This show has spoken to me on so many levels, specially Simon's story, the way he felt... it touched me so deeply I felt the need to explore his and my own feelings in a deeper way. Hope you enjoy
He's beautiful. And when he sees Him, that's the first thing that comes to mind, how beautiful He is; not in the usual assumption of the word, but in a much deeper one.
He's never been a man of many words. It had always been hard for him to express exactly how he felt, mainly because not even he knew how to name it. But now, with Him standing before him, he knows the right definition for that word: "Beautiful".
And every time he sees Him, he feels the need to reach out, accompanied with a paralysing notion that if he does, He might break. He seems so fragile, yet so strong; so damaged, yet so put together. He looks exactly the way afterlife should look like: a new opportunity to correct the mistakes of the past, to make peace with them so you can leave them behind.
His past was hard; it was still a difficult topic for him. Whenever he tried to relieve it, he went to the parts that hurt less. But when he saw His face, all of that didn't seem to matter; it was all just a mess of blurry images and words that no longer meant anything, because they were overshadowed by the bright aura that always accompanied the beautiful being that had come into his life in such an unexpected way, by a mere coincidence…or was it faith?
He made him doubt but at the same time, He renewed his faith in the belief that there was a purpose for all of this, this second chance nobody had asked for. Because no matter how determined he presented himself before his undead fellows, deep inside, he still doubted…He liked giving comfort to those who needed it, to show them they weren't alone, just like he would've wanted to be told when he was alive for the first time, when he felt desperate and in need. He wished everyone could have access to their own personal sunshine, just like he did at the moment, rejoicing in the presence of the one who most confused and marvelled him.
What had drawn him to this? Had it been a series of events? Had it been planned? Had all his life been just a sequence of tragedies that led up to this moment? Because if it was then he was happy he had lived them, and he'd go over them a thousand times if that was what it took to get to that point, where his chest felt warm, warmer than it ever did even when his heart had beaten.
Existence used to be meaningless. He could still remember so many doctors explaining his mother how he was just "calling for attention", in the middle of a "rebellious stage", and he knew they were wrong, even though nobody believed him. Being born with such despair seemed so unnatural for everybody else, and so impossible to understand without trying to give it an explanation they found "logic". Mainly because his "revolution" had always been quiet; it wasn't accompanied with raging screams or heated slogans. He was beyond all of that, finding it meaningless and revelling instead in the blossoming of his own awareness.
Explaining sadness, melancholy, despair…that had all been harder for him than anything else. His only refuge was his world, a micro-cosmos where he didn't have to explain anything, not to himself, not to the world. He just abandoned himself to the lull of numbness, no longer being able to feel pain or anything else for that matter, and trying hard to get rid of that eternal sense of boredom that followed him everywhere, that clawed itself to his insides like a parasite which didn't have the slightest intention of changing host.
His dead hadn't been surprising, not even for himself. After everything he had gone through, it was the logic thing to happen. And ever since the first moment he had regained consciousness, he wondered what he had done to deserve a second chance. He still wondered sometimes…
Everyone seemed to ask themselves why he looked so comfortable being an undead and he smiled at the puzzled looks he was given, because there was a very simple explanation for that: he was used to it. Even before his official dead, he felt like he was already gone, unable to feel, numbed. So it was no news for him; the anesthetised limbs, the slightly ungraceful movements, the distant feeling whenever he touched something…
Just when he kissed Him did he actually feel alive. That was when his faith was stronger, when he felt like there had to be something bigger than him for all these good things to be happening. Suddenly, all his numbed nerves would come to life, and the feeling would be real and strong and would touch him in a deeper way than anything else ever had. Not the shock of heroin, not the films he so loved, not even the Nortriptyline, meant to force his body to produce what it no longer could and awaken what wasn't alive. He could do all of that with just one touch of His lips.
Simon smiled at the boy in front of him. There was no way he could ever get tired of this, of seeing him smile, of hearing him talk about the things he was passionate about, of the way his eyes shone more than he'd ever seen in any other person, undead or fully alive. So if Kieren was the definition of "beautiful", Simon was the absolute characterisation of "redeemed".
This is the first work I submit for this fandom, so I'd love to have some feedback, I really appreciate it and it makes my day. Thanks for reading!