It was a strange comfort in the way Sora could shift from their usual banter into something more softened, or maybe it was just the way he knew exactly when. Often, Riku thought that Sora just might know him better than himself, like he could feed off of his peculiar brand of energy and know how to react to make Riku feel the best. He was pretty sure his own parents weren’t even that good at comforting him from the inside out. It’s something that still surprises him to this day. In a way, it’s crazy to think that he didn’t always know how deep his feelings ran. He doesn’t know what his parents might have thought, but he knew that they loved Sora, and that’s enough for him.
“I know,” he reassures, maybe even in part to himself. He does know, but he also knows that what Sora thinks means more than possibly what Sora knows. He decides not to dwell on it. That kind of thinking feels better left for another day when the sun isn’t burning his face slowly but surely and Sora isn’t right there beside him. He’d rather think about how nice it is, and the thought of a trip coming up.
“I think we should probably pack first.” Riku smiled a little at Sora’s natural enthusiasm. He knew Sora was pretty good at thinking on the fly, but really, they shouldn’t leave with just a few mushrooms and a coconut. He did nod, though, because they probably could gather enough stuff before tomorrow. “Yeah. Sounds good.” He passed a look up to the sky for a moment, squinting at the bright blue before nodding. It was hard to imagine laying out in the grass, looking up through a bunch of trees because the Islands never really had much of that, and his time running around since then wasn’t exactly full of free time in that sense. “We’ll take a blanket just in case.” That seemed logical enough, and if he needed to share said blanket and huddle close to Sora for warmth at night, he wasn’t actually going to complain about that, was he?
“I wouldn’t say I wasn’t happy…” He started, but he wasn’t really sure how to really put into words what he’d been feeling. He knew he’d been feeling a lot even before the storm, but he hadn’t really been able to do anything about it then, and it was just as difficult to put it into words now maybe. “Maybe just restless,” he offered. “And don’t… It’s not like you could have done anything, really.” He paused. “Well, maybe one thing.” Riku had been pretty dumb over everything back then, and while he hadn’t noticed it at the time, hindsight was painfully obvious. He’d just...wanted something more, and since he’d thought he couldn’t have the one thing he hadn’t even been fully aware of wanting, that had translated into a need to run away, taking the thing that mattered most with him. Of course, then there was Kairi, and that had only fueled the part of him that needed something more. “Not like I was gonna ask anyway.”
Then, of course, Sora had to go and do it anyway, and for a moment, Riku just had to laugh, feeling warm from more than the sun. It wasn’t like Sora was rarely affectionate or anything, his timing was just great. He shifted on his back, lifting an arm over his eyes as he took a deep breath. “You’re always going to be a sap, huh?” He looked back over, though, after a second or two. “If I was ever going to be stuck somewhere, I’m glad it’s with you.” Though, Riku didn’t really think of Winterdale as being stuck, not like he might have when he was younger. It really was amazing how much could change in such a short amount of time.
He sat up then. “Wanna go get some icecream? Bet we can borrow a pen and you can start a list of what we’ll need for the trip so we can grab it when we get back to the dorms.”