Leo's hands on his knees had drawn Julian's eyes down to his and he had simply stared at them for a while before he looked back up at Leo and watched his face as he spoke. All of it helped to ground him, to chase some of the anxiety back, and while it didn't push the whispers back completely it helped to focus them so that while Leo explained, it brought the appropriate ones floating through Julian's mind to match the words of what Leo was telling him.
Feeling bolder, Julian reached down and put his hands over Leo's before sliding his long fingers around the other man's wrists so that he could feel the brands there. His fingers gently stroked them as he looked at Leo. The Elder Kindred had done more in his human life than Julian had in his—well, his entire existence. Certainly, more than he had ever done in his own mortal life. For a moment the Malkavian had to wonder how his own thread within the web read but then quickly decided that he didn't want to know.
Julian's eyes searched Leo's face as he tried to figure out the kindness the other man was showing him because he could feel that's what it was kindness and not the double-edged kind that Julian was used to receiving. Leo was helping him without expecting anything in return, something that not even Dorian had ever done for him. It made him feel like he at least owed him the truth. To let Leo know just what he was allowing to stay under his roof with him.
"The whispers were already worse before coming to New York," he started out softly. "It's why Dorian sent me. Even in Chicago, I had started being able to pick up on ones of what was starting to happen here, suggestions of what will happen here, and of course, he sent me here to learn more." Julian stopped and licked his lips. He wasn't doing this right. That was the end of the story, wasn't it? The end result. Not the how of why it was all worse. His fingers tightened around Leo's wrists for a moment as he tried to force his mind into organizing its thoughts better. He knew it would be easier if he didn't have the hunger to contend with on top of everything else but this is what he had to work with.
"My mind was already fragile as a human, but then most of us Malks are made that way aren't we? The way I was turned, it was like my sire took a mirror that was already starting to crack and slammed it down onto the ground. I splittered to a thousand pieces and he just swept them up into a box and left it on Dorian's doorstep. But a broken mirror can never be fully put back together. The cracks will always show and there will always be pieces that are missing. Little chips that you can never replace but things creep in, fill them in ways that you don't want." He supposed these were all things that the Brujah already understood but Julian still explained anyway, his eyes looking unfocused as he did as if he was seeing something that wasn't there. "I found him. The one who Embraced me with so little thought to me or my life. I snapped and killed him." Julian's eyes refocused and he looked Leo right in the eye. "I killed him by draining him of his Blood."
He waited for Leo to move away from him. For that look of abhorrence in his eyes as he realized that not only was a Julian a diablerist but the worst kind for having done it to his sire.