It's never as slow a return as he'd like.

There's the amazing explosion that feels endless, like it's a rolling whiteness that everything is blighted by. And then the moment the ripples soften even slightly, the sound turns back on, piercing behind and across everything else.

He could hate them for that alone.

He does stifle most of that reaction at the sensation on his knees. Opening his eyes, lazy and golden and only faintly annoyed, rather than troubled, to lay the words unsaid against that face.