In the end, Jan's own words (and the lack of them, in a way) were what brought Horace here, to this dingy little room with a dingy little computer and access to everything a trainee could want, sort of. The pale hunter had never really lied to him, but he hadn't volunteered the truth either - and Horace hadn't expected him to, not really. Jan was grey, in the way a clouded mirror was, always skirting the line of honesty and deceit like a cowboy rides a bronco. This was not.... well, it was certainly not Jan's first rodeo. It was his own fault, of course; Horace hadn't asked the right questions to be answered. He hadn't wanted to hurt Jan, to seem like he didn't trust the other man. But, when he had asked, Jan had simply told him. In the face of that honesty, Horace felt guilty. It was a matter of delicacy and subtleties and he felt like a bull in a china shop, afraid to move lest he shatter it all. He looked down at his hands and the calluses forming in his palms. He was not good enough. Sighing, he dragged the mouse across the pad, banishing the stupid starry screensaver. With a few clicks, he changed it to colorful pipes - anything more than the default screensavers were not available. Stingy.

Anywhere considered 'public' had accessible video footage, although Horace doubted anyone other than hunters from the Death division bothered to watch it. Trainees merely had to ask (most probably would have no reason to) and had to have a date in mind to search through - he had the date, due to an offhanded mention. He never forgot anything he read, even when he wanted to; it was... not always a pleasant talent. Horace scrolled through the files. Someday, he thought, it would be nice to implement a tagging system on the videos: each video ultimately tagged with date, place, and hunter names. As it was, they had date and place. Scroll, scroll, scroll. The sheer amount of cameras on the island was fascinating. There was, of course, the temptation to watch everything, know everything, but Horace knew that for each interesting tidbit of information, there were fifty other routine moments, empty moments. It would be counted as a waste of time. Interestingly enough, having all of this available meant that if some hapless hunter walked in on a couple ******** in the laundry room - the first room that came to mind and he remembered he needed to ask Dawson about Mardi Gras - that hapless hunter could walk right out and simply watch the ensuing pornographic footage the next day with no one the wiser. It was a powerful tool. He hummed and clicked on the file he needed.

Horace wasn't entirely sure why he was doing this to himself. Masochism, maybe. He'd fully accepted his like of pain and the way brief flashes of it made his muscles clench and colors run brighter. But this was, for lack of a better word, emotional suicide. It would be like watching them ********, something even more private than their loathing-charged banter on twitter. He took a deep breath, the fingers of his free hand curling around the hem of his sweater, and skipped ahead, watching the sun sink, fast-forwarded, towards the horizon. There - he recognized Jan even in the black cloak, the precise movements, that inorganically still way of holding himself. Some things had not changed. And there, America, red hair glinting dully. He wished briefly that Deus had set up better mics on the field; their words were garbled, half-formed and blown away on the hot tropical wind. They were exes. Ex-lovers, yes, ex-predator and prey, maybe, in the way they moved around each other, although he could not tell which was which. Horace's phone vibrated, but his eyes were locked on the way their fight looked almost like a dance. Miss, dodge, miss, miss, a connected fist. Jan's cloak swirled around him as he moved lightly; America seemed more direct. America - did she always spar like that, with fists alone - too afraid to let Stryker reign fire on a field made to soak up liters of blood? Horace doubted it and he tapped his fingers along the pitted wood of the desk, stomach uneasy. There was always something about the way they interacted that prickled along his skin. It spoke of old intimacies, now soured, but still somehow there. He hated it. He picked up his phone, thumbing open an app. <******** your boyfriend to send his creepy messages to someone who enjoys them

He tries to hold him close: falling, sleeping, all heavy arms and heated breath on the back of Jan's neck. Horace wants him to stay for the full night, arms tangled around each other. It seems more romantic. But early every morning the pale man slips away and Horace wonders where he goes and if he sees someone or if maybe he just cannot bear the to keep the bed any warmer than one person makes it. He wonders if he's inadequate and rolls over to press his face into Jan's pillow, breathing deeply.

He tapped out a reply to the unwanted message, eyes flicking back up to the screen in front of him. Leave him alone, America Jones, Horace thought, a sad half-smile crossing his face. Why couldn't she just take what happiness she'd found in Taym, and leave Jan and, by association, him, alone? Horace wasn't asking for actual happiness (he'd done nothing to deserve it) or for anything more than a fleeting peace like the kind he felt when Jan slept at his side. On the television, the man who was Jan and was not Jan - not his Jan, but America's - summoned his weapon, blue talons long and deadly. A runic spider's legs. It was in the past, he reminded himself, months ago, before Horace had met him, but the intensity of it still echoed in every word America and Jan wrote to each other. He wondered what it was like to feel the burning arc of a dying star. His phone buzzed again; Horace ignored it for a few, bright moments. They were close enough to kiss or to cut and sometimes there wasn't really a difference between those two things, was there? There was love in bruises and blood. Horace sucked in a breath.

"You can tell me anything." And Horace can hear the smile in his voice, feel the lazy trace of fingers by his ear. "I promise not to laugh. Cross my heart." Jan doesn't laugh and that means everything.

@ISpeakFeline
I left my music lodged in your chest. I hope to one day retrieve it. I do not regret but I lost more than I expected.

Grey words next to a grey icon - the angel cast out. Horace knew what the music referred to, but the words read like a romance novel. They spoke of a longing he couldn't understand. He was not enough for Jan. Horace could not replace Jan's hand and loss of music with any part of himself; he didn't possess the same bright vivacity America did - she flamed as dazzingly as her hair. She was as bright as pain. Horace didn't need to be reminded of that. He'd felt like this before and had gone to drown the cold spots in his belly with alcohol. Then he'd slept with Al, made a mistake, and therefore couldn't fault Jan for his - real or imagined. It had been so hard to watch him flirt with Maebe on Twitter, using the exact same phrases, inflections of their precious flirtations. Horace did not forget anything he had ever read. He wondered why he bothered to reply to America - as if she could understand the strange desperation he felt around Jan. All he wanted was to be everything. His lips twisted. If only she would just stop.

"I feel better around you, I can be more myself than at any other time." Jan types and Horace locks that text so he can't accidentally erase it. He reads emotion in between the straight lines of the letters and thinks that this is how love works. "You have never disappointed me. And I doubt you ever will." Horace falls asleep with his glasses on, phone screen glowing softly.

When Horace was with Jan, he never felt pressured: pressured to make a joke or to talk just as loudly as everyone else or to be anything other than who he was. Although he still tried. He wasn't worthy of Jan, of the experience that glowed in his cool eyes and those pale lips that said 'I love you' as though it were a simple fact, something never to be questioned, but accepted as surely as the ocean recedes with the moon. Jan made him want to be better, but the kind of better that came not with sociability, but from cultivating a strength of self. In the quiet moments with him, when Horace smoothed out repetitive motions or stroked fingers along the curve of Jan's neck, he felt calm through and through. Better. On the screen, Jan slowly closed his taloned hand around America's neck. Without thought, his own hand reached up, fingers circling around his throat. Horace dropped his hand as if burnt. America smiled, somehow triumphant and arrogant even in her defeat and he wished he knew what they were saying. His phone vibrated and did not stop for a time, but he watched as Jan began to drag her from the field. The reminder.

America was limp in his hands and Horace thought fancifully that he could see her heartbeat flutter like a small bird's. Impossible, of course, not with the distance and video quality. He looked at his phone, fingers flying to respond. And paused. He hadn't expected a barrage of images: conversations between America and Jan. Horace felt something tangle up inside of himself, then straighten smoothly, then tangle and twist, knots pulling tight enough to break. What was he supposed to think? What was he supposed to do? It was disgusting, but there was that flicker of jealousy, childish and wrong, a simple whispered thread of 'look only at me'. Horace wasn't proud of it. Jan was different now, certainly, even if he'd done terrible things. Horace remembered how he forgave Alesha, how he forgave Darren and it wasn't enough anyway. He stared at the time stamps. Jan was different now, different... and what if he wasn't?

On the screen, Jan was carving a treble clef into America's chest - his music. Horace's fingers moved, unconsciously mimicking the movement of the talons, tracing a clef onto the uncaring wood of the desk.

"It is not about what I deserve." Jan says, his voice a dismissive flick. He pulls Horace inside, passive and graceful, that grace quickly snarling up into something else, his hand clenching in fabric, teeth against his ear, lips brushing Horace as he speaks. "It is about what I want."

Horace never sleeps well in Jan's room. He's awake when the familiar hand reaches up, strokes - almost dotingly, latches around his throat, nails digging into his skin with a ferocity he only sees directed at other people. "Jag älskar dig." In seconds, he's soft and limp in sleep again. Horace's heart beats into his throat as he smooths down pale hair that shimmers just so in the moonlight.

There was nothing he could not accept. Surely. Horace's shoulders bowed in on themselves, suddenly shivering with a cold that was only in his chest. He didn't know how to feel, what to believe, how to reconcile America's Jan and his into something that was the same person - the person he still loved. Slowly, he reached out, dragged the mouse over, and watched one more time as Jan pressed a kiss to America's forehead before leaving. Again, he watched it. A breath, a beat. Again. His eyes hurt from the light of the computer, from the light of his phone. Only from that, he told himself. Pause, rewind, again.

"I love you."
"I love you."
"I love you."

Unheeded, the spar looped again from the beginning, the noises of fighting muffled, words indistinguishable from the ambient noise of the island itself. He glanced at his phone and typed out one last response to America before setting the phone back down slowly, careful not to make a sound. Silence seemed important now. The phone glowed coldly on the desk, lighting his face in a milky blue and turning the hollows of his cheekbones into dark shadows. Horace covered his eyes with one tired hand.