Shade Jay Here

You listen to me... I'm in love with you. Jerevin

“You listen to me… I’m in love with you.”

“Can you hand me a light, Lil’ J? ‘m thinking that this might be a deeper issue since I’m not seeing anything wrong surface-wise, hm…”

Jeremy hums as he hands Gavin a torch, watches him take it with a thankful, bright grin that makes the corner of Jeremy’s lips twitch.

“Thanks, love! Hopefully, I won’t have to dig too deep. I swear that maintaining these boys are more effort than actually crafting them,” Gavin pouts. One hand grips the torch tightly to hover above the open panel, and his other hand grooms delicately through the inside components, eyes narrowing to catch any errors.

Jeremy spectates in interest as he shifts side to side with his view, trying to catch a glimpse of what Gavin is scouring through. He knows just as well that whatever he sees, he won’t understand at all, but it’s the curiosity that counts; and besides, Jeremy just has this awful, awful habit of watching Gavin.

It’s not as creepy as it sounds – reminiscent of when he tried to explain this awful habit to Michael, the first to know about their dating – but it’s just so easy to get caught up in Gavin. Intended or not, Gavin is a hurricane of a being. He’s composed of contradictions and complexity that none of them’s ever really reasoned out, taking him for how he is at the most immediate level.

Gavin and his solar panels are the best examples of that, the one that everyone knows but don’t acknowledge – at least, not as much as they should, in Jeremy’s opinion.

For indiscernible reasons, Gavin’s grown a penchant for solarwork, especially with his solar panels. They’re tricky things to craft, even harder to maintain, and upgrading to its max potential looks near impossible with the resources required. The type of character that Gavin is, no one had expected him to enjoy that sort of work; it fell more into the realm of Ryan or Jack’s interest. Yet they didn’t question it, instead taking on their usual hobby of ribbing Gavin and his work.

It’s not done out of malicious intent, and Gavin doesn’t seem bothered by it at all, but Jeremy’s a different story. He feels the awkward and uncomfortable feeling for his boyfriend, listening to them poke fun about the solar panels when he’s seen the effort gone into them up close.

Watching it now, he’s still stupefied by the amount of work and care Gavin puts into his panels. Gavin’s brain is a litany of knowledge about the panels, ruled by book knowledge and tons of experience. If Jeremy looks closer, he can see how Gavin’s hands are calloused and roughened, little welts where he he’s been shocked and old scars from sharp metal.

“Oi, world to Lil’ J? Your boyfriend’s calling for you! Are you there?”

“H-Huh, what?”

Jeremy’s shaken out of his thoughts, back ramming straight up out of surprise. He’s greeted with a pair of green eyes looking at him with amusement, hands no longer scouring through the messy innards of a solar panel. Jeremy’s face flushes pink, and he wonders how long he’s been out of it if Gavin’s looking a little too smug for no reason.

“About time you returned to the real world, innit? I’ve been calling your for a while now, love,” Gavin explains. He doesn’t seem annoyed from Jeremy’s lack of attention with his grinning expression. “I’ve been done with maintenance work for a while now, and I need you to carry this back for me to the station.”

“Oh! Shit, yeah, I can do that! Just…hold on,” Jeremy mumbles as he ducks his head in slight embarrassment and takes the solar panel into his arms. It’s a familiar weight, a task given to him multiple times by now, and the walk back is very much the same.

“Thanks for always carrying the panels for me, Jeremy! I used to break ‘em a lot tryna’ carry them, so I had to work at the actual station itself which was absolute shite,” Gavin rambles, grinning sheepishly. “Everyone else was usually a lil’ too busy. That, or they didn’t think it was worth the time when Ryan was already making the reactors.”

And it appears again, that little uncomfortable pang in Jeremy’s chest. He shrugs his shoulders to lift the panel a little higher, and he swallows the lump in his throat that’s formed. He doesn’t really know if he should say anything.

“It doesn’t hurt to have more energy though, yeah? ‘Sides, it’s just one or two panels to carry. It’s not that hard to do, bud,” Jeremy deflects. He pauses there, but he’s firing off into another sentence when he sees Gavin’s smile flicker a bit. “I mean, it’s just…kinda sucky that they didn’t do this tiny thing for you, isn’t it?”

Gavin’s head tilts, brows furrowing as if he’s genuinely confused by the concept Jeremy’s laying down for him. “I don’t blame them though? We were all busy, trying to do stuff to improve our place and figuring out what we’d like to do.” He fiddles with the hem of his shirt, dirty with work on the solar panels. “And ‘sides, they had a point. Ryan’s reactors were working just fine and were more productive. Solar panels just seemed more like an extra, unnecessary project to them.”

Jeremy’s about to interrupt, sensing the self-deprecating hole that Gavin’s slowly falling into without noticing, but he’s cut off by a shrug from the other. A strained look overcomes Gavin’s features.

“It’s not a big deal, love. You don’t have to feel obligated to, y’know, feel bad or whatever about this. Doesn’t bother me nowadays.”

There’s an implication laying there in his words, in how Gavin’s shoulders hunch a little over himself and head turns away from Jeremy. It rears the ugly feeling in Jeremy’s chest again, and this time, he can’t stifle his thoughts from escaping into his words.

“You listen to me,” Jeremy starts, pausing in his steps and turning to face Gavin. He forces the other man to look him in his eyes, to see the seriousness in his words. “I’m in love with you. I’m not doing this out of ‘obligation’ or ‘feeling bad’,” – a slight lie – “but as someone who loves you, I’m saying all this ‘cus I really do think it’s amazing. You deserve to be recognized for your work, Gav.”

Gavin’s looking at Jeremy with an odd look on his eyes, and his hands aren’t fiddling with the hem of his shirt anymore. He stays silent, as if he’s processing what the words mean still, as if they’re foreign ideas that he’s never considered.

Jeremy fears that’s he assumed horribly wrong and that Gavin’s taken offense to said assumption. He’s already opening his mouth to apologize just in case, but then Gavin lets out this quiet chuckle – it’s awkward and stilted, uncharacteristically shy for his usual cocksure and nonchalant attitude.

“Thanks, Jeremy,” he mumbles with a small, crooked smile. His eyes are softer, bright green looking more muted but happier. It’s a nice shade on him. “It does feel nice to be acknowledged about my solar work sometimes.

Well, no shit, idiot, Jeremy thinks to himself fondly. He nudges Gavin gently to start on their walk back again, and he listens raptly as Gavin launches into a new ramble about whatever new topic. Distantly, he reminds himself to have a talk with the other boys, to compliment Gavin more on his work.

If you're down for it, "things you said at 1 am" with jeremwood?

1.) things you said at 1am

Ryan doesn’t sleep.

That’s not to say that he never sleeps, because he does, but they’re rare and fleeting instances. Hardwired to be productive and efficient, his brain forces him up for days at a time with no mercy for his body, and there’s never exactly been a cure for it. Ryan’s just figured out to roll with the punches, to take what it gave to him.

So, he ends up being tired frequently, donning these lines below his eyes that look sometimes darker than it actually is, but really, it’s alright, don’t worry because the others do worry over him. They bitch and moan about him all the time, but Ryan can see the look in their eyes, the worry that bubbles beneath them when they think he’s not paying attention.

It’s just easier to rib Ryan about it and say nothing though. That’s how the group works, their system of working with Ryan’s insomnia, and Ryan can’t fault them on that.

But while everyone else lets life continue on as normal (or as normal as it gets with them), Jeremy instead meets up with him on this tiny platform away from the main hub at the latest hours of the night.

(Latest for Jeremy, to clarify. Because one am, for Ryan, is not late at all if that hadn’t been obvious yet.)

It’s not to say that Jeremy doesn’t join in the teasing and pranking, because he absolutely does – but Jeremy is easily anxious, even if his appearance points to it being the furthest thing he could be. He worries and worries and worries, until someone has to remind him that it’s never as bad as Jeremy’s mind makes it seem. For as much power he has, Jeremy’s always felt powerless against his fear of his only companions hurting.

So, it’s not everyday that it happens, their meetups, but it’s frequent enough for more Jeremy’s sake rather than Ryan’s.

Ryan can’t help it. In the same way he does for everyone, these idiots he’s a part of and can’t find himself without, he indulges Jeremy in his own way. If it takes letting Jeremy ruin his own sleep schedule just to make sure Ryan’s doing okay, then Ryan can easily do that for him.

“You’re a menace, Haywood,” Jeremy says, this mixture of blase fondness in his words tonight. He interrupts Ryan’s thoughts. “An absolute maniac!”

How astute. Ryan snorts, shrugging his shoulders as if Jeremy’s statement is a simple fact of life – water is wet, the sky is blue, and Ryan Haywood is a less than lawfully abiding citizen in the little city they made. And it’s not like there’s laws exactly here, but everyone knows that if there were, Ryan wouldn’t care about them. True neutral people are like that.

“You say that like I’m the crazy one, which is fair. But I’m still not the one doing blood magic,” Ryan blithely points out, head tilting towards the whole blood altar that’s sitting on the platform across them. This intimidating, hulking structure donned in the screams of the eternally suffering mobs and pretty, red-black fairy lights strung up. “We can literally hear the mobs getting their blood drained and replenished, over and over again.”

Jeremy, for his part, doesn’t deny it. He just turns red, and Ryan distantly muses about how it matches the blood mage’s outfit. Jeremy’s dedication to the aesthetic of his role is commendable, and Ryan chuckles at the sheer epiphany that shows through on Jeremy’s face when he makes a joke about it.

(Ryan fears that Jeremy will take it as incentive to go further and make everything black-red colored. The man is dedicated to all the weirdest things, and Ryan accidentally enables him frequently.)

“Please don’t turn the entire platform red and black, not all of us are into reminders of your blood sacrifices.”

And Jeremy huffs, hands twitching as if he definitely hadn’t been planning on that. “I wouldn’t turn the entire platform red and black! Just a little bit of it, like my area and Gavin’s,” he explains before perking up again, “And this platform too! We always meet up on this tiny, empty looking thing.”

Ryan raises a brow. “Why is that a bad thing? We didn’t exactly plan this idea out with decorations in mind.”

“Well, that’s ‘cus it was like late when it happened! We can do that right now, c’mon, that’d be so much fun!”

Ryan stifles a sigh and the twitching of the corner of his lips. He averts his gaze from the man sitting besides him, but he can still feel the excited gaze that cuts into the side of his face with a giddy intensity. A loud series of pleading follows after the unrelenting gaze, and it’s only a matter of time until Ryan sighs again.

“Not tonight, at least,” Ryan relents tiredly that has nothing to do with his insomnia and everything to do with Jeremy’s pleading. Even so, a small smile graces his face at the loud whoop! that Jeremy lets out. “Too sudden for decorating, since we have to make all the stuff first. And plan it too, I guess.”

“That’s still a yes!”

Jeremy lets out an excited yell as he slings an arm around Ryan’s shoulder. He chatters on about possible ideas for the platform, suggesting things that Ryan doesn’t know they’ll be allowed to do if the others have anything to say about it. And as the older between them, he should probably be a little more willing to put a stop to those things, but…why not, really?

(Not like either of them will be stopped by the others’ disgruntledness anyway, but at least they can say that they gave the others a moment of consideration.)

Ryan shrugs, and Jeremy takes it as a sign to continue on. Instead of saying anything, Ryan just shuts his eyes and lets Jeremy ramble on and on – there’s no end in sight, it seems like, but there’s no rush. They have all the time in the world for this conversation, the next one, and their future ones.

Ryan can’t sleep – never been able to do that well in his life – but that’s fine.

He knows sleep will come eventually, and it’s not too bad anyway, knowing he has this little platform to retreat to – this home away from home. He’ll have these one am conversations fill up the static snow in his head, and the knowledge that even the loneliest nights will have company pressing against his side as the sun eventually rises from its nest once again.

So, it’s more than fine, really.