hismelody | (no subject)

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July gives way to August, and with it, though the muggy weather is no less oppressive, S finds his mood lightening a little. It's strange, probably, associating summer with death. It also can't be helped. He's not half as far gone now as he was in those first couple of years, but the loss of his parents is never going to be an easy one to bear, and the days and weeks around the anniversary of their deaths are always going to hurt. Likewise strange is how grief begets grief. For that, he always feels guilty. J is here, after all, alive and well. They've had nearly a year and a half together now that they weren't supposed to have gotten, and S really is, he thinks, the happiest he's ever been. But when that loss rears its head, even happiness hurts. He never got to come out to his parents, never told them how he felt about J. They never got to see him as he is now. They weren't there when he lost the love of his life, a storm he weathered entirely on his own, and something he'll always carry with him. At times like this, it's just a little closer to the surface than usual.

He tries not to let it emerge completely, holding it at bay as best he can. It's a hard time of year, that's all, and at least J knows that already. It makes him a little quieter than usual, and a little more inclined to bring up his parents, something he doesn't typically do all that often, especially knowing that can be a difficult subject for J in different ways. Like a dark cloud slowly but inexorably passing in front of the sun, though, it starts to ease — not like the flip of a switch, exactly, but a more gradual, less noticeable change, some of it lingering still, some of it substantially better. He's still a bit distracted, but he also has a chance to start catching up on the things he didn't feel up to a couple of weeks ago. It's something.

It lets him do more with J, too. Not that he was distant before, but they're both introverted by nature, and with the weight of all that grief, he's more inclined to want to stay in with the one person who understands it, who saw him through it back then. He's tried before, more than once, to try to tell J just how grateful he is for that, how much it meant and still means to him, but there are never the words. All he can really do is attempt to make it up to him in any small ways he can, smiling faintly as J suggests plans, only for him to realize that's the one day he'll be otherwise occupied. "Ah, maybe the day after?" he offers instead, just distracted enough that he doesn't really register what he's saying until the words are out of his mouth. "I have a doctor's appointment that day."

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J sniffles, nodding against S's hair. He knows all too well how that feels. He's done that to S too many times to count and in proportionally much worse ways. "I know," he murmurs. "I love you so much. I wish — I wish I weren't so easy to hurt." It's hard on him, being so fucking fragile all the time, but it's hard for S, too, he knows. S is, he's pretty sure, more or less used to having to adjust for J's issues, trying to compensate for problems that might arise, guessing at things that might set J off. He dances around topics like this to keep J safe. He shouldn't have to be used to it, though. J hates that this is how it has to be. But if he wants S to accept that things can't be the way they used to, that he's not going to magically be fixed, then he has to try and make himself understand that too. Sometimes he actually does.

"Or that I were more predictable at least," he says after a moment. "Even to myself. I know you want to protect me, but I... I don't like that it hurts you. That you have to carry so much and hold things back to do it." He wishes, really, that he were easier to love. It's not that he thinks S would ask for a simpler life or even that he regrets the one they have; he just would rather it not be this hard. He heaves a sigh, drawing S tighter against him for a moment, as much of a hug as he can manage when he's already cradling S close. "Sometimes there isn't anything you can do, Hyunie. I'm me. I'll find some way to be hurt whatever happens."

All he can do, he thinks, is what he promised a moment ago — try to be honest, try to be aware. He can't know in advance what will upset him, not always, but he can warn S as soon as he does know. If he speaks up, if he reminds himself that it will hurt less now than if he lets things get worse, then maybe he can avoid real trouble. But none of that really helps him figure out how to make things easier for S when it comes to knowing what to hold back when. It's constantly changing, and few answers to that stay true for long.

S wishes that too, of course, that J weren't so easy to hurt. Even with as frayed as he feels right now, though, he has the good sense not to say that out loud, knowing it would almost certainly come out wrong. It isn't that he dislikes dealing with the fact of that, after all, like it's something that bothers him about J when that couldn't be further from the truth. Instead, he wishes it for J's sake. Ever since they were young, J has always seemed to feel things so deeply, and that's only gotten truer as they've gotten older. He wishes so desperately that J didn't hurt so much, that what he says last weren't true. It probably is, and there's no comfort in it. He doesn't mind treading cautiously if it means J hurts less; it's hard to think that it might be an inevitable outcome regardless.

So often, he thinks, they wind up here. In a strange way, it's the very thing that kept him half-clothed for a year and a half, believing that the very fact of his existence would be painful for J. Of course, in some ways, it makes sense that, being so close to each other, they would be all the more likely to hurt each other, too, especially when they're both so fucking stubborn. It just hurts him to hurt J, and to think that there might be no alternative.

"You know me," he mumbles into J's shoulder, content to stay close, to keep holding onto him, for a while longer. "I don't like when there isn't anything I can do." This, too, is a tendency that he knows gets him in trouble, that where he was trying to take some small bit of control over a situation that seemed to be wildly spinning further and further away from him, it came across like him trying to control J. Here, too, it's clearly backfired. He couldn't and can't do anything about the way he looks now, the scars marking his chest, but he could make a point of keeping them covered. He thought it was the right choice. He was wrong.

Fingers idly twisting in J's shirt, more affectionate now than anything else, he sighs. "And it's usually not like this," he adds. Most of the time, he doesn't hold terribly much back. There's just the occasional subject that seems better left untouched. "With this, it just... I didn't realize how big it was getting. I didn't know it was hurting me, not like that."

J nods, a slight fond smile on his lips at S's comment. He's not delusional enough to pretend it doesn't frustrate the hell out of him sometimes, but he's perfectly aware of S's need to take care of things and control his situation. Sometimes it's endearing, sometimes infuriating. Mostly it makes J worry, though he doesn't really have any room to talk.

More pressing is this, letting S get out the things he's thinking and working through. Hand stroking down S's side, he nods again. "Sometimes you don't know until, all at once, you do," he says. It happens to him a lot, and he's not really sure why. Things just get pushed down until they boil over. With this, he thinks, he really should have noticed. He, at least, should have been less of a coward and spoken up long ago. It's one more thing to add to the long, long list of stuff he can't undo. "Now we know. And you... you can talk to me about it. Or not, whatever you prefer. And we can do something about it. Anyway, if I'm going to be upset about something regardless, I'd rather be upset knowing things than not, I think. Mostly."

"Mostly," S echoes, a hint of a weary smile playing at the corners of his mouth. In a strange way, there's reassurance in the fact of that — both that J would rather know, making this subject one that might not have to stay quite so off-limits, and that that may not always be the case, making him feel a little less stupid for having thought he needed to keep it to himself. At least they both know he was well-intentioned. That alone leaves them better off than they were in such instances back in Seoul, before J left. He was wrong, but maybe there was no real way to be right. Given the subject at hand, maybe it would have hurt just as much regardless of how it came up.

He doesn't know, and his head is too foggy from all the crying to be able to make sense of much of anything. What he does know is that something feels a little like it's been set right, or at least aimed in the right direction. It's not going to be as simple as him just suddenly being comfortable with his scars in J's view, but he doesn't have to try so hard to keep them completely hidden. Maybe the comfort, then, will come with time.

"I don't... want to not talk about it. I think," he says, brow furrowing a little as he tries to sort what's in his head into some semblance of order. "I don't know what I'd want to say, but I don't want to have to keep it put away, either."

It would be soothing to J if he could have concrete answers to give, if he could say definitively what he would like and what to avoid. Not knowing his own mind is disconcerting even on his good days, and when it comes to things like this, where S's wellbeing is at stake too, it can be gutting not to be... well, easier to live with. None of this can be easy, though. He tries to remind himself that he knows that, that it's been the case for a long time, maybe always. Loving him was never going to be a simple thing for a long list of reasons, stretching all the way back to his conception.

That he has some idea of how to reply helps him a bit, though. "You don't have to," he says, soft and certain. "You don't have to know what to say. And you don't have to say it all at once either. Don't put it away. You can say whatever you need to as it comes to you." Toying with S's shirt, he shrugs. "Sometimes it comes out of nowhere, having something you need to say. It's okay. You can tell me when it does. I mean, unless I'm actively in the middle of a nervous breakdown —" He wrinkles up his nose, reconsidering. "More of one than my daily existence is — then you can tell me. Anytime. Anything."

With this, too, it helps in a strange way to have that caveat given. S knows J better too well for anything else, and he knows he wouldn't believe that sort of reassurance. He wouldn't see it as dishonest, but perhaps just wishful thinking, overly optimistic, and then he would settle right back into not wanting to broach the subject at all. It still isn't going to be as simple as just being told once that it's fine and then never worrying about it again, but maybe with time, he'll get more used to it, maybe it will feel more like something he can do. He meant what he said before, after all. Not talking to J about something — especially something so serious, even if he hadn't known until today just how much it's been bothering him — always feels inherently wrong when J has long since been the only person he talks to about most things.

"You, too," he murmurs. He knows he's said as much before, probably countless times, but right now, under the circumstances, he thinks it bears repeating. It lets him turn over his own thoughts for another moment or two anyway, difficult as they are to make sense, especially when his head feels all clouded from crying. "Anytime, anything." He clutches absently at J's shirt in turn, mostly just for something to hold onto, the presence of J as reassuring as ever. "And I'll... I'll try to be better at... letting myself talk about it. When I need to."

It's ridiculous that J needs to hear that. He knows it is, when S has told him so many times, when he's taken him up on it so often. Even if he were a more outgoing person with any number of other friends, S is and will always be the only person he can really open up to. No one has ever or will ever know him in the same way. He wouldn't want anyone else to. There's too much he's done worse than wrong for that. S loves him, knowing all of it. He doubts anyone else could even like him if they knew just a fraction of his past.

There's no escaping who he is and what he's done, and still sometimes it gnaws at him, the fear that talking about it is too much, like S isn't perfectly aware of it all. So the reassurance helps, even if he thinks he shouldn't need it.

"When you want to," he adds, kissing S's hair. "When you can. It doesn't have to wait until it's a need." He should take his own advice, really, and remember to talk to S when he thinks of something that should be shared rather than waiting until he's falling apart to broach some of it. The day that happens, though, is probably far off. And yet he's said so much during his time in Darrow that he feels a quiet wave of guilt over it now. "You always listen to me. That can't be easy sometimes. And it... it's not just things I did or felt. It happened to you, too. I did. I don't — I don't want you to have to hold that by yourself. I can hurt a little if it means you don't have to do it alone. You do it for me."

It's never going to be easy to talk about that time, but it's often harder not to talk about it at all. And all this time, he's gone on about how he felt and what he did and how horrible he is for it without giving S nearly enough room to talk about what it did to him. It's selfish, avoiding that because he knows it will be hard to hear.

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