"Something like that, though I'm not sure I ever had the chance to be anything else. You'd have to ask my siblings what it was like to live that life instead." They had their own trials, he's certain, but not the set of challenges he'd gone through. And even Claude's own challenges weren't entirely universal due to the advantages he'd still, though he hadn't learned that until later when Cyril had told him much he hadn't realized until then.

It's all of those things which shape this now where Claude tells Jesper more truths. There's more to go, more he could add. In what he's explained before to others and to Hilda and Sylvain there were missing pieces only he could fill in which had mattered quite a bit for context and explanation both. And it isn't that Jesper wouldn't want to know the same or couldn't piece things together just as quickly; it's just that for once as the other man sits up that Claude thinks it's not a matter of keeping things hidden as he's wont to do but simply that they don't matter.

Because here's Jesper looking at him now telling him as much and as Claude looks back - he believes it. Whatever doubts he might've felt or the internal voice telling him to question something (or anything) is quiet as Jesper's hand runs over his face. There's that feeling of being seen again and by someone who's waited patiently over and over for him to set down one mask after another and continues to even now as they sit even closer still.

There's no hesitation then when Claude leans in to kiss Jesper and lifts the hand which had fallen to the other man's shoulder after he'd shifted to his jaw to keep him close as long as this lasts. And in it he finds more confirmation: that the past matters less when this matters more.