Although he may not be able to see much of J like this, S can hear the shift in his voice that suggests he's smiling, that alone an unspeakable relief. For such a long time, thinking about that part of their past did nothing but leave him miserable and lonely. Here, it hasn't been nearly as bad as that, but there's still been something bittersweet about dwelling on something long gone and out of reach, a time they could never get back. That last part is still true. He wouldn't want to go back to it, no matter how much he misses that time in their lives. It fell apart back then, after all. Only here have they been able to rebuild. He'd thought that, in doing so, it would be better, safer, not to have this. It's nice to consider that maybe he was wrong, that, if nothing else, they can still sit at a piano together, pleasantly reminiscing about the good parts of their earlier life together.

"Ah, much nicer on the surface," he agrees, smiling in turn. "I used to imagine that we'd have a piano like this one day. And the space for it. It's practically the size of our whole studio." It's an exaggeration, of course, but it isn't one at all to say that even if they'd had the money, they wouldn't have been able to house a piano of this size in their small little apartment. There'd have been no room for other furniture or for the two of them to move around.

He never minded that. He was always happy with what they had; still, even all this time later, he thinks he would take the upright piano that they had in their studio over one as fine as this. That was the one he grew up playing, after all, that he brought from his childhood home when they moved in together. "Playing this one still feels strange sometimes. Like I'm getting away with something."