Is it fine? S isn't actually sure. He can't, of course, decide that for J or be the one to determine how upset is too upset, but he mostly just feels guilty and uneasy and sad that any of this is even necessary. Aside from how badly he'll always wish that he had just fucking left when J told him to that night, he knows it's not his fault that he looks like this, and to him, it simply makes sense that it would be hard for J. Like he's sure he's said before, like he's more than willing to say again, he doesn't think it's selfish at all. He wouldn't even have thought it was selfish if J never was comfortable trying this again. He may have been waiting for J to broach the subject, but it isn't as if he was sitting around quietly resentful about having to keep his chest covered; if anything, he came to prefer it that way himself. Given what caused that, what he was afraid of, this should be a relief to him, too, and it is, at least in that sense. It's hard, though, to sit here and be seen and touched like this, and to know that, even if this may not have gone half as badly as he feared, it isn't as if doing this once will remove all the baggage from this particular matter.
Like J just said, it's always going to be hard, something that applies to both of them. For himself, forgiving J and starting over together were the easy parts. Living with the aftermath isn't always as much so. The months spent grieving, the trauma of having nearly been killed, the physical scars left behind — those things don't just go away, even if he's mostly tried to conceal the latter two.
As much as it hurts him to see the tears in J's eyes and at least feel like he's the cause, though, he knows too well how much worse this could be. That last remark gives him something to respond to without saying the rest of what's in his head, anyway, which comes as a relief. "You? Overreact? Never," he says, the gentlest sort of tease, before lifting his chin so he can kiss J's forehead. He's not sure he would put it that way, actually, understanding as well as he can why J reacted the way he did, but it also doesn't surprise him that, in that moment, surprised by the sight of them, J saw the scarring as worse than it really is. Until then, S hadn't even thought that much of it at all, at least relative to the rest of that whole mess. Now, of course, is different, and one more thing it's going to be hard to shake.
He doesn't want to say that. But then, his not talking about this is what prompted this whole situation in the first place, so maybe it's better to try to say a little of it after all. "It's funny," he murmurs, quieter now, teeth pressing to his lower lip. "Or not funny, but... After it happened, even when it was still new, I didn't think it was that bad. Too much else on my mind, I guess. No one else around to see them. And now... here... it seems so much worse than I first thought. Even now."
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Like J just said, it's always going to be hard, something that applies to both of them. For himself, forgiving J and starting over together were the easy parts. Living with the aftermath isn't always as much so. The months spent grieving, the trauma of having nearly been killed, the physical scars left behind — those things don't just go away, even if he's mostly tried to conceal the latter two.
As much as it hurts him to see the tears in J's eyes and at least feel like he's the cause, though, he knows too well how much worse this could be. That last remark gives him something to respond to without saying the rest of what's in his head, anyway, which comes as a relief. "You? Overreact? Never," he says, the gentlest sort of tease, before lifting his chin so he can kiss J's forehead. He's not sure he would put it that way, actually, understanding as well as he can why J reacted the way he did, but it also doesn't surprise him that, in that moment, surprised by the sight of them, J saw the scarring as worse than it really is. Until then, S hadn't even thought that much of it at all, at least relative to the rest of that whole mess. Now, of course, is different, and one more thing it's going to be hard to shake.
He doesn't want to say that. But then, his not talking about this is what prompted this whole situation in the first place, so maybe it's better to try to say a little of it after all. "It's funny," he murmurs, quieter now, teeth pressing to his lower lip. "Or not funny, but... After it happened, even when it was still new, I didn't think it was that bad. Too much else on my mind, I guess. No one else around to see them. And now... here... it seems so much worse than I first thought. Even now."