For a few moments, S can't respond, his breath caught in his throat as J traces his fingertips along the scars on his chest. He's shaking, he realizes, slight but noticeable, barely aware of the fact that J is too as a result. It isn't as if there's any physical discomfort — that time is long past — or as if he's still worried now about this taking a drastically bad turn like it did before. It's just hard to be seen like this after months of convincing himself it would be for the best never to attempt this. Again, he can't watch J touch him like this, feeling vaguely ill at the thought of what he knows he looks like. This could have been so, so much worse, and he's spent these past months afraid that it would be, but that doesn't mean it's good. The baggage attached to this part of their history never will be, though he's long since forgiven what led to these scars.
"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."
no subject
"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."