To S, it doesn't seem ridiculous at all. Unnecessary, surely, and nothing he's worried about, but it isn't like he can't understand why J would be so uneasy about playing now. If anything, J's reluctance increases his own certainty. He would be a lot more concerned if J took the matter more lightly, impossible as that is even to imagine. He's always been, at least in S's mind, too hard on himself. Maybe it should be different where murder is concerned — maybe too hard on himself is a threshold that shouldn't exist under such circumstances — but S doesn't think so. Nothing good would come from J punishing himself forever, and that would be a wild oversimplification of what actually happened. It's not as if J just woke up one day and decided to kill people to fuel his compositions. The truth, as it so often is, is messier, far more complicated, sadder.

"Maybe it will," he agrees, his own voice soft in turn, a quiet but noticeable optimism there in the words. He thinks he's always been a little better at that than J has, or at least these last few years, but one of them needs to be able to look at things positively. If they could get this far, though, he can only take that as a sign that they might be able to get even just a little of that feeling back. It's more than he's had any reason to believe they would have again. "You can go as slow as you need. Always. And if you want to stop..." Maybe this isn't the time for what ifs, but it feels important to say anyway. "It won't change this. Us. Nothing will."