Kieren Walker had saved him in more ways than one.
Watching him now, wide-eyed, Simon knew he would gladly lay down his undead life for him again. It was nothing. He would take a thousand more bullets, standing in the line of fire, being torn asunder and eternally shamed by the living, if it meant protecting him. Hell, he thought with a slight chuckle, he would return to Norfolk of his own volition, allow the angels of death with their curious, detached hands to pry him open and put him back together again. The vulnerability, the pain--it was nothing.
For Kieren, he would allow himself to be unmade.
He casually dismissed the lad's assertion that he was no messiah. For if there were a god, it would have been him. This slender, golden-haired, doe-eyed creature whose spirit transcended the limitations of his flesh. Who had pulled him from the cliff-face of sacrilege with a quiet beckoning; who, through whispers and soft kisses, had guided him through the dark. Simon would always take up his possessions and follow Kieren to the ends of the earth, as a disciple and a lover, hungry for the truths that wept forth from his lips.
There had been what he believed in and then there had been Kieren. But now there was only the one. And he was incredible.
That very night, he would bare himself before his god. Allow himself to be baptized by the healing touch of the sweet boy's hands, as they roamed over his willing mouth and down his arms, tracing over the track marks there, remnants of his past sins that would be swept clean. No longer scars that he looked upon with loathing, but stories of shared pain and understanding. All the more blessed for that. He would kneel, penitent, when Kieren finally found the gnarled, sutured flesh that wound down the length of his spine. Not shying away when his lips traced over the ravaged skin, loved all the more for its ugliness.
And he would worship the boy's own body, kissing every inch of him, as they climbed ever higher and higher into the sweet white oblivion they had discovered for themselves before tumbling back down again, sweating and laughing into each other's arms. The closest to heaven they could ever get.
Fuck the Undead Prophet and the ULA. Fuck their preconceived notions of paradise. Heaven was a place on earth with Kieren.