For Nick

[hellomynameisfu]

True to his word, Hannibal had hunted down Nick's hut out in the middle of the woods. Or at least, where in NYC a hut that was in the middle of the fucking jungle would be. He also brought beer and was curious to see if Nick was going to live up to his word and pee in jars. Hannibal would have definitely peed in the jars, no doubt about it.

Whatever Nick was going through though was going to take more than beer and jars full of piss to even start to resolve. Hannibal had no clue what went on except for a vague idea, but he did know that supernatural shit could get freaky on a level that regular people couldn't comprehend. Even if you dealt with monsters and supervillains it wasn't the same.

Demons and vampires and all that stuff fucked you up in different ways. It changed who you are, changed your soul, if you had one.

"House call!" he shouted as he got near. "Put your pants on. Or... not, I don't give a fuck."

Comments

[darkest_hunter]

It hadn't been the first thing he'd done when the island morphed into New York City, but after a day or two of getting used to pseudo-city life again, Nick had noticed a display in one of the shop windows near where his hut had morphed into an apartment.

The results of his little shopping trip were now sitting on the coffee table in the kitchen/dining room/living room of the efficiency apartment his hut had become. Because if he knew one thing, he knew Hannibal wasn't going to forget to check on him.

"Careful. Talk like that's going to make people talk," Nick said as he pulled the door open.

[hellomynameisfu]

"If they aren't talking yet, I'm a little disappointed."

Nick didn't look too bad physically. He hadn't gone full on hobo, which meant he was taking care of himself which was a good sign. Place didn't smell too weird either, which was a pretty impressive accomplishment for a guy living alone.

"Beer," he added, lifting up the case he had brought.

[darkest_hunter]

Nick nodded. He wasn't as afraid of getting a buzz on as he had been after his mother's rosary had appeared. That night he'd felt the fingers of his demon side tugging at his mind. Since Halloween, those fingers didn't worry him anymore.

Instead he stepped aside and let the guy in, waving a hand at the coffee table. "Your sample," he answered with a smirk.

On the table was a small glass jar filled with a yellowish liquid and a shitload of glitter.

[hellomynameisfu]

"Don't fuck with me," Hannibal said, giving Nick a serious expression. "That is not your urine. The is unicorn jizz. Trust me, I know. Have you been giving unicorns handjobs in an attempt to get sparkly liquid?"

Hannibal was pretty fucking amused though that Nick actually got something together that looked like urine with glitter in it. Or maybe it was urine with glitter. The easiest way to fill a jar with a liquid that looked like piss was to piss in a jar.

[darkest_hunter]

"Damn, you guessed it. I went to Central Park, conjured one up, and he left one happy, fucking horned horse," Nick snorted, leading him back into the apartment and flipped on the stereo, the room filling softly with New Orleans Zydeco.

"Gods, I fucking missed civilization."

[hellomynameisfu]

"Probably means civilization is going to fuck us over somehow," Hannibal said. He was fairly certain that this was all going to end really, really poorly. Or normally, who the hell knows with this place. Hannibal was always skeptical of happy endings.

"Robot uprising."

[darkest_hunter]

"My money's on zombies," Nick nodded. "Can't have a good clusterfuck without at least a zombie or two tossed in there. Personally, I'm going to stock up on baseball bats, frying pans and at least one chainsaw," he added, thinking of one of his former favorite video games left over from another life.

He took a seat on the couch and popped open a beer as a smile tugged at his mouth. "Shit, I just realized I could go pick one up. Spend a stupid amount of time with an X Box and Left 4 Dead."

[hellomynameisfu]

"You know, if you ever left your Unabomber hut out in the woods you'd know that we have that shit back on the island."

Hannibal wasn't sure if they had that actual game, but he knew that they had the consoles, he'd seen them a few times. Kids and their toys and all that.

[darkest_hunter]

"Maybe, and that place is ass deep in people. I like to play, not be micromanaged while I do it by fifteen hardcores telling me how much I'm fucking it up. That's why I don't play the live shit. Nothing like having a twelve year old hand you your ass then mock you for it."

[hellomynameisfu]

"That sounds about as fun as getting dry humped by a platypus," Hannibal said. He'd probably be tempted to go actually shoot the kids or actually have sex with their mothers.

"So why don't you go get a console? Or are you still some sort of fucking hermit?"

[darkest_hunter]

"Interesting visual," Nick nodded with half a smirk. "Thanks for that. Makes me wish someone had created mind bleach so I'd never have to see it again." He took a drink from the bottle in his hand and sighed. "I'm going out, Dad. Getting food, nodding at the ghosts, Dairine's going to take me on a tour of the city sometime soon." He smiled a little at that. "You want to talk about someone thrilled as hell about being here? That'd be her. Even if it means her whole tidal turbine engine thing went poof for the month."

[hellomynameisfu]

"What does she think about your self-imposed pseudo-exile?"

Because whatever Nick said, that's what it was. Maybe he was going out, but Hannibal had a feeling it wasn't like he used to. Which wasn't all bad, what happened on Halloween sounded pretty fucking serious. But pretending like going through the motions was the same as doing them because you wanted to was not good.

[darkest_hunter]

"She wasn't happy with me when I hid away those first few days after I woke up or whatever, and she wasn't really any happier when I emerged same day we ran into each other. But, as she says it, she's not real good with feelings, so it's hard to figure out what she's thinking a lot of the time."

Which was, he thought, one of his bigger understatements.

[hellomynameisfu]

"Feelings are tricky things," Hannibal admitted. That's why he usually just skirted around on the surface of whatever he was feeling at the moment. When you could die at any given moment, focusing on those feelings was perfectly acceptable. Learning to deal with real feelings was a bitch.

"That's what sex is for. Just muddy up all those feelings with physical desires until you just bang 'em all out."

[darkest_hunter]

That comment had Nick draining about half the beer in the bottle he held. "Yeah, that's what I've heard," he said, then finished off the rest of it. When he set down the empty it was not quite hard enough to break it, but it was close.

[hellomynameisfu]

Well, that was telling.

"Is that... is that blue balls I'm sensing? Navy nuts? Teal testicles? Cerulean stones? Sapphire stones?"

Wow, there were seriously a lot more synonyms for blue and balls than he would have thought he could figure out at a moment's notice.

[darkest_hunter]

"Man, I think you missed your calling. I'm pretty sure the guy who puts the thesaurus out could use your descriptive, and helpful, word choices. Helpful, and accurate," he added. "Actually, I think I passed purple back in August."

His hand came up to scrub once over his face, then he reached for another bottle out of the cardboard container and twisted the cap off.

[hellomynameisfu]

"So how long has it been? It's not like other things where if you don't use it it'll fall off," Hannibal said. That was kind of a terrifying idea though.

"It's like a fucking loaded gun."

[darkest_hunter]

"It's kind of hard to tell, time I spent on Olympus or in other realms doesn't act the same way, but conservatively speaking? Maybe four years. For most of that, it didn't matter much since no one would get within fifty feet of me. The last eleven months, I've had a girlfriend, so there for a while it was a little more...difficult. I think I've settled into acceptance now."

[hellomynameisfu]

"Are you shitting me?!" Hannibal said, his eyes going wide in disbelief. That was a seriously long time for a healthy, attractive guy like Nick to go without getting some.

"Is that even possible? Can you do that without your balls just... reaching up and strangling you or shoving your cock down your own mouth?"

[darkest_hunter]

Nick couldn't stop the laugh if he'd tried. "Gods, man, what? Did you go to school for that shit? Twenty minutes talking and I'll never be able to close my eyes again for all the mental images. To answer your question, yeah, it's possible. I wouldn't recommend it, but yeah, possible. Like I said, there for a while it was rough, the last few months haven't been as bad."

Relatively speaking. He wasn't getting turned on by random comments or innuendoes, he wasn't having to duck behind a counter if he saw someone eating a banana, and he was able to keep himself in check as long as he didn't lose control when he kissed Dairine.

[hellomynameisfu]

"Just wait until one night when you're sick and you have fucked up fever dreams about a unicorn going down on itself," Hannibal said, saluting Nick. That was probably a good way to keep Nick from being too turned on, actually, all the fun mental images.

"You've forgotten though. It is so bad, you've forgotten. You should talk to a priest. Those dudes go forever. Literally. Without sex."

[darkest_hunter]

Nick laughed a little, even as he winced at the latest picture in his head. "In the ultimate irony of it all, I was raised Catholic; and I know just how many rosaries I'd have to go through for the level of impure thoughts I've had over the last year. At this point, I could give priests a few pointers."

[hellomynameisfu]

"And how long have you and this girl been dating?" Hannibal asked. He would never pressure someone into doing something they weren't ready for, but at some point you have to face the very real biological and physiological factors in play with this sort of thing.

"Shit, is that why you're hiding, because you're popping a boner 24/7 and it's awkward in public?"

[darkest_hunter]

"No, that's not why," Nick snorted. "I went hermit because I wasn't fit for human interaction and I was ashamed of what I'd become. The inconvenient erections stopped a while ago, about the time I made my peace with the fact that our relationship wasn't going to ever be physical. Or as much peace as I could make with it." He thought about the other question and counted back, surprising himself a little. "We've been together about a year. It'll be a year in January."

[hellomynameisfu]

"Wow. That... sucks. A year. Wow."

Again, he'd never want to pressure anyone into anything but a year was a long time to be in a relationship and not even offer your guy a hand job or something.

"Her first grown up relationship?"

[darkest_hunter]

"I don't think so. She dated some guy named Alan or Adam, something like that. She never talks about him, though, so I don't know a whole lot about it. Pretty sure they never did anything more than kiss," Nick explained around a deep drink from his bottle.

He couldn't blame the lack of hand jobs on anyone but himself, since he'd pretty much called a halt to them. It was like the ultimate in selfish to him, and it was hard to move past the feeling he was being studied more than pleasured. That, though, was entirely too intimate for this discussion.

[hellomynameisfu]

"That is- wow. Yeesh. Yikes. Gah. You are seriously... not fucked. Like really, really not fucked."

Hannibal wasn't sure how to process that. He wanted to be supportive but at the same time it was a lot to take in. His balls were cringing just at hearing what Nick was going through. Hannibal was going to go find Helen as soon as he left and have a massive "thank you" fuck with her.

"I'm sorry, man. I mean, that demon thing at October was rough too. Don't get me wrong. That was fucked up."

[darkest_hunter]

Nick couldn't help but bark out a laugh that was only partially laced with actual humor. "Don't worry about it, man," he said with a raised bottle. "I'm used to rolling with it when the universe gets bored and decides to fuck with me. I've got near epic coping skills by now. So. Enough about my sorry arse, how're things shaping up in your corner of island paradise?"

[hellomynameisfu]

"To rolling," Hannibal said, raising up his own beer before taking a drink. He was glad that it was Nick in that position and not himself. Hannibal wasn't sure if he could act quite so nobly.

"Not much. Building a boat. Back on the island."

[darkest_hunter]

"A boat?" Nick asked, one eyebrow cocked. "Sail? Power? Submarine?" he finished the last with a telltale smirk on his lips.

[hellomynameisfu]

"House, actually. They keep sinking."

He hadn't really been trying all that hard. The sooner he got the boat finished the sooner he would be out of a project to work on. He didn't really mind that they kept sinking into the ocean.

[darkest_hunter]

Nick eyed him over the rim of his bottle. "Sinking huh? So that'd make it half houseboat, half submarine?"

[hellomynameisfu]

"It's more like the bottom of my boat is on the bottom of the ocean. Then I drag it out and try again. It's a learning process. I'm learning I fucking hate building boats."

Nothing he had done so far really even looked like a boat. More like a raft that had boat like aspirations.

[darkest_hunter]

Nick was laughing again, and it sounded real. "You're one my former boss would grumble a lot about, having to learn everything the hard way."

"You should talk to Dairine," he suggested, totally serious. "She just built a generator to pull energy out of the water and last Christmas, she built a fully functioning zeppelin."

[hellomynameisfu]

"But if I know how to do it the right way, then I'll just get it done and be back to sitting on my ass and having nothing to do," Hannibal explained. Still, it wouldn't be a bad idea to get some help. Aphrodite had offered to give him a few suggestions too.

[darkest_hunter]

"Yeah, the fucking boredom sucks. I've started taking classes to get rid of some of that, and bouncing/door duty at the club. Apart from that, it's a lot of watching the mangoes grow. Never thought I'd say this, but as much as I like being out in the daylight? There are times I miss the fuck out of home."

[hellomynameisfu]

"See, you should build something. Something you have no clue how to build. That shit takes up some serious time."

Hannibal would highly recommend it to anyone who was bored. Doing something over and over again because you did it wrong was frustrating but definitely didn't leave you bored.

[darkest_hunter]

Nick looked at him with a raised eyebrow. "Thanks, but I think I'll pass. That sounds frustrating as fuck and I really don't need any more of that in my life."

[hellomynameisfu]

"Well, you just keep being all bored and shit," Hannibal said with a shrug. Angry he could live with, he'd lived with angry and frustrated most of these last few years with his life. The only thing worse would be going bored.