Everything was perfect.

Everything was perfect and he was perfect and he could do absolutely anything and there was truly no one stopping him but the walls of his house. And the middle of the night. And it couldn’t really be any other way for he wasn’t supposed to be doing what he was doing and if anyone found out about it there would be some serious consequences. His friends would tell his father (or rather, they would tell someone else, who would tell his father) and his father would simply kill him. Cold-blood. No remorse. Just a sign of relief, maybe. Both for his father and for Filotimos.

But Filotimos wasn’t willing to think of that right now because he was perfect and he was strong and powerful and he was basically everything that he wasn’t for just as long as that white dust resided within his body.

The blond boy had sat on the floor, supporting his back on his father’s bed and letting his head fall backwards on the soft mattress. A numb sensation was slowly spreading throughout his entire body and all of his senses were stimulated, making him feel good, really good, and all his troubles and worries seemed so insignificant at that moment. He hadn’t yet closed his father’s bedside table, from which he had began that bad habit and had been secretly taking his dose for over 2 years now, but he knew that his father wouldn’t return home any time soon – and even if he did, at that moment Filotimos felt like he could take him on. He could easily take him on.

At that thought, the sixteen year old boy jumped upwards and headed towards his room. He needed to find his phone and text him. Or maybe even call him. And by that him, Filotimos wasn’t thinking of that brute he had as a father. Of course not. There was another him that had been occupying his mind day and night – perhaps even more than his father’s white dust did – and that him was absolutely perfect, compassionate, beautiful and incredible in every sense of the word. He was enchanting.

And Filotimos was in love.

He was high and in love, and he finally grabbed his phone after stumbling a few times on the way. But what was he going to say, anyway? The blond was looking at the ghost-like figure he had as his wallpaper and a million things occupied his mind – finding the correct way to confess his love not being one of them. After all, that perfect friend of his, going by the name Agathocles, wasn’t interested in guys… No, as far as Filotimos knew, Agathocles used to have a girlfriend in the past and had never expressed any physical interest in getting closer to any guy other than Filotimos – and Filotimos didn’t count, as they were best friends. If there was ever a prolonged touch between them, Filotimos knew it was on accident – and if there was ever a suggestive look in Agathocles’s eyes, Filotimos had no doubt it was unintentional.

After all, Filotimos wasn’t “love material”. He was of average height for a guy, sticks and bones, pale as a ghost. His light hair caused him to always stick out in class and be the teachers’ favorite boy to ask about the previous lesson (until they realized that Filotimos didn’t care about studying – and the fact that he was dumb was another weakness of him). His blue eyes might have been his only hope, yet even those eyes were wasted on that small face of his. He was supposed to be turning into a man, yet he could still see a ten-year-old boy in the mirror. A naive, hopeful, broken and absolutely messed up ten-year-old kid.

Yes, Filotimos wasn’t love material. He was too busy hunting ghosts and dreaming about a life he’d never have, constantly spacing out and losing touch with reality. He was too busy lying about small things, then bigger things, because he would somehow become paranoid about who knew what, and what their true intentions were. He even lied to himself about coke being a one-time thing, and that he did it just because he was bored and had nothing better to do. He lied to himself when he said he wasn’t addicted, but he was sure that he was telling the truth when he looked at the mirror and thought the absolute worst about himself. He thought that he was telling the truth when he reaffirmed to himself that all the negativity and abuse he’s experienced in life had somehow been his fault.

And now, with his phone still in his hands but his gaze no more fixated on it, Filotimos was glancing around his room – dry mouth, shaky posture, fluttering eyes, nauseous and thoughts being too many, too hazy and too intense all at once – trying to see where his self-confidence, his perfection and all of his strength had gone to.