With Jake’s words, and the feeling of his warm limbs wound tightly around him, Finn feels the tears come freely. Lowering his head and sniffling wetly against one of those arms, going a little bit limp, cradled by his big brother. It didn’t feel very grown up, but he didn’t feel ashamed either. Jake was his one great buffer against the outside world; the person he could feel sad, guilty and hurt with and never worry about how it looked or what he thought.

More than anything he felt tired. Wrung out, physically and emotionally. The catharsis would come (he assumed it would come, it had to) but until then, it was like they’d both been submerged in a deep, dark pool and the surface looked so very far away.

They stayed like that for a long time.