As much as he wishes he could, S can't disagree with that. It's the very thing that kept him quiet, after all — not fear of J being upset with him, but J being upset with himself. He's seen how easily that can spiral into something big and uncontrollable. Hell, he's seen it happen with smaller things, ones unrelated to the time that J tried to kill him. It was just never as bad as that one instance. He doesn't remember now much of what was actually said, or even what got J to ease back off that proverbial ledge. What he does remember is how fucking scared he was, the horrible, gut-wrenching certainty that he was going to lose J all over again. He's carried that with him for the past year and a half — quieter, but still there, always in the back of his head. J is volatile. As far as S is concerned, with all he's been through, he has every reason to be. S just doesn't want to be the thing that sets him off.

He also doesn't want to have reacted the way he did in turn, but he knows, logically, that J is right. Were their positions reversed, as they have been in the past, he would probably be saying something much the same, reassuring J that he has reasons to be upset, that it's alright for him to fall apart. His own reasons feel far less justifiable, but it makes sense, in a way. Of course they're both harder on themselves than they would be on each other.

"If I were doing it for fun, it would be very stupid of me," he mumbles. There's nothing fun about any of this, though it is soothing to have J's arms around him as his heart rate and his breathing steady. He hopes that it might even help J a little, too. "I just... didn't want to hurt you. And then I wound up doing exactly that."