Riku reaches for him to narrow down his choices, to grab him near one shoulder and the other elbow and pull him up onto his feet and he thinks, bewildered, that he might be taller now, or maybe it's been so long and his encounter with that other guy had messed up his recollection, or that maybe sunlight be damned, he should rip off that blindfold. That last thought's ridiculous and reckless, he knows it, because he hasn't yet adapted to proper daylight.
Riku, Sora had cried out. He's pretty sure he's never heard anything so welcome in his life. Can this really be happening? After all the fruitless searching, the crushing weight of grief he thought would smother him like one snuffs a candle, of all the worlds that he would suddenly, actually stumble upon him here, in this town! He thinks it has to be a dream.
But Sora doesn't disappear, he's still there and Riku, still laughing, discovers for the first time in his adulthood what a thin border tears share with mirth. It's the blindfold that catches them, the sound pushes through his teeth in a ktch when he tries to shut his jaw before the thing snagging in his laughter turns into something embarrassing. He is not and never has been the kind of person whose strongest feelings find an outlet in crying. He can count the number of times in his teenage years that he shed tears on one hand. It's a thing very rarely done.
So is the thing he does next, when he catches up his friends with his arms and hugs him, tight. Not that hugs are unheard of between the three friends from the islands, Kairi was free with her displays of affection, and Sora was ever the exuberant hugger on his own terms, Riku didn't initiate those kinds of things, didn't tend to migrate far off well beaten paths of fist bumps, head locks and clasped shoulders.
"You're here," he manages, a sentence that's fractured right down the center, and boy does that cloak smell bad. With luck, that'll distract from the fact he's worked up enough to shake, "You're here, you're really--"
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Riku, Sora had cried out. He's pretty sure he's never heard anything so welcome in his life.
Can this really be happening?
After all the fruitless searching, the crushing weight of grief he thought would smother him like one snuffs a candle, of all the worlds that he would suddenly, actually stumble upon him here, in this town!
He thinks it has to be a dream.
But Sora doesn't disappear, he's still there and Riku, still laughing, discovers for the first time in his adulthood what a thin border tears share with mirth. It's the blindfold that catches them, the sound pushes through his teeth in a ktch when he tries to shut his jaw before the thing snagging in his laughter turns into something embarrassing. He is not and never has been the kind of person whose strongest feelings find an outlet in crying. He can count the number of times in his teenage years that he shed tears on one hand. It's a thing very rarely done.
So is the thing he does next, when he catches up his friends with his arms and hugs him, tight. Not that hugs are unheard of between the three friends from the islands, Kairi was free with her displays of affection, and Sora was ever the exuberant hugger on his own terms, Riku didn't initiate those kinds of things, didn't tend to migrate far off well beaten paths of fist bumps, head locks and clasped shoulders.
"You're here," he manages, a sentence that's fractured right down the center, and boy does that cloak smell bad. With luck, that'll distract from the fact he's worked up enough to shake, "You're here, you're really--"