이젠 다시 돌아가고 싶지 않아

[beklemmt]

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.

Comments

[hismelody]

More times than he can count, S has wondered what it says about him that he's been so accepting of the things J has done. He can't say it's alright, exactly. Murder is still murder. But he understands why it happened, and he knows that, while J may have held the knife, he wasn't the driving force behind those actions, and he's willing to take all of that on. In much the same way, though he's never actually figured out what it means for that to be the case, he also knows that it doesn't really matter. He wants this regardless. He would love J regardless, an immutable part of his being. He may as well embrace it rather than hiding from it. Since the moment he first found J here, nothing else has been an option for him. Hearing J talk about it like that — that's bad, isn't it — sends all of that flitting through his head, but it's short-lived, really, hardly the point right now. He's made his choice, and he'll keep making it. Even with all the shit they've been through, he's never once regretted it.

Even weepy and disheveled, he still doesn't, shaking his head slightly. He's reluctant to move at all with J kissing his hair like this, the soft brush of his lips as reassuring as anything could be right now, but with the rest of what J has said, the question in it, he needs to look at him when he responds. Finally, slowly, as if trying to talk himself into doing so at all, he lifts his head again, rubbing his red eyes with one hand before wrapping his arm around J once more. He isn't ready to pull away yet, wanting to hold on while he can. If it helps him, he can only hope that the same is true for J, too, some measure of comfort in the face of so much that's heavy.

Besides, he's pretty sure he knows what he has to say here, and it isn't going to be easy. Whether or not he should is a bit harder to tell, but especially when they've shared so many truths tonight, S doesn't think it would be right to hold his first instinct back. "I know," he says before anything else, leaning in for the briefest kiss, hardly any contact at all, just enough to emphasize his own words. "I am, too. No matter what."

That, too, is the thing. He doesn't really care if it's bad or not that J feels that way, because it doesn't actually change anything for him, and he's pretty sure he gets it anyway. "And I don't think it's bad," he continues, words a bit slower now, carefully chosen. "You know me. You've... somehow seen me after that. I don't want that to hurt you, but I understand." He would probably say the same if their positions were reversed. And though he hesitates now, still a touch uncertain, that in itself is why this feels like something he has to say. "If that's bad..." His gaze drops, though he doesn't pull away at all, still holding J close. "Then so is this. When I read your journal, when I found out everything that happened... I had a easier time with the ones that were on purpose than the first one. The accident." It doesn't need any more detail than that. J will know what he means, and why that would have been the case; of that one thing, he's absolutely sure. "And it's not — I get that, too. But it's the same thing, right? It's different when it's... personal. It's more real."

The way he wrote about it, S isn't even sure if J remembers most of the others in any sort of detail, and he suspects that might be for the best, too. That, though, seems like a different conversation, too big to take on tonight when they're dealing with so much else for the first time.

[beklemmt]

That, too, is something J guessed was true. Even so, hearing it said out loud is difficult, his body tensing instinctively, as if that might somehow shield him against this. It doesn't though, not at all, and all he can do is stay where he is, holding onto S, fingers curled in his shirt, in his hair, and make himself take another breath and another. It's a good answer, really, an honest one, and that makes it all the more reassuring that S understands what he means. It isn't like it doesn't upset him to know what he's done, but it's just far enough from his life that it doesn't feel as immediate and too big for him to hold in his head for long. Sometimes the horror of it is overwhelmingly real and sometimes it feels sort of faraway like something someone else did a long time ago, and all of it is bad in a way that's too big for little adjectives. But none of it is as awful as what he did to S because S is real, solid under him, someone he loves. The aftermath of his crimes is hypothetical — he can imagine the outcomes, the grieving families, but he doesn't know. He knows what he did to S.

So he can understand, too, exactly why it was the accident that upsets S most of all. It still feels horrible put into words, leaves him feeling sick and ashamed. "I know," he whispers. If he hadn't gotten in that car that night, none of this would have happened anyway, not like it did. If anything, he thinks, a sudden spark of knowledge in a haze of guilt, he would have hurt himself instead, chasing after the inspiration he found when the professor held that knife to his throat — and, fuck, that feels different to think of now, somehow scarier in a different way entirely — because it wouldn't have occurred to him to hurt someone else. But of course it hurts S in a way the others don't.

S meets J's eyes so carefully, wary but kind all at once, and J can't bring himself to keep looking back, not just now. "I couldn't tell you," he says, still quiet, though a little louder. He lets out a small, rueful laugh. "If I'd done something else, I might have called you in a panic. But that —" He shakes his head. "I just couldn't. I really thought you'd hate me forever." He was wrong, of course, but he was wrong about a lot of things, and painfully paranoid, and S had — has — every reason to be upset that J would get behind the wheel drunk after what happened to his parents.

Which, really, is all the more shameful, given what little he knows of his father, but he wasn't exactly at his most clearheaded at the time. It's different here — no cars, no alcohol. He hasn't had access to either, but the latter, at least, wouldn't have been hard to obtain. It's just seemed smarter, safer, to avoid both. "I don't think that's bad," he adds after a moment, feeling a little distant but not wanting to let S think he believes otherwise. "It makes sense. More real, like you said."

[hismelody]

S may have expected that much to be the case, but that doesn't mean he likes hearing it, frowning as he watches J. It's hard, after all, not to wonder how different things might have been if J had told him then. Of course, they can't know that, and he can't be entirely certain of what his reaction would have been. By the time he read J's journal, J was already dead and he was already grieving, and he knows that colored how he looked at all of it. Finding out at the time, it might have been even harder to come to terms with than it already was. Still, he knows one thing, shaking his head gently as he lifts one hand to J's cheek, palm resting there gently. "I could never hate you," he murmurs, fond and forlorn. "Not ever." It doesn't, at least to him, feel like any sort of false promise or something he couldn't say for sure. If J trying to murder him wasn't enough to accomplish that, then he's positive nothing ever could be. J is too much a part of him for that; the only way to hate him, S thinks, would be for J to be someone other than who he is.

That doesn't mean it's all easy, or that it will be. Somehow, though he feels like he's navigating a minefield, choosing each word so carefully, not knowing which might cause an explosion, almost certain one will. It is, again, an old instinct, born of their last attempt at a relationship, and an uncomfortable one, but too difficult to shake under these circumstances. Already they've talked about so many things tonight that hadn't previously come to the surface, and more than once, he's felt that they were on the cusp of an argument, something he desperately wants to avoid. With this, it's a different sort of volatility he's worried about, at least. He doesn't really think there's anything he could say in this regard that would make J angry. But it might hurt him in other ways, and S has no desire to do that. J has already hurt himself over it enough, the sound of his voice and the way he can't quite hold S's gaze serving as proof enough of that. Likewise, though, he has no desire to downplay any of it, mostly because he's sure J would see right through any attempt to do so, and partly, too, because that would seem unforgivable on his own part. Accepting this doesn't mean glossing over it. Doing so wouldn't be fair to either of them.

"I would've been... upset," he continues, biting his lip for a moment, uncertain. "I was upset. But I think... I mean, I knew that you knew I would be. Once I did find out, it wasn't hard to guess that that was at least part of why you didn't tell me." Even now, he can't say it outright. They both know what they're referring to. It doesn't need specifics. "But I wouldn't have hated you. You already hadn't talked to me in six months. You coming to me anyway, knowing I'd be upset..." He shrugs, voice a little quieter when he adds, "I think t would've meant a lot, actually."

They can't go back and change it, though. Spending so much time on a hypothetical situation seems stupid when J is hurting now, when they both are. S leans in, resting his forehead against J's, trying half-subconsciously to keep him grounded in the present. "More real or not," he nearly whispers, "I don't hate you. And I'm sorry you were alone."

[beklemmt]

J tries very, very hard to stay still and quiet, to listen without turning away or blocking it out, though it still feels a bit like S is speaking from another room. And then he's leaning closer, and the press of his forehead to J's makes the feel of everything else more vivid, like color rushing through him, reawakening his awareness of fingers and legs and hair and shoulders. It's a shock to the system, made more of S's words and the feel of his breath on J's skin as he says them than of the actual touch, drawing a shudder out of him. Tears spill over immediately after, just when he was sure he'd managed to hold them back, his grip on S's shirt tightening.

He should have called S. He should have trusted him to care enough still. He should have trusted him, too, that night at the piano, should have to hold him, should have listened. It's been so hard every time he's looked back at his past and seen all his mistakes, and somehow he can't figure out if it's better or worse or both at once that his choices were, at least in part, less his own than he thought. What he knows for sure is how hard S's words hit him. It's been months and he's put such an effort just into finding a way to live as normally, as happily, as he's capable of. He can't ever forget what he did, but he can try, at least, not to let it fill his every waking moment. He can try to be here, now. When he looks back, though, as he inevitably does, the best he can ask of himself is a small measure of mercy, an understanding that he was in pain too. It doesn't excuse anything, but it's all he's been able to give.

Even that was hard-won, more thanks to S's sympathy than his own self-knowledge. Every time he has to acknowledge that it was at all hard for him, he has to force himself through a gauntlet of reasons why that shouldn't matter, and to be confronted with the idea that he's in any way deserving of sympathy is still dizzying. It's all the more so now, when he's tired and emotional already.

Speaking again isn't easy. He's shaking a little, partly from crying, partly from trying to keep himself from crying, and he's a mess, he knows that much, and he feels unbearably small and stupid for it. "I made myself alone," he points out. He'd thought he did at least. He thought that was his choice, that he was better off that way, and that doesn't make him any less teary. "Didn't I? I thought... I thought I wanted that."

[hismelody]

Although it's dark enough that he can still only sort of see J, as much as his eyes have adjusted to it, S can tell all the same — hears it in his breathing, feels the tears on his cheek where one hand still rests there — when J starts to cry again. It makes something in his chest constrict, stomach twisting uneasily. All of this, he knows, is important to say. They probably should have months ago, really, except he could never bring himself to mention it. All of it hurt too much, and he knew this was what it would be like, both of them crying and shaken. It could be worse, he knows. They're here, facing it together, maybe closer than they've ever been. Still, it breaks his heart a little to witness J processing all of this new information, aware that there likely isn't anything more he can do to help than he already has done and is doing.

Still, they're better off now than they were when all of this was first happening. Neither of them has to be alone now. They shouldn't have had to be then, either, but that's behind them now. Present, too, in the way J trembles in his arms and woke up sobbing, but they made it through, even when they shouldn't have. S just has to keep reminding himself of that.

He takes a deep breath before he tries to respond, unsure how best to do so but not wanting to say nothing. His other hand lets go of J's shirt as he speaks only to slip just underneath it instead, resting gently against the warm skin of J's back. "Just because you thought you wanted it," he says, softly, slowly, "doesn't mean you really did. Or that it wasn't hard." Again, he's uncertain whether or not he should continue, if saying what he wants to would make this better or worse. Now that they're here, though, he has to err in favor of honesty. It means too much to have even that much back, and having started being so open, he doesn't think he should stop and send them back in the other direction. "Do you remember what you said to me a few minutes ago?" He keeps his voice soft, as soothing as he can manage, even with as emotional as he is and has been. "He told you the people around you were distracting you. Maybe you made yourself alone, but it's not like you didn't have reasons."

Attempting to fend off another threat of tears, S shuts his eyes tight for a moment, though he doesn't pull away in the slightest. "You don't ever have to be alone again now. I promise. I'm with you for good."

[beklemmt]

The sound J makes now is small and soft, one of quiet relief, even gratitude, for the gentle press of S's hand against his skin, an unconscious reply, thankful for the way S's touch always makes him feel a little more here. He feels unnervingly shaky, but with S holding onto him, he knows he'll be okay. Or, anyway, he's not about to fall down, which would be frustrating and mortifying and unnecessarily upsetting.

It helps with everything he has to think about now, whether he wants to or not. He does, in fact, remember what he'd said, his own words drawn back out again. There's a kind of subdued humiliation in needing that, having his own memories held up in new light to reexamine, searching for clues because his entire being has become a mystery. He meant it, though, when he said S helps him to see differently. As much as it stings, it's better like this, letting S help him pick through the pieces. He's not sure he'd trust his own analysis or that he wouldn't balk from the truth.

That doesn't make it hurt any less to understand that he was manipulated. It wouldn't have worked if he hadn't been weak to such prodding, if some part of him hadn't agreed or suspected the truth of it or at least been desperate enough to attempt any offered solution, but he no longer knows which decisions were wholly his own, which ones he would have come to had he made them by himself. He made S miserable back then because he was miserable, too, but would he have left?

Doesn't matter now, he tells himself, breathing in slow and deep, no matter how his breath shakes, focusing on all the places where their bodies meet and the sweetness of S's vow. "Forever," he says, voice trembling enough that it nearly lilts into a question, though he trusts now that S means these things. "It was hard." This he says pitched low, another small confession. He was too stubborn, too proud, too foolish — too easily molded, too, apparently, and he feels painfully stupid for it. "I don't want that ever again. I don't — I don't want a life without you in it."

[hismelody]

There's something a little frightening in those words; there's something a little reassuring, too. S very much does not like thinking about how little it might take for J not to want to be here, alive, after all, nor does he like apparently playing a significant role in that regard, even as it feels unbelievably good to be wanted again. Still, they're better off than they were. He doesn't think he'll ever forget the sheer horror of those few minutes, the day J arrived, when it really seemed like he might be about to lose him all over again. These past months, he's tried and, he thinks, done reasonably well trusting that J will turn to him if it ever gets that bad again, before it does, but that doesn't stop those words from sending a spike of fear through him now. Still, at least this promise is an easy one to make. As long as he has any say in the matter, J won't ever have to have a life without him in it again. If nothing they've been through has made his devotion waver yet, then nothing ever could.

"I don't either," he whispers, not knowing that's what he's going to say until the words have left his mouth. S swallows hard, his hand leaving J's cheek only so he can wrap both arms around him again, drawing him closer, only a little bit to hide the fact that his attempt to stave off further tears is failing. On the few occasions it's come up, he's tried to say as little as possible about how unhappy he was in J's absence. Even tonight, having said, he thinks, more on that subject than he has in the last half a year put together, it's all been brief and vague, coming out in snippets. Nothing more than that seems necessary, not least when it would probably only hurt J.

He can't help but think about it now, though, how he was so terribly alone, longing for J even after J tried to kill him, facing the promise of the whole rest of his life spent on his own. Maybe he wouldn't have been, maybe there would have been someone eventually, but nothing that could have compared to this. The prospect was still desperately lonely. He always thought they'd spend forever together, but they had, really, only a few short years. Eventually — before very long, really — he would have had more time without J than he had with him, and thinking about that now makes S feel a little sick, makes him cling to his boyfriend here in the safety of their dark bedroom.

"Forever," he adds, nodding a little, his own voice shaky but desperately sincere. It's a promise he's made more than once before, but maybe because of all the truths they've shared tonight, it feels particularly weighted now. "I just want you."

[beklemmt]

When S wraps J up in his arms like that, he moves willingly, leaning forward, tucking his head against S's shoulder. Turned just slightly, it's enough that he can rest somewhat comfortably and press a kiss to S's neck, soft and, hopefully, reassuring. In this moment, caught up as he was in his own worries and how foolish he feels for the mistakes he made, he is, admittedly, not entirely certain why S suddenly seems a bit sadder, but he does. It makes J want to take care of him, and he goes from clutching at S's shirt to unfurling his grip, moving around just to get a better hold on S, which eventually means draping his arms over S's shoulders again. It gives him a moment's worry, afraid S might flinch even now, though it's not quite the same, but it lets him stay as close as possible, too, which is what matters most right now.

Nosing at S's neck, he closes his eyes. "You have me," he murmurs, close against S's ear, a hand slipping into his hair again. "I'm yours, Sihyun-ah. I'm —" He presses his lips into a flat line, trying to find the words that are both correct and won't make him end up crying again. "I feel really stupid," is what comes out, a hushed and mortified confession. "About everything. Except this. Being here, you holding me, it's..." He lets out a slow, shaky breath. It feels like those things shouldn't coexist, the life he's led, the pain he's felt and feels still, and the happiness he has with S. That he can wake up in a panic and wind up in tears over things he didn't know about his own past and still feel comforted and loved is nothing short of a miracle.

"You make me feel safe," he murmurs. Even if he feels stupid, he's safe here, starting to relax again, comforted by the security of S's embrace. What he's learned in his time here is that, if he's going to fight, he has to make use of the weapons he has, and that doesn't mean knives or hands here. It means finding the small piece of good in a sea of feeling horrible and holding tight to it with a tenacity that used to piss his teachers off. It means remembering all the things that keep him here, all the reasons he has to be thankful to be alive, clinging to whatever will soften the sharp edges of his mind. Like most of the fights he's fought in his life, he often ends up on the losing side, but he still gives it all he's got. And with S to hold him through it, he stands a much better chance than he ever did on his own.

[hismelody]

Even in the quiet part of his mind that's conscious of it at all, S isn't sure why he doesn't think twice about or react to J's arms draped over his shoulders. Maybe it's just trust, and how long they've had together here now, months in which he hasn't once felt unsafe or been hurt in any way he wasn't expressly asking to be. Maybe it's simply how tired he is, exhausted and emotional, more comforted by J holding him than he would be by anything else. Whatever the reason, he leans into it, holding J close, breath hitching a little at his words.

It's a nice thought, that he makes J feel safe. S is too aware, though, that he's never actually been able to keep him safe at all. When they were younger, he could try to protect him, but that mostly just meant speaking up when he could, making sure J wasn't alone. More recently, he was even more fucking helpless. He couldn't tell J about the professor, and thus couldn't prevent the professor from having an increasing hold over J. He couldn't do anything at all about J's darkening moods, unable to provide even the sort of relief that J gave him after his parents died. He couldn't convince J to keep him around, and so he wasn't there when things so utterly fell apart, from that first accident to the deaths that followed, including J's own. Still, he clings to him now as if he might be able to do so, comforted in turn just by being able to do so. They're here. They're together. No one else will get to have any say in that now.

"I'm not going anywhere," he promises, gentle, more soothed by being able to do so — to focus on J's hurts — than he could be on his own behalf. "And it's not stupid. You weren't. Aren't. It was... Everything that could go wrong did. Such a fucking mess. It wasn't just you." That much, he believes. J made his choices, and many of them weren't exactly wise ones, but they didn't happen in a vacuum, either. He was alone and unhappy and vulnerable, being manipulated by someone he should have been able to trust. That isn't stupid, S thinks. It's just sad. J knows the truth now, at least, which, guilty as S feels for it, makes it a little easier to bear in turn, no longer agonizing over whether or not he should say it and when, worried about how it might be received. All things considered, this might be the best case scenario in that regard. He hates seeing J cry, but tears are preferable to anger, and he's known for a while that there was a non-zero chance that all of this would only lead to a fight. At least this way, they can comfort each other.

"I'm here. I'm with you. I'll keep you as safe as I can."

[beklemmt]

A small protest bubbles up in J's chest, but he doesn't actually say it yet, forcing himself to keep quiet and focus on what S has said. There's so, so much that S can't protect him from, and a lot of it is the same as it's been for years now. S can't undo the mess that's become of J's mind and he can't pull J free of the ways in which he was ensnared for so long, ways he's only just starting to understand at all. He can't take away the things J did or how he feels about himself or the thoughts that still cross his mind at times, unwanted, frightening.

Even so, J meant what he said, and he trusts that S will do as he's just promised. However fucked up he might be, he feels better these days than he has in years. And when he feels like shit again, S is here to hold him and comfort him and make things a little bit closer to right. Maybe that's the thing, the part that really helps — there are qualifiers now. A little bit closer. As safe as he can. They don't build up impossible expectations anymore; there's no more pressure, real or imagined (or just imagined, really), to be okay in the blink of an eye. And there's no frustration on J's end at S not knowing what's happening or thinking things can just be smoothed over, because he can tell S what's happening and even the things that can't be fixed, he can be held through. It makes more of a difference than he once imagined it might.

Nestling into the crook of S's neck, he nods ever so slightly. "I know," he says, soft. He can feel, pressed together like this, the way S breathes, the steady rise and fall of his chest, and J tries to mirror it, to try and help even out his own breathing. There is, and probably always will be, something deeply soothing about feeling that, reassured that S is breathing reasonably normally. "I love you."

That's the easy part, the obvious part. The part he should have known practically since they met, and which he pushed aside over and over. Never again. More difficult is knowing if he should say what crossed his mind a moment ago or if he'd rather let the topic go. They'll talk about this again — and again and again — undoubtedly, because J's going to be thinking about this for a long time, and part of him just wants to move on for now. He's tired in a nervous, wrung out kind of way, and he'd rather just enjoy being held. But he's also working things out as he goes, and that's easier done out loud.

"I think that's the problem," he says, thoughtful. "It wasn't just me. I thought it was. And it..." He sighs, small and rueful. It feels easier to say like this, even more hidden than just the darkness in the room allows. "That's why I feel stupid. Like I should have known somehow. I just... believed everything. I thought I was smarter than that."

[hismelody]

S has barely heard J's response, never mind tried to formulate his own yet, before he shakes his head, the movement slight but still noticeable with how they're pressed together. It isn't that he doesn't understand why J would think so. He's always been too hard on himself anyway, and S has often felt stupid for his own part in things, too. That isn't how he sees this at all, though, and J shouldn't have to blame himself for what wasn't his fault. Some aspects of it were, yes. There's responsibility that does lie with J, choices that were his, things that he did. What they're talking about now, though, it's deeply uncomfortable to hear J frame like this. Granted, he knows he's done the same, thought about how foolish he was and how ridiculously fucking stubborn that he didn't just leave when J gave him an opportunity to, but he's aware all the same that he couldn't have known what was going to happen, that it isn't his own fault that he got fucking stabbed. It's hard to counter the voice that says what if, that wonders what he could have done differently to give things a different ending, but deep down, it couldn't have been on him.

The same should be true for J. He just isn't sure how to say it in any way that makes sense, giving himself a moment to think it over before he tries to do so. Too often, his words have come out wrong. The things they've been talking about tonight are much too important to take that risk, especially when they're both tired and emotional. "Would you say the same thing if it were me?" he settles on, his voice whisper-soft. He wants to lift his head to look at J as he says this, but he's too unwilling to pull away, comforted by the way J is tucked against him. "That I should have known?"

He knows the answer, or he's reasonably sure he does. J has lashed out at him on numerous occasions and spent a long time seeming to blame him for just about everything, but deep down, he doesn't believe J would do that now, certainly not with something like this. That's the very point he means to make, at least, letting the words hang in the air for a moment before he continues. "I don't think it's about you being smart," he continues, "or stupid. You were lied to and manipulated by someone you should have been able to trust. The only person responsible for that is the one who did the lying and manipulating."

At least this time, he manages to continue speaking gently. No matter how much anger he may still harbor for the professor, it wouldn't be fair to direct that towards J in any way. He presses a kiss where he's rested his head instead, to the curve between J's neck and shoulder. "There are things we both could or should have done differently," he allows, because even now, it's hard not to think that he should have just told J the fucking truth from the start and let them weather the ensuing storm together. "But... what someone else did to you isn't your fault."

[beklemmt]

The answer is so easy, so obvious, when S frames it like that. Why he can't just apply the same to himself, J doesn't know. He can try, at least, taking the things S says now and tucking them close, burying them in his heart, but it might take time for those seeds to take root, to grow.

There are people who would say differently, people who blamed him all his life for things he didn't choose. It's painfully easy for so many adults to lash out at kids who can't protect themselves, and he knows that wasn't his fault either, but it's hard not to feel it sometimes. That's the way they always framed it when he was a kid, at least. That he was punished because he fucked up, that slipping up somehow justified that treatment, or that it was even for his own good. He'd thought he knew that wasn't true, just a way that cruel adults soothed what little conscience they had. When the professor scolded him or said he wasn't working hard enough, though, he believed him — that he'd earned those lectures, that he wasn't doing his best, that it would help him improve. That, if nothing else, that was the professor's intention, to help him grow as an artist, and so whatever he said, whatever he did, was guided by that desire. He bought into the same kinds of lies he rejected all his childhood, because for once he thought someone meant it.

"I guess," he mumbles, because it's the best he can do for now. S is right and he knows it, but he isn't about to say so outright when he can't yet make himself feel it. "I... if it were you, I wouldn't think it was your fault either." He just has trouble imagining S falling for all of that. S is too clever for that, and better by far at judging others than J is, though J's instinct is usually just not to trust them at all. "It wasn't. He stole from you." The understanding of that rolls over him again, sends a thin spark of anger through him. "And that wasn't your fault. But he picked me because I was easier to trick, wasn't I?" It was J, after all, that the professor drew away from the rest of his world, J he lied to and manipulated, J who was weak enough to be taken in by it all. And even if that hadn't been the case, he can't imagine S making the same choices. "You wouldn't hurt people like I did, even if he'd picked you instead."

He feels strangely resigned to that, too tired to fight that impression of himself. Maybe he wasn't stupid and maybe it's not that he wasn't smart enough. He was weak all the same, a desperate coward who would have done anything to feel some spark of creativity or control.

[hismelody]

The last part, S can't disagree with. Admittedly, it's hard to imagine himself winding up in J's position, but only because he's never really been ambitious enough to fall prey to the same tactics. Accolades never mattered to him all that much. He wanted to be good, to be great, but mostly because he loved it, because it was hard not to be swept up in the fairytale idea of him and J making it together, spending their days writing and evenings performing and nights in bed. He fell for it that way, as something they shared. Now, it's the least important piece of that puzzle. He loved it, and he wants to love it again, but as long as he has J, he doesn't care what he might wind up doing.

They've covered all of that already, though. It's just easier to fall back on the part he's certain of than the part he isn't. Whatever twisted explanations he got from the professor, there's still so much he doesn't know, the twisted logic that drove him something S knows he'll never fully understand. He can make guesses, but he cant offer real answers. As much as he would like to be able to tell J something concrete, he's not so sure that isn't for the best. The less they have to deal with that man and the damage he did to them, the better.

"I didn't want what you wanted," he points out, a quiet almost-agreement. He wouldn't have been pushed to the same lengths J was because he wasn't going after the same thing. Even when he lost his own inspiration, he was desperate to get it back, but by trying to recapture what he lost, pathetically attempting to reestablish contact with his ex. As for the rest, he can only shrug, his chest rising and falling with it where he's currently pressed against J. "I don't know why he picked you. I don't know that he didn't try to pick me, too." It isn't as if it would have had to be only one of them. Once he'd driven that wedge between them, ensured that S wouldn't talk, he could have played both of them without either ever being the wiser for it. He's wondered about that sometimes, if the professor intended him to be another of his acolytes, misjudging instead how his blackmail would be received, or perhaps too desperate for a finished piece at that time to play it more carefully. "He played it wrong with me, I think. Once he made that deal with me... I gave him what he wanted, but I saw through him then, so he didn't have a chance. Showed his hand too soon, I guess." On paper, newly orphaned and unable to afford school on his own, he might well have made for a prime target, too. It was being clued in to who the professor really was that largely prevented that from ever being a real risk.

This is about J, though, not him. S turns his head just enough to brush a kiss to J's hair, easily, instinctively affectionate. "If he picked you because he thought you were easier to trick... that's on him, too." For looking for that, for deliberately finding someone who he could use, even if it wound up being in unexpected ways — it's horrific. His hand absently trails up and down J's back again as he continues, an instinctive attempt at comfort. "And for you... Having a teacher single you out like that, in a good way for once, and one who knew your father, too? All of this happening just when you were... becoming more unhappy? You were vulnerable, and he knew it, and that's not your fault, either."

[beklemmt]

It's so reasonable that even J has to admit that's the case. If the professor had tried the same thing with him, if he'd chosen blackmail over more subtle manipulation, J would have seen through him, too, and things would have been different. And if S had been more ambitious, he might still have been swayed, just a little. It isn't like J doesn't know, too, to some extent, why he's always been the more ambitious of them. He's just always had more to prove.

Though S's touch helps to keep him settled, he tenses briefly all the same at the mention of his father, a brief burst of misery spiking in his chest. It isn't fair. He told himself for so long that it didn't matter that he'd never known the man, that he lost nothing. It's not like his father seemed inclined, from what he knows, to marry his mother anyway, so all of that would have been the same, and much of what he's gleaned from reading between the lines of his mother's rare stories and gossip and what the professor said, his father wasn't a man much worth knowing anyway. But the professor did know him, and J hates that right now. Even if the man was an aimless drunk, squandering his talent and seducing women, J can't help that some tiny, tiny part wants to have known him after all. To have met him, at least. To have some impression of the man that was his own, not secondhand.

"He used that," he says, muffled into S's shoulder, and somehow that stings as bad as any of the rest of it. "He mentioned him sometimes. My father. Little stories in passing. Comparisons. I didn't think I wanted that, but I did." It's not something he talks about much, even with S, the subject always a difficult one, too complicated for J to want to look at for long. It just hurts somehow, in a strange, sharp way, to know that the professor saw a weakness in him that J thought he'd kept well-hidden. He must have seen, too, how much J wanted someone to pick him. To want him instead of all the other options, the ones who were more obviously valuable. He should have been content that S saw that in him all along, but how could he resist when a teacher finally acknowledged his potential?

He sighs, shaking his head slightly. "I know you're right," he murmurs. "It's just a lot." It's more than he can possibly take in tonight, aware enough of his own exhaustion to understand that much. It's also just hard to turn off.

[hismelody]

They've never talked about him much. There wouldn't, S thinks, have been all that much to talk about when J never knew the man, seemingly more shaped by his absence than anything else. He knows a little — knows that he never married J's mother, obviously, that he was a pianist too, that he drank — and he knows, of course, the hell J was put through because of his background, as if it could somehow have been his fault that his mother was unmarried, but J has never seemed all that inclined to discuss him much, and S doesn't mind that. Back when he and J talked about everything, he always figured that J would know he could talk about his father when he wanted to. He figured, too, that that was part of the reason he latched onto the professor the way he did, one of the reasons S was so reluctant to tell J the truth about what was happening behind the scenes. Taking that away from him would have felt cruel, if only because he didn't know just how far the professor would go. Theft and blackmail were bad enough, but manipulation and murder went further even than he could have anticipated. J may have held the knife, but the professor was the one pulling the strings, and that, S thinks, is the worst offense by far. He couldn't commit his own crimes any more than he could write his own music.

"I know," he echoes, then shakes his head a little in turn, not pulling away to do so. "I can only imagine." There was a time, he thinks, when J would have snapped at him for something like that. And it's true that he really can't know what this must be like for J or what's going through his head, but he does know that it's a lot, and he can be here for it, gently stroking J's back and hair, keeping him close. "I know it is." If it's been a lot for him to carry around, wanting to say it but never knowing how or when to do so, it must be even more so for J to have to reconfigure his memory of everything, coming to terms with something unbearably huge.

Although he doesn't start crying again in earnest, he sniffles a little, ashamed, his face pressed to the curve of J's neck again. "And I figured he did," he says. "That was part of why..." Trailing off, he takes a breath, not as deep as he would have liked it to be. "Even if it had been safer... Even when I wanted just to say fuck it and tell you anyway, I didn't want to take that from you. I didn't want to be the reason you lost that. I didn't know how bad it would get."

[beklemmt]

J kisses S's hair again, hugging him a little tighter. "You didn't know," he agrees quietly. "You couldn't have." How could either of them ever have guessed how it would go? How could they have imagined that it would all lead to murder and madness, that the despair he already felt would be fanned into such flames? S did what he thought was best, and J doesn't know if he was wrong or not. Either way, it's done now, so it doesn't entirely matter. It makes sense to him, though. Of course S was protecting him the whole time — trying to, at least. Under other circumstances, he would have succeeded, probably.

That S understood the power such a connection would hold for J makes sense, too. Even if J has never had much to say on the subject, S knows him too well to have missed it. It just hurts to know an outsider could read him like that, all the worse for having it turned against him. "Not much to take anyway," he says quietly, trying to hide a quiet sniffle of his own. "I don't know. I just... wanted a little piece of him, I think. So he'd seem more real." He's always felt a little guilty whenever such thoughts pop into his head, as if he's somehow saying what he had was inadequate, when he knows he was lucky to have grown up with a mother who loved him so much. To want to know about someone who never even wanted him seemed ridiculous to him even then, and asking her would have been hard — not that she would have minded, he's pretty sure, but he would have been afraid to make her think he felt his childhood lacking.

With a tiny sigh, he plucks at the back of S's shirt, shaking his head. "I guess it's normal to be curious," he admits. "And you were probably right to keep it from me." It doesn't make a difference now, but he still wants S to know he thinks so. Easing back just a little, he kisses S's cheek. "You know I would have just made a mess of it, right? Stormed in shouting and pissed off, and then he would have outed us and we wouldn't have had tuition or a place to live." It still feels a bit strange to say, to acknowledge this new version of reality, but he knows it's true. S protected them both by keeping that secret. As much as J would have been angry then to know that S was hiding things from him, he can see the wisdom of it now. Maybe it would have been better if S had told him, maybe they could have come up with a plan, or maybe he would have known not to trust the professor so much, but he knows how stubborn he is and how protective he is of S. Even then, when he knows he must have been feeling increasingly miserable, that drive to keep S safe wasn't yet dormant. He would have wrecked it for both of them.

[hismelody]

Even with how shaky he's beginning to feel again, S huffs out a soft, unsteady laugh at J's description of what he would have done. It's easy to imagine him doing exactly that, the other, more significant part of the reason he felt like he could never confide in him that particular truth. He hated every second of it, hated having to keep such a big secret from J when the only secrets he'd really kept from him before were, first, his being gay, then later, his burgeoning feelings, both coming out into the open before very long anyway. But he was certain that if the professor suspected that there was even a chance he'd told J about the theft or the blackmail or both, he wouldn't have held back, and he knows J too well to think for a second that he wouldn't have acted on it. It was an impossible situation. No matter how much he hated having to keep quiet about it, he thought he was choosing right, doing what would protect J, not what would ultimately leave him in the lion's den, alone and easy prey.

"I know," he says, and he hears the change in his own voice, how the sound of it wavers, his throat tightening. "So stubborn. I love that about you." He has, really, since the day they met, J outnumbered on the playground and fighting back against the kids who were bullying him anyway, unwilling to give up even though he didn't stand a chance. Of course, after the fact, it just seems now like all the more reason he should have told him. At least they wouldn't have gone down without a fight. At least they wouldn't have been fighting separate battles on their own when they could have been waging one war together, a united front against such a major threat.

They would have lost their apartment and their scholarships and who knows what else. They wouldn't have lost each other, though, and so much more besides. Now he does begin to cry a little again, unable to help it, clutching J closer to him without realizing that he's doing so. "We wouldn't have," he agrees, words and trembling breath muffled into J's shoulder. "But — but maybe you would have lived."

It isn't as if he thinks J's death is his fault, exactly. Like he just said, he didn't know how bad things would get, not until everything was already over, J dead and his journal in S's possession. Still, as awful as he knew it would be for them if they were outed, he can't help but wonder if maybe it would have been better than the outcome they got. They would have had no school and nowhere to live, their careers over before they ever had a chance to start. At least they would have had each other, though. Then again, that was always all he needed anyway; J was the one who wanted more. Even then, though, even if J got angry and blamed him and shut him out, he might still have been alive, without a slew of deaths on his conscience. That alone would have left them better off than they were by far.

[beklemmt]

The words catch J off-guard, ringing in his ears, tears pricking his eyes before he's finished processing what S has said. "Hey," he murmurs, pulling S closer, as tight as he can, as if he can take away everything hurting S right now if he just holds him near enough. "No, no, we can't — we can't think like that, okay?" It would be hypocritical of him to say they can't think about the past when he's pulled back to it daily, when the evidence of all they endured is still written into their bodies. But if they start down the path of what might have been now, when they're already tired and sad, he doesn't know how he'll pull them back out of it.

"Darling," he says into S's hair, eyes closing tight. "We don't know what would have happened. And I —" He hesitates, unsure he wants to finish saying what he almost said. It's hard to be sure it could actually be at all helpful, but it's honest and that feels called for. "Maybe I would have. But I'm not sure. You saw how lost I was, how unhappy I was." They would have been together, and maybe that would have been enough to help him pull through. Maybe if he'd had something outside of himself and his own tunnel vision to cling to, something to push him forward, he would have found his own way out. Or maybe he would have been depressed and homeless, without any access to music, without any sense of hope or any idea of how to help support them. It was hard enough to find halfway decent work without anyone knowing he was gay. And the idea of his mother finding out —

He doesn't know. It's hard to know, to be sure, what she would say or think. He wants to believe she'd understand, that she, of all people, could get what it means to love someone you're not supposed to be with, to defy convention for love. But she'd also have had to live with knowing the danger he was in just by existing. And if she'd found that out from someone other than himself, it would have wrecked him.

"It isn't like that was the first time I thought about it," he admits quietly. He isn't sure if S already knows that. It's not like he talked about it then, but he hasn't really hidden it either. "What I did. I didn't... make plans or anything, I didn't really want to do it, it just... crossed my mind sometimes. So... maybe. Maybe not."

[hismelody]

It isn't exactly comforting. It isn't exactly surprising, either, which might be the worst part. Back then, S knows, it isn't as if it was something he was often consciously worried about. Much like J has just said, it only crossed his mind sometimes, little flickers of concern when J was at his lowest points, when days turned into weeks without any apparent reprieve from all that darkness. Before it actually happened, he had no way of knowing it was something about which he should specifically have been worried. That fear was more nebulous, just that nothing would ever be enough to make J happy again. He certainly wasn't.

Now, it's different. Even a world away, safe with each other, only barely entertaining some hypothetical situation, having lost J like that once, he's terrified of doing so again, the very idea that much more real. It shouldn't matter when they can't change any of it — when he knows that J is right, that they can't think like that when there's no undoing what's been done and no way of actually being able to say for sure what outcome it would have had — but it hurts anyway. Just like they don't know what would have happened in their past, he doesn't know what their future holds, either. They've been doing so well these past few months, as happy as people who've been through what they have can be, he thinks, but that doesn't mean it will last. They were happy before, too, after they first became a couple, and then they weren't anymore. If things go in that direction again, if J winds up that lost and unhappy —

It's quieter now, at least most of the time, but the memory of the conversation they had that first day J arrived here is always in the back of his head. J didn't promise that he would stay, he promised that he would try. Still certain he can't ask for more than that, S is absolutely terrified that it won't be enough to keep him here.

He doesn't say anything at first, crying softly into J's shoulder, fingers clutching at J's shirt again as he pulls him close. What might also be the worst part is that it is comforting, in a strange, awful way. J didn't talk about any of this then. However much it might hurt to hear, it has to be a good thing that he is doing so now. "I know," he finally mumbles, just so deeply sad. "I know... we don't know. I just —" He's always had a hard time accepting that sort of helplessness. The thought that they might have been doomed regardless, that something would have come between them, that there was nothing he could do one way or the other, fucking hurts. "I just want you to be okay."

[beklemmt]

For a moment, it scares J that S doesn't say anything, that he simply cries like that. He knows very well how hard it can be to talk once he's in tears, but it still worries him. It's impossible not to question if he was wrong to say that, if he should have kept it to himself, if it hurt S too much to have been worth admitting.

He's not sure even after S finally speaks, but at least it lowers the volume on those concerns. They've promised each other honesty and trust. It's not always an easy promise to keep. When things were first starting to get bad before, he remembers keeping a lot to himself out of fear that he would worry S for no reason or upset him by talking about these things that went through his head, that had to be nonsense or that, worse, were true and impossible to fix. It's very difficult not to fall into that way of thinking again, a constant process of steeling himself over and over to tell S things he won't like hearing. But if S is brave enough and S loves him enough to listen, then J has to be brave and loving enough to tell him.

It breaks his heart all the same, hearing S say that, prompting him to sniffle again, swallowing hard against the lump in his throat. "Sihyun-ah," he says, low and sad and so very tender. "I know, darling." That is, perhaps, the hardest part, the part where he most needs to be brave — not brave enough to say these things, but to keep from saying things that aren't true. All he wants is to be able to tell S that he is okay and that this won't change, but he can't. It wouldn't be fair. He might be doing better in general, but he woke up in a panic, sobbing, not all that long ago, and he's clearly not alright, not completely.

"I want that too," he settles on after a moment. "And I — I think I kind of am. Most days are pretty good. And when they aren't..." He draws in a shaky breath that turns into a rough laugh. "Well, I have this. And it's so —" He thought he was getting through this pretty well, actually, that he was holding himself together admirably, which was what he wanted, to be the composed one so S wouldn't have to feel he needed to be that when he's clearly upset. Instead, he finds his jaw trembling, tears spilling over again, even as he pushes himself to continue. "It's so much better than I ever thought it could be."

That's the real thing that needed to change, he thinks, not what S kept from him, but what he kept from S. If he'd known how much it would help just to be able to talk openly, if he'd felt able to do that, to push past the part of him that always, even know, wants him to shut up and pretend it away, maybe then he would have survived. Maybe they would have stayed together, and everything would have been different. But he didn't, they didn't, it wasn't, and he dwells on enough of the past as it is. "I'm okay right now," he whispers. "Right here, holding you. Better than okay."

[hismelody]

With the night they've had, S isn't entirely sure how he could even be capable of crying anymore. Now that he's started, though — again — it's impossible to stop, trembling a little and biting down hard on his lip to try to regain some semblance of composure, his face still pressed to J's shoulder. This part, what J is saying now, it isn't even bad. It's more, in fact, than he could have asked for. It just hurts, all of it, thinking about J's death and thinking about J being kind of okay now. He thinks he said in those first few days J was here, though it's hard to be sure now, that time such a blur, that he wasn't asking for or expecting J to be happy. He wants that, but only because he hates to see J as miserable as he was before. It isn't something on which his feelings are contingent, nor does he have any naïve assumptions that one day J will just wake up and everything will be fine. If anything, even something so small is so deeply moving that it keeps the tears coming all on its own. He's so scared and relieved and sad, and everything is such a fucking mess. That's part of why he held this back, he thinks. Part of it was just not knowing how to tell J, yes, but he thinks he must also have known on some level that as soon as he let himself dwell on it, it would destroy him all over again.

"It is for me, too," he says after a moment, voice soft and choked. "Better than I thought it could be." He thought he was going to be alone for the rest of his life. He thought he would never see J again, the one person he loves most in all the world. Even on the few occasions he's talked about it, tonight included, he doesn't think he's ever done justice to just how lost he was in those few months after J died and before they both showed up here, just a shell, really, hollow and drifting, fueled only by anger and a desperate need to get even the smallest amount of justice for his dead friend. For that matter, he's not sure even he realized just how bad it was until that was no longer the case anymore, his reuniting with J and the last half a year casting the time leading up to it in stark, horrible relief.

No matter what weight has been lifted from his shoulders or how good it is to hear J say such things, he still feels wrong somehow, something twisted and heavy in his chest. It takes him a moment, a few aborted deep breaths, to manage to pinpoint it, and another moment longer to convince himself to say it. Easier though it might be to keep this back, too, he doesn't want to fall into that again now that they've been so open with each other. And anyway, J knows him well enough that it probably speaks for itself.

"It's just... hard," he says, stumbling over his words, though he persists through his tears. "Hurts. Thinking that... we didn't stand a chance. That nothing we could have done..." He chokes back a little sob, still clinging to J in the dark, trying to fight off this unbearable feeling of helplessness. "I love you so much, and I know you love me, and it still might not have been enough. No matter what we did."

[beklemmt]

Maybe that part has been easier for J, he thinks, because he mostly assumed it was his own fault. Besides, the way he grew up, he's had to be pragmatic about the fact that life mostly doesn't work out. Most people don't really get a happy ever after, and it usually seems to him like life is a matter of or. Happy families struggle to bring in food, people with money marry people they don't love, and he was blessed with a mother who adored him and cursed with a father who made his life harder than it needed to be even in his absence. It made him stubborn and defiant, but it made him wary, too, knowing there was a chance it wouldn't matter how talented he was or how hard he worked, that the doors that open for people like him are incredibly rare and only just slightly left ajar.

It's not that it's easy for him to think of their love that way. It's awful, especially when he hears S say it. It would be nice to believe their love was an exception to all of that. But maybe it helped to have something to pin the blame on, to be able to say that they failed because he fucked up, and so maybe, maybe, things might have been alright if he'd done this one thing differently. This new possibility that someone else is at least partly to blame complicates things. And besides, whether the guilt is his or someone else's, the fact of it is that much of what he did, he did because of things he doesn't know how to control and didn't know how to address, some awful disconnect in his brain he still doesn't understand.

Life is cruel. He'd like for that not to be the case, but he's had to teach himself how to find happiness, how to understand that his looks different from everyone else's, that seizing joy where he can find it is its own act of rebellion. That doesn't make it easier to hear how much S is hurting, when his happiness matters even more to J than his own.

"We don't know that either," he says, gently stroking S's hair. "Maybe there was something. Maybe if I'd told you more then, I would have done better. I don't know." Again he kisses S's hair, breathing in deeply, letting out a stifled sigh. "But we're here, darling. Isn't that — maybe nothing would have fixed things in Seoul, and maybe something could have, but I love you and you love me so much that we're here. You know that can't be an accident, don't you? We couldn't make it work out in one world, so we found another."

It's a strange thing to be the optimist in this particular situation, but he's pretty sure he's right. It's not something he'll take for granted, but the fact that they're here at all means something. "Think about it," he murmurs. "Look how far we've come. I don't think it's so hopeless, Hyunie."

[hismelody]

Hearing that, shaken though he is, S doesn't hesitate to nod in agreement, though it's an odd, slight movement when he isn't ready to lift his head yet. That much doesn't matter. They're here in the dark anyway, and he needs J to know that he agrees, that just because he's still all fucked up over the past doesn't mean he appreciates the present any less. If anything, it makes him that much more grateful for this impossible chance, knowing that it's the only one they could have gotten. He just hates the fact of that. As much as it hurts, there's something strangely easier about wishing he'd done things differently. Knowing he was so powerless, backed into an impossible corner, any choice he could have made the wrong one, is much worse. Keeping the secret, not telling J about the stolen music or the blackmail, left J unaware to the lengths the professor would go to and how dishonest he was, which certainly at least played a part in how wrong everything went at the end. Telling him all of it, though — preferable as he thinks those consequences would have been to the way it all played out instead, it still would have left them in an awful position, and might well have taken just as much.

They're here now, though, and they have each other, and he knows that's the most important thing. He's been the one to say so on multiple occasions now. For J to be doing so now makes him feel a little guilty, but it's comforting, too, the sort of thing he really doesn't think J would say if he didn't mean it. The hand in his hair is likewise soothing, something S tries to focus on for a moment as he tries to pull himself together yet again or at least catch his breath.

"There you go again, actually being optimistic," he mumbles, half-joking, though deeply fond and more than a little self-conscious. "But no, you're right. I know you're right. I do." Pressed close like this, he can feel J's heart beating, the rise and fall of his chest with each breath he takes. That, too, he holds onto now, attempting to steady himself with it, not wanting to fall apart any further than he already has. His voice is softer when he continues, audible probably only because of their current proximity, voice still thick with tears but tender as well, deeply sincere. "Finding each other the way we did..." He gives J's shirt a little tug. "That's too much to be a coincidence."

He really does believe that, if only because he has to. The idea of all of it being happenstance, some unlikely turn of events with vanishingly slim odds of taking place, is more unsettling than any of the rest of it. There's reassurance, though, in thinking that they found each other here because they really were meant to be together, that not even death could keep them apart for long, fate rather than luck intervening on their behalf, the strength of the love they have for each other bringing them back to where they're supposed to be, here in each other's arms. "Told you," he adds. "It's supposed to be us."

[beklemmt]

"You did," J agrees, smiling as he hides his face against the side of S's head. It hurts, it really does, to hear S like this, but the whole thing hurts. It's all a mess. Of course S is still upset; they'll be carrying this with them the rest of their lives. He doesn't want S to feel so hopeless when he knows the pain of that helplessness, but he's not about to tell S not to cry now. "And it is. And I'm optimistic this once, okay? But just because... it's us."

He spent far too long feeling otherwise, denying his feelings, trying to pretend it away. He let himself be led astray and believed all kinds of wild lies and made things up to try and keep himself away. At the same time, he never really stopped loving S. He's always been better at S's side than away from him, or at least that's mostly true. There were a few days after he left where he felt bursts of relief just for having done something, but it's not like it really helped. He'd rather be like this, crying together, knowing the truth.

"I don't know," he says again. "If there was something we could have done... ah, there's a lot we could have done differently, but we don't know how any of it would have turned out. But we loved each other enough to find each other again. I think we did pretty well at that, right?" It is, he knows, not quite the answer S wants. J is fine with it himself. Really, he just can't imagine a version of events where things work out. Having made the choices he did, having listened to the professor, having been so desperate, not knowing how to treat whatever it is that's wrong with him, he's not sure any other outcome was possible, and he doesn't know how he could ever have changed any of those choices in a way that would have worked out. He would still have been broke and desperate and in despair. There wouldn't be blood on his hands, so they'd be much better off in that regard, so maybe he would have survived, maybe he wouldn't have.

And barring that, having made the choices he did, the very best they could have hoped for, he thinks, would be his having told S the truth, but then what? A lifetime of S helping to hide what he did? How would they have kept the professor quiet, another murder? It wouldn't have worked, it wouldn't have been right, and he wouldn't want any of that on S's hands too.

Even if things had, miraculously, all worked out, they still would have had to keep their relationship secret for decades. He's hardly about to say it's a good thing he killed himself — he has some sense — but really, it's all turned out pretty well.

"Trying to guess how things would have gone if we'd just chosen this or that instead," he murmurs, "it'll only make us crazy. And I've got enough of that for both of us already."

[hismelody]

Again, S nods, not wanting to seem for a second like he disagrees when he very much doesn't. More than once, he's pointed out the same thing himself, that there's no sense in dwelling on what they could have done differently when they don't have any way to change the past or of guaranteeing what sort of difference it would have made. He knows it's true. It's just hard, when they're talking about all of this for the first time and when so much went so spectacularly wrong, to keep himself from entertaining the possibility anyway. There isn't much he regrets, especially when it comes to his relationship with J. They were happy for a while, and even before this place, he still would have said that finding J and being with him was the best thing that ever happened to him. Getting this back, they've been so fucking lucky, not to mention closer than they probably ever have been, that it wouldn't seem right to get hung up on the past and a variety of what ifs. Still, there are things he wishes he'd done differently — wishes he'd found a way to try to help J that didn't seem like he was taking it all too lightly, wishes first and foremost that he'd told J the truth from the start. He knows why he didn't, but it isn't as if holding it back did either of them any good.

But they're here, right where they're supposed to be, all wound up in each other, and J knows the truth now, and that's the best they can do, more than S would ever have expected. He's much too grateful to want to risk seeming like he isn't, no matter how rattled he is by everything that's happened tonight, still grappling with the weight of it.

"I know," he agrees, clarifying his own response after just a moment. "I know it will. And we did." His fingers staying curled around J's shirt, S smiles faintly against his shoulder. "Look how far we've come. We might be a mess, but..." A mess or not, it feels good to have this kind of honesty between them again, to have J with him, his presence alone making everything they have to carry now feel lighter. Even before everything he found out tonight — even before he knew why J tried to kill him in the first place, and that he still loved him all the while — S couldn't help wanting J with him when he was at his most unhappy, like he's told J before. It makes all the difference in the world to face this together, not alone anymore.

Finally, he lifts his head, turning it towards his own shoulder for a moment instead, though it makes no difference to the state he's in when he sniffles. "I'm sorry," he mumbles, not quite meeting J's eyes when he does. "It's not... I'm happy. I am. I'm so happy here with you, I don't want to seem like I'm not, and I wouldn't change this now." Even if he'd told J the truth from the start, even if they'd managed to get through that fallout, even if they'd stayed together, even if no one had been killed, they still have a huge opportunity here that they never did before, getting to be out together. Granted, J had more to leave behind back in Seoul than he did — his mother, the prestige of having won that award — and S still hates, too, that they both lost how they felt about music, to an extent, but they're safer here than they ever were before, and that goes such a long way on its own. "It's just... You know me." He smiles again, slight and self-deprecating. "Thinking that there wasn't anything I could do... But there is now."