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After assuring Jordan that he did not have duties, the two partted and Horace ran to grab a shower. Even though he was an intermediate, he'd elected to stay down in the basement for now, preferring not to move until he managed to make it up to full hunter.

After about forty-five minutes, he appeared in front of Jordan's door, no longer gross and sweaty, although still tired. "Jordan?" He knocked hesitantly. Horace was a little wary of talking to Jordan about.... things, but the other man seemed smart and there were slight similarities in their situations. Very slight. Dr. Morris had helped him, too, and he hoped to gain more insight from Jordan at least.

Horace poked his head in hesitantly, and the rest of him followed (as bodies were wont to do, being attached to heads and all). "Hey." He brandished his mug; he thought he couldn't impose on Jordan even more than he was alreayd going to and the mug was a small caveat. A small, meaningless caveat, but he hadn't exactly been thinking clearly. To say Horace was nervous was an understatement; he was a tangled ball of nerves with a sprinkle of exhaustion on top.

"Ah, need any help?" He gestured at the dishes, feeling tenser than a drawn bow. Horace wasn't sure how he was supposed to begin, anyway, and just kind of stood there, uselessly.

"I am tired." He accepted the coffee gratefully, wrapping his unsteady hands around the mug. He'd read somewhere that a warm mug calemed because it mimicked a person's bodily warmth - he didn't know if it was bullshit or not, but the idea was nice. "I haven't been sleeping well these past couple of months," he offered with what he hoped was a nonchalant shrug. He wondered if, when Jan was back, he'd stop feeling this way, stop dreaming, if everything would be okay again. He sighed. Probably not, but it was nice to think.

His thumb rubbed along the rim of his cup. Horace wanted to talk, he did, yet here he was and the words died in his throat, fell down to stuck in the pit of his stomach like spoiled food. Finally, he took a deep breath and just blurted out the first thing in his mind, wincing even as he said it. The words tripped over themselves, all expelled on one breath, as if getting them out into the air between them was somehow better than leaving things unbroached. "Do you ever feel like you have to justify loving someone to yourself?"

"Mmm, sort of, I guess." Did it count as a nightmare if most of the time it followed his memories? Well, followed them until a certain point, then veered into any manner of unpleasant endings. The dream of knights had been the first one in a long time that hadn't been that dream, and even then, it had not been pleasant. The nightmares, he'd talked about them with Oliver, and maybe that was enough. But maybe they'd never stop.

"Do you think that's bad," he said earnestly. "-or do you think it's like giving someone a second chance?" The fingers of his left hands tapped along the mug - Horace couldn't stay still. "Sorry, I... I realize this is all really personal stuff, I just..."

Horace gratefully sank down onto the couch, welcoming the few seconds that movement gave hijm to try and corral his thoughts into some kind of order. What'd forgiveable? Wasn't everything, if he tried hard enough, if he was good enough. Horace would take everything given to him, done to him, and it would be because he deserved it.

"As many as it... takes," he murmured, rubbing his fingertips against one another. "As many as I'm strong enough to give, don't you think?" He looked up at Jordan, mouth set in a small, sad line. "Dr. Morris said it took fifteen months... fifteen months and sixteen days to even think about loving her husband. How long have you waited?"

It was infinitely easier to think of this conversation in terms of Jordan alone, and not try to draw parallels. Parallels were for the dark of a basement room, alone, when his mind swung into overdrive. He took a deep breath and thought only of Rep, and Jordan, and Harrison. Jordan's response, his readiness to speak even on personal subjects was comforting, in a way. Horace took several deep breaths.

The coffee was rich and hot and soothing; he breathed in the steam like a balm. "So it depends on if you're stronger than it, I guess. Though I'd read something, somewhere, that trying for love could burn the weakness out of you, turn you into something better, something new." I would have burned the weakness out of you. Horace did not say that it was Jan who had written that - it was irrelevant. This was a conversation about Jordan.

"Did you worry you'd burn out - in the beginning? Does the... guilt ever stop?" He looked down at his coffee and the table and wiggled his toes in his shoes as nerves continued to skitter down his spine.

Everything Jordan said was filed away careful, to be transcribed and read and reread and pulled up again when he needed it. Just like Dr. Morris' words. His weaknesses... Could he be weak around Jan? "I think... maybe, if you can be a little weak, it's okay. Emotionally or physically." With Jan, he'd be a little more guarded now, he'd have to be. Horace would swallow his insecurities like bitter medicine. "I think allowing your guard to entirely fall around someone, anyone would be a recipe for disaster, regardless of who they were." Letting his guard fall completely was for the nights alone when he couldn't sleep, couldn't do anything but remember how the salt had burned, how his wound had reopened, how he'd wrenched himself out of America's arms because he refused to be her burden.

"If you could forget - if they could forget, would you pick that option? Would you start over fresh, like nothing bad had ever happened?" Horace clenched his left hand into a fist and slide it off to the side of his thigh, where he couldn't see it. He forced out a small laugh and shook his head. "I'm sorry - I'm asking so many questions."

"The concept of letting every guard down completely is... it sounds like a fairy-tale. Something to be wanted, desired, but just not practical anymore." Horace had wanted that before, the kind of openness, the kind of happy-ending romances in his books. But the actual world didn't run on romantic tropes and sweet love - it ran on trying and trying and sometime people still failed and broke and were forgotten. He'd felt comfortable with Jan, had thought he had let his walls and guard down, but everything that had happened made him realize they'd both kept walls up and the wrong ones. He wanted to be safer than that, hold the core of himself separate - if Jan wanted him still, if he could accept everything. He raised his eyes to watch Jordan. The way he'd said those words - endure. Horace's mouth opened. Words bubbled at the back of his throat, bitter and hot: 'endurance was a commonplace thing'. Horace. would endure and endure and if he broke it wpould only ever be his fault. He closed his mouth with a click of teeth, instead. This was not the time to spit out bitterness into sentiment. He hoped Jordan would find someone he didn't have to endure and vice versa - he deserved nice things.

After a moment, almost hesitantly, he ventured: "I don't know that there's a right or wrong answer. Maybe it lies in the differences between strong with, strong for, and strong against." But Horace didn't have a quick and easy answer. Maybe that's just what love was, though - endurance. It was confusing and none of it made clear-cut sense. It wasn't anything like the facts Horace kept scribbled in binders in his room.

"No," he said. "I wouldn't talk; things stay in this room." Jordan's not-quite-a-question made Horace feel a little more confident, somehow. If he didn't want Horace to say anything, it stood to reason that Jordan would do the same for him. Fingers tapped along his thigh - his left hand one-two-three, one-two-three. The absense of his finger altered the rhythm and sometime it still made him shiver.

Horace had asked before about the individual points of forgiveness, although he didn't know the threshold of it. How much was too much to forgive, when did someone run out of second chances? A large part of himself wanted to believe anything was forgivable as long as a few specific stipulations were met. Base requirements he needed to continue existing, he supposed. Horace sighed softly. They had talked in unspecifics and circles, words delicately balancing on a ledge. And, on a whim fueled by coffee and bad decisions, he spoke. "Do you think its wrong of me to still love Jan, even... after everything?" Horace did not know why he asked; he could guess the answer Jordan would give, but he could not summon the breath to pull the question back out of the air between them.