J sniffles, shaking his head, gaze still lowered. He can hear the change in S's voice, the shift in his face where it presses against J's palm, and he can't bear to see it quite yet. "I should have told you sooner," he whispers, his own voice thick and rough. He lets out a small, trembling laugh. "I thought it would help not to. I didn't want you to... to feel pressured, like you have to play in front of me. Even if I didn't say a word, I thought — I thought you'd have to sit and play expecting me to yell at you or start a fight. So it was better not to say it."

He groans quietly, leaning forward to rest his head against S's shoulder for just a moment. "We don't learn," he says, quietly wry. It's funny and horrible all at once. He's not sure how to fix that, though. After all, S did what he did to try and spare J pain, and he did so at a time when J was very often not capable of making reasonable decisions for himself or anyone else. Coming to Darrow and finding S again was what he needed to start healing, but it was and is a process. He's still working on regaining his confidence and the mental wherewithal to make bigger decisions. It's been best to leave a lot in S's hands, even if he's always had to be pretty explicit about that being what he was doing — also understandable, for the same reasons that J didn't want S to feel obligated to play for him. He doesn't know how they're supposed to determine when it's right to do these things for each other and when they should ask; there's too much room for error, but it wouldn't have helped either of them if J had been right all this time and he'd still pushed S about it. If the sound of S playing truly hurt him and S had asked, he very well might have denied it, not wanting to get in S's way. He can't ask S to stop trying to protect him when sometimes he needs protecting; they both do.