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Sometimes, when he couldn’t help himself, Noah missed him.
Him being Barrington Whelk. Him being the biggest mistake in his life, by a long shot. Even when you included all the life that Noah had lived after his death, if you could call it that. Noah would call it that. The afterlife he was living was more of a life than his actual life had been, when he thought about it.
It wasn’t really that Whelk had killed him. It was all the things before that that made it a mistake. Noah thought that even if he hadn’t become friends and a bit of something else, Whelk would have still picked him to sacrifice on that day. It would have been better that way. Perhaps not better in any real sense of it, but he’d feel better about himself. He would no longer be the fool who walked right into it, who drove Whelk to the place he could murder him. To the place he could hit him again, again, again, again, again, until there wasn’t any Noah left.
Whelk had never been a good person. But he hadn’t seemed like a horrendous person, either. Even when you know someone’s not good, you don’t think they’re going to go to such lengths. That never comes to mind, especially not someone as naive as he had been. You have a friend with some prominent less than great qualities and it’s not that big a deal. Some smarter people would stop being friends with someone at that moment, but even then they don’t think that it’s possible the other person will go to murder anytime soon. Not even when they’re volatile.
Their first kiss had been an accident. As much of an accident a first kiss could be, anyway. Roughhousing was common between them. It was never serious and never lasted for more than a minute or two. Wasn’t enough to be questioned, either. Noah doesn’t know how many times they were in similar positions, but that time their faces got close and they stopped and it just. It just happened.
Noah wished it was a more interesting story with a better person. Noah wished a lot of things. He knew he would never get what he asked for, but he felt better if he asked.
The second time wasn’t an accident. Neither was the third, or fourth, or fifth, or sixth, or any of them after that. They pretended a few of them after the first were, though. Noah’s pretty sure it was the fifth one that they stopped pretending, when they shared a smile afterwards. When they both realized they were arranging their days to have more and more time with each other to sneak kisses.
They did share a kiss once, that wasn’t secret. Noah had been crying. Whelk panicked. Not that he panicked and kissed him to make it better, but that he obviously panicked to care so much more about helping than what other people thought. Noah found himself wishing a lot that was the Whelk that was around all the time. He never saw that Whelk again, though. He doesn’t think he ever existed much past the moment the rest of Whelk found out about him.