Chapter Text
Theo wakes with Boris wrapped around him and Popper snuffling at his face hoping to be let outside. That’s how he often wakes up, so it takes him a minute to realize the bed is comfier than usual, and the sheets smell nicer, and in general they are very much not in Las Vegas. That’s when he sees Boris’s face and remembers his injuries.
“Boris, what the hell are you doing?” he maneuvers the other boy to lie flat on the mattress, laying his head carefully on the pillow and brushing his hair out of his eyes.
“Hmm?” Boris flutters his eyes open and frowns up at Theo. His hastily towel-dried hair is frizzy and twisting all over the place, and the healing bruises on his face look like painted shadows.
“You shouldn’t be sleeping on your side like that,” Theo says. “You’re still healing.”
Although to be honest, he doesn’t really know how the healing process works for… whatever injuries Boris actually has.
“Ya silnyy,” Boris says sleepily. I am strong. “Like cockroach. Cannot kill me.”
“Well you can sure as shit get hurt,” Theo scolds. “And we can’t keep making your injuries worse. I think we pushed our luck with that enough on the train.”
“Why?” Boris scrunches his eyebrows. “You think we will need to run again?”
“No, dipshit, so you’re not in so much pain.”
Boris just looks at him for a moment and Theo has no idea what he’s thinking. He’s not sure he wants to find out.
“Whatever, go back to sleep or something,” he pulls on a smelly shirt. “I’m gonna take our clothes down and see if we can use Hobie’s washer.”
“So bossy, Potter,” Boris teases, happily settling back into the bed. “Like housewife.”
“Ha fucking ha,” Theo deadpans. Popchyk shoots out the door in front of him as soon as he opens it. Shit, how long have they kept him stuck in here? They really don’t need to add a dog pissing on the floor to the long list of ways they’re inconveniencing Hobie.
“Oh, hello you!” he hears Hobie say from the kitchen, in that voice people only use when they’re talking to a dog or a baby. “You must be hungry, let me see if I have anything for you.”
Theo enters the kitchen to see Hobie rummaging through the cabinets with Popper fluttering around his legs trying to trip him.
“Good morning Theo, you’re looking better,” he says. “Did you sleep okay?”
“Yeah, great, thank you,” Theo says. Hobie looks way too relieved to hear him talk for such a basic answer. “And thanks for you know, letting us crash here and everything.”
“Of course, I’m just happy to see you again. I was a little worried about you out there with your father, and you haven’t emailed in quite a while.”
Theo shrugs.
“Did he, um,” Hobie gestures to Theo’s face. “Did your dad do that?”
Hobie sounds so ridiculously serious and concerned about it that Theo is about to say no no, my dad is so not the problem, it’s just Boris’s dad we have to worry about, but technically, the answer to Hobie’s question is yes. And then Theo remembers that his dad is fucking dead. He lets out a surprised laugh that clearly confuses Hobie.
“It’s fine,” he assures Hobie. “He’s dead.”
“Oh. My goodness. Well.”
Hobie doesn’t say I’m so sorry for your loss, and Theo is grateful, because he’s not sure if he’s sorry about it yet. He thinks he is. Mostly he’s angry, but that’s not really what you’re supposed to feel when your dad dies, he doesn’t think.
“Do you have a washing machine?” he changes the subject.
“Yes, it’s downstairs. You’ve seen it, I’m sure, in the back corner of the shop.”
“Right, thanks.” Now that he mentions it Theo does remember, although it feels like a lifetime ago since he was last here.
“But I can take care of that,” Hobie continues. “You should eat.”
“No I got it,” Theo is already escaping down to the woodshop. He’s not sure how to talk to Hobie, how to account for who he is now and justify his presence here. Not that he would admit this to Boris, but Theo really wasn’t thinking straight when he decided to run off to New York. What did he think, that he could just go right back to how his life was before Vegas? Did he think his mom would be here waiting for him? Stupid.
He spends too long downstairs—it’s really not that complicated to start a load of laundry—and Hobie comes looking for him.
“You know, I really am glad you’re here. With you and Pippa both away, I was getting lonely,” Hobie pauses, waiting for Theo to respond. He doesn’t. “Of course, I would prefer if it were under better circumstances.”
“Yeah,” Theo says. “I’m really sorry for just showing up like this.”
“I meant better circumstances for you, Theo. I’m sorry you’ve had such rotten luck.”
Theo thinks about the fruit in the painting his mom showed him that day. Bursting with life, just on the edge of going bad. He thinks his life might have skipped right over the perfectly ripe part and jumped straight to rotten.
“It looks like your friend has had some rough luck as well,” Hobie continues. “Does he need a doctor?”
“I don’t know,” Theo admits. He knows Boris doesn’t want one, but he’s not sure how safe it is to avoid it. Theo hasn’t thought much about what’s ‘safe’ recently, and he doubts Boris has ever had much chance to. “It would be complicated, I think. I don’t know if a doctor would treat him. It’s not like we have insurance or anything.” Nor American citizenship nor maybe even a valid visa anymore. He won’t come right out and talk about Boris’s legal situation—he doesn’t understand it anyway—but it’s not hard to guess the gist of it.
Hobie nods, like he had suspected as much.
“There’s a friend of mine who might be able to help,” he says. “She’s a nurse, she wouldn’t mind doing us a favor.”
“And she wouldn’t, like, ask questions?”
“She’ll need a bit more information about Boris’s injuries than you boys have given me,” Hobie says. “But no, she won’t pry. And I won’t either, if you’re not ready to talk about it.”
The feels a spike of panic at the prospect of having to explain himself to Hobie. ‘Not ready’ implies that he will need to be ready at some point, right? He doesn’t know how to talk about either of their fathers or about Boris immigration status or about his relationship to Theo.
What is he to Theo? Boris has called them brothers, that might come close to describing how intertwined they are. Boris has also kissed him, desperate and reverent, and held Theo’s face like he was something precious. He’s held him in other ways too, under the cover of night and the haze of vodka and vicodin. That’s not really brotherly, but, well, he and Boris aren’t really brothers. He doesn’t really know the rules for people who are like brothers. He doesn’t know where the line is or if there even is one or what’s on the other side of it. He fears that if there is a line, he and Boris have crossed it some time ago.
It doesn’t matter. None of that shit matters. Boris is here, with Theo, and not with fucking Kotku or Mr. Pavlikovsky or anyone else. It’s Boris and Theo like it’s been for years and like it probably will be forever. And right now it’s Theo’s job not to let Boris die of internal bleeding or some shit.
“Okay, I’ll try to convince Boris,” Theo agrees. “Thank you, Hobie, I know we’re asking a lot from you.”
“Nonsense, my boy, I’m happy to help,” Hobie pats his shoulder. “I hope you’ll stick around, you have a good eye for antiques and your friend is quite a character.”
Theo does not want Boris to be in pain. Pain happens all the time for Boris, this is not something that worries anyone usually. But now Boris wakes to Theo fussing over him, telling him to be careful with himself so that he will not hurt anymore. Gentle, like Boris deserves this.
Boris and Theo have fought before, harmless really, a punch to the face and a kiss on the knuckles, quickly forgotten. But Theo was upset by these things, Boris could tell. He was upset also when Boris’s father would hurt him, or when he and Kotku would fight. Many things about their lives bothered Theo, Boris thought probably he was just not as familiar with how the world works as Boris is, his mother had shielded him from the bad parts until she was ripped away from him.
What if he thinks now that their world will go back to how it was before for Theo in New York? That is not the world Boris lives in, he does not know how to be a good little boy at fancy school with nice clothes and pretty face. He is always too loud or too quiet. He is dirty and impulsive and usually drunk.
Boris has heard of men who like a stripper so much they want to ‘take her away from all of this’. A girl in Vegas told him about this, she said these rich fancy men always get bored of their beloved whore when they realize she will not turn into lovely princess after he rescue her. He does not think Theo is stupid enough to expect such a change from Boris. But there was the way he talked about them living in New York, like everything would be better. Boris cannot be better.
Fuck. Fuck, this was a mistake. He should not have come.
“Boris, are you up?” Theo comes through the door quietly so that maybe Boris could have stayed asleep if he was normal person with no worries.
“Yes,” says Boris. “Awake.”
“Cool,” Theo sits on the bed against the headrest. “Hobie has a nurse friend that might help us out without dealing with paperwork and IDs and shit. He’s gonna call her and see if she’d be able to come by this afternoon, to look at your ribs.”
“We don’t have money for that.”
“I don’t think she’s charging for it.”
“People do not give something for nothing in return,” Boris says. One of those things about the world that Boris knows better than Theo. Surprising he did not learn it from Larry.
“You do,” Theo argues.
“Ha! No one has ever accused me of such a thing. When do I do this?”
“You give me stuff all the time.”
“Oh just to you?” Boris waves his hand. “That does not count.”
“Why the hell wouldn’t I count?”
“Potter, you and me are brothers, we share everything. It is different. And I take from you also, not only give.”
“So, what, you think Hobie’s friend is gonna try to take something?”
“I think I am nothing to these people, they have no reason to share with me,” Boris explains tiredly. Theo has been living in the real world for years now, he should know this much already. “So yes, they will want something in return, is only natural.”
“Well you’re- you’re something to me,” Theo clears his throat awkwardly. “And I think I’m something to Hobie, so he just wants to help.”
“I am fine, Potter, don’t need help.”
Boris rolls out of the bed, trying to make his movements look natural despite the pain, and looks through their bag for a cigarette.
“Boris…” Theo says, with something strange in his voice that freaks Boris out.
“What, Potter?” he snaps.
Theo doesn’t respond, and when Boris looks back to him he is staring down at Boris’s body. At the dark ugly colors all over his body.
“If it bothers you so much then give me a shirt,” Boris says, which seems to snap Theo out of it. “You took all our clothes away.”
“No, I just, I guess I never got a good look at it before.”
“Not very good to look at, hm?” Boris tries to joke. Not his best.
Theo approaches him. Boris wasn’t kidding about the shirt, he would very much like to cover up. Normally he would not worry about such things, it’s only Theo after all, but he feels very exposed right now. Theo reaches out to lay a hand on his side. Gentle, once again he is fucking gentle. They don’t do this, the two of them, not in the light of day. It is too much, Theo is going to spook, he is going to run again.
“Talk to the nurse,” he says, pretty eyes behind stupid glasses. “Please?”
Whatever Theo needs, that is what Boris had decided to be. If Theo needs him to play nice with this nurse woman to convince him that he does not need to worry about Boris, then he will do this.
“If you are going to be such baby about it, fine, I will talk to her,” he agrees. “Who knows, maybe she will be hot. You could be setting me up with the love of my life here, yes?”
“Asshole,” Theo rolls his eyes with a little smile and shoves Boris. It hurts and Boris is relieved.