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There is a boy whose heart only knows hunger. He expands and grows and makes space for something, anything, and everything in his heart. The gravity of his core calls and consumes whatever can get in his orbit.
You feel yourself falling and falling and falling.
⁂
Words always die in Weisz's throat before he can make a shape out of them. They slip out of his grip before he can take hold. Mom always used to say that they should be used carefully, gently. They can hurt and bruise in the most brutal ways. But tender things do not do well in his grasp, so he keeps them hidden away from the world and him. They are safe there.
⁂
You don’t know if gods exist. It’s hard to keep a belief burning and alive when the only thing you can remember from that burn is the smell of the incense sticks in front of your mother’s name that is engraved on the stone. You remember grey shadows overcasting the blue of the sky. Everything else is vague except; except the white-hot rage that simmered in your bones. Your body was too small to make room for so much grief. There was a hand on your shoulder—you don’t remember whose, it was small and wrinkled. Probably the old lady who lived next door and used to cook and give your mother your favourite stew sealed in a chipped yellow plastic container—trying to calm you down as you angrily shouted at the grave, asking why she left you alone. What were you supposed to do with all this loneliness? Where were you supposed to put it down? The world was suddenly too big and wide. All the fragile things in you shattered that day to encase this boiling anger so that you can hold on to it. That kept you going year after year.
You were just a boy without faith. You forged your life thereon with calloused hands and used those brittle pieces of your souls and loaded them into the chambers. Things only break in your hands, so you learned how to recreate them. The ether in your veins buzzing to combine and remake broken things. You made a living among the rusted dark streets where your guns glinted in the moonlight. You were just a boy without faith and then you grew into a man without faith.
You don’t know if gods exist.
But there must be something, someone, beyond the cosmos, by whose divine intervention even time and space bent down to lead your way to him.
“Hey! You’re younger than I thought you’d be!”
⁂
Everything is in shambles after Drakken. Weisz wants to break and crush the world down to its sediments. He is back to being eight and sobbing by his mother’s bed, begging and pleading with her not to leave him alone. He can hear the beeping of the machines nearby and the smell of anaesthesia in the air. He feels so small. He takes the anger that had mellowed down over the years and lets it consume him. Firing bullets after bullets, he rages. That’s the only way he knows how to give shape to his sadness; to make it something concrete and real. His entire body aches and burns, but it isn’t enough. Nothing will ever be enough.
“You’re the one who is gonna have a taste of scary I can be,” Drakken sadistically grins while catching Weisz’s fist head-on and breaking his momentum.
The ether lines on his body glow in contrast to the dark skin. His grin turns sharper and there is a maniac look in his eyes.
Somewhere, Shiki cries, “Weisz!!! Take your suit off!!!”
It’s too late. There is an explosion. A blinding light followed by a pointed ringing in his ears. Arsenal crumbles down to dust around Weisz. There is blood in his mouth. Drakken is saying something about his arm. From the corner of his eye, he sees a blade coming. Everything is blurry.
So this is how he is going to die. Did he live the life right? Will his mother be happy if she sees him like this?
“You were never good at making friends, so... I am a little worried…”
He really was bad at making friends, huh? He remembers snarling at Sibir when the bastard stole his pendant.
“I thought we were friends,” Sibir had said quietly in his thick, gravel voice.
Maybe it was always meant to end like this. Maybe there is another universe where he finds a happiness that he is forever chasing after. Gods, he feels so fragile. The memories of his mother turn foggy. They leave him too. He searches for his anger but he is too tired to feel it. He feels so alone. There is a sharp pain in his body. He tries to move but it is so fucking hard.
He shuts his eyes. There is a movement nearby. Suddenly, it feels like his body is floating. Drakken’s blade swipes through the empty air and meets the hard concrete of the floor, breaking it to pieces. There is a hand tightening around his wrist.
“Shiki…” Weisz whispers. The world around him revolves as his eyes fixate on Shiki’s.
They land on the ground with a thud. “You gotta cool your head.” Shiki doesn’t let go of his hand. “You won’t beat him charging in like that.”
He blinks once and then twice, trying to comprehend what is happening. Shiki’s fingers are wrapped around his wrist in a loose grip now. They are gentle, but they still burn.
Shiki is here.
The whole crew is in a fight with Drakken and his people.
There are people around Weisz. He is not dying. Not yet. There is a fight that he needs to win first. What does Shiki know about people like Drakken? He won’t understand the visceral misery that makes Weisz’s blood boil. It is his battle alone.
He turns away. “I didn’t ask for your help.”
He never knows how to anyway. He doesn’t know if he is allowed to accept it. Kindness like Shiki’s will weigh him down. It will make his chest constrict because people like him should not waste their time on people like Weisz.
The words sting his own heart as soon as they are said out loud.
“But a friend gives it anyway.”
Weisz’s eyes widen and he looks up to see Shiki smiling at him. It is so sure, so steady, that it almost brings him to his knees. What did Weisz do to deserve this unwavering trust?
Friend.
That’s right.
Friend.
Because Weisz is no longer alone. He has people who look out for him and have his back. There are people with whom he laughs and jokes around. There are people who he is slowly learning to call his own. There is a place that he is slowly learning to call home.
I am no longer alone, mom. I have friends now.
Weisz tries to reply, but his voice breaks along with his heart. He only nods and then smiles slowly at Shiki in return.
“Let’s do this, Weisz!!” Shiki calls out.
Together.
Weisz finds his footing again and turns to face Drakken again. Ether buzzes on his fingertips.
“Yeah,” he replies.
Together.
⁂
When you met him, you knew he was a bit naïve. He looked at the world with so much awe, with so much desire to know and explore. Because he is a boy whose heart only knows hunger. But not everything you crave is good for you. He will come to know that in time; there are limits to your desire. That’s what you’ve learned the hard way. You have built up walls to cease and contain your longings. You have made yourself believe that it’s the safe way. It’s better than putting your heart on display only to see it getting trampled on every time.
This boy didn’t know that yet. He expanded. He opened up and showed how much capacity he has for kindness. Something in you resonated along the way, as if he was making you believe that you are capable of doing the same. He keeps on taking chances even after he falls.
Something in your chest takes root. Something tender that wants to grow and bloom.
⁂
It’s the end of the day after their training with Xenolith. Shiki's laughter reverberates in his ears. Weisz stares at his back as his shoulders rise and fall as he animatedly moves his hands while talking to Rebecca and Kleene.
Shiki does not worry about how his words tumble out of him. He welcomes them as they come. Gives them out freely, laced with affection and care, like he is not worried that they would ever run out. Weisz pushes back down a quiet knock that wants to be heard.
He looks down at the wrench in his hand and continues to work on his armour. His fingertips trace the crack in the metal.
Shiki is electric and alive, a wire that finally completed the circuit and lit Weisz's life. The light from his presence is flooding and he has spent so long in this greying darkness that he does not know how to take all of it. So, he always looks away.
He holds up his helmet, a beam of light falling on his lap through the fractures. When Weisz puts it down and looks up again, his gaze meets Shiki's who breaks into a smile. Weisz’s heart falters.
Everything is golden. Sunlight falls from the windows as the ship jitters and moves around a star. It gets pulled, pulled, and pulled into its gravity before finding its balance.
“Sorry about the turbulence,” Witch’s voice comes through the system. “The force was harder than we had anticipated.”
Shiki is back to talking to the girls again. Weisz swallows. He feels dizzy for the rest of the day.
⁂
You have lost too many people already. Grief is something that hurts like a fresh wound every time. It is never a thing that can describe properly. Some days, it sticks to you like thick tar, other days, it comes to you in the form of a distinct smell that you thought you have long forgotten. It is hollow but so heavy. The void that carries so much weight.
Shiki hasn’t come out of his room for two days. Hermit looks lost while Ivry has busied herself in her work, but in the late hours you have heard her cries echoing through the halls. The whole crew is quiet and mourning Witch’s death.
“I’ll go talk to him,” Rebecca says at last and walks away to Shiki’s room.
You give a slight nod. You never know what words need to be said anyway. You don’t know how you can console him, and this crumples your heart all the more because no one deserves it more than he does. This boy who has always got your back. Who readily pours and gives so much of himself.
A few hours later, he comes out with Rebecca from his room with tear-stained cheeks and red-rimmed eye. Even though his skin is pale and he is still sniffling once in a while, clutching Rebecca’s hand like an anchor, there is still a slight ease in his steps that wasn’t there before.
At night, under the lanterns-filled sky of Sandra, you see him. There are soft shadows on his face from the glow of the flying lights, a reverence and sadness in his eyes as he holds the lantern close to his heart before letting go.
You wish then to know how to cry. You wish you knew how to set this grief in motion; how to not let it choke you in his stagnancy, maybe then you would understand and help people around you better. You want to cry so badly.
People disperse after a while, everyone returning to their temporary bases that they have set up post-war. You make your way to the ship too when you see the blur of the dark hair sitting among the dunes.
You don’t say anything and simply stand beside him, tilting your head up to see the stretch of the starry sea. Your shoulder brushes against his in the silence. The air is warm here.
He rests his head on your shoulder. You lift your hand, clench and unclench your fist a couple of times, before finally giving in and resting your palm lightly around his shoulder. He breaks into sobs. Your throat feels dry. He turns around and presses his face in your chest. You wrap your arms around him and told him tighter. He cries. You don’t know how to. He cries. You don’t know how to console him. He cries. You take his face in your trembling hands. He cries. You say his name, quietly, like a whisper. That’s the only word you know at the moment. Your thumb caresses the bandage on his eye with all the gentleness you can muster.
“I don’t want to lose anyone else,” his voice is shaky and it breaks your heart.
“You won’t,” you reply and wipe the tear rolling down his face.
The world hushes around you. The soles of your shoes dig into the sand. There is a hand on your chest. The air hums. His lips collide against yours. It’s unsure and clumsy. You are aware of all your senses, your heart pounding loudly in your ears. Before he pulls back, you lean in.
You kiss the boy whose heart only knows hunger, and it is at that moment you realise that it’s you who is the boy with a hungry heart. You take and take and take whatever he can give and give and give. It’s always been you.
You want.
You want so much.
You don’t know why there are tears stinging your eyes.
⁂
They don’t talk about the kiss.
Weisz does not know how much of it is intentional. After they had pulled apart, they returned to the ship together. It was late in the night and they quietly said their goodbyes before returning to their respective rooms. Weisz didn’t sleep that night.
The next couple of days pass by in spending time with Rebecca who was still in recovery. They behaved like they did every day. Whenever their eyes met, Shiki smiled at him like he usually does. That evening, Ivry calls Shiki to try on the new mechanical eye she has made for him, while Weisz surprisingly ends up having a heart-to-heart with Laguna.
Although Weisz had kept the appearance of annoyance that he usually does around Laguna, his words had hit too close to home.
There was so much of himself in there. He didn’t know how to tell him that he understands the part of playing an unemotional man all too well.
He wants to get better. He is trying to get better.
Shiki’s voice cuts through the pa system. Firm and determined.
“So we are going to get stronger. To make sure no one else gets hurt.”
Something shifts and Weisz can feel the incoming of a new beginning. This is no longer the same Shiki. He hopes he can stand beside him in this advent.
A week passes, then months.
They don’t talk about the kiss and it becomes a memory. A dream that Weisz plays like a broken record on days he can’t sleep.
Things between them are still the same.
⁂
You watch the boy grow up slowly in a different mould than before. He waits and thinks before honing himself. There are rougher edges to him now. Maybe a selfish part of you misses what was before. But this is for the better and you will support him regardless, with everything you have. In the heart, he is still the same. He is still the boy with the sun in his hands that lights up everything around him. You are still learning how to take it but now you are learning to bask in its warmth.
He grows and you find yourself staring at the freckles on his nose and the now more defined and leaner jaw. He frowns more now, but his smile is the same nonetheless. You find yourself hungrier for it, because you are the boy whose heart only knows that. It’s harder these days to subdue that desire.
When your eyes meet, you look away. It’s hard to look at him in the eyes these days.
You still sit together to have dinner, and you still spar and train in the gym together. Things between you are still the same. But it doesn’t feel like that.
You are hungry.
Always.
Hungry.
⁂
Weisz slumps down the wall in the kitchen. There is amber light overhead with a moth. He doesn’t know how or when it got into the ship. He hopes it will make it out alive. He draws his knees together and buries his face in his hands.
“Any moment now,” Laguna says before taking a sip of iced tea.
Weisz lifts his head and throws him a glare. “No one told you to sit here.”
“I feel like I will be missing out on some drama if I don’t see this through,” he replies monotonously and opens up his bag of chips.
Weisz knows he is being dramatic. His head hurts. His ether gear has been acting weird because he is not concentrating properly. He short-circuited a weapon that he was remodelling for weeks. He feels angry and irritated and decided to skip the late evening training sessions, deciding to spend the time sulking in his room instead.
At last, when everyone was done with their supper, he decided to find something to eat and bumped into Shiki on the way. He had asked him with concern in his voice if he was okay. Weisz had only grunted a half-heartedly reply that he doesn’t even remember now.
He was groaning in his hands when Laguna showed up.
He pulls on the string of his hoodie and hears Laguna quietly eating.
“I am pathetic,” Weisz says at last.
“That’s nothing new.”
Weisz stares at him and Laguna stares back. He does not know why he is having this conversation with him, of all people. Sure, the things between them have lightened up now but they still aren’t... that kind of friends, maybe. But talking about this with Rebecca or Homura will make this more real when he himself doesn’t know what is there to even talk about.
Laguna finishes his drink. He takes out a chip and bites.
“I kissed Shiki on Sandra.”
Another chip.
“I like him.”
Another chip.
“Really like him,” Weisz breathes..
There is a stronger word on his tip that melts like molasses but tastes bitter. He does not know how to form it yet.
Laguna hums. “Looks like I wouldn’t have missed on any drama, after all.”
“Hey!” Weisz cries indignantly.
“Don’t overthink it. Your pathetically small brain won’t be able to handle it all anyway. It’s okay. You’ll be okay.”
“Can you just s—”
Laguna cuts him off by reaching out his hand, holding the now almost empty packet, “Chip?”
Weisz grunts and takes one.
⁂
Some days, it feels like he is moving too fast and you cannot keep up. He is growing so fast, continuously shaping himself into someone stronger. The constant urge to protect and fight drove him past his limit.
You want to hold him down. You want to tell him that he can take it slow; that he has people who want to look out for him too. So you stay by his side as long as he lets you. You take whatever he can give and don’t want more from him. Your own hunger has stormed your heart because he is a boy who can ablaze blackholes on his fingertips. How can someone like you ever have the chance to do anything but fall?
You just want to be there with him. At the end of the day, when sometimes he is too tired and rests his forehead on your shoulder saying, “Just for a moment, please,” you don’t wrap your arms around him, but you stand like a pillar.
Sometimes, you go to his room and he entangles his fingers with yours because the nightmares don’t let him sleep. When you wake, he is already out of the bed, but the blanket around you is carefully tucked up.
This is okay. You’ll be okay.
⁂
Three years pass by just like that in liberating all the planets under Ziggy’s rule. It feels like chasing a shadow. At least the latest lead they have from Connor will get them somewhere. After dropping him at Shooting Starlight Guild, they have decided to spend the night in the cosmos.
Weisz walks through the hallways of the ships and opens up the glass door to feel the crisp, cool air of the late night. The sill beneath his fingertips is cold and the cool winds cut his skin. Weisz leans forward to look out into the stretch of stillness. He opens his palm flat and sakura leaves waltz in the wind before settling on it.
Spring in this cosmos feels eternal with the pink ever present in the air; like time loses its meaning when you're wandering in space every day. It's only when they step out of the ship onto planets, that Weisz realises worlds spin and time flows. Seasons cycle and years begin, not just in the glowing binaries of his calendar, but in the buds that bloom and the constellations that run through the map of the sky.
He exhales.
How much time has passed, he wonders, since his heart had decided to expand and make space for so many things? How different of a person he is now than he was the last time when he was here. He is still trying to learn and unlearn so many things. Someone forever in motion.
“Couldn’t sleep?”
Weisz looks over his shoulder to see Shiki coming and standing next to him.
“Just taking a breather. You?”
“Something like that,” Shiki replies.
The sakura leaves slowly fall down and collect around them. The ones floating in the cosmos usually don’t make their way down here through the atmosphere. Since it's spring, the cherry blossoms are blooming all around them. It is a beautiful sight. Weisz stares at Shiki’s profile.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks.
“Ziggy.”
“We will fight against him together. We will win.”
Shiki nods but doesn’t say anything. Weisz turns to face him.
“You know we are a team, right? You know that we have got your back? You know that—” Weisz swallows, I am there, “—that everyone is there. You are not alone.”
Shiki turns to face him too. He stares and Weisz can feel the erratic beating of his heart. Shiki smiles. It’s slow and genuine. Earnest.
He leans forward and brushes off the leaves off his head. “I know.”
⁂
Your heart in the palms of this boy is safe. He makes you remember the love preserved in it. And it's then, you cry out rivers of it. Through grief and rage. Through tears and wails. You met this boy in the cosmos with its fluttering sakura leaves. You met this boy in the spring and bloom of this universe. But this boy carries the entire multitude in his existence.
Shiki.
When you say his name, your bones thaw in the summer of its sound. When you hold his hand, the fire in your heart keeps you going through the winters of it. He is the vibrating colours of the fall. He is the spring that makes way to new beginnings.
You take his hand and pull him closer. You kiss him. Because you are the boy whose heart has only known hunger till he came along. Now, you want to give. He has taught you the expanse of your own heart, the topography of your love. You want to long and want, but you also want to give everything you can. You want to let him know that you will keep his heart safe in your palms too.
You pull back a little, a breath of distance between you two to see the dark of his eyes. You open your mouth, giving shape to those words that have never listened to you before. Some things are needed to be said out loud. Sometimes words are the only way to convey the enormity of it all. “I—” You want to be brave. You try again.
“I love you.”
He kisses you back because he too is a boy whose heart knows hunger because he always had the courage to want but is not sure enough how much to take. He pours out the love and craves for it. Just like you.
The sakura leaves fall over you.
You met this boy in the spring and bloom of this universe.
You loved him right there too.
You both are just two boys whose hearts know hunger.