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Out of them all, Jeremy is the one who prays the least, if at all.
Trevor does his best to make offerings at least once a month; filling a wooden bowl with tree saplings and carefully jetpacking over to their shared, small temple. He quietly sends them to the Gods, letting gravity carry them down to the dark abyss, before returning to his work without another word.
Geoff gifts the temple spare chicken eggs, naming each one before letting them go, trusting they’ll be taken care of.
Jack offers crops, Michael offers elementium ingots and Gavin finds himself offering solar panels, or at least, his old first-generation solar panels.
Jeremy, however, doesn’t go near the temple.
The others ask him about it. Gavin’s overheard Michael question him multiple times, but he always manages to dance around his reasoning for long enough that they eventually give up.
It only succeeds in making them more curious.
Gavin’s approach is to just ignore it, happy to let Jeremy tell them why when he’s ready. So instead, he focuses on solar, carefully melting sand in the giant smelter and occasionally pinging arrows off Michae’s helmet when he’s not paying attention.
It’s not until the middle of summer, when the grass of Geoff’s farm turns yellow and dry, that Jeremy’s behaviour becomes too interesting to ignore.
He’s halfway done making all the mirrors he needs for his next generation of solar when Jeremy comes to a standstill beside him, staring strangely at Trevor. He’s barely breathing, eyes locked on Trevor, who's quietly whispering words of encouragement to the newly planted seedlings.
Curious, Gavin asks, “Jeremy? You okay there, boy?” and barely manages to avoid casting his hands in the glass while he watches Jeremy.
"He shouldn't—It's meant to be Trevor. Why is Alfr-” he mutters, blinking in quick succession, before snapping back to himself. He turns to Gavin and frowns. “Sorry. I don’t—”
“What do you mean? He looks like normal ol' Trevor to me.”
Jeremy smiles, but it barely reaches his eyes. “It’s nothing. I probably didn’t get enough sleep last night. Everything’s fine, Gav.”
And while Gavin finds himself relenting, the slip-up sits in the back of his mind for the rest of the day. He finds himself watching Jeremy just that little bit more, trying and failing to catch another weird moment. By the time it’s dark, Gavin’s wasted his day with nothing to show for it.
The next morning, he forces it out of his mind. Micheal lets him bum around the Forest of Mystery for a bit until he kicks him out around noon. But once he starts working on solar again, it’s easy to forget. By the time Jeremy asks him to offer blood for his magic a week later, Gavin’s completely forgotten about it.
Which means, he spends his summer, autumn and winter building his sixth generation of solar panels, all the while munching on corn and bleeding into a small stone altar.
He also, without any say in the matter, falls helplessly in love with Jeremy.
It’s partly to blame on all of the time they spend together, thanks to the altar; but also because Jeremy seems to open up more when Gavin babbles incoherently at him, all thanks to his blood loss.
Gavin learns about who Jeremy was before they all spawned; “Not all that important, Gav. I was a simple potion maker back on the ground.”
He learns about Jeremy’s family; “Lots of brothers and sisters.”
And he learns about why Jeremy doesn’t pray; “They’ve done nothing for me and I’m not even sure that they’re actually real. Why should I offer thanks to God’s that don’t even care about me.”
Gavin’s not sure he can agree.
After all, the Gods are the reason Gavin’s here, alongside Jeremy and Micheal and everyone else, high in the clouds away from the land below. But he nods along if only to keep Jeremy talking and does his best to keep himself from saying anything too embarrassing.
When the flowers start springing up in the Forest of Mystery again and the air starts tasting sweet, Gavin makes a plan. He pulls Trevor aside and barters for an angel block, grinning happily when Trevor caves. He upgrades his jetpack, ensuring that he won’t run out of fuel halfway through his journey (and also adds rainbow sparkles to the exhaust, but that’s not important) and then heads out past Jack’s farm until he can’t see their little base anymore.
Then, Gavin builds.
It’s a small grassy area, filled with flowers; next to a small, oddly-shaped pond with one happy salmon in it. He adds two trees for shade, a small (ugly) hut filled with things he’s pilfered from the lad shack, and a picnic blanket.
When he’s done, it’s perfect and horrible all at once.
He spends the whole flight back arguing with himself, and by the time he touches down by the reactor he’s ready to throw the whole idea out the window. But then Jeremy makes eye contact with him from over at the altar, and Gavin melts like warm chocolate.
As if on autopilot, he beelines straight for the altar, pulling up in front of it and rocking back on his heels, trying to expel some of his nervousness.
It’s probably stupid to ask now, he tells himself, content to watch Jeremy work, after all, he’s busy and I’ve got plenty of time. Tomorrow. I’ll ask him tomorrow.
“You’ve been gone all afternoon,” Jeremy mumbles, sliding another stone slate into the altar. It sinks underneath the blood, his blood, slowly before completely disappearing.
A number of lies and deflections dance on his tongue, but when he opens his mouth all that comes out is, “I have a surprise for you!” It doesn’t help that he definitely screams it, seen in the way Geoff snaps to look at them from across the chicken park, but Gavin can’t take it back now.
Jeremy, however, just grins. “Oh yeah? Gimmie.”
Gavin shakes his head. “Nah, you have to follow me. We’ve gotta fly somewhere first!”
He’s half-expecting Jeremy to change his mind as soon as he says it, but Jeremy just nods and adjusts his Supremium armour. With his map in hand, Gavin leads Jeremy past Jack’s farm and into the expansive sky.
For the first ten minutes of flight, it’s awkwardly quiet, what with Gavin trapped in his head worrying if Jeremy will actually like his surprise, and with Jeremy being just as mysterious as always.
And then Gavin’s jetpack sputters out for a moment and then dies completely, dropping the lad out of the air.
Jeremy’s quick to catch him, but the panic still hits him hard and Gavin scrambles to latch onto Jeremy with desperate handfuls.
“F-fuck, holy shit, Gav. You’re alright, I got ya. Gods above, you scared the shit outta me.” He manoeuvres them until Gavin’s in a more comfortable position for both of them and then runs his hands down Gavin’s back, just for the reassurance of touch.
“I-I should’ve recharged my jetpack before we left,” Gavin mumbles, heart pounding in his chest. He presses his face into the crook of Jeremy’s neck and sucks in a few shallow breaths, trying to slow his heartbeat.
Jeremy starts moving at some point, (Gavin’s not really paying that much attention anymore), carefully flying them in the direction Gavin was leading them. Being wrapped safely in Jeremy’s arms means there’s no room for awkwardness, and so Gavin finds himself talking to fill the silence.
“Why do you always get me to bleed for you, Jeremy? Can’t anyone do it?” he asks, and then immediately feels Jeremy stiffen under him.
“What? I mean yeah, I just thought—I thought you liked doing blood magic with me? You should have said something sooner, Gav, if you—” he stutters and Gavin realises he’s put his foot in his mouth.
“No! No, that’s not what I meant! I meant it more like why did you pick... me? You could have done blood magic with Michael or Trevor. Why... why me?” He trails off, feeling like a right fool. He’s half a second from just forgoing the whole conversation and just jumping out of Jeremy’s arms to let the void swallow him whole when Jeremy replies.
“I chose you ‘cause I lo—cause I wanted to hang out with you, Gav. We barely talked, and I just wanted...”
“Oh,” Gavin mumbles, hiding his pink cheeks in Jeremy’s neck. He feels Jeremy’s body relinquish control to gravity and realises that they must be here. They‘ve finally made it to his little picnic spot.
Regretfully shrugging his way out of Jeremy’s arms, he takes a couple of steps back and opens his arms.
“Tada!” He exclaims, “here’s your surprise, Jeremy Boy.” As soon he finishes talking, his heart feels like it’s trying to climb out of his throat.
He watches Jeremy carefully as he looks around the small floating park. Then, he smiles, so wide that Gavin wishes he could capture it in a drawing and hold onto it forever.
“This is awesome, Gav! No wonder you were gone for so long.”
He sinks down onto the picnic blanket underneath one of the trees and looks over at the pond, watching the salmon splash around in the water. Gavin knows he should grab the basket from inside the hut and layout their lunch, but for the time being, Gavin is transfixed. He sinks down on the blanket beside Jeremy and does his best to watch Jeremy without being too obvious.
“Can I name the fish?” Jeremy mumbles, looking up and staring through the tree branches. When he looks at Gavin, his eyes have gone glassy and blank. While it only lasts for a second, before they return to normal again, Jeremy looks as if he’s met death.
He gasps, ragged and raw, as his hand shoots out to grab for Gavin. Through the touch, Gavin can feel Jeremy’s slight tremble and he instantly pushes himself forward into Jeremy’s lap without a second thought. Cold fingers skate across his cheeks as if Jeremy’s trying to inspect him for injuries and when Gavin tries to open his mouth, Jeremy swallows his words with a desperate kiss.
It’s too fast for Gavin to really react, but the touch burns itself onto Gavin’s lips and he finds himself swaying forward to meet Jeremy again.
“Tell me you’re okay. Gavin. Please. Tell me you won’t leave me. I can’t—you can’t. I’ll fall apart without you,”
“Jeremy, what are you talking about, Jeremy?” he tries, laying one of Jeremy’s hands over his heart, just so he can feel his heartbeat and know he’s alive.
“You died. You died and I—he—I completely fell apart and I know that I, me,” he presses a hand against his chest to punctuate the word, “would do the same.”
“I... I don’t understand,” Gavin mumbles, and Jeremy sucks in a breath. When he meets Gavin’s gaze, his eyes are no longer the familiar shade of brown he’s come to know, but rather an electric and mesmerising blue.
“There’s something I need to tell you, Gavin," he breathes, pausing for a second, “I—I’m a God and that’s why I don’t pray. My brothers and sisters thought it would be a fun idea to drop a couple of humans on a tree in the sky and watch them fumble to survive. You were meant to die, right from the beginning. It was all a game to them. But I couldn’t—I refused to let that happen. So I spawned alongside you, masqueraded as a normal human and helped you all survive.”
Gavin tries to find something to say but comes up blank. All he can do is sit and listen.
“And then, almost as if as punishment, I’d catch glimpses of your other lives. Michael, who traded his humanity for robot parts, attacking things just to feel something again. Jack, building himself a glass house in a shaded cove. And you; so many different versions of you, all so much alike right down to the core. And so fragile. Dying, bleeding, hurting; the man I’ve foolishly fell for, so close yet so far.”
Jeremy lets out a shaky breath. “I watched you die. Sniped by an arrow, and sent falling to your death by a man you called a friend. I—I can’t save him, but I can save you.”
“You’ve already saved me, Jeremy,” Gavin whispers, feeling off-balance with all this new knowledge. “As long as I’m with you, I’m safe.”
Jeremy shakes his head, pulling his hand back from Gavin’s chest and presenting it palm up. Where there was nothing before, now sits a small, yellow petal that seems to shine without reason.
“While I can’t bear the thought of losing you, I will not force you to live this curse alongside me. It’s up to you entirely.“
“What’s it gonna do to me?” Gavin asks, eyeing the petal.
“It’ll make you everlasting, just like me. You’ll be a child of the sun. A herald of light. Solar panels will charge at night just by being in your proximity. You’ll be a God, and I will live happily knowing that you’ll not fall to the same fates as your other lives.”
“Everlasting. That means I’ll outlive Michael and the others, right? I’ll have to watch them grow old, wither away in front of me while I never change.”
“Yes. It’s a curse I know too well,” Jeremy mumbles.
For a moment, Gavin considers it. An eternity at Jeremy’s side. The freedom to live forever, with no countdown. It’s such a tempting thought, but one that’s incomplete.
“Can you make more of these?” He asks, and from the look on Jeremy’s face, it seems the lad understands what he means.
“All I can do is offer them the same choice, Gavin. What they decide is up to them. I make no promises.”
Gavin smiles, picking up the petal and popping it into his mouth. His tongue tingles where it touches. “Your brothers and sisters are going to regret putting us all together, but I couldn’t be happier.”
And when he leans in to kiss Jeremy again, Gavin feels likes he’s glowing.
Because he is.
Literally.