Thomas likened Felix to apple cores and dull, small seashells that were crushed underfoot with little incident, beautiful but hidden in dirt and sand. He'd never tell him this, naturally, for boys their age were not one to compare each other to rotten fruit and pieces of flotsam. Sixteen had implications. If you were to call a boy beautiful, you were probably gay. Thomas was confident he had no interest in either genders, but found Felix beautiful anyway.
Another one- a caged sparrow. Those didn't survive well in captivity. Felix once told him that life is captivity, until you stomp enough men to be in a thin, rarefied atmosphere in which you no longer see the bottom you were once in. But Felix had no intention of stomping men, as much as he would have liked to.
Suspicions were high that Felix had no intentions to be anything but dead, but that was another story to tell. Thomas would have begged him not to, naturally, because his other friends used him for homework and his fake ID. Begging, for whatever reason, never seemed beneath him, but somehow he knew his opinion would have no sway.
"Thomas, what do you think happens after we die?" Felix asked him a month before, chilly early November cutting into both of their bones, the heat out again for the umpteenth time in Felix's awful apartment.
"I don't know, I think nothing happens. And if something did happen, it's probably not nice for most people."
"I want to stay here."
An eyebrow raiser, that statement. Felix and his sufferings, everyone and their sufferings. Why would anyone want to stay?
"Everyone says that the after will be better, Christians say prepare for it, and Buddhists, even though they don't have a heaven, want you to prepare too."
"Why do you say you want to stay?"
"I want things to work out. And if they don't, I want to be here when everything goes."
"I still say nothing happens."
"I never said otherwise," Felix replied. "That's why I want to stay."
All possible responses to his friend's train of thought eluded Thomas, so he settled on nodding.
"The world is just so violent. Violently stunning and amazing and perfect, and if everyone saw that everything would be better."
His eyes- Thomas saw distance. Felix was the emperor of distances, heliosheaths away despite being seated just across from him.
"I guess. I don't know," he replied.
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