stay curious.

Once you start, your brain can’t stop. Or else the thoughts come back again.

“’Kashi,” Matt says, serious despite the nickname, “if I can’t fix them, if I can’t help them, and they might as well be strangers to me—then how can I help my friends and family, the people I actually care about?” Because yes, the alien-itarian lifestyle works out well, he has a purpose to his life and a way to address a literally universal (universe-wide) trauma in trying to rebuild after the collapse of the Galra Empire, but at the end of the day, everything’s already happened and there’s no undoing it. He still has nightmares, flashbacks, panic attacks. He still can’t sleep, can’t cope, can’t breathe. And that’s not unique to him, not by a long shot. “How can I fix myself if I can’t fix them? I’m doing everything I can, but I must be doing it wrong, or—I’d feel better by now. Right?” He lets his hand linger at the back of Shiro’s neck, right where his shorn hair cuts off, and ruffles the tight crop of it as a sensory distraction.

The softness of his full name has Matt sighing, closing his eyes; he relaxes, tipping his face into Shiro’s touch. It feels good, but not in a charged way—feels tender, warm instead of hot, comfort instead of carnal. “Not sure any of us can say that anymore,” he says, not to ruin the mood or anything but because it’s true. Matt himself is different: taller, no glasses, lean muscle, long hair, a battle-won scar on his face and a knee that buckles if he overexerts himself. Something’s changed inside, too. Yes, he still has a scientist’s innate curiosity, but layered over it is a soldier’s conviction, and one has to be stronger for the other to survive. And the two of them haven’t had contact, much less seen each other, for over a deca-phoeb before now.

“I haven’t been the same, since—.” The sentence ends there. Shiro knows what he means. “I keep going to these far-flung star-forsaken pockets of the universe, trying to—I don’t know—undo what happened to me by helping somebody else. And it just makes me realize how much people need, just to survive, let alone thrive. How different people need different things, and how sometimes people can’t even describe what they need, they just know they don’t have it and they’re desperate for it. And they’re hurting, and I can’t fix it. All I can do is get them resources, and even that might not be enough.”

“Maybe not enough for you, but it has to be enough for them, because when one person’s resources are finite, they’ve done all they can,” Shiro says, tightening his arm just that little bit more, this time around Matt’s waist. He likes what Matt’s become, even if he’s rugged from years of exertion— he wishes he could change their circumstances, but he realizes he can’t undo the past, and he realizes Matt’s suffrage is only natural, given what’s happened to him— happened to them both. “I think we’re both looking for the same thing, just differently. And I think you’re not wrong for doing what you’re doing. You can still be bright-eyed and see the way the universe looks from a disjointed lens.”

Just like all the scars marring Shiro’s body, Matt has matching ones, and Matt even has a similar prosthetic— not built quite like Shiro’s, yet all the same just as robotic and foreign to his body, enough to cause persistent pain. Matt smells like machine fluid and dirt and sweat and aero fuel— he smells just like he remembers he’d smelled, back when they were cadets, laced with the stringent musk of space. 

Matt tucks his forehead into the side of Shiro’s neck. Maybe it’s childish of him, to feel so comforted by a half-hearted hug, but it means a lot. “I lost you,” comes out mumbled and small. “I lost you twice.” Once to the Arena for a year, once to the Warp for three. “I’m glad you came back.” But what if he didn’t? Matt’s heart squeezes just as tight as Shiro’s arm, and he hides his burning face in Shiro’s shirt. “Just—I know you didn’t come back for me. Like, because I asked. And you… you changed. Your hair, your arm. Both times. It’s still you, right? Still just you?”

“You need to stop,” Matt says weakly. The way Shiro talks about him, to him, makes him feel warm, kinda like his skin is too tight for his body or his teeth are tingly. His face is probably doing something horrible, some moony smile with a flush or something equally embarrassing. “I’m just… glad we’re still… y’know. Friends, or whatever.” Maybe that’s the right word after all, but something about it seems superficial in this context. “Despite it all. I mean, we’ve really been through it. All of it. I just thought you would’ve decided you’re too good for us little guys by now. Don’t leave us behind, big guy.” Don’t leave me behind.