The music softens and stops, but J doesn't open his eyes yet. He closes them a little tighter, in fact, silently urging the tears to stay back. He doesn't want S to see them and misunderstand. It's not quite enough — it never actually works, though he always tries — and he can feel one or two slip free even as he nods. There's a deep ache in his chest, pushing against his ribs, but it is, he thinks, a good kind. Mostly good, at least, if not wholly so. It's too early to tell, too hard to wrap his head around his emotions just yet.

The way S plays has changed a little. Not enough to make J feel he's missed out on some part of S's growth, but enough that he can notice, can hear that S hasn't played seriously in some time, but that he's still good, if a little less sure than he used to be. J can't fault him that. He's the same now. Well, a lot less sure, in his case, but they're both somewhat out of practice these days. He's glad that S hasn't let go of playing entirely. That's what matters — that he can still play, that he wants to, that he's allowed J to sit here and listen.

Making a soft sound of agreement, he sniffs, reaching up with his free hand to rub the heel of it over his cheek. "Yes," he murmurs. "It's alright. I'm alright." He lets out a small, helpless, embarrassed laugh, glancing over at S finally, his eyes wide and wet. A long time ago, he asked S to play for him one last time. For more than a year now, he thinks, he really believed that was what happened that night. Now it's not true anymore, another part of it falling away, as if they're undoing a curse piece by piece and he's fighting his way back to the world, casting off the remaining binds of some dark and terrible spell. As in most fairy tales, they've stepped into their future with their innocence left behind them, but it is, he thinks, a brighter future than they could have hoped for two years ago. "It's pretty. You're pretty."