Try though he might, S can't help beginning to cry again in earnest at that. At least it's quiet this time, just tears sliding hot down his cheeks, but he hates it all the same. Crying is never exactly pleasant, of course, but it's never as bad as in moments like this, when he can't help the continued thought that he wasn't supposed to be upset here, that he meant to be comforting J after fucking up yet again and upsetting him. It's far too late to take it back, though, as if getting this out in the open has not only made him aware of how much it actually has weighed on him, but also caused him to feel it all the more acutely. This, too, is more of the same, even though he doesn't really even know why. J has called him beautiful countless times over the last year and a half, and he knew even in that moment, that day, that J's reaction wasn't because he thought otherwise. S has just felt otherwise, increasingly convinced every time he looks at himself that the sight of those scars is hideous. Usually, with such compliments from J, he'll tease or shrug them off or turn them back on J himself. The truth is, though, that any of those options are easier than thinking about how very much he doesn't see himself that way.
"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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"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."