His shoulders shake with suppressed laughter, soft, and fond, and brief. He's laughing at himself, or he's finally rediscovered the humor in the situation. How long has he been in Zanarkand? How much longer is he going to be? Somehow he was envisioning a future where he wasn't needed any longer, or at least one where the needing was less — because any future is inevitably going to contain his absence — and then he's confronted abruptly on the deck of the houseboat that isn't his and his own grasp on the situation's slipped, just that much.

It wouldn't be the first time he was wrong.

"I know." Auron says, smile audible. But, like all of his smiles, there's a hollowness at its center. Something that he, even with all his practiced feigning, can't pretend away.

He squeezes Tidus's sides under his worn hands, feeling over the tract of all that bare, warm skin, without moving from where his hand's in his hair, gently placating. It's something he's trying to say without saying. He has enough experience with these things to know. He has enough experience with these things not to question it.

Instead, after the moment's gone on long enough, he curls his hands around Tidus's upper arms and pulls him along with him when he lies back.