked a hunger for more that bled from Jonothon to Hannibal as freely as the crimson that was seeping from between the spiderweb cracks that were traced all across his body.

[sharp_as_knives]

Hannibal turned his head to kiss those fingers, too, licking the blood from them. He didn't shy from those cracks, running his hands and mouth over those, too, collecting and smearing the blood over both of them.

But this was Jono, and as beautiful as it was, this bleeding was unacceptable. So was ignoring or rubbing it out.

Hannibal stepped behind Jono, nibbling on his ear as he murmured into it. "There is a Japanese practice called kintsugi." He lifted one of Jono's arms in front of their faces, the cracks visible. "When an object is broken, its cracks are repaired with laquer containing gold. What were wounds become a beautiful map of its history."

[furnaceface]

Jono's gaze moved over the cracks along his arm, studying them in quiet contemplation.

"Are you proposing we fill my cracks with gold?"

That... that sounded entirely too easy.

[sharp_as_knives]

"Gold is far too prosaic for you," Hannibal said. "And gold would be meaningless."

He traced the cracks lightly as he thought, then stepped back around in front of Jono, still holding one hand in his own. This place was pure mind, and if Jono could be whole...

With his free hand, he reached into his own chest, through flesh and bone with the substance of smoke, and pulled out his heart.

[furnaceface]

"Only you would call gold prosaic," Jono murmured, smiling just the faintest bit as he watched Hannibal reach for the heart in his chest.

And then his eyes widened slightly in dawning realization. In his mind, a gesture as extreme was removing one's own heart was hardly impossible, of course. Physics and biology and the other laws of the physical world didn't matter at all. But there was a symbolism to the gesture that ran deeper than it appeared on the surface.

And yet it was so simple. Exactly what it looked like all the same.

"... Oh."

[sharp_as_knives]

Hannibal took a moment to enjoy the sight - his knowledge of biology ensured its shape and color, but the vessels and striations on the surface looked more like marble than flesh, polished and opulent. And yet it was still beating.

He held it over Jono's arm, squeezing as he thought of what he wanted, and what flowed down was less blood and more the concentrated essence of his feelings - predatory possessiveness, awed acceptance, and the jubilant caring that they seldom put a name to.

[furnaceface]

Jono watched in silence as that essence flowed over him, splashing over him in a river of liquid obsidian. He gasped as it continued up the length of his arm, creeping over flesh and fire, impossibly close, like a second skin. Up over his shoulders, down over his chest, moving to engulf the whole of him inside and out. His gasp died when it crept into his mouth, and he stopped staring at it as it covered his eyes. Tendrils reached out to crown his head with antlers that curved upward triumphantly before melting away again as that essence, that obsidian emotion, seeped away into the cracks, giving way first to flame and then to clean flesh.

Jonothon stood there, shivering and naked and staring at his arms, not covered in seeping wounds, but bearing the etched lines of a thousand scars, all filled in with...

He looked up at Hannibal, at the heart in his hand. And then his head bowed and he exhaled, not sure if he wanted to laugh or cry, emotions welling up and shimmering through him, shining through the obsidian in iridescent, swirling shades of blood and gold.

[sharp_as_knives]

Hannibal's own hand trembled ever so slightly as he set his heart back in his chest. Nobody who didn't know him very well would have seen it, but it was difficult not to be a little overcome with the beauty of that vision.

He settled for stroking his thumbs along those swirling scars as he pulled Jono in for a fervent kiss.

[furnaceface]

Jonothon found himself surging forward to meet Hannibal in that kiss, swept up in an overwhelming hunger at the first brush of his lips, his mouth opening as though he intended to devour Hannibal then and there. His teeth were a predator's teeth, seeking to savour every scrap of flesh that they could sink into. His tongue was fire, as hungry and dangerous as the rest of him, seeking out Hannibal's own.

He wasn't afraid that he'd burn the man he was clutching close now with desperate, strong hands. His own heart was spilling out around them, flames reaching to embrace him as the blood had engulfed Jonothon. If anybody stood to be burned by that fire, it wasn't Hannibal. After all, the most persistent threat to Jono's mind had always been himself. Hannibal was made of something different.

[sharp_as_knives]

Hannibal smiled into the kiss, licking and biting back, taking that fire into himself. It flowed over and around and through him, a fierce comforting heat that he welcomed, his eyes reflecting it back.

[furnaceface]

Jonothon's smile went feral at that, something like a purr in his throat as he grabbed Hannibal and pulled him closer still. He'd fold himself around the man, crawl inside of him, push through, so that they would fill every ounce of one another with what made them them. There was Hannibal, threaded through his cracks and shining there like something beautiful and dangerous, and there was Jonothon, flickering through Hannibal with a warm glow.

He wanted more.

[sharp_as_knives]

Hannibal chuckled. "Still impatient. Should I make you wait again?"

[furnaceface]

"You'd do that? Make me wait even longer here in my own head?"

That seemed terribly unfair to Jono. But then, patience wasn't his greatest strength, really. Never really had been.

[sharp_as_knives]

"I might." Hannibal smirked. "I could chain you up inside and out, and make you think about all the things I could be doing to you."

[furnaceface]

"See how much it takes to get me to break the rules here in my own head?" Jono gave Hannibal a wry little smile. "It'll be more difficult in here, you know."

Chains were much harder to keep in place when you were the one in charge of your surroundings, almost utterly.

[sharp_as_knives]

"Yes, I know," Hannibal answered. "You'll have to try very hard, won't you? However," he licked the shell of Jono's ear, "the longer you last in here, the less I'll make you wait out there."