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이젠 다시 돌아가고 싶지 않아

It's a dream. It has to be. J knows that, tells himself that over and over until he can't make his mind form the words anymore. At a certain point, the fear and the horror are too much. That's how it always is. He never feels entirely in his own control when he does it, though he knows he is, he must be, to make these kinds of choices. Still, it feels — felt, really — like his hands do the work on their own, like he's watching from afar. It's a terrible contradiction — to need to be far enough removed from it to keep from losing his nerve, to be enmeshed enough to feel it so it has the required effect. To know the fright in the eyes of someone dying at his hands, palpable enough that he takes what he needs from it, held enough at bay he could keep himself from falling apart after the fact or from stopping before he was done.

It's a little bit different tonight. He sees them in the shadows, hardly more than shadows themselves, hovering at the edges of his vision, but there's no victim before him tonight, no murder to relive. There's just a visceral wrongness, like he's hovering on the edge of understanding, aware they're here and that they aren't. He forgets things even as they happen, and it's the last of it he'll remember when he wakes.

There's a car. It's a worn-down old thing, the best he could afford, but it keeps running in spite of that and the damage he's done to it — did to it, that night, going too fast — but it's not moving now. He's sitting behind the wheel and it's quiet and it's dark, and something is very wrong. It's the smell, he thinks, and it takes him a moment for it to click before he realizes he knows it very, very well. It's been a long time, though, since he smelled it so strongly, the sour metallic bite of blood in the air, flooding the car, inescapable. The window won't roll down, and he leans across the seat to try the other (and he wonders, in the back of his head, why he doesn't just open the door, but he doesn't), but his hands slip, the handle slick. The blood was already there, though. He knows that when he sees it, that it isn't touching the door or the seat when he slips that does it. It was already there — is still there, on his hands, on the steering wheel, mottling the passenger seat. He knows it's there when he turns to look at the backseat — too much, more than there should be, more than there was, and it won't come out, it won't ever come out. It's happening now, but when it happened before, he scrubbed at it until his hands were red, his cheeks and eyes were red, and still he felt sure it was everywhere, seeping between the fibers until the seats were soaked in it. And it's not real, it can't be real, because this didn't happen. S didn't die, he knows that, he's sure of it, but he must have, because no one can bleed that much and live.

That's the part that cuts through the panic, slices so sharp he can feel his skin crawl, his breath stop in his throat. There's too much. Is this a dream or was it a dream to think he fixed things somehow? Was he too late? Did he go too far after all? He's faintly aware of the sounds he's making, sharp gasps as he struggles to catch his breath, high-pitched whimpers of protest. When he leans further into the backseat, he's afraid he'll find a body still there, though he should be able to see it from the driver's seat, but he can't stop himself pitching forward, clutching at the armrest. He never got used to this smell. It grew familiar, but he hates it — in the same faraway manner in which he feels everything but abject despair — and he can't get away from it. The knife shouldn't be here, he knows that, he's absolutely certain of it, but then he's not really sure of anything. He left it in his rooms, he knows he did, but maybe he didn't. There's too much that he's can't say with any real confidence, too many patches of time he can't account for, too many memories he might have made up.

It's dark still and he can't breathe, bent forward instead of back, leaning over the blanket and draped over the knees he's pulled up to his chest. Clutching at the sheet, the sounds he makes are incomprehensible even to himself, almost inhuman, harsh, panicked breaths punching out of him as he struggles to get air past how tight his throat has become, past the sobs that start to shake him as soon as his body is alert enough, well before his mind catches up. He tries to call S's name, terrified he isn't there to respond, but he can't make it come out, can't force his body to turn. If he's alone, if it was real, if it's true, then he'll die like this, struggling for air like some of them did. The thought of that is enough to make some part of him want just to give up and let darkness take him again. "Please," he mumbles, desperate, unable to manage anything else. It's hardly the first time he's woken up (he is awake, isn't he?) in a panic, but not like this, rarely so pronounced and all-encompassing.

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It's only at S's prompting that J tilts his head up, just enough to meet his eyes, hurt and shame clouding his face. He's thankful, then, that it's still dark. It's a bit disorienting, having no idea what hour it is, but at least it means S can't see him too clearly. Even if he can make out the feelings in J's expression, maybe he won't see how blotchy and tearstreaked J is now, which is sort of, vaguely, a comfort.

Still, it's excruciating to look at S and know he has to talk about this, that he's made a mess of things and can't just slip around it like he's tried to for months. No mention of that night is ever easy or comfortable, but he feels sick hearing S say what he can't stop thinking about. That S doesn't know what he means makes a part of his brain feel itchy, like he knows something isn't quite what he thinks it is, but he's too tired and miserable to stop and work that out.

Instead he nods, a tiny motion, leaning into S's palm. "Some," he mumbles, gaze lowering again in shame. It's self-protection too, though, as if some part of him is always waiting for S to come to his senses and realize how incredibly terrible J actually is, what an unforgivably awful thing he did. "I tried to make it stop, but I was scared I'd be too late. All over my hands. My pants." Kneeling over S the way he did, it was impossible to avoid. If he'd stayed, he tells himself, as he has so many times before that he's lost count, that he would have been arrested immediately. They wouldn't be here now. "And you. And then the backseat. But tonight — it was so much... No one could survive that."

Even in the dark of the bedroom, his eyes only just beginning to adjust to it, seeing the look on J's face hurts terribly. Somewhere in the back of his head, S can't help but wonder what the hell is wrong with him that he feels so desperately compelled to comfort the man who would have been his killer over the very fact of his having tried to kill him, but that, at least, is a thought easily dismissed. He made up his mind a long time ago. He's seen, these past few months, that first day especially, the effect it's had on J. Now, too, it's obvious how scared he is and how lost, and S aches with it, longing to be able to provide reassurance that it simply isn't possible to give. He's here, and he's alright, and he doesn't feel any less than safe, but he can't change what happened, as powerless against J's nightmares as he is to take away the scars on his chest. They're both of them, in different ways, marked by what happened, and none of that can be undone. He wishes it could, though, wishes there were something he could do or say that would ease J's mind, at least enough for him not to have to wake up from nightmares, sobbing and panicking and barely coherent, in the middle of the night.

Instead, he's pretty sure all he can do is make this worse instead of better. What J is saying is a little more understandable now, but S still doesn't quite get it, unsure how to make the various details he has add up. He was on J's floor, and then he was in the hospital. He was almost dead — technically did die, briefly, so he was told, flatlining and then revived during surgery — and then he was treated just in time not to be. Although he's never known what happened in the middle there, he doesn't understand how his blood could have gotten in J's car, and he doesn't want to have to ask — doesn't want J to have to talk about this any more than he has already — but he can't shake the feeling that there's some essential part of this that he's missing, that he should be able to piece together but can't. If nothing else, maybe he'll be better able to help J through it if he has a better comprehension of what J is trying to say.

"I did survive," he points out. He's said the same thing several times in several ways now, but with J so shaken, it can't hurt to repeat it, to remind him that he's here and alive and safe. "I did. And I love you so, so much." His hand still at J's cheek, he moves it just enough that he can press a kiss there, soft and brief. "I just..." He sighs, still, always, so fucking helpless. "I'm sorry. I just don't understand. How did the blood get in your car? Was I —"

That soft brush of S's lips paired with those precious words leave J feeling at once more and less lost, a small, sad sound drifting out of him. "I love you," he whispers. It's the most important thing he knows. They love each other. Even if it's foolish to do so, even when it's been dangerous, even when he's tried to escape it, they love each other. S is alive. It isn't right that he has to try and be the comforting one now when it's J's own actions setting him off, but J is thankful all the same that he's trying.

He glances away, S's question circling in his head, a flicker of confusion crossing J's face. It's not that he assumed S knew what happened. There was a point where he lost consciousness, where J feared he was dead, so it makes sense he wouldn't remember what came after. It's just that he's been here so long without talking about it that he forgets, in all honesty, that he left that out. Besides, it isn't as if he could have called an ambulance or simply left S out in the cold for someone else to find, so he figured it made sense, that S could piece it together. It's only now, hearing the caution and uncertainty in S's voice, that he fully understands that isn't the case.

He nods, brow furrowing, and steals another small glance at S. "In the backseat," he says, muted with shame. "I didn't know how else. I should have gone in and waited, but I was too scared, I'm sorry." He still felt some small shred of self-preservation that night — not enough to keep him from risking going out to take S to the hospital in the first place, but that was far more important than the possibility of getting arrested. Staying would have only turned out one way, though. "So I just left." Headed home, in fact, to be scared and alone there instead. His voice wobbles again as more spills out of him, buried tension surging up in his chest. "I didn't know what was happening. I couldn't ask anyone if you were okay. I thought they'd find me if I tried, or I'd call and they'd say you died, and I hated not knowing but I was afraid to find out for sure and it was horrible, but that was my fault... I didn't know what to do."

For so long, S wondered futilely about the rest of what happened that night, knowing that he would never get any answers, eventually accepting that it didn't matter all that much. He almost died, and then he lived, and the details in between stopped seeming particularly important when it was impossible to find out. Here, he knows there are things he could have asked about, but even when it crossed his mind to be curious as to whether J meant to spare him or was even aware of doing so, it didn't seem worth asking. They've talked about that night so rarely, and in the vaguest of details. With as upsetting as it's been every time the subject has come up, there seemed to be no point in discussing it further. Whatever happened, he lived, J died, and they found each other here. The specifics surrounding all of it hardly seemed relevant.

Apparently, though, they are, so much more so than S could ever have anticipated. Still he doesn't feel quite certain of what he's hearing and of what it means, but there's enough, his throat tightening as he takes it in, as he gradually processes this new, unexpected information. In the backseat. I should have gone in. It would be overwhelming enough to find out for sure that J did know he was still alive, at least then, but this goes so much further than that. S barely knows what to make of it, never mind how to respond, save for an instinctive shake of his head. He can admit that some of J's apologies have been warranted, but this one isn't in the slightest when it turns out that J went to much, much greater lengths than S ever knew.

"Don't," he whispers, not realizing until he does so how close he is to tears now himself, his voice wavering and body tense. He wants, instinctively, to curl in on himself like J did moments ago, but he would have to pull away for that, and in the back of his head is the distinct desire not to give J the wrong idea about his reaction here. "Don't apologize. You —" It still doesn't quite make sense, even as the truth seems to be plainly in front of him now, so far from what he imagined to have happened that night. His breath catches, and his hand leaves J's cheek only to press to his own mouth instead, as if doing so might help him maintain some shred of composure. "You took me to the hospital? You... you wanted to..."

J watches him, worried and awed at once, heart aching to see how S is reeling. It hadn't occurred to him that S wouldn't have put this together on his own or, given that it was his own fucking fault any of this was necessary, how it could possibly matter. But now, finally grasping that S didn't know, it's all the more stunning to realize S has stayed with him all this time anyway.

He tried so hard to minimize the damage he did. There's no undoing how he hurt S, no way he can possibly change what he did, the scars still on S's chest ample proof of that. But he tried, at least, to give S a chance of surviving, and for a little while tonight, he was so sure he didn't manage it after all. He's still trembling a little, he thinks, shaken by his dream and by having to discuss this and how tired he still is.

"I had to," he says, a soft note of protest in his voice. "I didn't know what else to do." He's killed people, but he's never healed anyone. He wouldn't know how to start, and he wasn't taking any chances with S. "It was the only thing I could think of." Had he called anyone to come help him — well, he didn't really know anyone back there, least of all anyone who would have provided assistance, and a doctor or ambulance would have been too slow and, perhaps, the end of him. That he killed himself not long after is beside the point. The shame of his being caught and his crimes revealed, the horror of a trial — how could he make his mother go through that? His voice catches again, a small, hurt sound curling in his throat. "I thought I was too late. Only imagining a pulse. Your pulse. I couldn't even tell if you were breathing. If it was hopeless even to try."

He still didn't know, that last day of his life. It's funny. He'd thought then that maybe he'd find S again on the other side of things, and he has.

There are things S would respond to that with, if he could. J didn't have to. The easier thing would have been to, at the very least, if he couldn't finish what he started, leave him for dead somewhere. That would have been safer, too. Had J not already been dead by the time S finally came to, he could easily have turned him in. He wouldn't have, of course, but that's beside the point. All this time — and it's been months, first back in Seoul and then here, of not knowing but assuming something vague and so far from what's turned out to be the truth — J was the one who got him help. Who wanted him to live, despite having been the one to try to kill him. Who put himself at risk in the name of trying to save someone who could very well have been dead already. It was snowing that night, S remembers, and still somehow J got him to safety in time, and for all this time, S has had no idea.

So thrown is he, so moved, that he feels a little sick with the shock of it, though it isn't a bad thing in the slightest. At least when tears finally begin to spill down his cheeks, he's quiet about it, even if his sniffle immediately gives him away. It's hard to know what to say and hard to catch his breath for the tightness in his chest, hard, too, to wrap his head around this new development, even if the past few minutes make much more sense now in this context. He just had no idea, and it's difficult to comprehend that in itself.

If it weren't for this place, if they hadn't both shown up here, he would never have known at all. He could so easily have spent the rest of his life not knowing that the last thing J did for him wasn't trying to kill him but trying to save him, and somehow that hurts.

"It wasn't hopeless," he mumbles, his voice small and unsteady, drawing in on himself as best he can without pulling away, unaware of doing so. "It wasn't. I — They told me, if I'd gotten there even a few minutes later..." He would have been gone. Soon enough, they both would have been. Not for the first time and probably not for the last, S is struck by the thought that he shouldn't be getting emotional over this, that he meant to be comforting J, not the other way around, but of all the things he could have heard tonight, this has to be one of the most unexpected. Eyes wide and glassy with still-falling tears, he glances up at J in the dark. "You saved my life."

Though it's been months now since he died, unsure if S still lived, J is shaken by it all anew, overwhelmed by how nearly he killed S after all. He only just made it, sped through the snow as fast as he dared with minutes to spare, and it's terrifying and a relief all at once, months late. What S says, though, throws him all the more, and he shakes his head quickly. "No, no," he says, because S is wrong this time. "I almost killed you."

He's much more alert suddenly, the product of all this adrenaline spiking, his heart beating too fast. He does his best to ignore it, more focused on the way S has started to shrink in on himself, and how J can hear the tears he can't quite see. "Hyunie, darling," he murmurs, urgent, unfurling himself just enough to reach up, to touch S's cheek in turn. "Ah, it was so close." He almost says he's glad he drove so quickly, but he bites it back, knowing that's a sore subject. He is, though, relieved he had the presence of mind to get them there in one piece as quickly as he did, if nothing else. S is safe now, even if he is crying, and that's all that matters.

The crying is concerning, though. J didn't anticipate that there would be crying. Granted, he didn't think he'd have to talk about this at any point, and he certainly didn't mean to do so right now, but he hadn't thought it would get to S like this. He's mostly certain it's a good kind of crying, based on what he can make out of S's expression and what he's said, but it's hard to be entirely sure of much of anything. "Really, though, it's not — I tried to kill you. It's not the same." It's astonishing how much easier that is to say when he's too worried about S to think about how horrible it is. "Are you okay?"

Shaken as he is, the last thing S wants is to worry J now. He nods quickly, not sure how visible it will be but figuring that J at least will feel it, his hand leaving his mouth so he can curl it gently around J's wrist instead. He didn't want to do this — he wouldn't have, if he could have seen this coming at all — but having started, he's not sure he can stop, at least not yet, and even as his physical instinct is to curl in on himself, he wants any contact he can get, too. Thinking about this — he's had plenty of time with the attempted murder, with his own near-death. He never would have guessed, though, that it was J who brought him to safety, and between being emotional about that and retroactively unsettled by how close he came to never finding that out, it's hard to pull himself together. There is, at least, a little comfort in not falling apart completely, but the tears keep coming, no matter how much he wishes they wouldn't.

"I'm okay," he replies, still unsteady but earnest. He's alive, he's healed, he's with the man he loves, both of them here and back together. It's just that any one or all of those things could so easily not have been true. For a time, it was far more likely, a given, really, that he would never find out any more about what happened that night, and the truth of it touches him far more differently than he would have anticipated. Whatever unknowns he knew there were, he hardly expected any revelations this significant.

J is wrong, too. S is sure of that; he just has to find the words to convey as much, struggling for a moment, both to get a deep enough breath and to figure out where to start. "I'm okay," he says again instead, buying a little more time. "I am. I just..." He does tense now, tightly contained even as he longs to keep J close. "I didn't know. That it was you. I just figured... I was left somewhere and someone found me, or something." Sniffling again, he pulls a face, nose wrinkling. "I didn't even know if you knew... I was alive or not. If you meant for me to be, or..." All this time, he's wondered. He knew what spared him, what held J back, but he had no way of knowing whether or not that was conscious or intentional or not, if J meant to leave him alive or believed he was dead. Never, though, did he consider this possibility, that J not only knew but actively tried to save him, despite the consequences it could have had for him. In that sense, J is right after all. It's not the same. It's so much more meaningful. J tried to kill him, yes, but that only makes his change of heart and the lengths he went to all the more significant. "And I never would have known."

That might be the worst part, the most painful. That, and the way J is so quick to deny what good he might have done. As predictable as that much is, S still hates it, even more than he hates not knowing how to convince him otherwise. "I wouldn't be here," he finally murmurs, ducking his head, "if it weren't for you. If you hadn't changed your mind. Tried, even when you thought you might have been too late." His voice wavers more considerably now, teeth pressing hard to his lip for a moment in a useless attempt to hold back a tiny sob that escapes him anyway. "Risked yourself for me."

The thing is, to J, it was so utterly self-evident that he would do so that he forgot all the reasons that just isn't the case until now. It would have been easier, perhaps, in terms of the consequences, at least legally, but he can't even think past that to consider what he would have done differently. He can't stomach imagining how he would have proceeded from there.

He hardly knows where to go from here, for that matter, how to respond when S is clearly overwhelmed by this revelation. His thumb strokes over S's cheek, his heart aching, free arm moving to wrap around S. They're all tangled up, a messy little ball on their bed, scattered limbs pressed close, and it is, J is pretty sure, the only way he can feel safe right now. "Not much of a risk," he says hoarsely. "I wasn't — I didn't think it through, it wasn't some grand plan to save your life. I snapped and then when I came to my senses —" He shudders and swallows hard, trying to push through the horror of it, the queasy feeling that comes with remembering that night, always far too vivid and too hazy all at once.

"I thought I killed you," he admits, voice dropping, low and rough. "And then when I thought maybe, maybe, I hadn't — I didn't sit and think if it was a risk or if I was making a choice. You make it sound... heroic, Sihyun-ah. I was scared and I did the only thing I could think of, that's all." He doesn't deserve credit or tears. S is the one who has stayed, not knowing whether or not the man he loves let him live by accident. He's braver and better and more loyal by far than J has ever been. If S had lived and J had been caught for making it happen, no matter how much he sought to avoid that, it would have been worth it.

It's funny, really, or it might be with a different subject at hand, or if he were less emotional or more awake. They're so much alike in so many ways, the two of them, and yet there are times it seems like they approach things from exactly the opposite directions. J talks about it like what he did was nothing, insignificant, and yet the reasons he gives just make it, to S, mean all the more. Whether J thinks it was one or not, it was still a choice. If it didn't feel like one, if it was all he could think to do, as far as S is concerned, that only speaks to who he still is and always has been deep down. S knew — not all along, but after he got and read J's journal — that J loved him still, that he felt guilty about what happened, but he made the harder decision without seeming to think it was one. It would have been easier, S is sure, to leave him for dead, even to do so while hoping for the best, and less dangerous, too. He knows, of course, that he has a tendency to think the best of J while J has a tendency to think the worst of himself, but he's not actually sure it's ever been a disparity this vast, or something that seems to him so completely ridiculous to try to diminish.

"The fact that that was your instinct..." he starts, trailing off with another shake of his head. Trying to maintain some sense of calm is becoming increasingly difficult, but he tries, focusing on the way he and J are all entangled now. It should be awkward, and it is, a bit, but there's comfort in that, too. They always were inextricably bound together, from the very start. To be intertwined like this, limbs crossing each other's, both trying to hold on and to reassure, is as grounding as anything could be right now, when he feels so terribly shaken. This is, he thinks, a good thing, but it's still a massive shift, bound to make him feel unsteady, too emotional to act like he isn't.

Breath shaky, he lets out a heavy exhale, not really wanting to say this but not knowing how to make his point without being blunt about it. "I could have turned you in," he points out, looking away again as he does. "I didn't — I wouldn't have, if you hadn't already been... But I could have." Close as they already are, it takes everything in him not to start clinging to J outright, as if he's the one who needs to be assured now that he's alive. That they both are. "If getting me to safety was the only thing you could think to do, I think that says a lot." And he had no idea. All these months and he never had a clue. Somehow, though he's not sure why, he feels a bit guilty for that.

S has already looked away, but J does the same too, turning his head to hide it against S's shoulder, his hand still resting at S's cheek. "I know," he mumbles. He was very much aware of the fact; for that matter, he hates that some small part of him had to point it out even that night, to remind him that trying to ensure S's survival could mean his own death. It just didn't matter. It was sheer madness for him to think even for a moment — or to stop thinking long enough to believe — that he might have been in any way better off with S dead.

"If you had, though," he continues, shifting a little so he's not speaking into S's shirt anymore, "it would have been right." He bites his lip hard, forcing himself to take another deep breath, eyes squeezing shut. When S is crying, it's hard for him not to do so himself, a few tears still slipping down his cheeks now and then despite his best efforts. It's just never easy to think about that night, and he tries really fucking hard never to do so in any kind of detail. "I wouldn't have had to get you to safety if I hadn't attacked you, Hyunie. I..." He sniffles, throat aching. "I really thought I killed you. And all I could think about was how I loved you and I'd killed you and then maybe you were alive, and if I didn't try — I couldn't have lived with that."

It's not very helpful, admittedly, saying that, because he didn't make it very long past that point in his life. That, too, is something he doesn't think about much. He's been here for a long while now, and he's been more or less healthy and happy and, if not entirely a shining beacon of mental wellbeing, at least somewhat stable. No good comes of dwelling on how even having the slight hope that maybe his efforts saved S only helped him live a week more, or thinking about how, if he'd been sure S died, he doesn't know if he would have lasted the night. He's not sure he'd be able to be here even now or that he'd be able to let S hold him, love him. All of that hinges on the fact that he was terrified enough just to follow his instinct without overthinking it and that he didn't get into another accident on his way to the hospital.

"I only had to take you," he says, "and leave you — I just left you there on the ground — if I hadn't lost my temper, I wouldn't have had to do that. You wouldn't have been hurt." How S can look at this and not see that, he doesn't know. He's grateful for it, really, but it hurts, too, wondering if he'll ever see himself half as kindly as S does.

Even now, it's hard to hear — not just to think back to that night and how he almost died, how he was almost killed by the man he loves, but to know the effect it had on J. Some of it, he could see in J's words and the way he wrote, however vaguely, about what happened. He's known it since then, too, with the undeniable toll it's taken whenever they've so much as danced around the subject. This, though, is the most either of them has said about it by far, and it hurts terribly, even as there's an odd sort of reassurance in some of it, too. S wouldn't be here, sharing his life and apartment and bed with J, if he thought that he had any reason to worry or that J could do something of the sort without caring, but that doesn't mean part of him isn't soothed by hearing it for sure. Mostly, though, it just hurts. This development may have left him reeling, still hard to process when he had assumed something so different, but he knows now without a doubt that he wouldn't be alive if it weren't for J. His life wouldn't have been in need of saving, either, but it's everything that happened after that feels far more important to him, more representative of the man he loves than a spell of madness spurred on by someone with their own reasons to want him gone.

In the end, wherever he was left, however close a call it might have been, J chose to get him to safety rather than to protect his own. S doesn't understand how he can't see how moving that is, even if he's not altogether surprised by that fact.

"Right or not," he replies slowly, almost to himself, "I couldn't have lived with it, if I did that." Given everything at hand and how overwhelmed he is, some part of him gets stuck on that even now, a hypothetical he can't play out. He knows, though, that he could never have brought himself to do it, already having decided what story he was going to tell before he found out that J was already gone and there was no one to protect. It's fucked up, probably, and definitely pathetic, but he can't bring himself to regret it with the way things have turned out since then. Looking up again, he shrugs without pulling away. "Even then, I just... loved you. I didn't know yet. That there were others. Why it happened. I remember —"

He should stop. Some part of him is aware of it, that if they go down this road, they'll say things they can't take back and only get themselves more upset, but now that they've started, it's hard to hold it in. Maybe he'll never get J to see it the way he does. Maybe it's even for the best that he doesn't. But he still wants J to know that he does, and why he does.

"I thought you killed me, too," he says, softer still, as small as he can make himself. "I was dying. And I knew I was dying. And all I could think was — 'He must hate me even more than I thought he did.' I thought that was why..." Twisting a bit, he swipes at his other cheek with one hand, though it does little good when the tears don't stop coming. "But you tried to save me, too. You did save me. There's nothing only about that. Just because I was... hurt by you... It doesn't make what happened after mean less. If anything, it means more that you did that for me anyway."

He was so sure he was doing better. And J knows, distantly, that he really is. He's felt a lot safer and steadier and happier since he came here. The darker days have been easier to bear now that he doesn't have to try and pretend them away, even if they're always hard. They still happen and he's not sure they'll ever stop, but he knows now that he can survive them. That he doesn't have to do so alone.

But he hadn't quite realized how a big part of that was him trying to bury all of this as deeply as he could, refusing to pull out these memories to look at. He couldn't escape them. They still came to him in his sleep, flickered through his thoughts more than is comfortable, but he's been able to avoid dwelling on it or discussing it for the most part. And now that he's talking about, it's clear to him why he's done so — it fucking hurts. Even now, S is so loving, so gentle. Even saying that J hated him, he's kind. He didn't deserve any of what J did to him.

But he still gives J his love, still stays, the pair of them tangled together forever, and the least he can do, J tells himself, is to try to listen. He hasn't heard this before. He hadn't wanted to. But he's wanted S to be open with him, and, on that level, it's strangely nice, no matter how badly it stings. He doesn't want to think about the others, the one S found out about later. Right now, he can only focus on S and on trying not to cry too hard.

"I love you," he says, voice breaking, the only explanation he has. "Maybe I did hate you, but that was because I loved you too." He was furious in that moment, he remembers that much, though that night is strange in his memory, bursts of unflinching clarity jutting out of the panicked haze. "I was so angry and... sad, and I missed you, and I hated that I missed you, and..." He sighs, shaking his head slightly, forcing himself to take a deep breath. There was a lot more to it than that, but all of that played a big part. Had he held his ground, listened to his better self, he would have let S go instead of snapping like he did. He tried. No self-control, no strength. But S sees love in his actions, and J can admit that's what propelled him. It isn't as if he thought getting S to the hospital would do anything to even the moral scales of his misdeeds. He just prayed he could spare the man he loves.

Brow furrowing, he leans into S, head on his shoulder. He's a little dizzy, but it helps to rest against S like this, looking up at S without having to lift his head. Though it's still hard to look at what he did in any kind of a positive light, he tries to understand what S is saying. He did live, after all. And if J hadn't sped through the snow, he wouldn't have. How they got to that point matters, and he thinks S is dismissing it a bit too much, but had the precipitating events been different, he knows, he would see the results differently too. His hand falls to rest at S's other shoulder, fingers curling in his shirt. "I saved you?" For a long time now, he's been incredibly cautious, trying hard to be good, to be steady and restrained, sure that he's not capable of much more than destruction and pain. To think of any of what he did in the months before he came here in a positive light is difficult when he didn't think that he could do good things then. It's a touch disorienting to try and wrap his head around now. "Did I?"

This hurts, too, the softness and uncertainty in J's voice, the way it breaks with his tears. It's hardly the first time they've wound up crying over their past, and S suspects it won't be the last. With this, though, it feels different somehow, a subject they've both done their best to avoid coming to light at last, and bizarrely comforting revelations along with it. Before, he'd convinced himself that it didn't really matter how he lived, because he did, and it was almost a punishment to have to do so — his whole family dead, J dead, too, himself the only one of J's victims who lived. Any one of those alone would have been a heavy burden to carry, but all of them together was awful, the loneliness so terribly oppressive. S isn't sure he realized the extent of it until he didn't have to be lonely anymore, and even then, he tried not to dwell on it too much. He's done his best to be open with J, but there hasn't seemed to be any point in talking about it. Although he never felt as low as J did, never considered ending his own life, there was a time when he couldn't help wishing that he hadn't survived, half-convinced that it might have been better, easier, that way.

He didn't know then, though, that it was J who kept him alive when he shouldn't have been, or even that J knew he lived at all. Hearing J's question now, he's relieved instead for the answer he can give, though relief isn't enough to stop his crying. A soft sound in his throat, he nods, wide-eyed, leaning against J in turn. "Yeah," he murmurs, his own voice breaking in turn. "You did." His hand finds J's as he speaks, the one resting on his shoulder, and gently he guides it lower, down to his heart and the scars left behind by J's knife, wanting J to feel his heartbeat. He hasn't, since that first day, taken off his shirt in front of J, and he has no intention of doing so now or maybe ever, but this seems like proof of a sort — that he almost died but recovered, and he wouldn't have done so if not for J. As long as S has known him, he's been brave in ways that are awe-inspiring. Still he thinks none compare to this, driving through the snow to save the life of someone he tried to kill. It didn't matter to S before how he lived, but it does now. He almost died because of J, yes, but he's alive now because of him, too, and that's fucking incredible. "You saved me." Though he tries to hold it back, another little sob escapes him. "I didn't know. I had no idea that it was you."

That in itself still feels horrible. He knows now, but he so nearly didn't. If not for this place, he would have lived the rest of his life, however long it might have been, not knowing. Even here, it might never have come up if not for J dreaming about that night, and S can't exactly be appreciative of anything that would wake his boyfriend in such a panic. Still, now that he does know, he wouldn't have wanted not to, and only in part because he hopes it might do J some good to hear this and to know how he feels about it. "But I lived because of you. Because you didn't have to stop and think about it and decide, you just... did it." A few minutes later and he would have been dead. That much isn't just his opinion, it's a fact. Had J not done what he did when he did, it would have ended a different way. Believing that J hated him would have been the last thought S ever had. The very notion of that brings on a fresh burst of tears, though it makes little difference at this point. "You kept me alive."

J's hand shakes a little under S's, pressed warm between S's palm and his chest. The fabric is thin enough that he can feel precisely what he thinks S wanted him to, the way his pulse races, heart beating strong and sure. He is, in spite of J and because of him, alive, and J can't help himself, starting to cry again. In the few times he's allowed himself to dwell on what happened, most of them in the days after, he saw it as just another desperate bid to fix the unfixable, a flailing attempt to undo the damage he'd caused. The only right, reasonable thing he could possibly do, despite the long stream of wrong and irrational behavior that made up his last months in Seoul. He snapped and passion and emotion overcame him, but he did his best to try and do what he could for S. Even knowing S lived, it's felt like such a small thing, a tiny miserable effort in the face of terrible odds and trouble he caused.

He keeps his palm pressed to S's chest, taking some comfort in that steady beat, even as he stifles a sob against S's shoulder, a strange surge of relief flooding him. "I would've said something," he said, "but I thought — it was my fault, so I didn't think — it just evened out. Not even that, I tried, but it didn't seem like enough, and that night was so horrible." He winces. "Worse for you, I know. I just... I had to try." He sniffles, swallowing hard, trying to regain a little calm. In spite of the rush of emotions, there's some odd comfort in it. "You saved me too. When I came here."

He still does, if J is honest. Just because things have gotten much, much better since he arrived doesn't mean that he doesn't have dark and difficult days, times when he frets over how the world might yet be better off without him. S is the one who keeps him going, who talks him down — or up, really, as the case may be. There's some satisfaction in the realization that he might have done the same for S in any way.

Tenuous — nonexistent, really — as his composure has already been, S can't maintain whatever remains of it when he hears J sob against his shoulder. Although he hasn't been able to keep from crying, he's been attempting, so far, to be as quiet as he can about it. Now, though, there's no suppressing it, nor is there any way of stopping himself from clinging to J, his other arm wrapped around him, holding him close as if he needs to be saved again now, as if he's drowning and J is all that's keeping him afloat. With as confusing and overwhelming as everything is, it feels a little like that's the case. New and unexpected as this information is, he's still reeling, aware of the truth of it but struggling to take it in. The same is true of what J says now, in a way. That much, at least, on some level, S knew. He remembers how terrified he was that first day J was here, how certain that he was about to lose him all over again. He knows he must have had a hand in talking him off that ledge, so to speak. Having it phrased like that, though, is frightening and relieving all at once, reassurance that he was able to do some good and yet emphasizing just how dire it was.

"I love you," he says again, mumbled into J's hair. It is, always, the truest and most important thing he knows, an innate, unshakeable part of himself. That would still be so even if J hadn't been the one to save him — even if J had believed him dead after all — but now that he knows the truth, there's something oddly fitting about the fact that neither of them would be here if not for the other. These past few months especially, he's had a lot of overly romantic ideas of the two of them genuinely being meant to be, fated to be with each other somehow, but he's not so sure there's nothing to that. They're just right, in every possible way, even when things have, on occasion, gone horrifically wrong. "It was enough."

He only wishes he could have done the same in turn, saved J before this place. S can't let himself think about that now, though, or about how he wishes, too, that he could have told J then that he'd lived. Even if he had been able to do either, they would never have stood a chance back there. Winding up here was, in so many ways, their best chance at being together, both of them alive now and safe, the two of them the only ones who know about J's crimes, a freedom afforded to them here that he never expected to get. "And I'm so glad," he adds instead, softer now, so deeply tender, "that I found you here. That... that we could save each other."

J stifles another small sob against S's shoulder, clinging tight to him. Though the reason now is much, much better than when he first woke, crying is still crying, exhausting and embarrassing and a little bit painful and a lot stressful. He wants very much for it to stop, but when S says things like that in that gentle, loving way of his, J can't help it. He's already so tired and emotional, and he loves S so much, and he wishes he could say something beautiful or profound that would answer what S has just said or even sound vaguely coherent. Instead all he has are little hiccuping whimpers muffled into fabric as he wriggles closer. Part of him wishes he had the energy and focus to shift around so he could sit in S's lap properly, making it easier to hug him and to be held, but he just doesn't.

"Why are you so fucking romantic?" he mumbles instead, tipping his head back to press a kiss to S's jaw, a little bit petulant. He knows that S wants him to be nicer to himself, and it isn't as if he hasn't tried. There are things he can see that he does to and thinks about himself that aren't fair, even outright cruel, often irrational, and he tries to curb those where he can. But a lot of the time, he's looked at it very differently from his boyfriend; he can try and do better in this life than he did in the last one, but he doesn't deserve mercy or compassion for what he did and how he suffered as a result. With the way S puts it, at least for a little while, J feels like S has taken away one more thing to hate about himself, and it's just further proof that S is the best boyfriend he could possibly have ever gotten, but it's also weird in a slightly hollow way, a small chunk of his self-knowledge chipped out as he tries to fashion a new understanding to put in its place.

It's not going to happen all at once. He has trouble wrapping his head around the idea of it. But now that the possibility is there, J wants desperately for it to be true, to be able to believe he really did a good thing. "I might need to hear that one again," he says, swallowing against the hoarseness in his throat now. "A few times. Before it makes sense. But I..." He sniffles again, taking a moment to hide his eyes against S's shoulder before he glances up. "I'm glad too." He wouldn't be here still if it weren't for S, he knows that, not just speculation but almost absolute fact. Nothing is set in stone, true, but he has trouble imagining any future for him on his own, any version where he lived without S here to help him regain his stability and his will to keep going.

At J's question, S lets out a short, surprised laugh, choked with tears and still so fond. "I guess you bring out the romantic in me," he says, holding J as close as he can. The angle is a bit awkward, the two of them all twisted up as they are, but he hardly cares. It's comfortable anyway just to be here, his boyfriend in his arms, both of them alive. He so easily could have not been. J wasn't. S has thought it before, that it's a miracle they found their way to each other across space and time and life and death, but he's all the more aware of it now, in light of this revelation. The only reason he's alive is because J brought him to safety, risking his own in the process. If what J said is true — well, S hesitates to give himself that much credit, but he knows he must have played some part in helping J find a way to stay alive. Neither of them would be here if not for the other, the two of them defying all possible odds to wind up together. Of course that makes him feel fucking romantic. He had, he thinks, a good example of a relationship to look to when he was young, his parents still so in love with each other, but what he and J have is something all its own, a kind of love he wouldn't have thought would be possible in real life.

"And I'll tell you," he adds, sniffling. "As often as you need to hear it, I'll tell you." It's not something he could lose sight of now if he tried. For all those months, the time between J's trying to kill him and his waking up in the hospital, disoriented and in pain and alone, has been a blank. What happened in between, he could only guess, piecing together the barest outline of events from what the doctors told him — that someone dropped him off outside barely alive, that he almost didn't survive surgery, what the extent of the damage done was. The last part, much like he doesn't intend to let J see the scars on his chest again, he has no interest in ever telling J about. All J needs to know is that he lived when he came so close to dying, that the attempt to get him to safety worked, and if he needs to be reminded of that, then S will keep reminding him.

Taking as deep a breath as he can, he shakes his head, still stunned. "I didn't know," he murmurs again, more to himself than to J, only half-aware of doing so. Somewhere in the back of his head, he still feels like he shouldn't talk about this at all. It's the most they've ever done so, though, and now that they've started, it's harder to hold back, given how unlikely they are to bring this up again, at least for another long while. "I wish I'd known. The way you wrote about it... I knew about the before, but not the after."

J smiles a little, comforted by S's laugh. He considers briefly that it might be good to lay down again, then decides against it. Though he feels better now, he's scared of sleeping again so soon, and tired enough he might do so. Instead, he gathers the energy to draw back a bit. It takes some awkward scrambling to extricate himself from S's hold, and then to turn and settle himself properly over S's lap, legs draped over his, arms wrapped around S's waist. It's better, he thinks, more comfortable. But it also gives him a moment before he replies.

There's a lot he shut out. He never forgot, never could, but he makes himself ignore it. With practice, he's reached a point where much of it slips his mind for days, even weeks on end, only showing up in quick flashes. That whole week after he tried to kill S — after he took him to the hospital, he adds for himself, silently stern — it was unbearable. It's not something he wants to look back on.

For S, though, he can do anything. He can, at least, try. "I know," he says finally, more serious again, nodding slightly. "I just... I didn't know how to write about it. I forgot to write much at all. Couldn't think. Or stop thinking." He worries at his lower lip, cautiously allowing himself to prod at the old wound, testing out those memories. "I think I was worried someone might read it. Or that, if I wrote it down, it would tempt fate, and you wouldn't make it. I know that's stupid, but..." He wrinkles up his nose, leaning his head against S's shoulder again. "I was a bit less than rational at the time, you may have noticed."

When J shifts, so does S, moving carefully around and with his boyfriend. Instinctively, really. His eyes have adjusted to the dark about as much as is possible, but that's still only so much, and his vision is blurry with tears. He can feel it, though, and settles in turn, arms around J as well. He should probably turn on a light, either that or convince J to go back to sleep. There are a lot of things, actually, that he should do, like check the time and call work to leave a message saying he won't be in, or get up for water or tea and maybe a painkiller, his head spinning. Right now, he doesn't want to do any of them. Here in the dark, with J warm in his lap, it feels like the rest of the world doesn't exist, like it's just the two of them here, separate from everything else. Somehow, though he can't speak for J, it feels easier to say these things like this, like it's safer to do so largely unseen. These truths will never leave their home anyway, but the dark still seems to act like a shield of some kind, keeping everything contained for them.

At least what he's said doesn't seem to have gone over poorly, a ghost of a smile curving his mouth as he presses a kiss to J's hair again, staying close, breathing him in. "No, really?" he replies, ever so gently teasing, a tender acknowledgment that he knows J is right — that saying he was a bit less than rational is an understatement, really — without, hopefully, making the mood any more grim than it already is. He's deeply aware of how often J has thought that he makes light of too much, but he's also pretty sure that this could easily be too oppressive if he doesn't try to counter it just a little.

Besides, he needs a moment to figure out how to respond, his thoughts fuzzy at best, the rest of J's words taking a moment longer to parse. Someone did read it, he wants to say, because he did, but that still doesn't make sense. Writing about trying to save him shouldn't have been the part of what happened that night to try to hide. Writing about trying to kill him — about intending to try to kill him, for that matter, and the plan and the reasons behind it — should have been worse by far. Unless, he realizes, J didn't want someone to know he lived.

S was already fairly certain that the professor hadn't known he lived. The day he arrived here confirmed it. Hearing J put it like that, though — and S isn't even sure he realizes what he's saying, or what it means — makes him feel a little sick again, his smile fading and his hold on J tightening just a bit, keeping him secure in his arms as if trying to protect him even now. "You didn't want him to know, did you?" he nearly whispers, not entirely aware of what he's saying or of the small voice in the back of his head saying he shouldn't. Tired and emotional and overwhelmed as he is, it's hard to summon up that kind of logic. "That you couldn't kill me. That you tried to get me help instead of finishing it."

Edited 2021-08-22 10:51 (UTC)

It takes J's thoughts several seconds to catch up with his instincts, body tensing slightly as S holds him tighter. Because S is tense, he thinks, because the way S speaks now is worrisome, like they're trying to hide a secret even in the dark.

Because he knows who S means without having to ask, and that makes something twist in J's stomach, unnerved.

Which is ridiculous. There are only so many people who might have had cause or desire to enter his rooms. Of course it's easy to figure out who S means. He never much liked the professor, which used to frustrate J to no end, but it's been so unimportant for so long. He's pushed all of that aside as much as he can; here, in Darrow, safe and alive and no longer pursuing music — however much that thought makes his heart ache even now — there's no need to think of his old mentor. There's no need to discuss him either.

He tries not to squirm, unsure if he wants to pull away or get closer. "I didn't want anyone to," he says. "If someone found out, they could have found you and hounded you with questions about me." He clenches his jaw, annoyed, though with himself now. It sounds plausible even to him. He might have thought it in passing at the time, for that matter. But it isn't quite the truth either, and he has tried so fucking hard to be honest. Things get left out, because some things don't need to be talked about, details they don't need to go over because they wouldn't help any. But the big things and his little thoughts, the things that upset him day to day, the things that haunt him, he tries. Because he remembers how he went from trying to keep a few things quiet to shutting S out entirely so quickly he hardly knew he was doing it and never knew how to stop. It's not a mistake he intends to make again. So, though there are times where it's hard to do, he tries his best to be honest — more than honest, open. And this doesn't quite fulfill that goal.

He lets out a tiny, stifled sigh. "He would have been mad," he mutters. "Don't you want it? Does the music mean nothing to you? You came all this way to give up like this?" He hardly notices the bitterness and hurt that creep into his voice. It's frightening, really, how easily he can call these things to mind, how readily he slips back into the self-recrimination and knows precisely what the professor would have said, the insults he would have hurled, because they were the same things some small cruel unshakeable voice at the back of J's own mind hissed. "I was already afraid because of what I'd done. I didn't want to be told I was a disappointment again. I already knew that."

It isn't until J responds that S realizes this is the first time they've spoken about him. He's come close a few times — wanted to tell J the day he showed up here that it wasn't his fault, very nearly blurted it out the day they stumbled upon that Pride celebration, overwhelmed in large part because of the lengths he had to go to just to try to keep them safe before. Every time, though, he's talked himself out of it. Just because he can be honest with J without fear of retribution now doesn't make it any easier to breach that subject at last, when he knows there's no way it will go over well. Even before everything fell apart between them, it was an occasional source of friction, J's seeming idolization at odds with the distrust and bitterness that S couldn't give a reason for.

He senses it now, his mind catching up to his mouth a moment too late. It's happened, though, that wall broken down, or at least chipped away at, and along with the predictable, uneasy feeling of dread that starts to overtake him, there's a more unexpected sort of heartache. He knew it was bad. He read about those same things in J's own journal, though he's not sure J was ever wholly conscious of how fucked up what he was writing was, largely because of the reason he's just given. When he felt that way about himself, of course it would be harder to recognize that those same insults shouldn't have been coming from an outside source, a supposed mentor. Hearing J say it, though, and especially in a context like this, just makes him sad.

S knows now, without a doubt, that he should have just told J the truth back then. They both would have suffered for it, but it would have been better than the alternative. He's been the one to say, though, repeatedly, that they can't change the past, that there's no sense in getting hung up on wishing they'd done things differently when they don't know how it all would have played out. All they can do is try to take another course this time. He means to, but that doesn't make it easier to do so, wanting to tread so carefully and still already feeling that same familiar frustration where the professor is concerned, having to swallow back his instinctive response. Asking J if he even hears himself would definitely not be helpful, even with J having just said himself that his thinking wasn't exactly rational at the time.

"You shouldn't have been a disappointment for not killing someone," he points out, his voice still quiet and as steady, as even, as he can make it. With as well as J knows him, S suspects already that he'll be able to guess how deliberate that is — to hear the caution there, the care — but it's better than the alternative. The last thing he wants is to fight at a time like this. It hurts too much to think about J alone with that man for so long, anyway, an unmistakable tenderness in the way he sounds even now, sad and almost pleading. "He shouldn't have been mad at you for that. You... You're shorter than I am and skinnier, and you still managed to get me into your car so you could drive me to the hospital, in a snowstorm, in time to save my life. I don't think there's any world in which that would be giving up."

Besides, even without having finished the job, J still got a movement out of it, one of his very finest pieces. S can't quite bring himself to say that, either. This is already going to be fraught enough as it is, and when he's not exactly in the clearest frame of mind, he doesn't want to bite off more than he can chew at once.

J makes a small sound of protest, more petulant than indignant. "Not that much shorter," he says, because it's the one thing that comes easily. He could point out, too, that it wasn't quite a storm, but it was a lot of snow and he would have been more cautious if he hadn't been so scared. But most of the things he could say are hard to wrap his head around, a tense frustration twisting in his chest. He can hear S being careful, and he knows that what S says isn't wrong exactly. That's the problem. S is right, he knows that, and still part of him pushes up against it, stubborn and defiant, and he doesn't know what to do with it.

"Maybe he wouldn't have been," he sighs after a moment. "I don't know. I was paranoid, not thinking clearly." That, again, doesn't feel right. J isn't sure if it's a lie or not, but it doesn't quite right true to him either. He doesn't like that, this feeling of fumbling for the truth in the dark, trying to piece together his memories. There's a lot he did back then that was all mixed up, and making sense of it after the fact is difficult. "Besides, he — he helped me. If I'd been caught, he could have been arrested. Of course he wouldn't want me to let anyone go. And if he read that, if he knew it was you, he could have found you and —" It's deeply uncomfortable, something drawing him short of finishing that thought. He feels a little sick suddenly. "Threatened you somehow."

He sighs, shoulders slumping as he leans into S, exhausted all at once or reminded of how tired he already was. "That whole week — you don't know what it was like. I was out of my mind, Sihyun-ah. I couldn't write a note." Too late, he realizes what he's said these last couple minutes, the topic he's brought up that he can no longer avoid. Lately he's found himself thinking about it more, restless and sad, missing how it used to feel to make music, back when that was something he could do, something he loved. It's not something he can change, though, so he tries to push it back, not to talk about it unless he has to, and now this... He can never write again. He can't play again. It's too dangerous. "I wasn't thinking right."

With the way J sounds now, S physically has to bite his tongue to hold back a slew of instinctive responses, and still that likely wouldn't be enough on its own. More effective is the way J leans into him, just heightening the sense S has of how fucking sad this is. He knew that, of course. He grieved for months. But that grief also lived alongside fury and a sheer stubborn persistence to get whatever justice was left, and that made it bearable. Reading about what happened wasn't quite as bad as hearing about it from J, each pause and choice of words feeling particularly weighted. S doesn't actually know if it is or if it's in his head, if he's just primed to read too far into all of this, but it's devastating all the same to hear J frame it this way, saying that he wasn't thinking right, that the professor helped him, when the professor is the one who encouraged him to kill others and then to kill himself. Maybe it served as inspiration for a time, but it did far more harm than good in the process, not even just to J's victims but to J himself.

Sighing, S combs his fingers absently through J's hair, mindlessly seeking out whatever contact, whatever affection, he can. Whatever happens now, he has to believe that they'll be fine. They've weathered the worst of it already. These are horrible, painful details, but they've addressed the way things fell apart before and the fact that J tried to kill him, and if they can get past the latter, they can get through anything. S just has to keep telling himself that, less convinced than he usually is, if only because of all he's been holding back.

"Maybe not," he allows, still careful, still quiet. "But I read what it was like. What he was like. I don't think you're wrong, that he would have." S is certain of it, in fact, for more reasons than just the ones that have been given, though he doesn't think J is wrong about that either, necessarily. "He helped you? Jae-eun-ah..." He trails off with a frown and another heavy breath. In a strange way, S knows he has to take the opportunity that's been presented to him, to use J's own words to try to illuminate the truth of what happened. If nothing else, it would feel too dishonest to back away now, and it would make him sick to hear J say such things and not offer very simple refutations. With as restrained as he's trying to be, his temper kept in check, at least for the moment, there's only so much he can manage not to say. "It was his idea. He told you to do it. The first time, and after... and then he told you to kill me."

The professor may not have given a name, but the way J conveyed it, it was clear enough who he meant, and S doesn't doubt the accuracy of that. He knew, after all, what the two of them were to each other. He knew S was the only person with the significance to J that he was describing. He had his own reasons for wanting to get S out of the way, too, and S almost says so, but he gets stuck instead on another thing J has said, his stomach twisting as it occurs to him what else he has to add, his voice that much smaller when he continues. "And he was arrested anyway. The day I got here."

J is already wrestling with his instinctive response to what S has said when he drops that particular bombshell. It's almost a relief to have such a distraction to turn him away from the horror of not quite knowing what he thinks.

"For what?" he asks, bewildered, though he's the one who just said it was a possibility. He'd assumed, though, that any harm to the professor would come only if J himself were caught and the truth pulled from him. With his own death, he expected that such danger would have passed. Confused and, a little bit, indignant though he is, he doesn't draw away, clutching with one hand at S's shirt for stability, for comfort.

"That doesn't make sense." He knows it has to be true. It's not the kind of thing S would make up, and they've both been truthful with each other since they got back together. J is sure of that, that S has put in every bit as much effort as he has to be open and honest, their best hope of avoiding the mistakes J made before. "He didn't tell me to do anything." He clenches his jaw briefly, hating that he has to amend that statement right away. "I'm an adult. I made my choices. I didn't just take directions. How could he have told me to kill you? He didn't even know I tried."

There it is, the thing that made him uneasy before S mentioned the arrest, the thing that was needling at him as not quite right. He stills again, brow furrowing, gaze darting away in confusion. The professor didn't know. He's sure of it. It isn't as if he gave J a name and expected him to scamper off and do as he was told; he suggested a type of person, not a specific individual. And, granted, J had only so many connections, hardly anyone he was close to, but, though he hardly confided in the professor about his relationships, it wasn't as if he'd managed to obscure that he and S were no longer close. It wouldn't make sense for him to have specifically meant S. And yet something drifts through J's mind, not quite there, something that feels wrong. That final night, that final talk, those last words he'd spit so precisely at J as he left — they'd churned through J and then burned away, but he feels an awareness of them now.

"He must have looked at it," he murmurs. It's the only reasonable explanation. "When he came to see me that day, before I realized he was there. He must have seen my diary after all."

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