S doesn't know how to say — doesn't want to say — that he thought the same thing, except for the part about J making it that way. It happened. There were so many different factors at play, and he still doesn't understand all of it. He knows he wasn't blameless, though, just like he knows that some of it was purely circumstantial, and that part, too, was that piece that J has called the voice, coming from him but not really him, not entirely. The way it fell apart could never have been just one person's doing, largely because of what J has just said. They shared it for so long. When they were still together, S never stopped trying to share it, but he thinks that did a fair amount of damage in itself, considering how fraught things had become. Had he not continued pushing, had he stepped away, maybe it wouldn't have been quite so bad. There are a dozen different what ifs, and he knows he can't get hung up on them, that it's impossible to determine what could actually have changed, but he's sure even so that it isn't solely on J.

"You say that like I could ever have forgotten," he says quietly, just barely teasing, turning his head to press a soft kiss to J's damp cheek. Of course he couldn't. Everything about that night is permanently etched into his memory — the Christmas season making the loss of his parents that much harder again, J playing the song he wrote for him to try to cheer him up, coaxing him over to the piano and then admitting how he felt, S's heart racing because he thought it was just him. That first careful kiss, learning that he was allowed something he was sure would be out of reach. The piano was always there, always a part of it. This past year, it's been nice to have proof of how strong their relationship can be without it, but that hasn't stopped him from missing when they shared it.

He huffs out a breath, almost a laugh, his nose scrunching as he tries again to dry his face a little, eyes tired from crying. "Ah, I'm a mess," he mumbles. "How'd I wind up crying so much?"