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July gives way to August, and with it, though the muggy weather is no less oppressive, S finds his mood lightening a little. It's strange, probably, associating summer with death. It also can't be helped. He's not half as far gone now as he was in those first couple of years, but the loss of his parents is never going to be an easy one to bear, and the days and weeks around the anniversary of their deaths are always going to hurt. Likewise strange is how grief begets grief. For that, he always feels guilty. J is here, after all, alive and well. They've had nearly a year and a half together now that they weren't supposed to have gotten, and S really is, he thinks, the happiest he's ever been. But when that loss rears its head, even happiness hurts. He never got to come out to his parents, never told them how he felt about J. They never got to see him as he is now. They weren't there when he lost the love of his life, a storm he weathered entirely on his own, and something he'll always carry with him. At times like this, it's just a little closer to the surface than usual.
He tries not to let it emerge completely, holding it at bay as best he can. It's a hard time of year, that's all, and at least J knows that already. It makes him a little quieter than usual, and a little more inclined to bring up his parents, something he doesn't typically do all that often, especially knowing that can be a difficult subject for J in different ways. Like a dark cloud slowly but inexorably passing in front of the sun, though, it starts to ease — not like the flip of a switch, exactly, but a more gradual, less noticeable change, some of it lingering still, some of it substantially better. He's still a bit distracted, but he also has a chance to start catching up on the things he didn't feel up to a couple of weeks ago. It's something.
It lets him do more with J, too. Not that he was distant before, but they're both introverted by nature, and with the weight of all that grief, he's more inclined to want to stay in with the one person who understands it, who saw him through it back then. He's tried before, more than once, to try to tell J just how grateful he is for that, how much it meant and still means to him, but there are never the words. All he can really do is attempt to make it up to him in any small ways he can, smiling faintly as J suggests plans, only for him to realize that's the one day he'll be otherwise occupied. "Ah, maybe the day after?" he offers instead, just distracted enough that he doesn't really register what he's saying until the words are out of his mouth. "I have a doctor's appointment that day."
He tries not to let it emerge completely, holding it at bay as best he can. It's a hard time of year, that's all, and at least J knows that already. It makes him a little quieter than usual, and a little more inclined to bring up his parents, something he doesn't typically do all that often, especially knowing that can be a difficult subject for J in different ways. Like a dark cloud slowly but inexorably passing in front of the sun, though, it starts to ease — not like the flip of a switch, exactly, but a more gradual, less noticeable change, some of it lingering still, some of it substantially better. He's still a bit distracted, but he also has a chance to start catching up on the things he didn't feel up to a couple of weeks ago. It's something.
It lets him do more with J, too. Not that he was distant before, but they're both introverted by nature, and with the weight of all that grief, he's more inclined to want to stay in with the one person who understands it, who saw him through it back then. He's tried before, more than once, to try to tell J just how grateful he is for that, how much it meant and still means to him, but there are never the words. All he can really do is attempt to make it up to him in any small ways he can, smiling faintly as J suggests plans, only for him to realize that's the one day he'll be otherwise occupied. "Ah, maybe the day after?" he offers instead, just distracted enough that he doesn't really register what he's saying until the words are out of his mouth. "I have a doctor's appointment that day."
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It's S's reason that pulls J up short, his brow furrowing in faint concern. S hasn't mentioned an appointment or even needing one. For that matter, though J has had little colds now and then since arriving, he hasn't gone either. He's in the habit of toughing things out unless they're especially bad. Doctors cost money, after all. "Doctor?" he echoes. "Everything okay?" If it weren't, he knows S would probably have told him before now, so it's likely not a big deal, but now he's worried he missed something important.
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After all, as a rule, he doesn't talk about it, the scars on his chest, the damage he sustained, the recovery from it. He remembers too well, painfully well, how J reacted to the sight of them the day he got here. Since then, he thinks he can probably count on one hand the number of times it's come up. J said something in those first few days, as he recalls, about needing to be able to face them at some point, sooner rather than later, but that soon has never arrived. As much as it may hurt, without explicit permission, he isn't going to make J face the lasting marks from that last night they saw each other back in Seoul. It may not always be very convenient, wearing a shirt during sex or when they shower together, changing in the bathroom or carefully facing the wall, trying not to draw attention to it all the while, but it's a hell of a lot better than the alternative. If it's part of keeping J safe, then he doesn't mind it at all.
And this, really, is just a variation on the same sort of thing. There's no reason to bring it up, to force J to think about it. Except now he already has brought it up, and the last thing he wants is to make J worry needlessly, his stomach twisting a little as he shakes his head. "Everything's fine," he says, casual but earnest. "It's just a routine thing. A check-up."
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"How routine can it be?" he asks, trying to sound more wry than confused, not sure he succeeds. "This is the first I've heard of it." S seems fine, though, both in terms of his health and what he's saying. There's something there that J couldn't put into words that makes him feel it's not quite as simple as S says, but no real reason for him to think it's anything serious either. He just also can't understand why S wouldn't mention it. It's not like they have to tell each other every little thing all the time, but this seems like something they'd usually bring up.
He can't tell if he's being paranoid, and it leaves him uncomfortable, awkwardly shifting on the couch to stretch out his legs as if that make shake some of the strangeness off of him. Glancing over again, hesitant, he nods. "Everything's really fine?" It worries him that he might seem suspicious or distrustful, that he might be imagining problems that don't exist. If S insists things are fine, he tells himself, he'll accept it. He can't let his imagination run away with him and get him worked up over nothing, and S wouldn't lie to him, especially about something important.
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He just has a feeling that, if he tells J what the reason behind it is, he won't see it that way. Hazy as a lot of his memories of that first day are, especially those few minutes he spent in an absolute panic, he vaguely recalls a similar exchange — him trying to say he was alright, J insisting otherwise. S can't stand the thought of going down that road again, or even anywhere close to it. He is fine, and the whole point of this appointment is really to confirm that. If there were anything wrong, if he even suspected there might be, this would be a very different conversation, something he would have prepared J for ahead of time.
Now, he isn't sure what to do about his slip of the tongue. He can't take it back, and he doesn't want to make J worry more instead of less. When J knows him so well, being too evasive would probably be obvious, and make things seem worse than they actually are. While he nods in agreement, not wanting to hesitate on that front, expression gently earnest as he looks over at J, he takes a moment to weigh his words before he gives a verbal answer, trying to find the tidiest middle ground. "Everything's really fine," he confirms, reaching over to rest his hand on J's, hoping the gesture will be reassuring. "I promise. It's... I had a surgery, a few months before I got here. And it went well, there hasn't been anything wrong since, I'm just supposed to check in every so often. I only didn't say anything before because it really is just routine."
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Even now, J feels like he's missing something, something thudding in his chest like he missed a step in the stairwell, abrupt and unsteady. There aren't more or less steps than there were before; he just lost track of one. His first moment of concern is the idea that S had surgery and didn't mention it. It would be just like S to leave something like that out, not wanting to worry J, but before he can say anything, his mind catches up, understanding dragging along his skin, jagged-edged.
He opens his mouth and closes it again, his grasp on S's hand briefly tightening. Figuring out what to say, what to ask, how to put it when he's still trying to wrap his head around all of this, is hard. He's not even certain what he's feeling. "You go to the doctor routinely," he says slowly, a little hurt creeping into his voice, "and it's not something I need to know?"
It's his fault. He knows it is. He highly doubts there was some other surgery he doesn't know about, so it can only be the aftermath of what he did that S means. It's not an easy topic; it never has been and likely never will be, so it's his own fault if S doesn't feel comfortable talking to him about it. But it's S's fault too, making assumptions, making decisions, keeping J from being able to support him. "That's not fair," he says. He's aware he's turning sulky, but he can't see how he's supposed to shrug this off and go back to talking about distracting little nothings. "Even if it's fine, it's — that's not fair of you."
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It was before it came up like this, though, entirely by accident. Of course, that's probably the only way it ever would have. Talking about it may not be the same as forcing J to look at the physical reminders of what happened that night, but it likewise wouldn't seem fair to talk about it and make him bear that burden. Not being able to talk about the weeks and months that were without a doubt the hardest in S's life isn't all that much fairer, but that, too, has simply seemed like the better of two bad options.
When J looks and sounds like this, though, S doesn't know if he could explain it well. He gets it, anyway, how this might strike a nerve, might hew too close to what J hated so much before. Since they've been back together, he's tried hard to temper the impulse to stay in control of what he can, at least so it won't start to come across as him controlling J. With this, it wasn't even so much a conscious decision, just the only thing he felt like he could do. Even now, he feels certain that it wouldn't have gone over very well if he'd brought it up sooner. With a subject as fraught as this, there's just no way to win.
"It's not like it's often," he says, a quiet protest, even as his hand clasps J's in turn. "Just once, maybe twice a year." That won't change anything right now and he knows it. Falling silent for a moment, he looks down at his lap, mouth settling into a frown. Softer now, he adds, "I don't know what you would have wanted me to say."
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He was fine. He was quietly content, his only concern for S that he's still a bit quiet himself, but that's okay. J gets that, after all. However S handles his grief as it ebbs and flows, J is there for that. Now he can feel himself getting wound up, worse the more he tries to hold it in. But he doesn't want to blow up at S and get swept away in anger because it hurts to look at his other feelings.
"I understand," he says. That's the part that hurts most, probably, not just that S can't trust him to hear these things, but that he gets why that's so. "But I —" He grits his teeth, eyes closing tight. What good is there in protesting? What is he supposed to say? He's too fragile. Too weak, too small, too useless. He'd thought he was doing better, that he was supportive. They both pull their weight in different ways, as best as J can, and he tries. They're supposed to be partners, but this is how it is. He'll never be able to be there the way he should be. S didn't even let him try, but maybe it's because he knows J can't do it, that he'd only end up like this, too upset to find his words.
S is the one carrying this alone. And here's J, selfish as always, upset about the role he plays or doesn't get to play.
His head growing light, he forces himself to stop, holding his breath for a second so he'll stop breathing too fast and get some air in his lungs. Tugging his hand away from S, he presses it to his chest instead, below his throat, trying to steady himself. This is useless. This is why S doesn't tell him these things. Huffing out a heavy breath, he sniffs, eyes screwing tight shut in frustration, trying to hold back the urge to cry. It won't help. Even so, he can't help the question that pulls out of him, quietly despairing. "Am I still that weak?"
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They've really been doing better, this past year and a half. S has to believe that. Still, though, time and again, he fucks it up, and it's worst when it's like this, when it feels so tied to the very fact of his being. Moments like this, irrational though he knows it is, a part of him can't help but wonder if it's unforgivably selfish, wanting to be with J when he knows he'll always be a reminder of the worst things J did.
What J says hurts, too, so far from the truth that it leaves him speechless for a moment, knowing he's gotten this even more wrong than usual, than he would have expected. "It's not like that," he finally protests, slight defensiveness under the wounded sound of his voice. Maybe his not telling J wasn't fair, but neither is this, not from his standpoint. "And you know I've never thought you're weak, so don't — don't put words in my mouth." He feels like he's about to be sick, his chest tight, his breathing shallow. None of this is right, no matter what he does, and there's no way to fix it. Right now, faced with this, it's hard not to feel like there never is.
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Instead he doesn't know what to say or do, his throat tight, guilt mixing with indignation. Even now, he knows they're both in the wrong this time, too sensible to his own faults to miss that. What he doesn't know is how to correct it. "Sorry," he whispers after a moment, lips pressed firmly together after, as if that might keep his voice steady when he speaks again. How is he supposed to feel anything but useless, though, when S keeps things like this from him? What is he supposed to make of that? Nails pressing into his chest, he slumps forward against his knees, words muffled against his arms. "You don't think it, but I do. And — and what am I supposed to think?" This effort proves to be in vain, too, his voice pitching up pathetically, too wounded to conceal it. He tenses at the sound of it, part of him aching to move, to pace, restless and unnerved. He can't though, not quite able to make himself move, breath coming too shallow, head too light.
Staying curled into himself, he shakes his head. Conjecture has never worked in his favor, and he spends too much time imagining things that aren't true. He just can't really imagine a reason why S would hide something from him that wouldn't hurt. Even the best intentions J can imagine make him ache, utterly miserable. Ultimately, the fault is his own. No matter how hard they try or how much they grow and improve, that can't be changed. He'd started to think, though, that S didn't think about that all the time or even very often, not like J does. Before, he'd been sure that night was the reason S wouldn't play in front of him, and he'd been wrong about that. He can't see how the same could be true now.
"If not that," he asks, "then why?" They're supposed to support each other. They want to. How can he, though, if S won't let him?
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He's hurt J anyway, though, damned if he brings it up and damned if he doesn't, and this, too, feels unfair — that it's somehow on him to protect J from anything pertaining to it, and on him when that backfires. He nearly died, thought he did die, and then he woke up in a hospital alone, his best friend dead, no one there to help him get on his feet again, both literally and metaphorically. He had months of that, time to at least start coming to terms with the simple fact of that being his life. Coming here changed everything, of course, but even just physically speaking, he's infinitely better than he was. With that being the case, of course he didn't think all that much about it, and when he did think about it, it just seemed better, safer, not to risk bringing it up. It's not at all because he thinks J is weak. If anything, it's because he is, too haunted by that first afternoon here, sitting on this same couch in positions not dissimilar to the ones they're in now, thinking that he was going to lose J all over again.
"It really didn't seem like a big deal," he mumbles, staring down at his lap, trying to ignore the uncomfortably familiar prickling in his eyes. "If it was, if there were anything wrong, I would have said something." It feels hollow, not good enough, nothing J will accept, even if it is the truth. That whispered apology does little to soothe the sting of J pulling away from him. "It didn't feel worth bringing all of that up over nothing."
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Except, he thinks, that's not true. Not anymore. He would have at the start, that's undeniable. As horrible as it is, though, to know what he did, and as much as he knows he's unlikely ever to forgive himself for it, he's also lived with it far, far longer than he'd imagined he could — long enough to see for himself that, however terrible a thing he did, S is still alive and well and loving him. It hurts to think about and likely always will, but he's more inured to the fact of it than he once was. Maybe bringing it up early on would have been a mistake, but he doubts S went to the doctor so soon after arriving. This would have happened later, and there was a second time, and now this third. He assumes it is, at least, based on how long they've been here. Regardless of that, he realizes, it's not the injuries he caused that have him so upset now. It's being kept out of things, sheltered, as if he's not aware he caused S harm.
And now he's just making things worse, likely making S wish he'd done a better job of hiding this. That makes him uncomfortable, too, the idea that S might try to improve his ability to conceal things from J, and then uncomfortable with himself for worrying about it, afraid he's straying too close to who he was before. He's fucked up, responding so intensely; he should have made himself think and wait before he said anything, though maybe it wouldn't have helped. The more he thinks, after all, the worse all of this feels.
Part of him wants just to say okay, let it go, let S keep his secrets. He's tired and he's making an idiot of himself and that's not likely to convince S he was wrong. Just enough of him is aware, though, that curling up inside himself and shutting down isn't helpful either. "It's not nothing," he says, hoarse and still muffled. "I'd tell you if I went to the doctor. Just because you're fine doesn't mean you should have to do it on your own. And what if you weren't fine?" His voice wavers and he lifts his head a little, enough to get a clearer breath of air. "What if something happened and I didn't know — what to do, anything? I didn't even get a chance." Groaning, he presses the heel of the hand that was previously at his stomach against his eye instead. Nothing feels right. He doesn't know how to make it feel right. He doesn't know anymore if what he's saying is reasonable, his next question entirely genuine. "Is that selfish of me? If it's better for you if I don't know, I — I guess don't —" He can't get it out, breath catching on a lump, tears rising again. It would be as good as telling S to keep him in the dark, and maybe he is selfish, but he can't make himself do that. He feels useless enough without saying he is.
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And it's probably a stupid thing, to still be so stung by J's pulling his hand away when there's so much more that's wrong, but he does all the same. Maybe it's just easier, he reasons, to fixate on the smallest part of this, the one that doesn't make his head spin. Watching the way J looks now, hunched over and in tears, S wants nothing more than to pull him close and comfort him, except that he's somehow the reason J needs comforting, and he can't bear the thought of J pulling away from him again. It's more than he could take right now, his breathing unsteady as he brings his feet up onto the couch cushion, arms wrapping around his bent legs. If he could go back in time two fucking minutes, he would. He gets the sense, though, that in some way or another, it wouldn't make all that much difference.
"Of course it's not better for me," he replies, a wounded protest, and the one thing he can say for sure right now. It may be simpler to keep things like that to himself, but he's never liked withholding anything from J, going all the way back to when they were kids and he was too scared to come out to his best friend. Here, he's always hated that this subject feels like it has to be off-limits, something he still has to bear alone, but it does. "I — I didn't think you'd want to hear about any of that."
He thought, too, still does, that it would only make it worse for J to have to consider those details. A small, petty part of S is half-tempted to bring them up now, to ask if J really wants to hear about the physical damage he sustained beyond the basic overview of being stabbed, but he doesn't have it in him to be that cold. He's too upset for that, trying and failing to fight off tears, wanting nothing more than to make this right. "I'm sorry."
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So it's a relief to, for just a moment, feel a flash of exasperation amid the hurt. It's not anger or despair, just something tired and a little sad, and he can handle that. That S apologizes — well, it makes him feel guilty, too, but it tempers the lingering frustration just a bit. He understands the urge to double down in an argument, but he doesn't think he's the only one in the wrong here. Having S seem to understand sincerely that, if nothing else, he hasn't gotten this right helps. Fingers stretching, shoulders pressing back, he tries to loosen his limbs a bit, though it doesn't do much. As badly as he wants to reach back over to S — actually, what he wants is to tumble over and lean against him, not have to hold himself up at all — he can't make himself unfurl quite that much.
"And you want to hear," he says, hoarse from crying but pushing himself to speak up a bit rather than hiding his face in his arms, "all the things I have to say? The nightmares and the memories and everything I did? Sihyun-ah..." He sighs, breath hitching. It's hard to make himself speak clearly — or at all — or to breathe properly. He can only manage maybe one of those at a time right now. He scraps his thumbnail over his collarbone, the small sharpness of it helping to steady him. "I don't have to like things to... to want to be here. I know what I did either way." No amount of silence can ever change that. Not talking about it doesn't mean it didn't happen. When J still can't entirely forgive himself, he's hardly about to forget. S talks well about wanting to know things, about wanting J to talk, and J would yell at him for not wanting to give him the same courtesy if he had the energy to do so and if he weren't so sad.
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It isn't that he would want to hold back telling J anything important, even if it might be upsetting. J has been there through nearly everything, all but that last, worst time in the life he had before he got here. When his parents died — when he thought he might have to move hours away, when his grades went so downhill he wasn't sure he would be able to get into any decent school — J is the person he turned to with all of it, the only one he would go to with any of it. That first night in their studio, as it finally sunk in that he would never get to go back to his childhood home again, J held him while he cried himself to sleep, before they knew what they would become to each other. It's just always been J, in every way. That is, perhaps, albeit counterintuitively, what's held him back here. Of course he doesn't want to talk about, to make clear the extent of the damage of, what might set J on a course toward not wanting to be here anymore.
So much of the day J arrived is a blur. Those few horrible moments, though, S remembers with a sickening clarity. He'd been so terrified that he might and so certain that he would lose J again, and something in him both broke and grew resolved not to let that come up again. Of course J knows what he did, but he shouldn't have to be confronted with the lingering effects of it. If that means not talking about routine doctor's appointments, or never taking his shirt off in front of his boyfriend, then S will do it without question. Now, he just doesn't know what to do, when every choice feels like the wrong one, equally likely to lead to some kind of disaster.
"I know you're here," he says, frustrated and sad and pleading, drawing further in on himself. This, too, is counterintuitive. J is saying that he's here, and S is agreeing, and yet he feels suddenly so achingly, frighteningly alone, his breathing shaky as he tries both to maintain his composure and figure out what to say to explain himself, to fix this, to stop everything from spinning so far out of control. "That's — I just want to keep it that way."
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It's not like they have to go into detail. He can understand S not wanting to discuss that, not least with J being the reason he had to get surgery. He just doesn't see how S can't understand how it feels to be left in the dark, not given any opportunity to help him, when J knows he made S feel the same fucking way for so long.
"I'm not going anywhere," he protests. Nails digging into his palm, he forces himself to breathe deep, jaw clenched tight as if it might help balance him out. It's hard to make himself move. As horrible as he feels, it seems safer, too, to some voiceless part of his mind, if he stays curled up and tucked close in on himself. But S is practically shrinking and J has enough sense left in his head to know that he very much doesn't seem like he's here. There's not that much space between them now, but it's too much even so. Sucking in another sharp breath through gritted teeth, he maneuvers himself sideways to better face S. He tucks his legs up under him, pulls himself inward even as he leans closer. He wants to be close, even if he can't yet reach out, one hand curling tight in his pants, trembling from the harshness of his grasp and the rising nervousness dancing through him. The other he keeps at his chest, pressed hard to try and calm his frantic heart. It's worth the effort. He wants S to see him. "I'm right here. I'm not leaving again. I love you, Sihyun-ah... Please... I'm sorry. It's why I'm upset. I want to support you like you do for me, and it just..."
Again he bites his lip, trying to fight back the urge to start crying again in earnest. "I worry that I can't," he says, "and now..." This, S keeping him out, it feels like proof of that. Even though he very much doubts that's how S thinks of it, he can't help his instinctive response to the idea of S bearing something like this alone. No matter how routine this may be, no matter how fine S might be — if anything, it's harder not to be permitted to be part of something so simple. It's his own fault, he knows that, and he knows how volatile he can be about that, but S could at least have asked him if he felt he could handle that or if it was better not to discuss it. They've talked so much about that now, the need to open up. There have been too many misunderstandings born of silence between them.
"Moving is hard," he adds after a moment, cheeks flushing further at that, embarrassed more by this than the tears. They've cried in front of each other far too much for that to be a real issue now, but it feels shameful not to be able to make his own body do what he wants of it.
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He doesn't want it to get that bad now, distantly has the thought that he doesn't have that right, when he can sort of understand at least some of what J is saying. It's still not the way he sees it, but however minor it might seem to him, he can't discredit the fact that it's apparently much bigger to J. Telling himself that, though — that he shouldn't be shifting the focus here when he's the one who upset J — doesn't stop the reaction that's already taken root in him. His vision blurs with tears, hot when they spill down his cheeks, and his breath hitches. At least on that one point, they can agree. Moving is hard. It's always harder when there's a space between them that he doesn't feel like he can close.
"You've been supporting me," he mumbles, his turn, this time, to speak without lifting his head. "It's not — not something I needed support for. Not here." The last is a quick addendum — half thoughtless, but fully in the interest of honesty. He needed support in the immediate aftermath, and he had none of it. There was no one left to give it, his world shattered in the accident that took his parents, burned down in the fire that killed J. "If I did, I would've told you."
No matter how difficult he knows it would be to bring it up, he means that. He wouldn't have kept it to himself if there were anything he were worried or upset about, if he was doing anything more than just checking in the way he was instructed to. All things considered, he's doing well in that regard. He's healed, even if his body will never be quite the same. That's the issue, really, or part of it, the thing that he thinks J is missing. S has long since stopped worrying about J walking out on him again. What he's afraid of is something bigger, more permanent. He lost J like that once. To go through that again, he thinks that would be the thing to make his heart give out, that would be more than he could take. Impossible as it is to be entirely certain, given everything that happened then, he vaguely recalls thinking the same thing that day, too, in that span of time when he couldn't ask J to stay alive but desperately needed him to.
Most of the time, he doesn't worry too much about that. There's always a little concern in the back of his head, but it's not an active fear, not most of the time. Just talking about this, though, being left with what feels like such an impossible choice, brings it back to the surface. He knows he has to say something, after all, to be more specific, to try to convey what's held him back from mentioning this beyond just finding it inconsequential. Trying to bring it up feels terrifying, like tempting fate somehow, speaking it into possibility, but despite how well they know each other, he thinks they tend to fuck it up when they try to guess what's going through the other's head. "But how — how am I supposed to talk about that," he asks, quieter and shakier, "when you can't even look at me?"
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But he doesn't lash out and he doesn't retort. He doesn't pull his hand from his heart or his nails from his palm either, but he's quiet, shaky as he listens, waits for S to say what he's going to say. Tucked in on himself as he is, his words are muffled, and J wonders distantly if he's always like this, too, if trying to hear him get his words out is difficult as much because he's talking into his fucking legs as anything else. It probably is. It's S's patience he has for a model here, his willingness to wait that J tries to emulate now.
S's words send a little jolt through him, indignation followed by a shiver of cold he doesn't fully understand. "I'm looking at you right now," he points out, not quite able to keep himself from responding this time. It's a very stupid impulse, he knows that. S is so frighteningly vulnerable right now, and J, all instinct, only barely manages to curb the bite of his words. Maybe S can't tell because he can't see J right now either. Except J knows that's not it, that it has to be more than that. S doesn't get this worked up just because they're in a huff with each other. As upset as J has been the last several minutes, it's not like it's odd for him to need time not to meet S's eyes, to focus on calming himself.
His calm isn't the important thing in this moment, he tells himself. He won't feel settled as long as S is unhappy like this, too. He started this, so he's got to put it right. Granted, the best he can make himself do just yet is lean against the back of the couch, pushing his hand from his leg forward, fingers twisting in the hem of S's pants instead of his own. "I'm looking at you," he says again, gentler now, though his voice is a little unsteady. "I look at you all the time. I can't stop looking at you, darling. Talk to me. Please."
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Aside from those first days, and maybe once or twice since, they haven't talked about it. In all honesty, S kind of suspected that they never would, and he became alright with that because he had to be, eventually coming to prefer it. Knowing the effect that the sight of him had on J before, of course he wouldn't want J to have to see the scars left behind from that night, to make those awful few moments an even more present part of their relationship than they already are and will be. It stings a little, it always does, but it's better by far than the alternative, and an unbelievably low cost to pay to be together, all things considered. He has J, a miraculous impossibility in itself, and most of the time, everything between them is really, really good, the best it's ever been. Not being shirtless isn't even an inconvenience, really, when held up to that. It just is, and it's better, then, to leave it tucked aside, a nonissue, just a simple state of being.
Except now that he's said it, and failed at saying it, that's no longer the case. At least for right now, he has to try to put words to the thoughts in his head, an increasingly difficult task when he can barely think straight or catch his breath, a wave of panic he hasn't felt in a long time crashing over him.
"That's not what I mean," he says, quietly pleading again, even as he knows that there's nothing to be done but keep talking. "The day you got here, you got one — one glimpse of me, of —" Although it may not mean anything when he has his legs bent up to his chest, he unwraps one arm just enough to gesture over where his heart, and the scars there, would be. "And you were going to —"
Faltering as his words are, he doesn't know if this will be clear enough, either. All he can do is hope it is, when he's not sure he has it in him to say it more outright than that. "So how am I supposed to talk about having surgery?" he asks, helpless now, shoulders hunched. It's impossible, every choice here the wrong one in some way. He thought he'd chosen the less wrong of them, but now he's not sure. "Or recovering from it?"
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J doesn't remember a lot about his first day in Darrow. He was distressed, to put it mildly — not just miserable and afraid, but exhausted. He spent months barely sleeping, hardly eating, desperate and haunted. It took him weeks, even months, in Darrow to start to feel like he'd gotten enough rest and nourishment to feel entirely solid and human. He felt better far before that, but when he arrived, he was barely contained by his own skin, his thoughts wild and hazy. There are some things he won't ever forget and others he's not sure he could repeat if he tried, not quite sure how they got to the apartment or what they did next. He remembers, though, the giddy rush of getting tangled up in each other again and then everything falling apart very quickly. He remembers being overwhelmed by guilt and shame, a moment where he was overcome by the reminder that he'd killed himself for a reason.
It's an uneasy thing to sit with — his suicide, yes, on any given day, but this, too, remembering wanting to stop existing. It's uncomfortable to look back and remember wanting to die. In a strange way, he's grown accustomed to it, but it's somehow embarrassing when it's more than a passing notion on an otherwise ordinary day. He knows he meant it very seriously at the time and that he had good reason for that. He knows S was terrified. But somehow he had mostly let himself forget that was where this started — not just a vague understanding that he couldn't handle it, but a very specific incident of his very much not being able to handle it.
His eyes feel sharp and warm, but he doesn't start crying again — a small victory. Tugging thoughtlessly at S's pants, he shakes his head. "Darling," he murmurs, a helpless plea. It's hard to say it wasn't you and make S believe that, but he'd mean it. It wasn't S specifically. It was the idea of having hurt S. He's not sure he knows how to articulate the difference or if he should try. He's not even sure how to explain the ways in which things have changed, not least when he can't promise that they've changed enough. "That was... bad. I know. I — I wasn't exactly at my best, though. I'd just — just — everything was so fresh and I hadn't slept, I —"
He wrinkles up his nose, not sure how to put this. At the time, nothing had felt entirely real, and then he'd seen the scars and become acutely aware that everything was very, very real. "A lot has changed," he says finally.
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He said the same thing later, too, after all. It was still that same dizzying afternoon, but S remembers too when they finally went to bed together, how J said when they were still discussing it that he didn't think he could see that. S decided then that he should never have to. The way he sees it, he doesn't get to be the one to change that, anyway. That decision is J's, something to be done at his prompting only, and nothing that S would want to be done for his sake, no matter how wrecked he might feel now. It isn't as if it's just that causing this flood of emotions, after all. Being reminded of how he felt then, having upset J by going about this all wrong, seeing no reasonable path to take, knowing that time and again he fucks this up, no matter how hard he tries — all of it leaves him a trembling, miserable mess, entirely at a loss for words.
"I know that," he manages to mumble after a moment, if only because he can't just say nothing. He even turns his head just enough to steal a glance over at J, though it's short-lived, face burying in his knees again just a moment later. However obvious he thinks that much should be, though, and however incapable he feels of articulating the rest, it feels important to be clear on that front. The very last thing he needs now, when he's gotten this so wrong as it is, would be to make J think that he doesn't see them as having moved on past that night at all. Given his own track record, it seems far too likely. "But that doesn't mean —"
He cuts himself off, eyes shut tight as he shakes his head. Even now that J understands what he meant in the first place, he still doesn't know how to explain himself, and it still feels like the damage is done. Had he known it would seem so significant, he probably would have tried to find a way to carefully bring it up before now, but he would have been terrified of doing so. There's no way to win here, nothing that doesn't just end with them both hurt.
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"It's okay," he murmurs, concern finally breaking through the panicked paralysis, pushing him closer to move his hand to what he can reach of S's back, fingers curling in his shirt and tugging. There's only so much he can manage and he doesn't want to pull S into this if this is one of those moments when space helps more. He can hardly judge for himself what he'll want from one minute to the next; he's not about to assume what S needs. "I'm sorry. I — I didn't think, I'm sorry."
Even when things are good, his old fears are submerged, not drowned. They resurface from time to time. To him, it seemed natural to think that what S did, he did to protect J, more than J wanted to be protected. He should have realized, he thinks, that it was more than that. He remembers now, all too well, how frightened he was early on, too, not for himself but for S, watching him panic for the first time, wondering if he looks the same when it's him. He doesn't want S to feel like he does, not ever. "Come here," he urges, then hesitates. "If you want." What he wants is to hold S close and promise that those days are over, that he's not in any danger of ever again taking his own life — or anyone else's — but he can't. That's one thing he does remember from then, that he promised to try. It wouldn't have been fair to promise he'll never end up there again. Even if he thinks now that it's unlikely, he can't honestly say it's impossible, and he won't lie to S about that now. "I'm here. I'm right here."
Anything else he has to say on the matter, he decides, can wait. There's no point in having a discussion when the only reason he's not having a meltdown anymore is because S is.
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J reaching out to him does, guilty though S feels for it. He doesn't want an apology, but he does want J to hold onto him, nodding emphatically as he shifts a little closer. It's an awkward movement when he's still all curled in on himself like this, but it will, he hopes, be agreement enough, even if it shouldn't have to be a question, even if he shouldn't need this comfort at all.
There are too many things he wants to say, thoughts too hazily formed to find the actual words for. He wants to promise that he doesn't just live in constant terror that J will decide that this second chance at life is too much for him; he wants to try to explain more clearly what went through his head, what held him back from mentioning it. Just like the distance between them just now didn't feel like his to close, it didn't feel like his subject to broach. With J having said that he didn't think he could see the scars, S figured he was then the only one who could say otherwise, and for himself, he went from not wanting to pressure J to not wanting him to have to see them ever. A doctor's appointment might be just tangentially related, but it still brings the same subject to mind, what felt to him like a too visceral reminder, something more than just a distant awareness.
He can't say any of it. Instead, he just swallows hard and whispers, "Please," sniffling before he tries to add anything else. "Don't — you don't need to be sorry."
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"But I am," he says, not quite thinking before he does, then pulls a face, both frustrated and apologetic. He turns his head to kiss S's hair. "I didn't think and I should have before I got... upset with you. I made a mess of this." He gets so stuck in his own head, so painfully aware of his own feelings, he often forgets to process that S's motivations aren't always the ones J imagines for him. He's usually pretty good at understanding where S is coming from, but there are blind spots, hidden by his inexplicable anxieties.
It's not like he's not upset anymore. There's still plenty of reason for him to be bothered and worried, but they aren't the reasons he thought they were, not entirely. Not only, at least. And it's not worth bringing any of them up until they're both breathing a little more easily.
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For S, though, he thinks it was the single most terrifying moment of his entire life, even more so than the moments after J plunged a knife into his chest and wrapped his hands around his throat. He knew he was going to die then, but death at least is finite. Facing a lifetime without J, though, was unbearable once, and infinitely more so when he thought he'd gotten J back only to lose him again. They've come such a long way since then — a lot has changed, like J said — but he feels an echo of that fear now, and having been reminded of it, he can't quite shake it, can't make his tears stop.
His breaths are a little less gasping, at least, one hand blindly reaching out to try to curl in J's shirt when he manages to speak again. "I made a mess of it," he counters, miserable and apologetic. He really did think that it wouldn't matter — that it would be better not to say anything — but that isn't half as important as the fact that he apparently thought wrong. "I'm sorry. For all of it."
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"Ah, darling," he murmurs, closing his stinging eyes. "We make a mess of a lot of things. We're figuring it all out still." There's no map for this. His whole life was a matter of blindly finding his way, trying to guess how to follow a route so many others have laid out for them in advance. Now, here, he's trying to determine how to live a life that shouldn't be. They're going to make a lot of mistakes along the way. He doesn't think there's any kind of guide out there for having a mind like his, never mind for dealing with a second chance at life, and it's much easier to be kind to S about it than to himself. "I still shouldn't have snapped at you."
He's been doing well, he thinks, at biting his tongue here. He's not so inclined to shout or argue, and he can usually catch himself before he gives into the impulse when it does arise. Sometimes, though, it's hard. For a moment, this pushed him right back into his defensive corner, angry because he was scared. Rubbing circles against S's back, he breathes in deep. "I wish you'd told me," he says, speaking slowly, wanting to be honest and still to weigh his words. "But I was thinking of it as you hiding something from me that you decided I couldn't handle. I... I hadn't thought about that... about before and how scared you were."
Even mentioning that part makes him uneasy. He doesn't really like to think about how he felt then, how panicked he was, how much he hated himself. It's a battle on any given day not to hate himself as it is, though he usually manages now to keep from letting it completely overwhelm him. But he's also come so far from his first day here and what he remembers of it is so distant and surreal; he doesn't want to bring the visceral panic into it or remember what came before he arrived in Darrow. Even so, there's a lot more he could say, words catching on each other in his urge to reassure S. He holds them back for now, makes himself stay quiet. The last thing they need is for him to get one or both of them worked up again before they've even settled; S is still too shaky and tearful for that, and J won't push him to talk about anything when he can barely breathe.
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"You didn't snap, really," he says, having the sense enough not to say what threatens to follow, that he deserved it anyway. He knows that just the idea of his possibly thinking that has upset J before, and while, in this case, it seems true, he's fucked this up enough without making it worse now. "I wasn't looking at it like... like hiding something from you." He doesn't know what he would have done if he'd considered it that way. As much as he likes to think he would have said something, he still can't be entirely sure of it, given the rest. If nothing else, he might have been a little more careful not to just blurt it out. Then he might have had a chance to tell J on his own terms, to bring it up in a way that could hopefully minimize the damage he's just done. Maybe that way, J wouldn't have to think about that time before and how hard it was on him.
Even that doesn't seem fair, in a way. J is the one who was actively suicidal; S shouldn't be the one so shaken by that memory now. He was then far more so than he is now. That moment, he's pretty sure, was the most scared he'd ever been in his life, and that's saying something. It's probably all sorts of screwed up, too, that he was more frightened by the prospect of losing J — again — than he was in those few instants he thought he was dying, but it's true, and he can't change the fact of it.
"I think about it," he mumbles, simply because it must be very, very obvious now. "That day. Before. Not — not like you might... now, but..." He shouldn't have brought any of this up. He shouldn't be laying this on J. It's too late, though, to take it back. "I'm okay, though. I promise I'd say if I wasn't."
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"Are you sure?" he asks anyway. He can't pretend he's not thinking this. It wouldn't be fair, and it would definitely be hypocritical right now. Not that he hasn't been both unfair and hypocritical on any number of occasions, but he's trying. "It doesn't... seem fine, Sihyun-ah." It makes sense that S would think about all that; in a way, J is grateful. If S is thinking about what J did and what he almost did, but says he doesn't think J is in imminent danger of killing himself again, then at least the fear, however potent, is a past one. It's less an open wound than a bruise. J doesn't know how to begin to explain the truth, how it still occurs to him sometimes, in the same way it might occur to him that he could get a haircut. It's there and then it's gone again, sometimes vague and sometimes vivid, sometimes brief and sometimes lingering. Sometimes it leaves him shaken; most of the time, it's just an awkward uneasiness that he's almost accustomed to. There's no bite to it, no desire to follow through. It's just a thought.
"If it were," he continues slowly, gently stroking S's back, "you would have told me sooner, wouldn't you? You wouldn't have had to decide it wasn't worth it. Do you — do you think if we talk about it, I —" He winces. Even now, it's hard to speak directly about what he did. It feels too blunt just to put it out there, even though they both know in painful detail. He sucks in a sharp breath. "Ah, darling, I... I can handle it. I think I can. We've talked about it before, haven't we? I'm still... here."
It's not quite the same, he knows. That day, it wasn't because they talked about it; it was what he saw. Even so, he thinks, he saw those scars without any preparation for what would happen, without much if any chance to calm down from everything that had happened earlier. If they'd had the time and sense and presence of mind to slow down and talk first, to wait a couple of days until he'd slept some and recovered a little, he might not have reacted anywhere near so poorly. Fragile as he was in those first weeks, he could have managed that, he thinks. Instead, he botched everything. A year and a half later, and it still haunts them.
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The scars, the surgery, the recovery — none of it was as bad as what he woke up to, the news that J was dead. Of course he wouldn't have wanted to bring this up. Most of the time, he really doesn't worry about J becoming suicidal again, at least trusting that he would pick up on signs of something being wrong beforehand if J were going to go down that road. Every single day since that first time he found J out on the sidewalk here, though, he's had to think about how J reacted to the sight of him without a shirt. Doing so is inevitable, given how he has to go out of his way to keep them covered. He really doesn't mind doing so — would do far more than that for J's sake — but it still hurts to think about that response, and the fact that he caused it with simply the state of his existence.
"I know you are," he murmurs, back curving a little under J's touch, gently pressing into his hand. "I do. If I were worried about it, I would have told you that." He doesn't know how he would begin to bring it up, but that much, he still can say for certain. If he thought J was anywhere near that point, he would try to intervene. That first afternoon, he told J that he couldn't ask him to stay, agonizing as that was for him, but he meant it. He couldn't in good conscience ask that. That doesn't mean he could just sit back and let it happen. He's much too stubborn for that.
Sighing, his shoulders rising and falling with it, he shuts his eyes for a moment. Even though he's breathing a little better now, he still can't stop tears from coming, and that makes it difficult to try to say very much at once without getting himself all worked up again, still perilously on the edge of it. However clueless he may be, though, he has to try to fumble through this somehow, to fix what he's fucked up.
"I just..." He swallows hard. "I don't want to be what pushes you toward that again."
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And, really, when he does stop to think about it, he finds he has what he thinks is a slightly better grasp on the situation. It's incredibly difficult to articulate this, because he knows, were their roles reversed, he very much wouldn't see the difference. He doesn't expect S to either, stubborn as he is. How S ever has the patience and presence of mind to explain things to J when he's upset and out of sorts and not understanding things that surely seem very obvious to S, J will never know. That J only sort of understands these things for himself makes it that much harder.
Pressing a kiss to S's hair, he squeezes him a little. "You won't be," he says. It seems the simplest, most honest way he can say it. "You weren't." As much as he doubts S will believe him, as awkward as it is to say, he has to find a way to do so. Complicating matters is the way he can feel the sharpness at his eyes before he's even figured out the words. It's not easy to talk about this. It never will be. "It's... I can't say that... you don't have an impact. You do. But I — it's not something you do or say. When I... when I did it... before..." He huffs, small and sad, shaking his head. "I don't know, truthfully. But I think it wasn't you exactly? It was the idea that I could have done that. That I'd... fallen so far. Become so awful."
Though the words come a little more easily as he speaks, they still send a tiny shudder through him. He's gotten to a place where he doesn't think quite so terribly of himself most days. He's had to, needed to learn to live with it all in order to stay alive at all. Even so, he's keenly aware of how he felt then, and how those self-recriminations echo through his head still. "Coming here after that," he says, "exhausted and nervous and afraid... seeing — seeing the scars I made —" He bites his lip hard, staring down into S's hair to keep from closing his eyes and reliving that moment. "I saw how badly I hurt you, and I thought I really must be as monstrous as I'd thought earlier."
He doesn't know if S will see the difference here. Admittedly, J's not sure it's a very obvious one to anyone but him or that he's done a good job of explaining it.
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"That's what I mean, though," he settles on, a quiet, sad protest. "That was me. You saw me, and then you wanted to..." Whatever differentiation J might try to put on it, S doesn't see it that way. The scars on his chest, the damage he lives with, the doctor's appointments, those are part of his life now. If hiding that part helps ensure that J will stay alive at all, he'll do it without hesitation, no matter how much it stings sometimes, no matter what trouble it causes. It's infinitely better than the alternative. Distraught as he's been for these past few minutes, it's still nothing compared to the ice cold terror he felt when he thought J was going to take his own life again. He can't separate those things from himself, though. They're the state of his being, irreversible facts. "Of course I wouldn't want to bring that up."
Even having accidentally done so now is unnerving under all the rest of it. A lot has changed since that day, like J said, and S isn't so worked up that he can't tell that J sounds immeasurably more composed and grounded than he did then. He doesn't think anything is going to happen; it doesn't seem at all like he's woken up whatever awful impulse made J feel like that was the path forward to take. After so long spent carefully avoiding this particular topic, though, he can't help if it doesn't sit well with him.
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Sucking in a sharp breath, he hurries to add, "I'm not saying — I know you feel that way, darling. We just see it differently." He bites his lip, uncertain. "I don't remember a lot of that day. But I think, actually, for a moment... I didn't see you. I saw myself, what I'd done. I was... ah, distressed is putting it mildly, Hyunie. I didn't know yet. It wasn't real yet, you being safe and alive, only the idea that I couldn't do anything good."
He's not always convinced that's untrue. The days when he can't stop thinking all he can do is cause S pain in some form or another have dwindled, but they haven't entirely stopped. But he also has a lot more help to counteract that, including S himself. The trouble is, he doesn't know how to explain it, that all these things can be true. He was in danger then and he can't promise he won't ever be again and he can't say S's worries are wholly unfounded. At the same time, with time and distance and all he's learned and how much has changed, he thinks he's much better equipped to handle it — and that, quite possibly, no small part of his distress that day was that he was fucking exhausted on every level. He still has nights when sleep is hard won or too brief, but it's never again been that bad, not even close.
"I was very tired," he says simply. "And I didn't know I'd... I'd also... saved you." It still feels intensely difficult to say that. Knowing how S sees it helps a lot, and he knows it's made a big difference, but it's still hard to put it that way on his own, hard to drown out the voice that still wants him to know he wouldn't have had to rush to the hospital if he hadn't hurt S first. "I didn't know a lot of things. And it was so much more damage than I would have expected."
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"It's what it felt like," he points out, his voice lowering a little further, tears still falling, though at least he's quiet about it now, not unable to get a breath in like a few moments ago. This seems fair enough, he thinks, the only rebuttal he can give that wouldn't be overstepping or making decisions for J. For him, they're the same thing, and he doesn't know how else to explain it. The only other thing that crosses his mind would be to ask J how he would have felt if their positions had been reversed, and the very idea of that makes him uncomfortable. It would be too cruel, too accusatory, when it isn't as if he can fault J for his reaction at all. He gets it, at least as much as it's possible to without having dealt with everything that J has. It's just a painful thing to have been on the receiving end of.
"For me," he adds, wanting at least to be clear about that. "It's how it felt. And..." Trailing off, he sniffles. More than anything, he would like to go back to fifteen minutes ago or however long it was that they were just sitting here contentedly making plans rather than revisiting one of the most upsetting moments they've shared. As usual, though, he's gone and fucked this up, leaving him with little to do but try to say what he means without making it worse. "A lot has changed. But that hasn't. You still can't..."
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He waits, too, to see if S will finish that sentence, just in case his own assumption is wrong. When nothing more comes, he's fairly certain he understands anyway, and that hurts too. This, he thinks, is entirely his fault. He should have said something sooner, or at all, instead of letting things go on as they have. It's just that it's a difficult conversation to approach, not least when talking about what he did is still upsetting, no matter how much better things are. Every time he's wanted to talk about it has been inconvenient — a moment he didn't want ruined or somewhere too public or a time when he was already upset about something else. Bringing it up out of nowhere felt jarring, too. He should have done it anyway.
"You don't know that," he says after a moment. There's no heat or hurt in it, just a simple fact, uncertain though he is about voicing it. Keeping it back wouldn't be fair. "I haven't tried. I... I want to. I think about that a lot. We just... never talked about it. Kept putting it off, and then it always seemed like the wrong time... That's not the same thing as can't." It isn't like he can avoid it, after all, the thought of it. All the times when he should be able to undress S or when he simply ought to be — the way he stays half-clothed for sex or in the shower together, or turns away or leaves to change — they're starkly obvious to J. He's gotten used to it, but he still takes note of it, still finds himself reminded constantly of why that's the case. If anything, he thinks he probably thinks about what he did more for not having had the chance to become accustomed to the sight of it, like he's done with his own scars. He still doesn't like the writing on his arm, and he takes pains to cover them when he goes out, but he sees it often enough at home that it doesn't bother him most of the time. He's never been able to do that with S. Maybe he can't guarantee he'll react well or that it won't take time to adjust, but he's never tried.
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"It's okay," he murmurs, shaking his head again, sounding counterintuitively a little calmer now. He wants J to know that he means this; it's the least he can do. "I get it. I... I don't mind. Really." He wants, too, to say that he does know, but he's aware of how unfair that would be, exactly the shit he's trying to avoid. He just has to find other ways of conveying what he means instead. "I figured you'd bring it up if you felt like you could, and... I don't want you to feel like you have to for my sake."
It's a strange, horrible position to be in, trying to protect J from the very fact of himself, hating that he can't be shirtless around his boyfriend but not wanting to risk doing otherwise. Even if it went well, he's not sure he could bear seeing J's face in response to the scars on his chest. Keeping his shirt on may not be comfortable, and it may not keep them from thinking about it, but at least J doesn't have to look at all of that whenever they shower or have sex or get changed. There's no way to win here, but this just feels safest. And he knows that J hates when he makes all the decisions, but S doesn't feel like this is that, and he doesn't think it's just for J's sake, either. That first day he brought J back here, when they were both out of their minds and frantically trying to get their hands each other on this couch, he simply wasn't thinking when he took his shirt off. He should have been, but he wasn't. Now, though, he's not sure there's any way for him to be anything other than hyperaware of the state he's in, self-conscious in a way he isn't used to being with J, at least not when it isn't on purpose.
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"I don't feel like I have to," he says, a little wounded in spite of himself. He would have thought S would want to be done with this. "I don't want you to feel like you have to — either way. But I want to. I want to so much, I just —" He sighs, eyes closing tight. Though he's managed to stay reasonably subdued, it's still difficult. He's not sure it will ever stop being difficult.
"I knew," he continues after a moment, "that bringing it up would be upsetting. Talking about it always is, even when it's a good thing. And a lot of the time when I want to say something, we're already... getting undressed." He rolls his eyes at himself. "And I don't want to derail things, so I don't say anything, and I should, I should have. It was selfish of me. You've been so — so patient and thoughtful and I just kept quiet because I thought I could bring it up later, and then I never do." He doesn't even have a good reason for that. He just hates getting like this, agitated by the past, likely to start crying, even as he's constantly reminded of it regardless by the very fact S is half-clothed at those times. It's all he can do to keep from apologizing. The only thing that keeps him in check is knowing he couldn't handle S telling him not to.
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"It wasn't selfish," he says, a soft protest, the one thing he can say for certain right now. Considering how well it went the last time he took his shirt off in front of J, of course it wouldn't be selfish not to bring that up. It would be upsetting, as they've just gone and proved, and he can't blame J in the slightest for not wanting to see the scars that night left him with. As bad as this has been, it would doubtless be worse to go that route, a chance that simply doesn't seem worth it to take.
After all, S doesn't think he wants J to see them. He doesn't know how to say that without it sounding horrible, like it's one more way in which he's keeping J out, but it's true all the same. It isn't that he feels like he has to, either. If it were purely obligation, he would at least have grown more tired of it by now. "And it's okay that you didn't bring it up." He sniffles again, but tenuous as it might be, he does at least manage to hold onto this one thread of composure, at least for a moment more. "I don't feel like I have to. I was the one who suggested this, remember?" He summons up the barest hint of a smile, though it takes a lot of effort, and though he's not sure it will even be visible with the way they're holding onto each other. "That's not why I did bring it up. Really."
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Now that they're talking about it, he can't help the knot of stubbornness in his chest, the desire to undo what he screwed up. It was selfish, he knows it was, to put this off. Maybe they wouldn't be upset if he'd brought it up sooner. Maybe there wouldn't have been any need for S to keep his appointments secret. And, anyway, he means it emphatically, jaw set even as he continues to stroke soft circles against S's back. S has learned to live with the scars on his arm. J's never had the same opportunity. He's gotten to this point in his existence largely because of that stubbornness. He's gotten into a lot of trouble because of it, too, but he wants to trust that won't be true now. If S really doesn't want to change this, he'll have to accept that, but he won't let it be just because of him.
"I want to see you," he murmurs, "all of you." He'll never entirely get past what he did, he's sure of that, but he's learned to accept that he can't change it — most of the time at least — and to cope with the fact he did it to begin with. On his better days, he knows he was a different person in that moment, not at all lucid or rational, and that he's in better control of himself now, that S is right about J having also helped him that night. If anything, now, intent on getting this if he's permitted it, he's all the more defiant in telling himself these things. He won't hurt S again, not like that, and he won't hurt himself, not if he's prepared this time. Worrying at his lip briefly, he then adds what occurs to him next. "They wouldn't be there if you hadn't survived. Not like that. In that way, isn't it a good thing that I could see them so well? Mine were already faded and healed when I came here, like magic."
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Even hearing J say that he wants to see him doesn't make him feel relieved, just kind of sad, and the guilt he feels for the fact of that doesn't help. Frowning, he shakes his head a little, though it takes him a moment to find any words. This, too, he doesn't know how to say: that he doesn't see how there could be anything good in it with the reaction that the sight provoked in J once before. At first, he didn't mind the scars. He had no reason to, living on his own and having no particular investment in his own appearance. It isn't as if he looked good in other ways, anyway. Back then, when the wounds first healed, he was much too skinny, too, pale and dark-eyed from lack of sleep, utterly miserable in a way that made it difficult to do anything. With J, though, and given what happened before, he's convinced now that they're horrible, hideous. J might think he wants to see, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't still end badly.
"I don't know why you would want to," he mumbles, a truth that feels unavoidable. "It still looks like it did that day. They aren't any, I don't know, better."
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"I wouldn't think so," he says simply. "But I am. Aren't I?" There are so many reasons for him to want this, more than there are for him not to. He's pretty sure of that much, though he's not exactly sure S wants him to run down a list. "It's not like I don't know what's there or how it happened, even if you stay covered up. I didn't have a breakdown over how it looks." Granted, in retrospect, he thinks he might easily have had a breakdown about nearly anything. If it hadn't been the sight of S's scars, he probably would have wound up on top of S and freaked out. What they can do now would have torn him apart then. But then, it doesn't seem like pointing out how on edge he was then is doing much good, even if he thinks it was responsible for a lot of how he reacted.
Shrugging, he rests his hand at S's waist, tugging him close, though there isn't really anywhere for him to go now. "If you don't want to," he says slowly, "then... then okay." J knows his own reaction, however intense, was understandable at the time. It can't have been easy for S to get used to it either. Maybe he's more self-conscious than J thought about this, and J can't ask him just to get over that if it's the case. Maybe they can work toward that, if S wants to and is willing, but maybe he isn't. The only way they can know is to talk about it. "But if it's okay... you know I think of it anyway, right? Because I can't see your chest, it reminds me why that's so."
He's more or less grown accustomed to that. It's not like he's going to forget any time soon anyway. But if he can adjust to that constant reminder, then, he thinks, it seems just as possible he can adjust to the actual sight, given the chance.
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Even if it weren't for that, he still wouldn't have wanted to bring it up, to make J think about it in any kind of detail. It's one thing to know those scars are there, to have to think about them. It's another entirely to have to see the damage done, or at least that's how S has been thinking about it. With the subject out in the open now, he really doesn't know the best way to move forward. He hates keeping things from J; he has ever since they were young. Not mentioning his appointment ahead of time wasn't something he thought that much of, but now that they've talked about it, it would feel uncomfortably dishonest to keep J on the outside of all of it. He has no idea how to move forward from here, though, unable to shake the thought that it would only hurt J for him to have to be confronted with that so directly. Maybe he doesn't get to decide that, but he also can't disregard it. Less important but still persistent in his head, too, is the belief that there's no way J could be attracted to him with the way he looks now. It would kill the mood for sure, just like it did J's first day here.
He doesn't know, he doesn't know, stuck with every option seeming like a terrible one, shaking his head again just because it's the only thing he feels like he remembers how to do. "I don't know what I want," he admits, forlorn and sniffling again. "Thinking about it... isn't the same as seeing it. You shouldn't have to. See it. I guess it's... it's not that I don't want to, but... it just seems like so much, now."
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"It does," he agrees. They have a bad tendency, he knows, to let things sit too long. That's mostly on him. He can't fault S for being worried about how he'll handle things, even if J's said before that they both have to talk. It can't be easy, dating him. He knew that from the moment that first day here let him start to settle a little, when he promised to try. "Every time we... leave things out, it builds up so big. If there's anything else we're avoiding, we should really just have it out now and get all the crying over with."
It comes out wry, which is how he intends it. There probably will always be something. Their lives have been too complicated for anything else. Still, his voice softens. "Hyunie, I know I don't have to. I wouldn't say I want to try if it weren't true. That wouldn't be fair. And it doesn't have to be all at once, if you're... worried about how I'll react." It's fair. It hurts to think of S feeling that way, not simply because it's justified, but because it sounds to J like a lonely way to feel. Even so, he knows it's fair. If S hadn't talked him down that day and if he hadn't been too frozen with panic to do anything but stay put, he might not be here right now. For the most part, his existence hasn't felt quite that tenuous in a long time. Even in the late winter, when he felt like a numb and empty shell again, he didn't so much want to die as feel like he didn't quite exist and, occasionally, like it might be alright if he didn't. It won't be as bad as it was, he's sure of that. If he thought it would be anything like that, he would agree to keep things the way they are and stop pushing. But now that he has some idea of how S must be feeling about this, he's all the more intent on making this happen. He's left S alone too many times; he won't do it again, not when he's painfully familiar with how much it hurts to feel alone even beside the person he most loves.
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He hadn't expected this — the way the subject has come up at all, or his own reaction to it, breath still shuddering intermittently as he tries to pull himself together. Now, he can see it, how it must have weighed on him far more than he realized, until he just couldn't hold it back anymore. That, too, he feels guilty for, but he at least has the sense not to get too caught up in it now. He's too much a mess for that, his thoughts a jumbled, fuzzy tangle, more emotion than sense. It feels good, at least, to be held, even if the position is still slightly awkward, even if he still thinks he shouldn't need comforting.
"I am," he admits, apologetic even in doing so, fingers grasping at J's arm for something sturdier to hold onto. "I still... I remember how you looked at me. How..." Just the memory of it makes him feel a little queasy. For a moment, everything felt almost right again, and then it so quickly fell apart. They've come such a long way since then, but the sheer terror of those few moments left a mark as indelible as the scars themselves. S doesn't want to talk himself in circles, though. He doesn't have the energy for it, and the more he says in that regard, the less willing he is to try taking that step. Better to shift his focus, to find a reason to do it instead of yet another one not to, something to try to balance it out a little.
"I know I've said it before," he adds, quieter now, his eyes brimming with tears all over again, despite his best efforts. "But after it happened... I really wished I had you with me. It was a lot to take alone."
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But the idea of S alone, that always breaks his heart, a sharp pain in his throat as tears well up again. It feels wrong. He left S too many times before. For a while, it felt to him like the most important thing in his world was being at S's side, caring for him when he was otherwise alone. Protecting him from all the pain J ultimately left him with. "It must have been," he murmurs, voice soft to keep it from breaking. He needs a moment to hold himself together. It wouldn't be the first time they both started sobbing, but right now, he wants to stay steady. He needs S to see he can handle this. "I wish you'd had me with you too."
He wishes so fucking much. There's too much that would have to be undone to put things right in the past, and so starting fresh has been the only way, pushing forward instead of reaching back. But that doesn't keep them from their memories and their regrets and the history that shaped them. "You have me with you now, darling," he adds, still gentle but not quite so hushed. "I don't want you to be alone. Even if things don't seem important or worth it... let me?"
He can't fairly ask S to tell him everything all the time. He wouldn't, any more than he shares every passing thought of his own. It matters to him that he maintains some degree of privacy even from S. But there's a difference between keeping tiny unimportant things to himself, like not necessarily telling S everywhere he wandered or idle thoughts he's now able to recognize as more reflex than truly felt, and keeping things to himself because he thinks he has to or should or has to weigh at all whether or not it's worthwhile. Even if he understands better now why S did so, there's no good reason he should have to, and he's worked so hard to make J feel less alone, given him all the love anyone could ever hope for. It doesn't feel right for J not to have the opportunity to do the same.
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Despite everything they've just said, that's one thing he still thinks it would be better not to say. He doesn't want to make all of this worse, doesn't want to give J something else to feel guilty for. Right now, it's not really the point, anyway. That time passed soon enough after he got J's journal and found a purpose within its pages, a desperate need to exact some sort of justice keeping him going when nothing else could. Even if they would have wound up here anyway, he prefers it like this, being able to assure J that whatever he did beforehand, he saved his life, too, that he survived even when he shouldn't have. Simply contemplating taking this step would, he's sure, be infinitely more difficult if those wounds had been fatal.
"If... if it does wind up being too much," he starts, a roundabout agreement, even if he has to pause to swallow hard, "please say so, okay? I'll understand, I really will." After so long spent convinced they would never do this, it isn't something he can just throw himself wholly into at a moment's notice. He still isn't convinced that this will work. But somewhere in him is still the part of him that wanted nothing more than to have J by his side as he recovered, that's hated not being able to talk about what happened to him and what that's involved, and especially when J sounds like this, S can't bring himself to turn him down, to draw that line. He can, though, make clear that he has no expectations, that it isn't something he'll push. He couldn't bear it if he prompted the same sort of reaction again that he did the day J first got here.
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Despite a bad spell earlier this year, though, he feels so much stronger than he did when he came here. In a lot of ways, he thinks he might be almost as different from the person he was that day as he was, when he arrived, from the person he was when they moved in together. If he feels more sure of his own strength now, more capable of handling worse, it's in no small part because S was here, holding his hand, reassuring him and helping him to see the world and himself differently. They've taken back so much of their life, their happiness, things they once took for granted. There's no reason they can't try to get back these things too.
"Okay," he says. "I'll say so. Even if it's too hard in that moment and not forever, I'll tell you that." It won't be easy for him to admit, but it'll be worse if he lets himself get worked up, dragged under by his despair. "And... your chest, the scars, if it's too difficult after all, I'll say it. I'm sor— ah, I wish you didn't have to remember that." No matter how much better he's doing now, after all, and what they've overcome, it's not like he's forgotten how S looked at him that last horrible night. This may not be nearly the same thing, but he knows how hard it is to shake being looked at with horror and fear, the way he must have, even if it was all self-directed. "I really do think I can handle it, darling. I want to. I — I want every part of being with you."
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The thought alone makes his breath catch, but he nods, slight, just enough to be visible, still leaning into J. This is what he wished he'd had then, J with his arms around him, helping him to weather that storm. Though the damage has healed, even with the scars visible still, maybe he can actually get a little of that now. Of course, the thought of that feels horribly selfish, a burden he shouldn't lay on J's shoulders, but that doesn't mean they can't find some middle ground. Even having been so sure that it was the right thing simply to keep this subject buried, it's been hard at times, not being able to talk about it at all, especially with the person closest to him, the one he's spent so long telling just about everything.
"Okay," he murmurs, almost inaudibly quiet, still sounding fairly miserable. He means it, though, holding onto J as if to try to convey as much, curled up small in his arms. "If you think so, then... okay."
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It's hard to feel anything else when S is like this. All J wants is to make it go away, anything that hurts S, and he can't. In the end, after all, he's the cause of it now — the reason S was injured, the reason S was alone, the reason he thought the sight of himself cause for despair. He just has to try again to content himself with being the one who soothes that hurt, if he can.
"If you think so, too," he says. "If it's too much for you, that's it, okay?" It's not entirely the same, but it's close enough he can't help thinking again of his birthday last year, the careful process of moving past his fear of how S would look at him. It wasn't nearly as difficult as he would have feared, and, in the end, all they'd really needed was to ease into the first time in order to reclaim that part of their sex life. This might take a little more getting used to — for both of them — but it's a relief they'll try. The idea of S staying dressed the rest of their lives because he thinks the sight of himself would hurt J — he should have spoken up sooner.
With a small, soft sound, he nuzzles into S's hair. His legs are starting to hurt, tucked under him at this odd angle, but he's reluctant to try and stand. For one thing, he's not sure they'd hold him yet. More importantly, he doesn't want to let S go. "I love you so much," he murmurs. "I never, never thought you were anything but beautiful, darling. I thought I was the ugly one. Inside. You taught me better." He's hardly a saint, and some part of him remains disturbed and uncertain by the idea he could be good in any way, given what he did, that someone who did such terrible things might not be all bad. In some ways, it was more comfortable to think that he'd become a monster, that he couldn't possibly be who he was. Even with that being true, he's not sure he could have lived this long if he still believed that. If he still felt as irredeemable as he did in that moment, it would break him. It's only having S in his life that's let him see that even the worst parts of him are just part of him.
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"I'm not," he protests, muffled against his knees. The sight of the scars is horrible, but he doesn't want to say that. J put two of them there, after all, and the last thing he wants is for J to feel like he's the cause of this. S knows far too well that when J plunged a knife into his chest, then drove him through the snow to the hospital, he couldn't have been thinking about how it would alter his appearance. That was never the point.
It isn't now, either, hardly the sole or even primary reason S has been reluctant to want to change the way they've been doing things. Still, the insecurity is there, set aside only because it's difficult to hear J say something like that and not respond to the rest of it. Again and again, he tells himself this wasn't meant to be about him, and somehow he keeps drawing the focus anyway. He can at least try to shift it back now to J in some capacity.
"But I never thought you were anything else, either," he adds, a little quieter now, but clearer, too, these words deliberate. S is far too out of sorts to know if he's actually making sense, but he figures that J will probably understand what he means regardless. Even when J was gaunt and pale that last day in Seoul, even covered in ash and with scars on his arm, even reading every sickening detail in J's notebook, S never saw him as anything but beautiful. "I still don't. I never will."
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"Well, you're the only one," he says, trying not to let that sound as dire as it feels. He wants to believe that his mother felt — feels — the same, but in her absence, he'll never be sure or able to shake the part of him afraid it isn't true. Letting out a shuddering sigh, trying to resist the tears starting to well up, he shakes his head. "You are. To me, you are. You can't argue with me on this. I won't give in."
Still, he senses it's more than that. The way S tucks into himself, the way his voice made J's heart ache, it's a hurt that runs deep, and it appalls J to think he didn't see it all this time. If he'd had any idea this was the case — as, at least, he thinks it is — he would have found his courage sooner. "Darling," he murmurs, soft and gentle, "did you think I — I thought anything different?" Even though it stings to imagine that, he also has an uncomfortable understanding of how easy it is to persuade himself of things that aren't true, that he knows aren't true. He still hates the idea of S dealing with that disconnect or feeling — feeling like what? J searches for it in his head, uncertain. Ugly? Unappealing? That J would think so? Tangled up as that must be in his keeping covered up, it's no wonder he wouldn't have said anything, but J wishes desperately that he had.
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At any other time, S would say something to that extent. Instead, now, jaw trembling slightly with the effort it takes not to fall apart completely again, he can only try his best to answer J's question, wanting if nothing else to assure him that the last part isn't true. "No," he allows, sounding just deeply fucking sad. He knows that, for J, it hasn't been about his attractiveness, or lack thereof. He knows, too, that J wouldn't say such things to him if he didn't mean them. The problem lies with him, and with what he hasn't let J see again. Of course he doesn't think J thought anything different, but that doesn't mean J wouldn't.
"It's me," he says, fumbling to try to explain it even as he doesn't want to talk about it at all. He hardly understands how they even got to this subject. They're here now, though, and considering that it was his holding something back that ruined the mood in the first place, the least he can do is try to be honest now. "You might not think anything different, but I do." At least hunched over his legs like this, he feels somewhat shielded, a little less laid bare by all these truths and in no position to take the step that they've just talked about taking. "It's not like I can blame you. For reacting like you did. It looks horrible. I don't know why you'd want to — to look at me like that."
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That's the thing, he tells himself. It's only for now. He'll never forgive himself entirely, but he's begun to see that, with time, he can still adjust to nearly anything. He spent his life adapting to survive, long before he graduated high school, and he'll keep on doing so for whatever time he has. He just needs to have something to adapt to, and he can't do that off of silence.
"Because you're you," he says, when he finds his voice again. "Because I like looking at you. Because it's part of life, because, even when I'm mostly used to it, there are still times when I — when you'd normally undress, but you don't, and I have to remember it's because of me, and the only — the only visual I have is that time. And I reacted —" This time, he doesn't trouble holding back his sigh. "Sihyun-ah, it wasn't because I thought it was ugly or you were. It really wasn't. I just hated — I hate — how badly I hurt you, that I... that I struck you that many times." Though he's tried hard to keep his voice even, to be the calming one here, he doesn't quite manage it for a moment, words wavering before he gets himself back on track. Stabbed. Not struck, stabbed. It feels like too much to say even now. "But I got used to my arm because I got to see it all the time."
It might be too many reasons, he thinks, even if they're all true. He's not even sure how much of it S will agree with or process or believe. For himself, the difference between reacting to the knowledge of what he did and reacting to the sight of it is a reasonably big one, but he wasn't on the receiving end of it. He can't ask S not to have been hurt by it. He can't, for that matter, ask him to move on. All he can do is try to ease the pain he caused, his guilt for it less important than how badly it's affected S. If he apologizes, he knows, it's likely S will shut down; that's probably the last thing he wants, even if J thinks it would be deserved.
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So, of course, what comes out first is completely unintentional. "Twice," he nearly whispers, more to himself than to J. "It was twice." He knows all of those messy, gory details — how the stab wounds punctured his left lung and his heart, how close he was to dead when he got to the hospital, how for a minute or so, he was dead, flatlining on the operating table before they managed to bring him back. Over and over, he was told how lucky he was. For a long while there, it was luck he didn't want, survival feeling more like a curse than a blessing.
At least he hasn't gone and said that. It's stupid, probably, to be thinking about the secrets he should still keep when his doing so was what prompted all of this in the first place, but he can only imagine how much that would hurt J to hear. It wouldn't be worth it, not when he's long since gotten past that point. This is already messy enough as it is, a tiny sigh escaping him in turn before he tries again to say what he means.
"And I know that wasn't why. I do," he insists, quiet and shaky though his voice is. "I know you didn't think that." The whole thing happened so quickly, a transition so abrupt that it left him reeling, that he's not sure J would even have been able to think it. Neither of them was exactly at their most clear-headed at the time. Ultimately, the cause hasn't mattered when the effect was the same, when he still looks the same way. "That's not even why... I haven't wanted to try that again. It's just there. In my head, whenever I see myself. "
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"It looked like more," he mumbles, then swallows hard, tries to makes his throat feel a little less tight. In that instant, it seemed to him like he must have gone even madder than he'd thought. That isn't really the point right now, though. Closing his eyes, he tries to breathe evenly, tries not to blurt out any other half-formed thought. He makes himself turn those words over in his head, even though they sting. It can't be any worse than the things S has borne for him; they do this together, for each other, and he can handle it. And, besides, if it really was less than he'd come to fear, maybe it won't be quite so shocking when he's not already out of his mind and suicidal.
"I know how that feels," he settles on after a moment, "I think. I... for a long time, I didn't want to look in a mirror at all. I think I was scared of who I'd see. It wasn't... physical like that, but... maybe that's why it was so bad. When I did see myself, I knew I didn't look much different, but inside..." He sighs, shrugging the arm not around S. "I didn't know how to see it differently for a long time. The only reason I can now is because you saw me differently first." It's when he tries to keep things to himself that he really starts to fall apart. S may not be unstable like J is or has been, but J has to believe it would help him, too, being able to share things and to let J love him when he can't see his own beauty. "I can't change what you see. I can't force you to — to feel what I say is true. But maybe I could... do what you do. Show you what I see instead."
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Probably he should have. There is, he thinks, something deeply ironic in the fact that this started because of him not telling J something, when the times he's let himself think about it, he's hated feeling like he couldn't talk about it. Keeping things from J has felt unnatural for practically all the time they've known each other, and this is something so big, a whole several months of his life that he hasn't been able to bring up. Even now, he doubts it would do any good to get into the details.
Most of them, anyway. Everything J has said is a lot to take in, especially when he feels like this, still so shaken, but the quiet surprise in J telling him it looked like more sticks in his head over the rest of it. At least getting that out of the way seems simpler than all the rest of it. "Of course it did," he says, likewise quiet, not having it in him to look at J as he says this. "Look like more. I had surgery." That scar is the worst of them, too, and the hardest for him to look at, a prominent line down the center of his chest. Already he half-expects J to say that it makes no difference, given that he wouldn't have needed surgery in the first place had it not been for the stab wounds, but the very fucking least he can do is provide clarification.
That part is simpler than the rest of it, though it probably shouldn't be. S knows it just makes sense, and that he can't deny something that he's been so insistent about offering. He doesn't want to need it, doesn't want to make J have to deal with this, but it's too late to take it back now. Breath catching, shuddering, he makes himself give a slight nod, eyes shut tight as if that will hold back more tears. It doesn't. "Maybe," he allows. "Maybe you could."
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It doesn't make it less awful, not really. The scars were there because of what he did, whether he left them behind or doctors did. Still, there's something soothing about the notion that they weren't all of his making — or, rather, that they were, both the scars he left with his own knife and the ones left by the doctors who saved S, the ones he managed to get S to just in time. Proof, he said a little while ago, that S lived.
Before he can think to explain this or even how to start, though, he focuses in on S again, drawn back to the present by the way S shakes a little, breath rippling through him. Half-formed thoughts and feelings, his own whirling reaction to this idea, they can wait. This is much more important, a spark of hope and relief. After this, it would be impossible for him not to wonder and worry about what S might keep from out of his idea of what's best for J or some sense he shouldn't share. But maybe they can put this right.
"I want to try," he says, soft but fervent — so much so that tears prick at his eyes, surprising him a little. It's always hurt, though, those times when he's had to watch S ache and not be able to do anything about it. To have any chance to make things a little better is a relief. "And even if I can't, I... I want to be here for you. To talk to, to tell things. If you want to." He huffs, shaking his head, unable to help coming back to it. "I didn't even think of surgery." He didn't know it left marks like that behind, for that matter. He's never had a surgery, rarely even been to the doctor. It makes obvious sense if he thinks about it for even a moment, but he just never did. That first moment of shock froze an idea in place in his mind, and he never questioned it.
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It shouldn't be a question. There shouldn't be any doubt in it. S is at least pretty sure, though it's hard sometimes to be certain if he's remembering the past accurately or not, that there was a time when it would have gone without saying, and it feels like his own fault that it apparently doesn't anymore. He still doesn't have the first idea what he would have done instead, having been too convinced that he shouldn't bring it up, that it would only hurt J for him to do so, but evidently he chose wrong, and has done far too much damage in the process. Always it seems to come back to this for him, and he's sick of it.
"Of course I want to," he says, his voice tiny and faltering and sad, deeply apologetic. "I hated feeling like I couldn't talk about it. I really didn't think you'd want to hear it. Didn't want to... to pressure you." When the subject never came up again, he just assumed J wasn't ready, that maybe he never would be, and even with how much it stung, S was fine with the idea of that. He hated it, but he was fine with it, not wanting to risk what the alternative might be. The whole thing was all wrong, though, and he has no idea now how to fix it, or how to explain himself when he can barely manage to catch his breath. At least J is here, holding onto him, so it can't be as bad as it was earlier, his fingers still clutching at J's arm in turn, but if J doesn't know that he would want to talk to him, then it still can't be very good, either.
Head resting against his knees again, he tries to take a few deeper breaths, though he doesn't quite succeed, his chest too tight. He still doesn't know what to say, but it is, at least, in that lull that J's last remark finally has a chance to sink in, his frown deepening a little. He's not sure what difference it actually makes, but it seems to for J, and that's enough to make it significant. "What, did you think that was you, too?"
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He hesitates, something twitching in his cheek, at S's question. "Of course," he murmurs, heat rising along his neck. It's fucking stupid. He's had a long time to grow accustomed to the fact of what he did, far longer than he would have imagined possible, and sometimes he can talk about it without falling apart. Right now, though, the trade off for not breaking down is the awful sense of shame heating his skin. "I — of course I did." He didn't have any other way to frame the scars in his mind. All of them, as far as he knew, had to be at his hand. Though he knows he snapped that night, he didn't realize it was quite that bad — the stabbing part, at least — but he didn't know how else to see it, and his memories of that night are too blurred in places for him to feel entirely confident in any of it.
He lets out a short, sharp exhale and shakes his head. "Sihyun-ah... I want to hear it," he says, because he doesn't want to get sidetracked before he says the important part sticking in his head. "Even the things I won't like or that will upset me. And... and you were right. I wouldn't have been able to then. But I — I can. And you can, you can talk to me, I swear. I don't — ah, it's the worst feeling, to have it in your head and your heart and never be able to say it. I don't want that for you." Even if it's a different kind of awful from what J endured and what he still struggles with, it's still awful, and the idea of S alone with this makes him want to start crying all over again.
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What he knew was that he didn't want to have to avoid something so significant, that it felt wrong to leave such a prominent part of his life almost completely unmentioned to the person he trusts and loves the most. Even that, though, he was used to — not the secrecy, exactly, though he's had plenty of that in his life, but the bearing it alone. He isn't on his own anymore, and he's so unbelievably fucking grateful for that, but he was for a long time. Had he wanted to talk about what happened to him, he wouldn't have been able to. It made holding it back here a little easier, an instinct he already had. That one thing just didn't change, staying put away, what seemed like the best place for it.
"Promise you'll — you'll tell me if it ever is too much?" he asks, soft and pleading. It isn't as if he would jump straight to the most unpleasant parts of it anyway, but even now, he's not sure he'll feel like he can say any of it without that reassurance, still too worried that he might go too far. "You're the only person I've ever really talked to. It always feels wrong not to just tell you everything." He pauses a moment, at least coherent enough to know that that probably sounds fucking stupid right about now. "It just... felt more wrong to bring it up."
He still doesn't know how to explain it, and he doesn't think that's quite right. Still, it's something. While the circumstances are vastly different, much like J could only promise to try to stay that first day, he can only promise to try to open up about this, something easier said than done. "I'm sorry. I should've..."
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He hasn't made things easy. Throat aching, he closes his eyes. No matter how hard they try, there always seems to be something they're holding back, not out of a desire to hide but because it's all so fucking complicated.
"And I promise," he continues, "I promise." He'll say it as many times as S needs to hear it, and he'll do it, too. It's better, he reminds himself. The same way he'd want S to tell him if he approached a line, knowing that would hurt less than going too far would, he has to do the same for S. Better to find some way to extricate himself from the conversation than to let himself fall apart and make S think he has to continue keeping things to himself. "If I need a moment or I can't handle it, I'll tell you. But you have to remember it's because of me, not you, okay? If it is too much, that won't be because of you. Understand?"
He's not sure the difference in these things will be all that apparent to S either, but he has to try, voice soft but firm. He doesn't want a miscalculation on his part in what he can handle or the memory of what he did to be the reason S shuts this down and decides to carry this alone again.
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Maybe it will wind up being a disaster, but at least they'll know. Maybe, if nothing else, even if it doesn't work out, he won't have to be quite so fucking cautious doing things like showering or changing his clothes. That would be a huge relief in its own right.
"It was really hard," he admits after a long few moments, the words sticking in his throat. "Not — not here, but... before. Dealing with it alone. Not having you to talk to." Especially early on, before he got and read J's journal, it was one of the most painful things about it — knowing that J was the one who hurt him, and still wanting nothing more than to have J with him. He doesn't really know how that turned into feeling like he couldn't or shouldn't talk about it at all, except that it was easier not to bring it up than to risk the harm it might do. If he didn't say anything, didn't do anything, then nothing bad could come of it. Only it did anyway, if not in the way he would have expected, and even with J telling him not to apologize, he's still just so fucking sorry.
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Turning his head, he kisses S's hair, then carefully lifts his hand to S's cheek, nudging him to look toward J. He wants to kiss him, something small and simple, just a reminder he's here, but he also doesn't want to force S if S isn't ready to look up. "You can talk to me now," he says, voice a little too thick, and swallows. "I know it doesn't change before, but... Ah, it must have been so hard, darling."
It remains one of the things he most regrets about his past, and he's both adjusted enough and grown too tired to feel bad about that. He loves S. Of course it would be, to J, one of the worst things he did — not just hurting him physically, but leaving him to endure the aftermath alone. "I hate the idea of it," he murmurs. "I wish..." He sighs. It doesn't matter. He can wish all he wants. It won't undo his mistakes. "I know it's not the same. I wasn't there then. But I am now, no matter what."
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Now, of course, he knows J is right. He is here, and S has never for one second stopped being grateful for that. In J's presence, though, that separation no longer exists. It isn't as if S looks at him and only sees his would-be killer — if anything, it's been far easier than it should to put that away — but of course it's harder to talk to J about it when he knows the guilt J harbors over having done it. He got all of this terribly, devastatingly wrong, but he also doesn't think he could have made any other choice. He was never going to be the one to bring it up, at least not on purpose.
"I know you are," he murmurs, leaning into the hand at his cheek. "I — I think I don't really know how to talk about it? I never have." Saying that, piecing that part together, takes him a little by surprise, eyes widening slightly even as he continues. "But I do want to talk to you. I always want to talk to you."
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Before he says anything, though, he leans in to kiss S, soft and brief, thumb sweeping over his damp cheek. "I love you," he murmurs, resting his forehead against S's. "And I want to listen. It doesn't matter if you know how to talk about it or not. I never really know how to talk about..." He doesn't know how to describe it. He never has. There's no good word to sum up not just his history but also the state of his mind and how it functions or doesn't. "All of... me. And you see how well it goes when I don't talk about it. I just have to blurt things out and hope they make sense."
He knows, at times like that, he's lucky if that happens at all. His sentences get long and winding, he knows, and he's not sure he conveys what happens inside his head in any helpful way. But he knows S wants to hear what he has to say regardless, no matter how convoluted or painful. Making himself understand and believe that has been a long process, and he needs constant reminders. If that's what S needs too, then J will just have to step up and give him that.
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"I guess it makes sense," he mumbles, pausing to worry at his lower lip with his teeth. "That I wouldn't know how to talk about something I've never talked about." Even with doctors, he never really has. He's been told all of the physical details, of course, and answered questions when applicable, but he's stopped far short of going into the toll it's taken on him. Beyond that, it's a subject he's avoided, even with J, especially with J, and in avoiding it, it's become that much harder to do anything else.
He swallows hard, exhales slowly, still leaning into J and clinging to him as if afraid of the damage he's potentially wrought here. "I really didn't realize," he adds, not sure now if he said this before or only thought it. "How... big it got in my head. How much it got to me. Like I wasn't just keeping it from you, but from me, too."
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"I've done that," he says, lifting a hand to comb his fingers through S's hair. "A lot, really. It's... scary, I think, how much we can hide from ourselves." It's ruined him in all kinds of ways, not quite knowing what he hides from himself. He can't help thinking that, in a roundabout way, that's exactly what got them into this whole mess. If he'd been a bit more honest with himself — if he hadn't let himself hide the truth from himself of how much he craved that connection to his father — that would have been one thing fewer for the professor to use against them both. If he could have acknowledged it, he might have been able to steel himself against it, or to hear S better, more honestly.
It's useless to think about now. There are bigger lies he's told both to him and to S, and he's afraid to find out how many he's still telling. What's done is done.
"You know now," he murmurs. "And so do I. That's a start."
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Still, this is something, a better place to be than they were in before, however awful he feels. He meant it when he said that he hated feeling like he couldn't talk about it at all. Some of it, he wasn't aware of — how bothered he was, for one, and how afraid — but he found himself thinking on more than one occasion that it felt wrong not to be able to talk about that chapter of his life at all. Given what brought it about, it will never be easy, but he would so much rather talk to J than not. Keeping anything back from him has always felt wrong. That's probably part of why he didn't let himself see what he was doing that way.
"Yeah," he agrees, still frowning a little, though he leans his forehead against J's, savoring the gentle brush of fingers through his hair. Such simple gestures were exactly what he so badly longed for back then — someone to hold his hand or stroke his hair, to stay at his side when he tried to make himself eat something or when he was too grief-ridden and tired even to get out of bed. He thought losing his parents the way he did was the worst thing that could happen to him, but at least he had that then, J with him every step of the way. At least he can have a little of that now. "I don't know what comes next, but it's a start."
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Now that they've broached the subject of his actually seeing S's scars again, much more prepared and stable this time, though for a relative value of both, he wants to make it happen. He just also wants to do it on S's time. Pushing him will make it worse for both of them, the worst possible way to handle it. A gentle nudge might do, but no more.
And, too, there's a part of J that hopes it will go well enough that they can actually, if not have sex, at least mess around with S shirtless, not even so much because J thinks about sex an awful lot, but because hearing S like this makes him want fiercely to show S precisely how beautiful J really thinks he is. More than that, he wants to make S feel it. He can't change how S sees himself, he knows, but he can show him how he's seen, and maybe that will make a difference. It does for J.
"I do still want to see," he adds finally, soft. "I think... it might be good for me? But only when you feel... as ready as you think you can." He knows better than to suggest S will ever be fully ready. Some things have to be done well before all preparation is done, or they'll never happen. He has a hazy memory of his own fear at showing S his scars that first day, and S isn't the one who caused those. He can't expect S to be giddy to show off a sight that, previously, pushed J into a panicked self-reflective spiral that made him want to die. Again. All he can really do is, without quite thinking of it, say the things he wishes he'd heard sooner. "It doesn't have to be now or even today or tomorrow. And you don't have to say everything today either. I'll be here when you're ready."
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Considered from that perspective, maybe it would be good for him, too. S doesn't really think so, but it's not impossible. At least that, too, would be a start. At least he wouldn't have to try to keep himself so hidden. He would settle just for being able to change his fucking shirt without having to turn away or leave the room. Even that, he knows, isn't guaranteed. None of it is. They might try it and one or both of them decide it's too much after all. Still, he thought the same thing about having sex facing each other with J on top of him, and was wonderfully proven wrong when they stumbled over that particular hurdle. Maybe it will be the same now. If nothing else, there's a chance of it.
Reassuring as it is to have J so gently leave the choice with him, it's a little overwhelming, too. S doesn't know what he wants or what would be best. Just thinking about it, his instinct is to push it aside even now. It's that realization that makes his decision for him. Probably it's a bad one, but there's not really a good option with a subject so fraught.
"I... I think if I wait... then I might never do it," he admits, ducking his head as best he can without pulling away. "I'd just want to put it aside again." He sniffles. Already a tear-streaked mess, he doubts this kind of vulnerability will make him feel any better, but going back to holding onto this is all but guaranteed only to make him feel worse, especially after all they've just said. "Would that be okay? If I just... do it?"
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"That would be okay," he agrees softly, leaning close to try and kiss S's cheek. For a moment, he considers suggesting that he be the one to handle it. If he does the unbuttoning, he can pause as needed. But he knows S, knows how much he likely needs control of this moment. He can't take that from him. Leaning his head against S's, he sighs. "I love you. And you trust me, darling. So trust that, if I need... a moment or to stop or... I will say so. And I wouldn't say this if I didn't believe it. I wouldn't do that to you."
S knows this. J is sure he does. It still awes him to know that S does, because there's a long list of reasons why S shouldn't trust him or believe him at all. Sitting here, though, cradling him close, trying to soothe S's fears as best he can, he's surprised to remember that there's an even longer list of reasons why S might, built on a long history of friendship and intimacy. A lot of what J has figured out about handling this, his awful whiplash instinctive reaction notwithstanding, is because S has held his hand through so much, given J a metric for what support looks and feels like that he can hold up alongside what he knows of S and of his own needs. It's a strange patchwork, but he thinks it works. At least, right now, it makes sense to him, and as long as it makes sense to S, too, that's all that matters.
He draws back just the slightest bit, still bent close but not pressed against S's hair now. Being able to focus on S through this helps keep him settled, but it doesn't prevent the flicker of nerves in his gut, or the worry he's miscalculated. Whatever happens, he tells himself, they'll know. They'll have talked. It will be out in the open, and they'll both be better off because of it.
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At least the rest of this isn't like that, not entirely. The circumstances are, but where they go from here is up to the two of them, and he won't know what comes next until then. That's exactly why he feels like he has to do this now. If he doesn't, he very well might never do it, and then they'll just remain stuck where they are now, not knowing what might work and what won't. Keeping himself covered around J has been a measure of control in a way, too, preventing the possible fallout, but a desperate one, the only option he saw available to him. Maybe after today, that won't still be the case. Or maybe it will, but at least he'll know then instead of basing it only on frightened guesswork.
Resolved as he might be to attempt this, he can't look at J as he does it, nor can he look at himself. He glances past J to the wall instead, keeping his eyes there as he unbuttons his shirt with shaky hands. It's been so fucking long now — he's been so careful not to do exactly this — that it feels wrong now, almost enough to make him want to change his mind, but he's determined now to see it through. So instead, he waits, all but holding his breath as he unfastens enough buttons that the shoulders of his shirt can fall loose, hoping that he hasn't just made a really big fucking mistake.
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It's still there, of course, a low-level buzz underneath his skin, the faint fear that he's made a mistake, diving in before he was really ready just because the subject came up. He doesn't want to think he'd do that, not when it's S that's in the balance, but trusting himself is still hard, especially when it comes to things that matter. His arm still around S, he keeps his breathing slow and steady, gaze darting from S's trembling hands to his face. As much as he wants S to look at him, it makes sense to him, in a terrible lurching flash, that he wouldn't. And maybe that's for the best — for S's peace of mind, but also for J, not having to worry as much about his expression, the way it slides from worry to wariness, concern to caution. Stomach twisting, he looks, gaze trailing down from S's face to his shoulder and slowly lower to the network of scars across his chest, J's lungs constricting at the sight.
It hurts, it does, but he expected that it would. He steels himself against that, stubborn as ever, and remembers to start breathing again, repeating a litany of reassurance in his head. It really isn't anywhere close to as bad as it was before, whatever S has said, and J doesn't know if that's because S has healed more over the last year and a half or because seeing it the first time was so overwhelming that it looked worse to him. Maybe he just built it up in his head, spun out of panic and months of hindsight. Either way, it does make his heart ache to think of S dealing with this alone, but it also isn't unbearable. It will take time, he tells himself. He was never just going to be happy and comfortable with this, least of all right away.
And, anyway, much of the hurt in his eyes is for S, more than himself and his own guilt. Lifting a hand to S's cheek, he leans in to kiss the other again. "Are you okay?" he murmurs. "It's okay. I'm okay." He hates who he was, who he became, the parts of him that coalesced into his darkest self. He hates that he was capable of this. But he hasn't yet fallen apart, and that gives him hope he won't do so at all. There's a flicker of curiosity in his throat, gaze dropping briefly again and then back up to S. He wants to look more closely, to familiarize himself with the sight, to acclimate; he wants to touch, for that matter, so that he knows, and so it won't be a surprise in the future. Until he's sure of S's comfort with it, though, he won't let himself do either.
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But that was before — before stabbings and open-heart surgery, before J wound up suicidal at the sight of him, before a year and a half of carefully avoiding letting J see his chest at all. A shiver runs through S now, not from any chill in the apartment but simply from nerves, the weight of J's gaze even heavier than usual even with S avoiding meeting his eyes. Only the hand on his cheek gets him to look at J again, and he's cautious when he does, afraid of what he'll see there. He didn't want J to have to see him like this. Despite all he said about not realizing how much it bothered him or how hard it was to hold it back, there's still a part of him that thinks it would have been easier, better, never to address this at all. They have, though, and they're here, and he's terrified, even hearing J say that he's okay.
He hates the unease he feels and the desperation for reassurance, hates how badly he wants comfort when part of him is still convinced he should be the one giving it. He had none, though, when this first happened, and while he was aware of how awful it was, how lonely he felt, how much he wished he had J or his parents with him, it was one more thing he had to push down and keep buried. It's not as if there was anything to be done about it. Of course he craves that comfort now.
"I'm okay," he answers, though he sounds a little like he's trying to convince himself of that and feels anything but. He doesn't know how to explain it. he does, though, remember the first time he brought J back here, how he tried to soothe J while J fell into a panic and failed miserably at it. Taking that approach again, focusing purely on the physical facts of it, seems like the easiest approach right now, however willfully obtuse it might make him. "I'm okay. Really, I... I am. There haven't been any complications or anything. No problems since. It looks bad, but..."
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Well, he wouldn't be him. He still wishes he'd managed, though, that he could have handled this with more grace, for S's sake. Leaning close, he kisses S's cheek again, wishing, too, that he knew precisely how to soothe him. However calm S's words are, his voice isn't quite. His body certainly isn't. All he can do, J tells himself, is to take this slowly and seriously. This is difficult new territory and he has no idea how to handle it. He just knows it feels entirely wrong that S should have to feel unhappy and self-conscious and try to dismiss it because of something J did wrong.
"It doesn't look that bad," he says, but he makes himself look as he does so, forces himself not to say it just to reassure S but with an actual view of what he's talking about. The longer he looks, the more he can remind himself that nothing real has changed. "It looks better than before, darling. Or maybe I'm less..." He sucks in a breath, a corner of his mouth hitching wryly up. "Insane? For the moment." The marks are still noticeable, but he thinks he can see it now, a faint difference between some of them, though he might also be imagining it. If he's right, though, even sort of, then the biggest of them may not even be his work; it's too straight and clean to be something he did in a rage. That's reassuring, at least, for whatever measure of the word applies to him. He feels remarkably calm about it, really, if a little bit like his ears are ringing.
Screwing up his courage, he glances up at S, trying to catch his gaze. "Is it okay if I touch?" he asks gently. He's had his hands on S countless times these last months alone, but his hands don't often stray far beneath S's shirt, if only because it's inconvenient and easy to get tangled up in, and he's not about to assume that this is in any way like it was before, something simple and obvious. "Are you okay?" He doesn't want to push too much — he knows he'd snap if S kept prodding him like this — but he also needs to know.
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"You can touch," he answers, his voice wavering a little, though he manages to bite back the please that threatens to follow. He shouldn't ask for that, considering how big a step this is in its own right. He probably shouldn't want that. Something about all of this makes him feel painfully young, though, brought back to when this first happened and he had no one at his side, not even a single visitor in the hospital. He wanted so much to be held and soothed. Right now, it's hard not to think that he should be offering that instead, with how fresh in his mind the memory of J's reaction to seeing him like this before is, but if anything, J seems calmer than he is. That's probably unfair, too.
As for the question of whether or not he's okay, it doesn't surprise him at all that J sees through his earlier answer, but S still doesn't know what to say. He doesn't feel particularly okay. Saying that it's a lot very suddenly barely comes close to covering it. However much he would like just to dismiss any concern, he doesn't think he could do so convincingly at all. Given what started all of this in the first place, he figures he owes J more honesty than that, anyway. "And I don't know. If I am. I'm not... not okay."
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Even so, the way S responded to his first question didn't sound so much like S reluctantly agreeing to something he doesn't want at all; it just sounded small and tired, and that, too, is about as good as J can hope for right now. Whether he pushed too hard or not, they're here, and he's not about to back down.
Hand trailing down from S's cheek, he runs his fingertips along S's neck, palm resting at his shoulder. "I don't know," he adds quickly. "Maybe I —" He stops, snorts, rolls his eyes at himself even as he smooths his hand over S's skin, going slow and careful. "I definitely worry too much. I just... don't want to make this harder on you than it is, and I..." He bites his lip, trying to shake that off again. Apologies can wait until they're on steadier ground, since S will tell him off if he gives one now anyway. "I hate that I didn't know."
He didn't know a lot of things. He should have figured, he thinks now, that there would be doctor's appointments and that surgery would have caused at least some of the scars he saw. He should have known that S taking things in stride didn't mean it was easy for him, that it didn't hurt, whether or not he saw it himself. It's frustrating to get something so important so wrong.
His heart gives an awkward lurching leap as he runs the pads of his fingers slowly along the line of a scar, his throat going tight. It doesn't feel much different from his own, the jagged characters he touches absently at times, though he's pretty sure it's always going to seem different to him, simply because of why and how he caused both. It makes him uneasy, stomach and chest tight, but he can almost feel a kind of relief in it, something in the back of his head, dancing up his spine, that helps. His touch light, he traces a shaking finger over a line he knows has to be from what he did, then slowly down the one that runs down the center of S's chest, the one too long to be from what he did.
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"You didn't push me," he says, quiet and self-conscious and at least reasonably certain that it's true. He doesn't feel pushed. He's the one who brought it up, after all, even if his doing so was completely accidental in every way. The doctor's appointment, then the surgery, then the mess of feelings still tied to this subject, he would have preferred to leave all of it unspoken, or, in the case of the last, unrealized. It would have been easier. It was a long time ago, though — that same first day, though he's pretty sure in a quieter moment, one of the lulls between surges of emotions — that he told J that he didn't want easy. If that was what he was looking for, then he never would have acted on the feelings he had for his best friend and roommate all those years ago. This hurdle is hardly the biggest one they've faced, either before then or since.
Attempted murder, he's pretty sure, will always top that list.
Obvious as it might be now, he feels like he owes at least a bit of an explanation here, nodding toward where J's finger traces the thicker, cleaner surgical scar without looking at it. "That's the one from the, um. The surgery," he adds. "I would have told you. I... didn't know that you didn't know." Especially after finding out that J is the one who got him to the hospital, he would have expected that it would speak for itself that surgery ensued, but then, it isn't as if he's ever spent a lot of time talking about the span of time that followed. "And I didn't know that it was weighing on me so much."
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"I was," he starts, unsure how to finish. "Everything was so much. It didn't occur to me. Very little did. I — I don't think it would have mattered then." He's fairly certain that, the way he felt that day, he wouldn't have heard any difference. As it is, that part of him is still very much lurking in his mind, doubting there is a difference. The surgery scars, after all, wouldn't be there if not for the ones J left on his own. Now, though, things are slightly different. The facts are all the same, but what they spell out has changed somewhat in his eyes, and having S love and trust him all this time helps to soften some of the edges. It still hurts, all of this does, but it's not the pain it was before.
"I thought I did that," he mumbles. He nearly closes his eyes, but he has the strong sense that, if he does, he'll see things he doesn't want to. Even so, his vision blurs enough with him staring at some vague point on S's skin that he doesn't see much anyway. "It scared me. But even if I'd known... I was so miserable. It wouldn't have made a difference. But now..." He lifts his hand slightly again, fingertips grazing the scar again, running slowly down the length of it. "This is why you're alive. This one saved you. So it's okay, right?"
He doesn't mean for it to be a question. It isn't, quite. What he means is that, to him, that's the difference, and as hard as it still is for him to stomach what he did, he wants to believe that he can see something good here — not just something to endure or to get used to, but a reminder that S lived. But he's not sure that's his call to make. They're S's scars, S's fight. He lived through it, not J. Throat tightening, he shakes his head. He's not going to accustom himself to the sight of these all at once, but even if he's teary-eyed, he's not nearly as emotional or as upset as he thinks they both feared he would be.
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Still, S frowns, expression concerned and apologetic and soft as he looks at J, one hand lifting to his cheek. For him, it isn't a question at all that it's okay. It was a year and a half ago, and it is even more so now. He hates the way he looks and he hates that, no matter what he does, he'll always carry around this reminder of what happened that terrible night, but physically speaking, he's fine, and if he held anything against J for what he did, then they wouldn't be here now. That would be cruel, as far as he's concerned, to act like everything is fine while holding a grudge or worrying about what might happen.
"Please don't cry," he murmurs, his own voice a little unsteady, though he manages not to start crying again himself. "It is. Of course it is. I'm fine now, and we're here." That, he's thought since he first spotted J here, is the most important thing. They're here, they're together, they have this impossible chance, and while it's not as if the past doesn't matter, it doesn't have to be what defines them now, either. He only wishes that J didn't have to see this. He kind of thinks that he had the right idea before, actually, staying covered in J's presence, preventing him from having to confront this. There's no taking it back now, though, and at least it's gone better than it did the first time, not that that's saying very much.
His thumb gently stroking J's cheek, S has to fight hard to ignore the instinct to pull his shirt back up and button it again. Even if he did, it wouldn't undo this or the emotional effect of it. Chances are, nothing will even change all that much after this, and S considers that a good thing. He can't imagine that J would want to fuck him with a view like this, or that it would be a welcome addition to something relaxing like a shower. S is more than alright with that. He may have once suggested leaving his shirt on as a temporary measure, but he hasn't thought of it like one in a long time. "Are you okay?"
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"Yes," he says when he can, his voice soft but certain, eyes opening again. His vision is still fuzzy, and he lifts a hand to wipe his eyes, sniffling. "Is it..." He wavers, unsure how to put this. The thing is, it's a question he doesn't think he needs to ask, because S is always kinder to him than he is to himself. But he wants to, wants to get the words out of his head. "What I did... it's always going to be..." He pulls a face. "Hard for me. That sounds selfish. But it is, so I don't want to sound like I'm making it a small thing when it isn't. I just... I really thought I did more. And it's... a — a relief?" It's such a strange word to apply to something so horrible, but he can't help the truth of it. Part of this, the reason his breath is hitching, his cheeks hot, is how overwhelming the relief is, mixed in with everything else. "I didn't do that. And you're here and alive and I — I was worried I'd never..." He huffs, frustrated by his own wobbly voice and inability to express himself right.
"That this would be too much or I wouldn't get to see you again or that I'd be wrong and break down again, but it's fine," he says, a little bewildered. It's not like he loves how the scars look — there's too much bound up in that history for them to be particularly appealing in that regard — but they don't bother him now as much as he worried they might. Maybe it's because he's trying to make himself see things this way, but right now, they're reassuring. He was right, he thinks, to say they're proof S lived. Blinking hard against his tears, he glances up at S through damp lashes. "Is it possible," he asks, faintly wry, "that I overreacted before?"
He knows it's more than possible. What he doesn't know is if he's making even the slightest bit of sense right now. Fingers wandering again, he grazes one of the smaller, rougher scars, shaking his head slightly. It's strangely fascinating, in an absolutely awful way, and at the same time, he finds himself thinking that even this one seems more healed now. Time keeps moving. They've had so much more time than he thought they'd get, yet now he's more sure they'll get longer still.
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Like J just said, it's always going to be hard, something that applies to both of them. For himself, forgiving J and starting over together were the easy parts. Living with the aftermath isn't always as much so. The months spent grieving, the trauma of having nearly been killed, the physical scars left behind — those things don't just go away, even if he's mostly tried to conceal the latter two.
As much as it hurts him to see the tears in J's eyes and at least feel like he's the cause, though, he knows too well how much worse this could be. That last remark gives him something to respond to without saying the rest of what's in his head, anyway, which comes as a relief. "You? Overreact? Never," he says, the gentlest sort of tease, before lifting his chin so he can kiss J's forehead. He's not sure he would put it that way, actually, understanding as well as he can why J reacted the way he did, but it also doesn't surprise him that, in that moment, surprised by the sight of them, J saw the scarring as worse than it really is. Until then, S hadn't even thought that much of it at all, at least relative to the rest of that whole mess. Now, of course, is different, and one more thing it's going to be hard to shake.
He doesn't want to say that. But then, his not talking about this is what prompted this whole situation in the first place, so maybe it's better to try to say a little of it after all. "It's funny," he murmurs, quieter now, teeth pressing to his lower lip. "Or not funny, but... After it happened, even when it was still new, I didn't think it was that bad. Too much else on my mind, I guess. No one else around to see them. And now... here... it seems so much worse than I first thought. Even now."
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Intentions are well and good, but they don't stop him from continuing to tear up, or the ache in his heart listening to S. Blindly, he reaches his other hand for S's, the one at S's chest shifting up to his cheek instead. He wants, always, to apologize for all of that. They've both grown about as accustomed as it's possible to be with the awful fact of J having tried to kill S. That doesn't diminish the misery he feels, thinking of S alone in the aftermath. It doesn't make him wish any less desperately that he'd been there after all, though it makes no sense, to have taken care of S while he recovered.
"Darling," he murmurs, heartache only slightly soothed by the fact he's here now. It isn't the same. He still hopes to do some good, but he can't undo the past, and it's hard to talk around the tightness and the apologies in his throat. Sniffling, he shakes his head. "It really doesn't look bad. I — I don't know if I can make you believe that, but it's true. I think it is." He shrugs, reminding himself that, when it comes to this, beyond his not losing his mind at the sight, his opinion doesn't matter all that much. Still, his opinion is all he has to offer when, as he said, he can't change S's just by force of will. "I wish I could make you see how I see you. Even this, it's... you survived so much. I didn't get to be there to help you —" His voice shakes despite himself and he swallows hard, frowning. "But you did. And it's a bit reassuring that they aren't as faded as mine, because that proves you did."
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Largely at a loss though he might be, the one thing he does know how to do is grasp J's hand in turn, fingers curling steady and determined around his boyfriend's. It doesn't change all those months he was alone, the span of time when there were bandages to change and far worse-looking wounds than these underneath, but it means the world and makes a world of difference that J is here with him now. S may not really know how to talk about this, and may not want to need comfort over it, but he can at least make sure J knows that much. It's not something he could ever take for granted, not something he'll ever be anything less than grateful for.
"You sound like me," he murmurs, again as close as he can get to teasing under the circumstances, which isn't very. "That's supposed to be my line. I wish I could make you see how I see you." That's beside the point right now, really, but it does buy him a moment's time to try to figure out what to say. He still doesn't think he should — has promised himself he never will — admit that survival in those months felt like something he was cursed with, not something he achieved. It's just hard, impossible, not to think about it from time to time, with a subject like this at hand. Finally, shrugging, he lets out a tiny sigh. "I believe you. That you don't think it looks bad. I do. I guess it just... started to feel easier, keeping it put away. Not having to be seen like this."
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"Maybe it's easier," he allows. "It seems like... it hurt a lot, but if you didn't know, then it was easier to handle, right? I don't think you can put that back, darling." He feels like a bit of a hypocrite when he says it. There's a lot he would put back if he could and a lot he does his best to ignore even now. But, he thinks, the difference is that, much of it, he knows he's hiding from. It's not subconscious, though he's sure there's more of that, too. He makes a choice to push these things away when they drift into his mind. He tries to, at least. But the things he knows without knowing — once he learns them, they're nearly impossible to hide away again.
He lets out a tiny sigh, leaning his head against S's. "But if you want to," he says, small, careful, "you can. If that feels better." He doesn't want that. Being here now, having seen what scared him before and found that he's grown and healed enough not to be thrown back to the past, being able to touch and see his boyfriend, he doesn't want to let it go. It feels like progress, both knowing he's dealt with some of this and also getting another small measure of normalcy back. That isn't worth S's comfort, though. If S really feels better staying covered up, J tells himself, he'll just have to accept this one moment in time as his proof of having improved and let go of the idea that this was ever really temporary. There are things about himself he doesn't like having seen either, parts of his being and his past that it's strange to realize anyone knows, even S. But he does, and in the end, J's found, they're better off for it. Still, it's not like either of them can just stop knowing about murder. At least S can hide this if it would make him feel better. "If you prefer it that way."
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"I don't know," he murmurs, still holding J's hand like an anchor, letting his eyes close for a moment in an attempt to compose himself. He hasn't fallen apart again yet, at least, but this is all so much to take on, and he wasn't expecting any of it. Even now, he's not entirely sure how they wound up here. He knows he slipped up and said something he didn't mean to, and that J got upset about him holding things back, but the rest is an emotional haze, too difficult to parse when he hasn't really even wound up on the other side of it yet. Trying to determine how he feels isn't all that much better. "I think... it's like you said. It was easier because I didn't know how hard it was."
He didn't let himself know. He couldn't, when he thought keeping the scars covered was necessary, not worth even considering doing otherwise. Sighing, he drops his head to J's shoulder, still savoring the closeness of him after having been so painfully, vividly reminded of such a horrible time. "I don't think I'd prefer it. Or that it would feel better, now. I just... I hate that you'd have to look at me and see... that. That it's always going to be there."
Even if they were both thinking about it before, with the obviousness of his staying semi-clothed during sex or in the shower, at least it wasn't visible. To him, at least, he could tell himself it wasn't as big a deal that way. With this, no matter what J says now, it's hard to imagine it ever not being fraught and emotional — maybe, hopefully, not to the extent that it has been today, but still significant. "I'm sorry."
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The trouble is, he's not sure how to do that, because he's not sure what S wants is even remotely possible. "Just because it's always there," he says, "doesn't mean it's always a problem. And anything could remind me of it at any time anyway. I don't just chop off my arm to stop it. If I did, I'd be reminded by not having an arm."
He says it wryly, but it's not a joke in the least. The absence of a thing can be as glaring as its presence, and his is a mind willing to seize on any chance it can to make him hate himself. What he saw that night was the man curled against him now, the eyes he loves so much, the lips more beautiful to him than a sunset, the neck he kisses every day. If anything about the past had to be turned away, he wouldn't be here now, holding S close. He wouldn't get through cooking a meal, never mind eating it, if the very sight of the damage he's done was insurmountable. He's learned to get used to things and to compartmentalize, because it's the only way to survive and he's determined to do so. Sometimes his determination is blunted by uncertainty and misery, but trying to hide any evidence of his madness might only make him feel more insane yet. There's no perfect answer to his imperfect self. He has to find an answer of some kind, though, something to make this better for S.
But what answer can there be? The things S feels make sense, but the depth to which he feels them is, like most feelings, not the least bit subject to reason. Knowing a thing and feeling it are vastly different. J knows this as well as anyone can, and feels it, too. He's not sure S understands, even now, just how entirely J gets that, how pervasive the disconnect can be. It's not that J's trying to hide it, exactly, so much as it is that he's become somewhat used to it and it only feels worth mentioning when it's pronounced. Just because he's fine today doesn't mean he won't be in agony tomorrow for no good reason at all. Just because he thinks idly about stepping into oncoming traffic doesn't mean he has any intention of doing so, or even any desire to try. He's not sure that's something S can understand, even if he tries, and he doubts it would give him any comfort at all, afraid as he still must be, even deep down, of what J might do to himself.
Perhaps referencing the idea of cutting off a limb was a poor choice, in retrospect. Regardless, he thinks, he needs to respond to what S needs, not use this as a moment to blurt out random shit he hasn't seen fit to explain before. "A lot of things are always going to be there. We can't help that."
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Letting out another long, slow sigh, he tries again to catalogue everything about this moment, all the ways in which things have changed. J is still here, safe and alive. For that matter, he's still safe and alive, too, after nearly a year and a half here. He never doubted that would be the case, but he remembers how afraid J was in those first couple days, not wanting even to commit to living with him for fear of hurting him again, and as far as S can tell, it hasn't so much as crossed his mind to do so, at least not in any way he hasn't expressly wanted. The two of them have played the piano in front of each other. So many things he thought were lost that haven't been, not really. They've just taken some time to get back there again.
And, now, J has seen the scars on his chest once more, and while S can't really say it's gone well, it hasn't gone even a fraction as poorly as last time. That counts for something. It counts for a hell of a lot, actually. "But please don't cut off your arm," he mumbles, because he can't not say anything to that, even if he doubts J ever would. Granted, J has done a lot of things that S once wouldn't have imagined he ever would, which he really sees no need to point out now, but cutting off a limb would, in some ways, be all the more drastic. At least, it would probably be more physically difficult.
It's stupid to even give it this much thought, but at least it provides a momentary distraction before he tries to find a real response. "I know. I do. I know." He scrunches his nose, almost amused, still too forlorn to be convincingly so. "I never wanted being shirtless in front of you to be something I'd have to get used to."
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He's pretty sure sometimes that that's the only way he learned that. It's uncomfortable when so much of himself seems beyond his control, but he doesn't think he'd have made it this far if he hadn't been able to manage it sometimes. But S, S has never had to learn it to the same extent J has. He's had every reason to keep grasping to hold the reins of every situation before him, and J hasn't often given him much cause to do otherwise, not as more than a day's distraction. Of course S would change things if he could. So would J. But too much of what J would want to change is set in stone, painfully solid and real and immovable. He won't survive trying.
"I know," he says softly, kissing S's hair. It's hard to have to adapt to things that used to be normal. It's painful sometimes, and even as he wants to encourage S to pursue this, he also doesn't want to let him think that it's going to be simple, that the only complicating factor is S's willingness or lack thereof. There will be times, he suspects, when he won't be as at ease. But then those are probably not going to be moments when they're having sex or showering, at least. "I wish it weren't."
He can't help the longing in his voice as he says it. As calm as he's managed to stay the last while, crying aside, he's still worn down by the emotions of all this, and it's impossible to pretend he doesn't wish desperately, too, that he could undo the past. He'd give nearly anything to be able to put it all right. He just can't. There's no way to do that, and there never will be, and he'll think about it until he goes mad all over again, but he knows it won't change anything. All he can do now is work with what he has, which is a hell of a lot, and take care of this wonderful man. "And I promise I'll keep my stupid arm. I got used to it mostly." He wrinkles up his nose, not drawing away to look at his scars, though the urge to do so dances along the nape of his neck. "And I learned to stop being afraid of being over you. Remember how scared I was to even mention it? I learned to be here alone and still be safe. I learned to go out and be safe, even from me. There are a lot of things I wish I hadn't had to learn again. There are things I'm still learning. It feels so stupid to have to. It feels so small. And almost none of it is ever completely permanent or even complete, and it's really fucking stupid, thinking I've got things figured out and then having to build up my nerve again. I hate it. But what else can we do? I'd change it for you, too, if I could. I hate that I can't."
The words tumble out of him, soft and a little tired, almost like he's telling S a story to calm him, but it's all true. Maybe it helps just to be true. "I can distract you through it though and tell you I still think you're the most beautiful person I've ever seen. Even if you stay all covered up forever."
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"Ah, you'll make me cry again," he says through a pout, the words half-muffled, though this, too, is more of a token protest than anything else. Guilty as he might feel for needing to be held and comforted like this, it's nice, too; it's what he wanted so much during those months he was alone, in the aftermath of the incident that left him with these scars in the first place. The hard thing is letting himself have that. Another apology is on the tip of his tongue, but he knows J would just tell him again not to apologize, so he holds it back on that basis alone. At least that's something.
There's enough else he should probably respond to there, anyway, even if it takes him a few moments to determine how to do so, his head a mess and emotions still high. It would be too easy, too, to focus only on what J has said about himself, all of which is important but would also be deliberately skirting the subject at hand on his part. He hates, too, that J has had to learn all of those things, and he's relieved that J has, especially with what he was reminded of earlier. Hell, just feeling him here, warm and solid and safe, is more relieving than S could ever find the words for. Shifting a little, he leans into J, curled forward enough that he can rest his head against J's chest, hearing his heartbeat, as steady and sure as ever. At least, whatever happens, there's this. Somehow, that makes it easier to decide what to say.
"I don't want to stay all covered up forever," he admits, his voice wavering a little again. He thought he did. He would, at least, have been alright with it, and maybe if they'd never broached the subject, it would still have been easy. Now that they're here, though, he can't pretend otherwise and he can't lie about it. "I — I hate hiding things from you. Even when we were kids, I hated it." Breathing in as deeply as he can, he makes a small, soft sound, not so much out of frustration as reluctance. "But you have to tell me if it ever is too much, or too hard, or... you just really don't like looking at it, or anything. Please. I don't want to make anything worse."
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That, too, comes as something of a relief. If S had decided he wanted to drop things here, J would go along with it. Of course he would. There'd always be the option to try again later, but even so, it would be on S's terms, always. J just doesn't want to go back to how it was before now, not if they can do otherwise.
"I promise," he says, quietly fervent. It doesn't feel like quite enough of an answer, but he needs a moment before he continues. "And... and sometimes it might be. I won't know until I know, but when I do, I'll tell you. But you — you won't make anything worse. Believe me, darling, you won't. If it did feel like a problem, ah, I'd probably already..." He pulls a face. Months, years, of living like this and he still doesn't have a way to name it that feels right to him. It makes it worse sometimes, not knowing what to call it, in the moments when it feels too flippant to name it madness, too expansive just to be a voice. "I wouldn't be doing well already, would I? It's mostly then that these things are too hard now."
There are varying degrees of that, of course. Sometimes it's just a day that's difficult, not like the endless weeks or months that drove him to his end, and that's unpredictable. He hopes, though, that he's doing well enough now, comparatively speaking, that he'd be able to voice that to S and not just dive in blindly and get them both hurt. He's never entirely sure of that, but he hopes all the same.
"You tell me too," he adds. "If you don't feel like being seen that way. It doesn't have to be all or nothing, okay?"
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But if J says that sometimes it might be too much, and that he'll say so if or when it is, then it's easier to accept the opposite, too: that sometimes it won't be too much. S doubts it will ever be entirely pleasant, and he still hates that it will just always be there, complicating what used to be so simple, but there's nothing to be done about that. All they can do is try to deal with it.
"Okay," he agrees, the accompanying nod more sure than he currently sounds, his voice small and hoarse from all the crying and being emotional still. "I'll tell you." For him, too, that may well be the case sometimes. In a way, it's strange even to consider, when he isn't at all accustomed to being self-conscious like that around J in a way that wasn't expressly invited. Even during those first few months they lived together, when they weren't a couple yet but S was becoming increasingly aware of how he felt, he was never really shy around J or reluctant to be seen. They'll never be able to go back to the way things were then, though. All they can do is move forward as they are now, insecurities and scars and all. "And if it's ever too much for — for either of us, then we'll wait until it's not anymore."
If he's completely honest, it feels like a little too much now, but not in a way that he would want to act on. This whole turn of events, taking this step in the first place, has just been a lot to take in, and now that he's had a chance for the panic to subside, he feels wrung out and vulnerable, grateful still for how close J is.
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"I love you," he murmurs, taking a deep breath, inhaling the warm familiar scent of S's hair. Ducking his head a little lower, he presses a soft kiss to S's neck, tugging him close. "That's all we can do, tell each other." That and trusting each other are what makes them work so well, he knows, and it's been more important to him than ever of late, being able to do both. He's still so painfully aware of his shortcomings and all the ways in which he used to be a terrible boyfriend. Unlike with much else of his self-flagellation, though, at least this he can put to use, working to do better. At least he's all the more sure now in their mutual faith; he can't doubt that S will stop him when he needs to and communicate what he wants and doesn't want when they've spent so much time pushing their boundaries over the last year, both in and out of the bedroom. If anything, it's easier when it comes to physical things, even as mundane as getting dressed or showering. He huffs, an almost-laugh, lips curving wryly. "And you know what to say if you ever need me to slow down."
Granted, he thinks, it's not like this is something that only applies to sex. There may be days one or both of them simply don't want to or don't feel up to dealing with the memories this brings. Still, he thinks that S will appreciate being teased a little. J can't always handle that, either, when things get rough emotionally; it's often too difficult for him to let go of his hurt so quickly. For S, though, he thinks it comes as a relief, a way for him to ease back into control. Of course, now that he's said that, J can't help thinking about how fun it is to make S lose control instead, but it's hardly the time for that, he tells himself. They've just barely worked up to this much as it is.
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Still, there's no reason to rush that far ahead yet anyway, when just this has been such a big deal in itself. For right now, despite how utterly stupid he feels for having fallen apart to this extent, he just wants to sit here for a while longer, warm in J's arms, curled against him. He really didn't know the toll this was taking. Now that he does, it's hard to shake, so much having come so abruptly to the surface, leaving him worn out and a little sad in its wake.
"I do," he agrees, sniffling through the wry humor in his voice. None of that is actually what he would turn to if that did prove to be the case here, but right now, he doesn't want to spend too much time dwelling on the likelihood of that being necessary. They'll deal with it if and when that happens. As it is, he's pretty sure that if he lets himself start focusing on that now, when they've only just tried this in the first place, then he'll talk himself out of being able to do it at all, too convinced again that it would cause too much trouble for both of them. "Ah, really, I'm... I'm sorry about all of this." J, he knows, will tell him not to apologize. To him, though, it feels warranted, both for what he never mentioned before today and the way he fell apart. Had he thought it was significant enough or that it wouldn't do too much damage, he would have said something, but that doesn't change the fact that he didn't, or the way his reaction came to override J's. "I didn't mean to... I didn't realize..."
Although he trails off, he thinks J will understand what he means all the same. There are too many ways he could end those sentences and too much in his head to try to sort through. It seems better just to let it stand on its own, encompassing everything it could.
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"You can't help what you felt," he says, "whether you realized it or not." And at least he managed to get a tiny laugh out of S, a small victory in the face of all this heartache. "And I... I wish you'd said something, I do. But I get it." It's hard. With all they have to deal with, they've had to fight to be honest and open. It's not an easy thing, talking about all the elements of this, even assuming they're aware of them ahead of time; they know every time they do, it's going to hurt. Of course they try to flinch away. Pushing through that has been difficult, and he's pretty sure they should get some kind of award for how often they manage to do it anyway. That S talked himself into thinking it wasn't necessary in this one way, that it would do more harm than good, isn't entirely surprising, and as much as J wants to know these things, he can't blame S for thinking he wouldn't want the reminder or for being afraid of what a reminder might do to J.
"You want to protect me," he murmurs. "I know. And I want to say you don't have to protect me from myself and what I did, but I'm the biggest threat to me, aren't I? Tell me anyway. Please. Don't be alone with these things. Not the parts you didn't know, you can't help that, but anything. I want everything, Hyunie, all of you. And that includes this. I don't want you to be unhappy, but you don't have to apologize for this."
He's all too aware that it's something S very likely would say to him — that he has, in fact, said variations on this before — and he's probably being a bit of a hypocrite. He doesn't care. It's easier to say it to S, meaning it wholly, than to take it to heart for himself. All the same, he's painfully familiar with how easy it is to feel things without quite untangling what they are and how intensely he's feeling them. He can't possibly fault S for going through that, too.
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Now, there's so much that's complicated in so many ways, and he's still getting used to that. It's worth it — he would take all of this and then some to be with J — but he can't help if it's sometimes hard to wrap his head around. The most important things, the way he feels and what he wants, those are as simple and as constant as they've ever been. There's a mess surrounding them, though, that wasn't there before and isn't likely to go away. S thinks it would be nice if it involved less crying, but even so, that, too, is a price he's more than willing to pay.
"You sound like me again," he mumbles, soft and teasing in equal measure. None of it changes the fact that S still feels like he has to apologize for it, if nothing else for the fact that J was upset first and he's the one who drowned it out by falling apart like this, but it does help to hear what J says, or maybe it's just that it's nice to be held. Swallowing, he takes a deep breath, still leaning against J, trying to steady himself. "Even if I don't have to apologize, though... I'm still sorry." He should have thought before he opened his stupid mouth, or should have found a way to talk about it sooner. Logically speaking, at least, he knows that J wants all of him. S just didn't want that to have to involve dealing with such a constant reminder of how bad that night was. "And even if I don't have to be... I am sorry. I know you want everything. And that you... wouldn't want me to be alone with these things."
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S would choose it every time, he knows that. He still wishes he could take away at least the worst of it. "You don't want me to be either," he points out, his voice a little rougher than he expects, throat aching. It hurts just to know that being together means S will never get away from any of this, never be able to put this past behind him, and it hurts to know that would be true even if J weren't here. He's the only one who bears the blame for that. S shouldn't have to feel badly for having any kind of reaction to it.
He sighs, a little shaky. "I hate it," he admits, though it's not much of a confession. "Ah, so much. I fucked up... immeasurably, and you... you have to live with all of it. It's not fair. All the things I did to you, all the things you learned, trying to keep me safe. It doesn't go away if we don't talk about it, but talking about it might make it better or make it worse. And I can't tell you not to worry, just to be honest without ever thinking about it, and I wish I could." It would be cruel to say it without any reservations or caveats when J knows all too well how fragile he sometimes is. Knowing that S sometimes holding back makes sense just makes him feel so painfully weak. "I do want everything, though."
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The way he sees it, though, that point is moot. Fair or not is insignificant when he chooses J every single time, more than willing to live with all of it because it means he also gets to be with the man he loves. The ache in his heart now is nothing compared to how it felt being alone, knowing he would never again have J's arms around him like this, never have his person to turn to. He knows why he kept this to himself, and while he regrets it now, he's not sure he was entirely wrong to do so. It feels stupid all the same, not to have talked to the one person he's ever been able to talk to.
"I know you do," he murmurs, sighing, at once rueful and fond. "That you... hate it, and that you want everything." The rest is trickier to put into words. He pauses for a moment, tongue pressed to his teeth, as he tries to figure out how to do so in a way that makes sense and won't just get them twisted up even further or give entirely the wrong idea. Even when he does continue, though, he's still not sure he manages it. "And it actually... I do worry a little less because you're not telling me not to worry? Like... if you were, it would feel like... I don't know. Ignoring that there are reasons to. But maybe..." Idly, he twists his fingers in J's shirt, holding on purely for the sake of it. "If we both know those reasons are there, it'll be easier to move forward with them."
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He wants to apologize for that being the case, and he wants to get angry, too, that it is. He did terrible things, but the way he's felt, he's felt for years. Everything started to crumble beneath him long before he hurt anyone, at least physically. Whatever punishment he might deserve for his crimes, this started well before that, when he had already suffered needlessly for too long. It's hard to untangle what he deserves from what he doesn't. All he's really sure of is that it's exhausting and it hurts.
And that S is right. Letting out another unsteady breath, he nods, still tracing idle designs against S's back. The part he doesn't want to say is how much that's true in general, not just in this instance, how he's become aware over the months of that. The less he says about what's wrong, the worse it is. He can't let that happen here, with this. He faltered in the winter, not quite seeing it until it was too late. He won't let himself do that again. At least, he'll try. He won't put S through that.
"Those reasons aren't going anywhere," he says softly. "I'd have to be even crazier to pretend otherwise." He remembers a little of that first day, recalls it in bits and pieces, and he knows a taste of how it felt then, how sure he was he couldn't live with all of this — or, rather, that he wouldn't, that it would be agony to go on in the knowledge of all he'd done and the pain he'd already carried with him. That it wouldn't be worth the pain of it. He was wrong about it not being worth it, but much of what was true then is true now. It's only life with S and the things he's learned since then that make it possible for him to be here still. Without all that, he thinks, he would have fallen entirely apart long ago. Again.
"I won't try to," he adds, voice still low, thinking aloud even as he overthinks in his head. "But I do think it'll mostly be okay. Right now, it's fine. And when it isn't... well, then you can just... hold me a little and remind me that some of that is because I got you to the hospital fast enough." His voice turns wry, a little embarrassed. It feels strangely self-aggrandizing even now to treat what he did as even vaguely heroic, though he's learned to accept that his actions that night both nearly killed S and saved him. "Or, if you need, I can hold you and remind you... whatever you need. How ridiculously in love with you I am."
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He hopes it is, though. He hopes that, one day, he won't even have to think twice about being shirtless in front of J. Though he tells himself often that he can't wish for a return to the way things used to be, knowing how closely that ties to the problems they had before and how J worried he saw their relationship, though he wouldn't want that anyway, given everything they've gone through together and gotten here, it would be nice to have that one little piece of simplicity back, to take his goddamn shirt off in front of his boyfriend and best friend without it feeling like it perches them on the edge of a catastrophe, without one or both of them being reduced to tears and panic over something that was once just a simple fact of their sharing a space. That shouldn't be too much to ask. And if it is, well, he'll be fine with that, too. As he's also told himself before, staying half-clothed is an infinitesimally small, worthwhile price to pay to be with J and keep him safe.
"I always want to hear how ridiculously in love with me you are," he says instead of any of that, summoning up a ghost of a smile. He still doesn't really want to move much yet, content to stay where he is, curled against J's chest. This, too, is something he once wouldn't have thought all that much about. It was always nice, being held, but it was easy to take for granted until there was no one left in his life at all and he wanted this more than anything else. They'll still have this, no matter what happens. He's not sure he could ever say how much that means to him. "And I'll remind you, too. What you did. How you saved me."
True as it is that he wouldn't have needed saving had J also not tried to kill him, S still thinks, and always will, that it's the part that came after that matters most. It took little more than an instant for him to be unconscious on J's floor. Letting him die should have been the easiest, safest course of action. J didn't.
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Sometimes it feels very small. Compared to the terrible things he did, he supposes it is, that it isn't much to save a life when he's ended others. He's past pretending, though, that it wasn't the life he cared most about in the end. Sometimes it feels small for other reasons, because S has saved him, too, and still does, again and again. J isn't even sure if he understands that entirely, beyond the obvious fact of J's still being alive. Or being alive again, as it were. He doesn't think he's ever voice it really, how much it wasn't just one day or one act, how it's been S every day of his time here, how it was weeks before he felt like he could get through a day without wondering if maybe they both wouldn't be better off without him alive. He doesn't want S to think it's still a constant, pressing thing, even if he can't claim it isn't still, at times, present.
"We save each other," he settles on, soft, a tiny smile rising at the sight of S's, a slim, fragile thing, and terribly precious. Lifting his hand, he brushes his knuckles along S's cheek, then huffs out a little laugh. "Ah, even from the start. Even when all you could do was bring me a bandaid. Really, Sihyun-ah, I love you so much — dressed or undressed or half-dressed." He's settled a little since he came here, isn't saying it every five seconds, but that doesn't mean he savors it any less. It feels good to be able to say it and to hold S close, to feel sure he's loved in spite of it all. His hand slipping to S's waist, he brushes his thumb against soft skin, small reassuring strokes. "I like you every way that you are." After a moment, he adds, "How are you? Feeling okay, darling?"
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He's said it before, or at least thought it before, that from then on, it was the two of them against the world, a battle he was more than willing to take on. While he tended to get along well enough with the other kids in their class, reasonably liked if never sought after, he knows he would never have been friends with any of them, not really, not like he became with J. Even if that was all they were to each other, it would have been worth it. Instead, he found the love of his life. The mess they've been picking up the pieces of here doesn't lessen the weight of that at all.
Bittersweet though some of it may be, with thoughts of how much he misses the simplicity of those earlier days still rattling around his head, it's still a nice thing to think back on, making his answering nod come more easily. "I'm okay," he says, and mostly means it, though there's still a slight question in his voice. "I'm... a little overwhelmed, I think. And tired. And —" At this, he makes a face, vaguely petulant. "Fuck, I feel so stupid. But I'm okay." Sitting like this helps, having J's arms around him, the soft, warm brush of fingertips against his skin. He feels much calmer than he did a little while ago, at least, and that's a huge step in itself.
"I like you every way that you are, too," he adds, turning his head into J just enough to nudge J's chest with his nose. To him, it seems like a perfectly obvious statement, something that simply stands to reason. It bears repeating, though, something it certainly can't hurt for J to hear again. "And I'm glad I gave you a bandaid that day."
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And, anyway, S's face is pressed close to him, his body more relaxed in J's hold than it was before, and that matters more. J ducks his head, kissing S's hair. "So am I," he murmurs. It was more of a gesture than anything else, not much use when he had more than one scrape and a number of bruises, but no one else offered even that much attention or support. No one else ever really had, his mother excepted. He'd been so anxious that it would prove to be a trick, scared to let himself hope it was real kindness or that S wouldn't learn better. He never has, apparently, and J's glad of that too.
"You're not stupid," he adds. "You can feel it, but you aren't. How many times have I completely fallen apart? Was that stupid?" He's had his reasons, however foolish he feels for them in the moments after he starts to calm down. It's embarrassing and exhausting, breaking down like that, crying and cursing and frightened of shadows. But there are real monsters in those shadows, and he's not wrong to be afraid.
S has his reasons, too. J wishes he'd seen them sooner, that he'd known how to soothe S's worries before they got this bad, but S didn't know either. They're still figuring out how to live around and through and with all of this. As much as he hates the mess that leaves behind, he doesn't think they could do much better. It's not like theirs is a history that cleaves to the usual trajectory of more ordinary relationships, no guidelines or suggestions written out for how to navigate this. "You're doing the best you can, darling. Of course it's overwhelming. I shouldn't have waited so long to say something." Maybe this would have been easier a year ago. J's not sure of it, not quite certain he could have handled it then, but at least he wouldn't have let it fester so long.
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If nothing else, it will be nice if they don't have to worry about that anymore, even if he never winds up shirtless in any other context. At least just a glimpse of him isn't going to send J down the same dark path it did that first day he spent here. Even now, S has to resist the instinct to button his shirt again. Their current position, one he's in no hurry to move from, makes it easier not to give into it, when J probably can't see all that much of him right now anyway.
"I shouldn't have either," he points out, not about to let all of this rest on J's shoulders, even though he knows, too, that he really couldn't have brought it up unprompted. Still, he's not sure he would have even if he could, and that's enough to be worth apologizing for, enough to leave him feeling horribly stupid. He really thought it would be better just not to mention it, but he thought wrong. The same goes for that stupid doctor's appointment. If he'd just told J about it in the first place, they could have avoided all of this fuss, but he wouldn't have had the first idea how to broach that subject. "And of course it's not stupid when you've fallen apart." Tired and self-deprecating, he rolls his eyes at himself. "It only feels like it when I do."
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He's here, after all, to hold S together through it and help patch him back up, the way S has always done for him. As much as he feels horrible afterward for the way he behaves and reacts, it's a bit easier — if also more embarrassing — because S is at his side. He just hopes he can offer a little of the same comfort.
"You had reasons too," he adds after a moment, "for not saying anything. I wish it wasn't like that, but... you can't be sure. I'm..." He hesitates, unsure which of the dozen unflattering possibilities to choose. "Volatile. I'm — I'm trying, I really am, but you can't know how I'd react."
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He also doesn't want to have reacted the way he did in turn, but he knows, logically, that J is right. Were their positions reversed, as they have been in the past, he would probably be saying something much the same, reassuring J that he has reasons to be upset, that it's alright for him to fall apart. His own reasons feel far less justifiable, but it makes sense, in a way. Of course they're both harder on themselves than they would be on each other.
"If I were doing it for fun, it would be very stupid of me," he mumbles. There's nothing fun about any of this, though it is soothing to have J's arms around him as his heart rate and his breathing steady. He hopes that it might even help J a little, too. "I just... didn't want to hurt you. And then I wound up doing exactly that."
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"Or that I were more predictable at least," he says after a moment. "Even to myself. I know you want to protect me, but I... I don't like that it hurts you. That you have to carry so much and hold things back to do it." He wishes, really, that he were easier to love. It's not that he thinks S would ask for a simpler life or even that he regrets the one they have; he just would rather it not be this hard. He heaves a sigh, drawing S tighter against him for a moment, as much of a hug as he can manage when he's already cradling S close. "Sometimes there isn't anything you can do, Hyunie. I'm me. I'll find some way to be hurt whatever happens."
All he can do, he thinks, is what he promised a moment ago — try to be honest, try to be aware. He can't know in advance what will upset him, not always, but he can warn S as soon as he does know. If he speaks up, if he reminds himself that it will hurt less now than if he lets things get worse, then maybe he can avoid real trouble. But none of that really helps him figure out how to make things easier for S when it comes to knowing what to hold back when. It's constantly changing, and few answers to that stay true for long.
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So often, he thinks, they wind up here. In a strange way, it's the very thing that kept him half-clothed for a year and a half, believing that the very fact of his existence would be painful for J. Of course, in some ways, it makes sense that, being so close to each other, they would be all the more likely to hurt each other, too, especially when they're both so fucking stubborn. It just hurts him to hurt J, and to think that there might be no alternative.
"You know me," he mumbles into J's shoulder, content to stay close, to keep holding onto him, for a while longer. "I don't like when there isn't anything I can do." This, too, is a tendency that he knows gets him in trouble, that where he was trying to take some small bit of control over a situation that seemed to be wildly spinning further and further away from him, it came across like him trying to control J. Here, too, it's clearly backfired. He couldn't and can't do anything about the way he looks now, the scars marking his chest, but he could make a point of keeping them covered. He thought it was the right choice. He was wrong.
Fingers idly twisting in J's shirt, more affectionate now than anything else, he sighs. "And it's usually not like this," he adds. Most of the time, he doesn't hold terribly much back. There's just the occasional subject that seems better left untouched. "With this, it just... I didn't realize how big it was getting. I didn't know it was hurting me, not like that."
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More pressing is this, letting S get out the things he's thinking and working through. Hand stroking down S's side, he nods again. "Sometimes you don't know until, all at once, you do," he says. It happens to him a lot, and he's not really sure why. Things just get pushed down until they boil over. With this, he thinks, he really should have noticed. He, at least, should have been less of a coward and spoken up long ago. It's one more thing to add to the long, long list of stuff he can't undo. "Now we know. And you... you can talk to me about it. Or not, whatever you prefer. And we can do something about it. Anyway, if I'm going to be upset about something regardless, I'd rather be upset knowing things than not, I think. Mostly."
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He doesn't know, and his head is too foggy from all the crying to be able to make sense of much of anything. What he does know is that something feels a little like it's been set right, or at least aimed in the right direction. It's not going to be as simple as him just suddenly being comfortable with his scars in J's view, but he doesn't have to try so hard to keep them completely hidden. Maybe the comfort, then, will come with time.
"I don't... want to not talk about it. I think," he says, brow furrowing a little as he tries to sort what's in his head into some semblance of order. "I don't know what I'd want to say, but I don't want to have to keep it put away, either."
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That he has some idea of how to reply helps him a bit, though. "You don't have to," he says, soft and certain. "You don't have to know what to say. And you don't have to say it all at once either. Don't put it away. You can say whatever you need to as it comes to you." Toying with S's shirt, he shrugs. "Sometimes it comes out of nowhere, having something you need to say. It's okay. You can tell me when it does. I mean, unless I'm actively in the middle of a nervous breakdown —" He wrinkles up his nose, reconsidering. "More of one than my daily existence is — then you can tell me. Anytime. Anything."
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"You, too," he murmurs. He knows he's said as much before, probably countless times, but right now, under the circumstances, he thinks it bears repeating. It lets him turn over his own thoughts for another moment or two anyway, difficult as they are to make sense, especially when his head feels all clouded from crying. "Anytime, anything." He clutches absently at J's shirt in turn, mostly just for something to hold onto, the presence of J as reassuring as ever. "And I'll... I'll try to be better at... letting myself talk about it. When I need to."
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There's no escaping who he is and what he's done, and still sometimes it gnaws at him, the fear that talking about it is too much, like S isn't perfectly aware of it all. So the reassurance helps, even if he thinks he shouldn't need it.
"When you want to," he adds, kissing S's hair. "When you can. It doesn't have to wait until it's a need." He should take his own advice, really, and remember to talk to S when he thinks of something that should be shared rather than waiting until he's falling apart to broach some of it. The day that happens, though, is probably far off. And yet he's said so much during his time in Darrow that he feels a quiet wave of guilt over it now. "You always listen to me. That can't be easy sometimes. And it... it's not just things I did or felt. It happened to you, too. I did. I don't — I don't want you to have to hold that by yourself. I can hurt a little if it means you don't have to do it alone. You do it for me."
It's never going to be easy to talk about that time, but it's often harder not to talk about it at all. And all this time, he's gone on about how he felt and what he did and how horrible he is for it without giving S nearly enough room to talk about what it did to him. It's selfish, avoiding that because he knows it will be hard to hear.