This was real. It was all so difficult to comprehend, no matter how not ready he’d been. He’d found Cian regardless, and here he was, with the one person he’d spent years kicking himself for leaving. He’d missed his parents, sure, missed friends and missed old teachers and neighbours, but above anyone else, he missed Cian. He’d missed having someone to talk to pointlessly, he’d missed someone who didn’t ask him to talk, who could sit in silence with him and be unbothered by his simple need for quiet company. He’d missed having a brother.
And it was hard now to think that Cian was still here, still real, and he was staying.
“Oh! No, no, that’s not a good question. Don’t ask me that. You don’t want that answer.” Waving his hand, Sean’s face blanched, and he tried in vain to scramble for a better question. “Do you like it here? I mean, you’ve been here for eight years, but do you like it?”
It was so hard to fathom and Cian was still half thinking that he would soon wake and this would all be a dream. Eight years was such a long time for a mortal; when they had parted ways he was barely out of childhood himself, a scraggly youth of twenty just on the cusp of adulthood. He wondered how different he must look to Sean, siting opposite him unchanged, how much older. He was slimmer then, and just as baby faced. Now he wore facial hair halfway between stubble and a proper beard, he was a fully fledged geologist, owned a house, and had been in a relationship for the past six years.
Cian frowned as he watched the boy react to his question. Clearly he was doing something unsavoury, something he didn’t want to admit. But Cian wasn’t a kid anymore and things had changed in Sean’s absence. “Yeah, I do; I mean I have my entire life here. What about you?” he played along, taking another mouthful of his water before he focused on his little brother again.
“Sean... you can tell me what you do, it’s okay.”