Welcome to Gaia! ::

Nervous energy curled slickly in his gut, a sick counterpoint to his racing mind. Horace had waited, of course, a day to process, to think. And yet he was no closer to figuring out the confused tangled of emotions than he was at the beginning. Briefly, he'd debated telling someone, gathering advice around himself like a shield against the unknown. But this was his own issue and no one else's. He needed to know what Jan had to say about everything, needed to hear it fall from his lips like a blessing or a curse. Horace needed him.

He wrapped his arms around himself - a gesture of insecurity he thought he'd left behind.

For the past few minutes, he'd simply stood outside Jan's door, unaware if he were home or not. Too afraid to find out. Horace pulled his arms up and smacked himself on both cheeks. Just do it! He refused to think about exactly why he was afraid. Lifting one hand, he knocked on the door instead of just entering. His knocks were precise, even, and exactly three - nothing like the little tune he typically knocked with.

"Jan? Are you home?"

"S-sorry if I alarmed you." Seeing Jan again made him smile, if a bit tremulously. Those familiar eyes, that familiar hair - everything about Jan had been steadily working up within Horace's heart to mean 'home'. When Jan moved inside, he followed him, brushing a hand fondly over his arm. Just for a moment, he hesitated, but sat on the corner of the bed.

Helping with minipets. Yes. "I'm okay. I, uh, can't really remember what I did today." He shoved a hand through his thick hair. but instead of scooping it back let it fall sleekly over the side of his face. "No, no, I'm not okay. We need to talk." His hands fell to fiddle with his phone in his lap, too nervous to look up, too nervous to unlock the screen and hand it to Jan.

Wordlessly, he unlocked his phone and tapped over to the conversation with America. He looked at it for one lingering moment before holding it out to Jan, blue eyes finally raising to look at him fully.

"Read this, please."

Horace watched Jan intently as the other man scrolled through the messages. The chuckles, the light tone as he read what amounted to accusations and proof of stalking, of maiming pets... Horace didn't give two shits about the pet - it was a fear creature; it did not matter. But the why of it did. "This is not about your hand." That particular turn of phrase only bothered him insomuch as it meant Jan still thought about her, that they held power over each other. He took the phone back and scrolled through the messages, trying to find something to laugh at. He ran his tongue over suddenly dry lips, distressed.

"You don't see anything wrong with these at all, Jan?" His voice cracked a little on the last word and he hated himself for that small weakness. "The word 'besotted' d-doesn't include maiming pets or following her, stalking her, spying on her as she slept. I don't understand." Please, Jan, he thought, say something, anything, make it better.

Horace couldn't help it, not when Jan was so cvclose - his fingers reached out to just barely rest on the other man's thigh. He did not allow himself to lean on Jan, no matter how much he wanted to. "It's not the pet - it's the why." Horace let out a small bubble of shaky laughter, more air than nervous mirth. "You hurt it because she was ignoring you. P-people don't do that. And I know you watch me - we sleep in the same bed sometimes but s-she... she was not with you. America had Taym and Konstatin and you still stalked her. Please, I don't understand."" The very calmness that Jan was reacting with was disheartening. It felt like things were falling apart.

"You lied to me, Jan. You said that everything she would tell me was slander and lies and yet... you did these things. What else have you lied to me about?" Horace wanted, more than anything, to just twist towards Jan, but he couldn't seek comfort there, not now. "Do you still watch her?" The question almost stuck in his throat, but he swallowed and pushed it out into the air between them.

"Is she not your p-prey? I fail to see how you treat her as anything but." Pausing, he plucked at a loop on his cargo pants, thinking idly that that was where hammers went. Pointless, inconsequential background noise generated by a brain too unwilling to remain calm. He raised both hands to scrub at his face for a moment before setting them back down, carefully, in exactly the same spaces they'd been before. "You bait her and she rises to it; she baits you and you follow. Ignoring you, it would never merit the things you have done, Jan."

Horace couldn't take this - the way Jan repeated the phrase 'I lied' as though it tasted new on his tongue, like the words were some delicate sweet to be slowly sucked on until it disintegrated. He was used to this from Jan, used to it and that's what made it worse. The urge to stop that pale mouth with his hand or a kiss or anything at all was almost overwhelming. But instead, Horace sat there, frozen as Jan's words washed over him, calm, cool, like a small, lazily flowing stream. It sounded as though Jan was discussing the weather instead of lies.

"How much-" he said, his voice low. Horace swallowed thickly, remembering how Jan had seemed on the verge of tears when he had confessed to sleeping with Al. "How much of it was a lie? Everything? This? Us? How many times have you lied to me, Jan?" He watched Jan's fingers dance across the back of his hand and wanted nothing more than to slide their fingers together, as if physical contact would make everything alright. There was a kind of visual comfort in the way their skin looked together. His vision blurred and Horace squeezed his eyes shut. "Do you still watch her? Yes, it m-matters." He'd always admired the way Jan kept his cool - it was ironic now, how that same cool undid him.

"Do you love me or was that a lie, too?" And despite his best efforts, Horace felt tears prickling at the corner of his eyes.

The way the words 'my darling' fell casually from his lips like routine without meaning caused his heart to shudder in his chest. There was something in Jan he didn't understand, that not even Jan understood. Horace had never minded the glazed look in the other man's pale blue eyes before - it was a quirk, nothing more, although now it hurt. Even a wild thing possesses instincts, he thought, a wild thing hunts and hurts and searches for prey to sate their hunger. How are you different? But he did not say this aloud. There was a gulf that yawned between them - an inability to understand that words could not bridge.

Horace bit down on his bottom lip, the small pain a reminder that he was awake. He used to do that, or tug healing piercings, or pinch bruises into his own skin when he woke up at night to see yellow eyes staring at him. It reminded him he was not dreaming; he was alive. The pain of his teeth sinking into his lip now was unwelcome. Considerably less was somehow still too much. "I suppose I should thank you for that," he breathed unwillingly. Jan was cruel - those words had hope sparking in his chest. Horace wanted to be the person most close to Jan, he wanted to crack him open and crawl inside and excise out the bits that belonged to others. Horace was selfish.

"You can obsess over her, but you cannot love me," The words came out unbidden, bitten off, frayed at the edges by hurt and unwise jealousy. "I'll never be like her, as good enough as her. I am not as interesting, as bright, as loud and I tried. I love you, Jan, but I don't even know why anymore." His breathing choked on the last word, eyes glittering painfully behind his glasses. The absence of love wasn't hate, but apathy. In this way, she had already won, as unwanted as Jan was to her.

Anything, he could have handled anything except this. Except the knowledge that he was never going to be as good as America, that the one spot in Jan's heart that briefly flutttered open was occupied. Even obssession was better than nothing when you wanted everything. And even now, he wanted it. It was weak and it was foolish and the Jan he knew wasn't the same as the real Jan, but he wanted it to be enough. Jan said there was nothing inside him - not a person, not love, but Horace wanted everything that was there. But he wasn't enough to fill up both himself and another person. Horace was only a small, background sound, nothing worthy of being examined, no unusual notes or grand, sweeping melodies. He was nothing to Jan.

And because he had wanted too much; he was off-key.

Horace shivered under those pale, graceful fingers. He would've liked to hear him play the piano, just once, he idly thought. The lips on his cheek were so painfully routine, domestic in their kiss. Was it a lie, too? Those weren't the words he wanted; Horace wanted the lie, the safe cradle of it, of false love and thinking that maybe he could have happiness. If he could, he would... but he didn't. Butch was unexpected and he nearly jerked back, feeling the slide of cerulean blades along his shield. Instead he held very, very still.

"What are you d-doing? What do you have to bind me to you anymore?" Light and soft, his words were as shallowly spoken as the breaths he took. He wanted nothing more than to sob, to scream or anything at all. They only hurt you because here, in this way, they care. He wanted to believe it. Horace closed his eyes, shivering.

His eyes opened to watch Jan's face, searching for any measure of emotion. The clipped English was something he'd heard in one of Jan's many sleep-talks and even that moment of recognition was bittersweet for him. He wondered who else had heard it. Horace remembered watching that fight with America and how Jan had slipped his claws around her throat as though he was a cage for her bird-like heart.

"You let her dictate your c-choices, even in this. Don't you see that? She's already won." A bubble of hysteria popped in his chest and he swallowed. His fingers slid up the gauntlets - cold, so cold - to briefly touch the white, perfect skin that showed above them and moved back. He looped his fingers around that gauntleted wrist.

Horace wanted, how he wanted. But he didn't want to be her music, he wanted his own to be enough. He blinked and tears streaked down his cheeks. "I can't stay in a room that has no place for me." His eyes flickered to the grotesque lamp, twisted, beautiful even in its ugliness. Turning his eyes back to Jan, he tightened the fingers around Jan's wrist and leaned forward, into the talons.


HP: 38/40
DMG: 2 horace hurt himself in his confusion!