yallllllllll.....I don’t think Sean knows yet...
I think he’s figured something out, but it’s not quite the right thing (“I’ve connected the dots” “You haven’t connected shit” “I’ve connected them-”)
So I think the betrayal of White’s lie is still coming. It’s going to be immensely painful and it’ll shatter Sean’s trust in White, but I think their relationship will survive it. One, because what a depressing show this would be if it didn’t (‘Breaking new ground for BL! The boys do not love’). But two, because the thing that matters the most to Sean, the thing that pushed him into finally confessing, isn’t that he trusts White; it’s that White trusts him.
When White tells Sean this, Sean fights back tears and disbelief. When White, knowing Sean will have trouble believing him, puts words into action through a trust fall, almost immediately afterward, we see Sean’s first real smile. And then Sean doesn’t stop smiling, again and again, throughout the episode.
Later in the episode, Sean’s own trust fall is not a way for him to solidify his trust in White. (If he had any doubt, he wouldn’t have done it off a rooftop.) Rather, it is Sean’s statement that White’s trust in him is returned. It’s Sean’s completion of the exchange; his reciprocation of the gift. Because White’s trust in him is a gift. For Sean, whose friends all turned away from him, who thinks the world has nothing but contempt for him, this trust means everything. They say we often give love in our own love language, and I think Sean sees it as his ‘part’ in the relationship to express his trust back to White.
So, when it comes out that White lied to him, will he feel betrayed? Of course. His trust in White will be damaged. But what matters more is that White’s trust in him – despite the complexity of White’s circumstance, despite everything that Sean hates and fears about himself - has been there and will still be there. To Sean, that’s the love he never imagined himself receiving.
