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It was stupid. It was ******** stupid and wrong and a hundred other synonyms. The phone skidded across his bed, cast aside, blue-white screen flickering odd shadows up into the corners of his ceiling. 'Well you know where I will be.' Horace ran his hands over his face, kept them there, pressed his thumbs into his eyelids until he saw stars, and breathed. There were too many reasons not to, and too many reasons to say yes. It was easy to forget how to breathe. If he stayed in his room much longer, he'd think and Horace was tired of all the cogs in his head slowly turning, each gear spelling out exactly how idiotic, how stupid, how much he deserved everything unpleasant that came to him. He stood, sliding his feet into a pair of worn out sneakers. Someone had told Horace before that life was an act of balance - if he did something good, he'd get good things and vice versa. And if good things happened when he had not yet deserved them, he had to make up for it. Horace quietly closed his door behind him, the click of the lock as final as any coffin nail.

Someone? He took the steps two at a time, footsteps ringing out hollowly in the deserted stairwell. Horace knew exactly who'd told him that, and when: Darren, pressing him up against the side of a yellow barn, the paint peeling down in long ragged strips, one knee shoved between Horace's legs. 'Let's make up for lost time,' he'd said. 'Give a little bit back.' Horace saw the echoes of it everywhere, looping around him like planet's rings, and he knew it was true. Life was a set of scales and nothing that came to him was undeserved. If things had been a little unpleasant before, it was just because he'd deserve it later. And if he deserved it later, why not deserve it now. His mind was all muddled, too perpetually confused to pull apart his own thoughts, so he didn't. He supposed that, maybe, this wasn't about the concept of sin.

This was about having someone voice all the insidious thoughts in his head and enjoy him in spite of it. Lawrence could call him filth (he'd be right) and it only echoed what he already thought, could tell him that he was worthless and that his emotion was beautiful simultaneously and have both statements be true. It was validation that wrapped thin arms around him, that pressed against his windpipe until he saw stars and choked out a confession of love. He was getting exactly what he deserved, chasing after it like Icarus even as Daedalus' warnings rang in his ears. Horace would get burned and burned again and it was not enough. For all this, Melvin only flashed in his head briefly - a thought of how he'd made his own bed and he had to lie in it, but only after Horace was done using it. He swallowed down the hot flash of guilt that followed, stuffed it behind his teeth, ignored it.

Instead of knocking, Horace opened the door slowly, slipping inside and closing it behind him with a soft click. His back pressed up against the cool wood, almost as if, without enough willpower, bone and flesh could melt right through it. He hated himself more and more every day.

"Hello, Lawrence," he said softly.

This room held so much, he thought - he almost didn't want to look. There was broken glass and braided hair, chains around his throat and quiet, lazy afternoons. He'd said they could erase the unpleasant memories, but it hadn't been all bad, Horace thought. In the quiet spaces between violence and lies, he'd fallen.

He flinched at Lawrence's voice, gaze suddenly snapping into focus. The question remained unanswered and he licked his lips, nervous. Horace didn't trust his voice right now. His hands curled in on themselves for a moment before he took a deep breath that tasted like shame. Lawrence wasn't wrong, after all. He watched as Lawr moved, pushing up off of the door as well. That feline sort of deliberate laze was familiar; almost comforting how some things would never change, he thought. A trickle in the back of his mind wanted to spur him onward: he's waiting, it said. He's waiting, and you need to be of use now. He ignored it as best he could, neither hastening nor deliberately slowing his steps to the bed.

As he walked, he pulled his shirt off in one movement, draping it across a chair. His skin prickled with anticipation, the chilliness in the room only heightening the feeling. For everything else, in spite of, because of everything else.... Whatever it was, Lawrence knew how to string his body along. Maybe he was right, and ******** was the only way to ever feel not alone. His knees bumped the edge of the mattress and he knelt down, putting them more on a level. He didn't look down at his own chest and the large, circular scar that made the base of his tattoo.

"You think you always know me, don't you?" A bit of unbelieved defiance. He reached out to place his hand against Lawrence's cheek, waiting for that cat-like lean into it. His fingers slid down to toy with the opening of Lawr's shirt.

Horace inhaled sharply as Lawrence grabbed his jaw, stilling. His skin felt over-sensitive, like the smallest of touches was too much. There was something powerful in not being understood, maybe, but it generally felt like Horace hadn't tried hard enough. He pushed the thought aside and focused on the way Lawrence's body moved, the thin fingers on his jaw, the sharp cheekbones. What he needed.... for now, Lawrence was right, and he found himself leaning into the hand at his jaw, returning the kiss.

The string of his hair being pulled back was good, he thought, bu not enough. He brace himself against the edge of the bed, crowding closer to the other man. Then, boldly, he lifted his hand and let it graze along Lawrence's thigh. "I think you can find out what I want." He smiled then, a brief flash of white teeth.

Horace blinked and abruptly he was on the bed; there was no real resistance in his body. Lawrence's sudden weight, the sharp scrap and press of his fingers caused Horace's back to arch. It wasn't enough, he wanted more, wanted enough to not think.

"Well, I didn't come all the way here to run away," he said, the corner of his mouth kicking up in a smirk. Right now, he knew exactly where you stood, more or less, and knew how to press against the invisible bonds that held him there. This was familiar and he grasped that with both hands, held it close and told himself it was okay to pretend. No one ever got hurt just pretending. The switch the the older accent was almost surprising, but it was the voice with which he knew Lawrence best. He knew he was sliding dangerously close to the edge of no return, but Horace didn't care, not now. It was almost freeing.

He tried, once again, to roll his hips up, the motion forcing a gasp from his lips. "You c-could always try me."

Later, limbs haphazardly splayed across him, Horace let out a sigh against the back of Lawr's neck.It was on the tip of his tongue to say how he'd missed this, but it was one thing to type it and another thing entirely to give voice to such traitorous thoughts. They would have to go back to the real world soon; his aches would fade; everything would turn back into the horrible mess it was. But Lawrence made it so easy to simply not think about it, even if he was the original cause of all of it. He wished the aches would last. Horace's fingers curled around Lawrence's arm, the fingers playing a stark contrast to his skin. One, two, three, and the thumb - this was something Lawr had given him that wouldn't fade. Horace shivered; he didn't want it; he'd deserved it. Taking a deep breath, he shoved those thoughts away.

He focused sharply instead on the skin beneath his hand. Pale, almost the blue-white of skim milk. It looked tissue-thin and fragile, somehow. Horace could see every bone. He frowned, stroking that hand down to a hip. "You're lighter than you were."

He felt Lawrence's body tense under his hands. "Var inte arg...," he said, arm sliding across Lawr's abdomen. It was disturbingly concave. Horace kissed the nape of his neck, blonde hair tickling his nose as he scraped his teeth across the pale skin there. He wondered if Lawrence had any silver hairs and decided prudently that it was best not to ask. Ever.

"You have such skin, blue-white. A little muscle and you'd look like an ancient statue of some sort." He let out a soft chuckle and curled more closely into Lawrence. "Bit Pygmalion though, maybe."

"Had," he said, frowning at the bony frame of the other man. What muscle might have existed once upon a time was now woefully missing. Lawrence was always light, too light, and now it was worse. Dangerously so. And Horace had no ******** idea why he cared, but he still did. Kind of. Maybe.

He sighed again. "Maybe you could have your pet-slash-second-boyfriend sculpt one of you."