Even with as shaky and vulnerable as he feels, S still manages to pull a face when J says it doesn't look that bad, nose wrinkling slightly. It looks horrible. It does to him, anyway. Before, when he was on his own, that was never the case. He didn't think they looked good, exactly, but he was in pretty terrible physical shape then anyway, too skinny and too pale, exhausted and miserable. Were that not the case, he still wouldn't have had to consider how they would look to someone else then, given that he couldn't have been less interested in being intimate with anyone. Hazy as his memories of that day are, he does remember that, before J saw him and stopped things, S hadn't spared a thought for the scars on his chest at all. He should have. Maybe if he had, maybe if he'd less caught up in the moment and less fucking stupid, he could have prevented things from escalating to such terrifying heights. Maybe they wouldn't be here now, with him feeling guilty for upsetting J and guilty for needing so much comfort and hating that something that used to be so simple now feels nearly impossible.
"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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"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."