J nods a little, understanding what S means. He thinks he does, at least, how it's been enough just to have each other. It still is and will be, he believes that. But that doesn't mean he doesn't ache thinking of what was, or that he isn't still baffled by everything, trying to figure out his place in the world and who he is if he isn't a musician. Photography has helped ease the part of him that desperately wants to make something, to capture some piece of the world, and part of that is the very fact that it's new. But that's why it's not quite enough to quiet those voices, because it doesn't and simply can't fill that history. It's the history that haunts him. He grew up on music. He sat on his mother's lap and tried to play with clumsy toddler hands before he can even really remember. Through desperation and insecurity, he warped the beauty of that, but it's still something woven through his very being. How can he step away from it entirely? How can he return to it? How can he trust himself to do so ever again in any serious way?
Aside from the acknowledgment that nod gives, he's quiet a few moments, stroking S's back, trying to push all these feelings around until they make words. "I thought," he murmurs at last, "that we'd be safer if I didn't play. And all those horrible things I did and said... I thought, ah, I wouldn't want to play in front of me either. I wouldn't be comfortable. But, darling, I... if you want to step away or only play a very little bit, that's okay." He shifts carefully, nudging at S's hair with his nose before he draws back a touch, trying to look at S even if S isn't ready yet to look at him. "But please don't make yourself. I don't want that from you, please. Don't stop for me. It doesn't help me any for you not to play, not if it's what you want, it really doesn't."
In a way, it makes it worse, though that's not true all the time and he doesn't want to give S the wrong impression. It just upset him before to think S had given up just to appease him or had stopped out of some kind of fear. It's a choice S can make for himself, but that's what J wants it to be — something he decides for himself, not something he does for J.
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Aside from the acknowledgment that nod gives, he's quiet a few moments, stroking S's back, trying to push all these feelings around until they make words. "I thought," he murmurs at last, "that we'd be safer if I didn't play. And all those horrible things I did and said... I thought, ah, I wouldn't want to play in front of me either. I wouldn't be comfortable. But, darling, I... if you want to step away or only play a very little bit, that's okay." He shifts carefully, nudging at S's hair with his nose before he draws back a touch, trying to look at S even if S isn't ready yet to look at him. "But please don't make yourself. I don't want that from you, please. Don't stop for me. It doesn't help me any for you not to play, not if it's what you want, it really doesn't."
In a way, it makes it worse, though that's not true all the time and he doesn't want to give S the wrong impression. It just upset him before to think S had given up just to appease him or had stopped out of some kind of fear. It's a choice S can make for himself, but that's what J wants it to be — something he decides for himself, not something he does for J.