Reluctant though he is, knowing he must look flushed and tear-streaked and horrible, S lifts his head a little at J's prompting, enough to be able to look at him. He wishes, too, even though it's nonsensical. Wishing doesn't change anything, and had J been there with him, he almost certainly wouldn't have had those injuries to deal with in the first place. Even so, that was the thought he kept coming back to, wanting J with him, even more than he wanted his parents. At least their loss, he'd had a long time to come to terms with, as much as a person can ever do so. J's was still fresh, and he was the only person S could really imagine himself talking to about what happened anyway, somehow existing in his head in duplicate: the J who tried to kill him, and the J who'd been his best friend for so many years, who'd supported him through his grief in losing his parents, the love of his fucking life.

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."