Although he's never once judged J for being emotional, S feels unbelievably stupid when a few tears spill over down his cheeks again, his breath a trembling exhale. It's not like he didn't know all of that meant something to J, too. It just got lost somewhere, he thinks, under the ambition and the fights, the way J seemed to hate him for playing and composing and to believe that nothing of his own was good enough. To S, he'd already done enough. J was the one who helped get him through those awful months following the loss of his parents, and S knows he would have done so even if neither of them had ever been musically inclined. Still, it meant the world that he went to those lengths, writing that song at least in part to try to cheer him up. It got him to smile when nothing and no one else could; it shaped the rest of his life, or at least the few years that have followed, moving him enough that he was inspired to try his hand at writing, too.
For a while since then, S has started to regret that he ever did so, wondering if everything would have been easier if he'd just left piano and composing to J. This, though, reminds him of why he chose that. No matter how much he'd loved music already, he hadn't realized just how much difference one piece could make. In a way, this isn't so different. All they're doing is sitting here; there's no one watching them, no one around to hear anything either of them might play. He played the first part of an old favorite piece of his, out of practice and without finishing it. And yet it's made all the difference in the world just to be here together, like they used to be so often. They shared their first kiss sitting at a piano like this, and countless hours both before and after. It hasn't felt, this past year, like their relationship has been missing anything, but being here together now feels, in a way, like coming home.
"I could tell you how much that meant to me," he says, sniffling, "but I think you already know." That much, he has to be certain of. He made no secret of it back then, after all, and the way J has framed it, all those pieces are bound up in each other — the music J wrote, the effect it had on S, how J felt as a result. "It's still my favorite. Always will be."
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For a while since then, S has started to regret that he ever did so, wondering if everything would have been easier if he'd just left piano and composing to J. This, though, reminds him of why he chose that. No matter how much he'd loved music already, he hadn't realized just how much difference one piece could make. In a way, this isn't so different. All they're doing is sitting here; there's no one watching them, no one around to hear anything either of them might play. He played the first part of an old favorite piece of his, out of practice and without finishing it. And yet it's made all the difference in the world just to be here together, like they used to be so often. They shared their first kiss sitting at a piano like this, and countless hours both before and after. It hasn't felt, this past year, like their relationship has been missing anything, but being here together now feels, in a way, like coming home.
"I could tell you how much that meant to me," he says, sniffling, "but I think you already know." That much, he has to be certain of. He made no secret of it back then, after all, and the way J has framed it, all those pieces are bound up in each other — the music J wrote, the effect it had on S, how J felt as a result. "It's still my favorite. Always will be."