It's a simple question, the second one, but there's no simple answer. For S, being with J has always been the easiest thing in the world, making sense even when all the circumstances around them said it shouldn't. He just knew; some part of him, he thinks, felt it instinctively even before he had a conscious awareness of it. This one subject, though, will probably never be simple or easy. Letting it fade into the background has come far more naturally than he once would have expected, but every time it comes up, it's like they wind up back here, everything fraught and tense all over again, an unnatural distance between them. That's why, really, he never said anything. There genuinely seemed to be no need to bring it up over something so minor. All he'd have been doing is reminding J — informing him, if anything, since they've never talked about the extent of it or his recovery in any kind of detail — of the damage done that night. Had it been something more consequential, had there been any complications or concerns, it would be different. That, he wouldn't have kept to himself. Like he tried to say at first, though, this is just routine, a simple fact of his life now, something he barely needs to think twice about anymore.

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."