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He had wondered, paper shaking, (pale and perfect in his hands and who did that remind him of, but oh, it was only paper after all), if this were some form of cruel joke. Horace had briefly cataloged the possibilities, organized them, analyzed, and summarily discarded them - it was both too elaborate a joke and one that would produce no real outward reaction. That was the point of pranks, after all - a reaction. The letter was an impossible thing, generally speaking, but something in his chest had ached and he'd gone to Jan's pod, feet nearly skidding over themselves recklessly. 3T. He exhaled, breath close enough to fog the glass. Of course, Jan was there, hushed, motionless behind thick, un-bubbled glass. He looked as though he were only sleeping, though it was stiller than any sleep Horace had seen. He was used to murmurs, restless words in different accents, idle sleep-movements. Jan was here, and the letter was there: in Horace's room, atop his worn desk.

He did not remember the walk back to his room.

With unsteady hands, he unfolded the letter again, Jan's scent rising from the paper. The very tone of the letter, that familiar ridiculous drama (he'd found it endearing, an odd quirk in Jan); it was normal, it was so distressingly normal that it was almost enough to make him forget. Selectively forget and remember only the things that had made him smile before. Horace drew in a breath and held it, and when he exhaled, he pushed the longing out of him. Carefully, slowly, he dissected the words, trying to sort them neatly, perfectly into lies and truths.

'I would've burned the weakness out of you' - a truth, though he felt weaker now than he ever had; he was made of jagged pieces of glass stuck back together. He was an artless thing, covered in masking tape to hide the cracks. There had been, still were so many days and nights of staring at the wall, any wall, knowing he should get up and do something, or sleep, or anything at all. But he couldn't bring himself to care. Everything was duller, now. He scrolled through Twitter, replied with smiling faces or mean jabs and felt nothing in particular. When he smiled it felt more like a baring of teeth - a fox run to a corner. Everything was duller, even the pain he collected from spars like an old woman collects stamps (both hoping to somehow experience things, to experience places they'd never been). Everything was duller now, except for his technicolor dreams of chains wrapping around his throat, dreams of skin as pale as snow, hands red with blood, and eyes with pupils are black as night. He did not sleep much, for each time he slept, Horace choked himself, hurt himself, knew he deserved even the nausea that burned in his belly. He took nothing of me that I did not give him; he did nothing that I did not deserve. There were words he wrapped around himself and they sounded like comfort and they felt like a cage. They were acceptable when everything else was not.

{we construct stories and we accept them, horace. you accept; you bend and you bend and you do not break. it is interesting.}

Interesting. A specimen, something else for Dr. Jannisari's studies. She didn't refute these thoughts; he felt her watching with a kind of arid curiosity. It was unpleasant and as impersonal as a blood-pressure cuff at a drugstore. He didn't have the energy or the drive to press it further. Horace was tired, so tired of trying to to figure out whether what he loved was the man or the lie or some muddy middle ground. He was sinking. The censure had eased a bit, forgotten with Jan's absence - and the less he talked about Jan, the more people seemed to forget and that suited him. But it was hard living with conflicting memories and no one to confide in who did not also judge. 'You are enough', they said. 'You did not deserve this, Horace', they whispered. But he wasn't and he did, in the same manner that fire was hot or the sun was bright; it was an undeniable truth that did not stop being true simply because someone wanted to argue against it. America was right; this was what he got. Jan was right; this was what he wanted. He was right; this was what he deserved. This and nothing less. {what have you done to deserve happiness?} It was an old question and one Horace still couldn't answer. He closed his clouded eyes and allowed himself one shuddering breath: inhale, exhale. Then he opened his eyes and they were once more clear, blue, unaffected.

'I wished to give that to you' - a lie. Despite his willingness to accept, to forgive, Horace was not as stupid as everyone seemed to think him. He remembered; he remembered every cool word in that clipped voice. "We are going to bond quite a bit, you and I, before I finally kill you." Or perhaps it was true and Jan was saying the only way Horace could hold more meaning than America was to die. A fatalistic thought, but lies and truth were so subjective, malleable in the right hands. America had said Jan was broken, wrong, and he wondered if anyone had ever tried. Perhaps Jan was callous because he did not know how else to be. Even Dr. Morris was a monster once and that did not make Robert one for loving her. But... Horace didn't know if he was strong enough to try and stay. Line by line, he went through the letter. Then, much, much later, he began to write, his handwriting smooth and even.



Horace had hesitated over each word, even the greeting, even the closing of 'yours' (he was still Jan's in the way a dog never forgot their first owner - an allusion supplied by his cynical late-night mind), trying to guess how or if Jan would react. Finally, with the corpses of half-finished sentences curling around his bare feet, he folded his paper up and sealed the envelope. On the front he attached a small note to Chantelle, asking her to deliver it. He wondered if he should buy her some trinket as thanks, something gothic or a nice eyeliner. He sighed slowly, suddenly aware of the way he could hear his blood pulsing in his ears. It was a wet sort of thrum, anxious and heavy. He grimaced and shoved back from his desk with a squeal of wood against concrete - the letter would be slid under Chantelle's door later. Lying back on his bed (the letter from Jan he kept under his pillow, as though the physical act if 'sleeping on it' would somehow help), he thumbed through his phone, through older conversations. America's anger, Hattie's careless joy, Lex's stilted attempt at an apology - but he did not reread Jan's. His breathing still caught at some messages, ones that scraped at his skin and dragged thin claws across his chest. February, and it was nearly April now - had it already been so long?

@mimserable - Is a statistically minimal possibility for him to be capable of love more valuable than your life?

There were questions, Horace thought, that he should not answer yet. Instead he folded them into tiny squares and kept them in the circle of his heart. Their edges would stab, irritate, cut against his skin until he could answer them. And that, he thought, was how it should be. Horace rolled over and pressed his face into a pillow that no longer smelled of anyone but himself.