Warning for mention of self-harm.


Since before Christmas, they'd sat in the back of his desk drawer gathering dust. Eventually, he figured he'd forget about them, but despite his better efforts, sometimes Horace missed that spiced smoke and the way it felt filling his lungs and curling in front of his lips in lazy loops. The clove cigarettes hadn't been easy to get a hold of - they were banned in the U.S. - but he'd managed to grab an unopened pack off of a kid in the mall parking lot. His hands had been full of packages: gifts, things for his room, and Dylon had been yelling at him to hurry his a** up or he'd be left behind. Horace had paid the boy (boy: he'd probably been Horace's age or older, with the kind of easy innocence and malice only teenagers possess) twice what the cigarettes were worth, maybe more. He thought it was worth it, to have a piece of something that said 'home'. But somehow, he'd never found time to smoke them. Even Horace wasn't sure if his failure to make use of them was merely because of time constraints or some sort of strange reluctance to bring his old life here, onto the island. But he'd paid for them, so, determined, he pulled them out of the drawer and felt the carton's plastic crinkle in his hands. It didn't make sense to let them go stale.

He couldn't smoke in his room, no ventilation and besides, the roof was gorgeous. Around Christmas, Horace had laid on the roof with Melvin and drank and drank until the stars tilted like they were falling into place. His footsteps rang up the stairs: basement to first floor to second to roof. s**t, he thought, this place needs a damn elevator. Wasn't there a hunter in a wheelchair? Finally, victorious, he flung the roof door open and crossed the flat rooftop in long strides, flopping down near the edge. There was something vaguely exciting about dangling his legs off a building, but only vaguely. He fumbled in his pants pocket for the cigarettes and lighter. Horace was, of course, always prepared. Prepared meant that he'd nicked that lighter from someone - he didn't know who. Said unnamed hunter had left it lying on a table in the cafeteria, so it was his now. Finders keepers, losers weepers and all that. The familiar feel of plastic and metal reminded him of nights back home. Horace looked at the base of his hand where thumb connected to wrist but, ah, he'd been so good even then at knowing exactly the limits of his body - how to bruise and burn and cut and never leave scars. The urge had only really come to him in those moments at night when he'd wake and look for yellow eyes and panic. When his lungs felt squeezed so harshly it burned and he needed to remember that he was alive, awake.

With a sigh, he tapped one out of the carton, the roll of brown paper looking even darker in the deepening twilight. He put it to his lips, the motion familiar and soothing. He'd missed smoking on occasion. flick. Flick a bic, Horace thought with a chuckle, and cupped his hand around the flame, just touching it to the tip of his cigarette. He inhaled slowly, just once, before his hand began to tremble. The lighter clicked on the concrete of the roof as it fell, the hand with the cigarette dipping to rest on his knee. Unseeing, he stared out into the dark night.

Darren: all blonde hair and bottle green eyes and broad shoulders. Maybe he did have a thing for blondes, after all. "You ******** told," he hissed with the spice of Horace's cigarettes on his breath, and there was a whisper of betrayal in that honey-smoked voice. Horace's head slammed against the lockers, pale fingers tangled in his dark hair. Bewilderment flashed through him - he'd told no one; Horace was so, so good at keeping secret their stolen moments in fields and behind buildings. But in his head an insidious something whispered 'yes, hurt me because then it means I matter to you'. Horace's tongue stopped before it could even begin to protest and, like a good boy, he kept silent.

He and Darren shared a cigarette behind the barn at his parent's house. He'd blown smoke into the blonde boy's mouth and they'd both laughed and kissed and everything had held that perfect gold of autumn sun shining behind it. Later that day, Darren would shove him, tell him to get lost with a laugh. Horace tugged him close.

{horace.}

They'd used his own cigarettes. "Only fags smoke cloves," one of them had drawled before punching him. Something horrible had twisted in him at that pain, a kind of dark shifting that was part defiance and part something Horace couldn't bring himself to examine. His eyes stayed fixed on that cherry bright light and the smoke curled up just barely from it. He breathed it, swallowed it instead of speaking and they laughed. Horace knew that behind their smiles lurked fear, disgust and he couldn't fight back because what if he somehow deserved this The cigarette sizzled against his skin and he jerked, cried out. In that moment, he fought, but arms held him down. This was not a pain he chose and bile rose in his throat. 'Shh', that voice said, 'what if I'm given only what I deserve?' and he swallowed down his own voice and he swallowed down the smoke.

{horace, listen.}

Horace had learned how to take care of burn wounds very quickly. It helped, he thought fatalistically, that he'd had practice.

{horace!} And it was the sharp disappointment in Jannisari's voice that brought him back. {the cigarette,} she hissed, the sound impatient. It was an oddly kind reminder from her. Yelping, Horace dropped the cigarette - it was all ash now anyway, close enough that he almost burned his fingers. His hand curled into a fist and slowly, he pressed it to the scars that littered his skin just under his collarbone. Horace wondered if one day they'd fade - if this bond with Dr. Jannisari was enough. He didn't know if he wanted them to. Silent, he sat there for long moments, the smoke twisting around him like a lover's touch. Finally, Horace stood, grabbing the lighter. He... he couldn't do it. Even now, bile flooded his mouth. The smell was everywhere and his eyes stung with the memory of burning cigarettes. He rubbed his hands, sweaty, shaking, across his face and headed to the door. He'd get rid of it all. Now.

The cigarettes, non-lit, were easily slipped into a baggie. He almost kept the lighter, rolled the cool plastic in his palms and thought of how useful it would be. Realistically, he should keep it, stolen or not, take it on missions because on missions it was never quite clear what he might need. He tilted it, held it up to the hall's florescent lights and watched as the lighter fluid sloshed against the cheap, transparent casing. It was purple - his favorite color. But Horace remembered the nights he'd heated thin wires (leftover scraps from grandma's craft box), heated them to a bright cherry red and pressed them against his skin. Curiosity had been a dangerous thing, even then, a thing that led to glowing wires in the night and a desire to remind himself that he was alive, after all. They had seemed so bright and alive that he'd wanted to swallow them whole and feel it burn him up from the inside. He remembered how the breath had hissed out of him that first time and how he had held his thin, thirteen-year-old arms very, very still as it cooled. Horace remembered and so, though his fingers lingered over it and over the memories (and those were tiny scars that faded, thin pale lines gone the next year although he couldn't forget the feeling), he slipped the lighter into the plastic bag with the cigarettes. His hands smoothly sealed it, fingers steady and as cinnamon brown as the cigarettes inside. And he pretended it was a permanent seal, unbreakable, like the thin wall of plastic would bend but not break. Horace didn't need these things; he couldn't have them.

79... 77, 75, 73, 71

The hallway seemed longer than normal. Horace had, of course, walked down here before though he couldn't remember why - something with Dawson, of course. The Moon hunter's room was right there, after all. Horace shook his head, chalking the sense of unease up to nerves and a plastic baggie that dangled from sweaty fingers.

67, 65, 63, 61.

He didn't like Mikael, hell, Horace barely tolerated the boy, but if he wanted to learn bad things, maybe he'd learn something good too. Or not. He shoved his hand though his hair, barely noticing as his fingers snapped the elastic out of it. In the next breath he'd tacked the baggie to Mik's door, along with a short note. 'Enjoy, kiddo. -H.' ********. He felt stupid and weak and a hundred other things he hated. With a strangely precise movement, he turned and walked away, shoving still-sweaty hands into his pockets. Not his problem anymore, right? But the smoke still clung to his collar and itched along his skin. Horace's step faltered, dim memories still flickering at the corners of his eyelids, but he held his breath and continued on. It wasn't anything a load of laundry wouldn't fix. And a shower. Maybe cleanliness really was next to godliness.